George Boyer Vashon’s “In the Cars”: A Poem and Four Responses

Introduction

George Boyer Vashon’s poem “In the Cars” is essentially unknown. After its original appearance in the August 26, 1865 issue of the African Methodist Episcopal Church’s weekly Christian Recorder, it does not appear to have been published again. While the poem was collected by the Black Periodical Literature Project and is thus noted in ProQuest’s Black Literature Index, both of these sources, like the original publication, list the author only as “G. B. V.” of Pittsburgh. I have located no other mention of the poem.¹

Our cultural forgetting of Vashon’s poem is both surprising and all too believable. Part of that neglect, like that surrounding so many texts discussed in this special issue, springs from its publication venue—an “ephemeral” periodical. Still, Vashon (July 25, 1824–October 5, 1878) was comparatively well known in and beyond nineteenth-century African America. Son of John B. Vashon and Anne Smith Vashon, George Vashon spent much of his youth in Pittsburgh, immersed in a culture of black activism, in which his parents played an important part. At fourteen, he helped establish a youth antislavery society, and this engagement continued when, while attending Oberlin College, he began teaching. By 1859, fifteen years after receiving his bachelor’s degree from Oberlin, Vashon had studied law but had been refused admission to the Pennsylvania bar because of his race; had written for Martin Delany’s Mystery, Frederick Douglass’s newspapers, and the 1854 edition of the anti-slavery anthology Autographs for Freedom; had been admitted to the New York state bar and practiced law there; had spent time teaching and writing in Haiti; had participated actively in the black convention movement; had taught for three years at New York Central College, thus becoming one of the earliest black college professors; and had helped lead black education efforts in Pittsburgh. He had also married Susan Paul Smith (September 19, 1838–November 27, 1912), namesake niece of early black writer and teacher Susan Paul and member of one of the Northeast’s most important black activist families.

Vashon remained committed to African American uplift during and after the Civil War, spending four years as President of Pittsburgh’s Avery College and continuing work with the convention movement. After relocating to Washington, DC, in 1867, he provided legal aid to newly-freed people, led Howard University’s night school, worked with DC schools, held several government jobs, and wrote for various venues including the New Era. Late in 1873, he was recruited to teach at Mississippi’s new Alcorn University, but he was felled by yellow fever after only a few years there. Known as an activist and educator, Vashon has also continued to hold a place in black letters, primarily because of his poem in Autographs, “Vincent Ogé,” an epic fragment on the Haitian Revolution.

But this brief discussion also highlights how much we do not know. Even though we have retained some of Vashon’s poems, we have not yet found what may have been a much larger oeuvre. Even though we can give a thumbnail sketch of basic biographical and genealogical details, we know comparatively little about the man and his circle. The few sources that bother to note that Vashon and his spouse had seven children, for example, generally name only the four who survived to adulthood: John (September 9, 1859–April 8, 1924), Frank (February 12, 1861–October 11, 1926), George (April 19, 1862–July 26, 1938), and Emma (August 8, 1866–November 13, 1932). To find the subject of the poem below—the “baby-girl, the crowning of our joys”—we have to turn to the pages of the April 8, 1865 Recorder, which report: “Died. VASHON.—In Pittsburg, Pa., on Saturday, March 25th, 1865, of congestion of the brain, Anne Paul, only and beloved daughter of Geo. B. and Susan Paul Vashon, aged 1 year, 5 mos., and 3 days.”

We here share both “In the Cars” and a set of responses to...