Can Anything Beat White?: A Black Family's Letters

Chapter 6: Setting the Stage

Chapter 6 SETTING THE STAGE S Compared to her brothers and sisters, Helen Lou Evelyn James was barely five feet tall. What she lacked in stature, however, she compensatedforwithanindomitablespirit .BornSeptember1,1876,Helenwasthe most prolific James correspondent and, except for Willis, the best traveled. She was the first member of the James family to attend Hampton Institute , a tradition that ended when her niece, Anna Houston Lane (Ann Petry), withdrew in the early 1930s. In 1901 Helen left Hampton, where she had been a teacher-trainee, and took work as a maid in a school in Honolulu on the island of Oahu. She met Liliuokalani, the last Hawaiian queen, and Anna Cate Dole, the wife of the first territorial governor, Sanford Dole, and later became a teacher and manager of a school and foster home on Hawaii. After her return to the mainland, she attended Atlanta University, where she studied with W. E. B. Du Bois, then taught at the Penn School on St. Helena, South Carolina, and at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical College. During breaks in her academic schedule, she worked in summer homes owned by Emily Morgan. Helen wrote to Bertha every two weeks. The best educated of the family, Helen had the most literate, and literary, style. Despite the long narratives, she was reticent about expressing her feelings, even about minor details such as why a particular vista moved her. Nonetheless, Helen’s letters were long and filled with graphic images. She enclosed 108 Setting the Stage 109 church bulletins, brochures, and sometimes even bits of leaves and pieces of cloth. A letter from Hawaii written in 1902 still smelled of sandalwood a century later. Helen was aware that her experiences were unusual and asked Bertha to preserve her correspondence: “Get a letter file and keep the family letters also any newspaper articles, magazine articles, etc. It will be a most valuable collection of family history to be handed on, if there will be any one to hand it to. From the present outlook papa is the only one who is looking out that the name James be perpetuated.” Helen was “Lou” to everyone in the family, but once she acquired a measure of sophistication, she followed her father’s penchant for selfreinvention . At Hampton she began to sign her letters “H. Lou E. James,” then “Helen L. James.” She explained the change to Peter, “In running through my mail to-day I found a copy of the ‘Hartford Courant.’ My interest caused me to scan it immediately when lo! my eyes fell on an old letter of mine written to Miss Rathbun. The letter sounded good: I liked it and feel that it may do good; but the introduction nearly made me faint! How glaring [triple underline]; I haven’t recovered yet. Seeing that ‘Lou’ in quotation marks made me grateful to Dr. Waldron for her suggestion that Helen was more dignified.” Helen enrolled at Hampton in 1897, but Bertha did not start saving the letters until December 1898. The first was typical: Sunday afternoons I am usually quite indulgent allowing myself to sleep from dinner until time to dress for church. To-day I have decided to use this time in writing my Xmas letters, and really feel no inclination to sleep. Perhaps this is because I was up late last night. In chapel Mr. Daniel Webster Davis, whose poems Miss Arnold sent me last year, read a paper before the Folk Lore Society. His subject was Echoes From the Plantation. It was very very funny. He dwelt chiefly on the pastimes of the negroes on the plantation, taking up their dances and games. Among the ring games he mentioned “The Ole Lady Turn to See the Ole Man Turn.” Do you remember that? Mr. Davis was too comical for anything. He is one of the homeliest black men one would be liable to meet on a long day’s journey, and just as his poems are so he is. It is easily seen that he is the embodiment 110 Setting the Stage of them. He recited two: Bacon & Greens and “Those Stolen Breeches.” I am glad that I heard him, although I wanted last evening for sewing: Sat. is the only free evening that we have. . . . I noticed by the [New York] Age that Mrs. P.C. Lane had opened “Parlours.” How is business? How are things at the United Workers? Remember me...