Claiming Exodus: A Cultural History of Afro-Atlantic Identity, 1774-1903

5. African Americans in the Nadir (1877–1900)

113 CHAPTER FIVE African Americans in the Nadir (1877–1900) The “Exodus” implies two things, the perfect emancipation of an enslaved people, and the immediate destruction of their enslavers, and both accomplished by a miracle, in which the former, as a race, is forever separated from the latter as a race. These ideas became facts in the case of Egyptian bondage—they can never be realized in the case of American slavery. —Daniel Payne, “Evergreen Cottage, Near Wilberforce University, xenia, o.” Exodus is medicine, not food; it is for disease, not health—it is not to be taken from choice, but necessity. In anything like a normal condition of things, the South is the best place for the negro. Nowhere else is there for him a promise of a happier future. Let him stay there if he can, and save both the South and himself to civilization. —Frederick Douglass, “The Negro Exodus from the Gulf States” The characters of the Old Testament I most admire are Moses and Nehemiah. They were willing to put aside their own advantages for their race and country. —Frances E. W. Harper, Iola Leroy; or, Shadows Uplifted [T]he railroad locomotive will furnish the “pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night” which is to guide the great exodus of the poor from the crowded communities of the Old World and the New into this promised land. —J. A. Wheelock, “The New Northwest” 114 CLAIMING ExoDUS The failure of Reconstruction thwarted black and white writers’ attempts to create new national Exodus narratives that would have developed a more perfect union for all American citizens. Reconstruction had ushered in an era of unparalleled economic, educational, political, and social gains that signaled the transformation of the United States into a promised land, particularly for its African American populace. Within a decade, however, white Americans had marginalized African Americans by presenting “the Negro Problem” as a popular topic in monthly magazines that targeted white middle-class readers, and they attempted to solve the “problem” by enacting codes that curtailed African American citizens’ rights, lynching blacks in record numbers, and perpetuating stereotypical images of African Americans in minstrel shows, plantation literature, and other cultural productions. The African American community struggled to survive in a period characterized as “the Nadir,” “the lowest point in the quest for equal rights.”1 Although African Americans established numerous colleges, women’s clubs, and benevolent societies to uplift the race, unemployment, poverty, and discrimination decimated the community. African Americans further faced a formidable obstacle when the US Supreme Court legalized “separate but equal” facilities in its 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, effectively barring them from the American promised land of equality. As their newfound freedoms disappeared, African Americans wondered if they were waiting on the border of the promised land, wandering in the wilderness, or journeying back to Egypt. The increasing circulation and influence of white supremacist ideologies fragmented America, even limiting opportunities for immigrants and lower-class whites to experience economic advancement and social mobility. Nevertheless, a new generation of white writers sustained the national Exodus narratives while American manifested itself as an increasingly imperialistic, industrialized world power. From the end of Reconstruction to the dawn of the twentieth century, African American writers returned to the Exodus narrative to reconstitute the nation as an inclusive, integrated society. They invoked the Joseph and Moses stories to affirm and advise leaders who preserved the community ’s commitment to activism by encouraging their brethren to continue demanding civil rights and social equality as they confronted the challenges of the Nadir. other writers were more interested in searching for a promised land than in identifying a leader, however, reigniting the debate that pitted integration, emigration, and migration factions against one another. New Exodus-inspired strategies, rather than the persistent concerns about Exodus leaders and promised lands, were on the minds of still other African American activists who appropriated the Exodus narrative as a blueprint AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE NADIR 115 for new guides to racial uplift that could address African Americans’ concerns and aspirations in the early twentieth century. Although the promise of freedom and equality offered by Exodus stories remained unfulfilled during the Nadir, the biblical narrative empowered a new generation of writers to sustain the struggle and lay the foundation for the modern Civil Rights Movement. AME Bishop Abraham Grant Joseph Affirms Prosperity in the Pit During the end...