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225 Chapter Ten “A Painted Lie” Autobiography and Historical Memory In early 1885, Peter Humphries Clark relayed his life story to Timothy Thomas Fortune, editor of the African American journal the New York Freeman. Fortune devoted two-thirds of the front page of his January 3 issue to Clark’s biography, signifying Fortune’s respect for his friend and political ally.1 Although this was not the first time anyone had published Clark’s biography, he rarely ever discussed his personal life story publicly, especially his family history.2 In that issue of the Freeman, Clark briefly recounted how his maternal grandfather, Samuel Humphries, a teamster by trade, had traveled to Erie, Pennsylvania, to help build the famous fleet of ships that Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry used to defeat the British during the War of 1812. He maintained that after the ships were complete, his grandfather served as a sailor on one of them, and had been present at one of the most famous battles in that war, the Battle of Lake Erie.3 In that same article, Clark expressed his annoyance at society’s failure to acknowledge the role African Americans played in that war. It seemed to be—at least to him—a deliberate attempt to erase their contributions. For him, even William Henry Powell’s 1873 famous painting Battle of Lake Erie contributed to African Americans’ erasure from the history of the War of 1812. That painting depicts Oliver Perry standing in a rowboat with several oarsmen. In the midst of battle, with cannon fire all around them, all the men except one are depicted as brave: the African American is shown cowering. Clark complained that “although colored men were in the hottest of that fight and bore themselves bravely too, the only one whom the artist represents as showing trepidation is the black sailor.” Outraged by the depiction and the message it sent about African American bravery, Clark blasted Powell’s rendition as a “painted lie.”4 By critiquing Powell ’s interpretation of the battle, he directly challenged American [white] 226 America’s First Black Socialist nationalist history, which places whites at the center of nation forming, and either relegates African Americans to the margins or erases them altogether . By painting trepidation into the face of the black sailor, Powell subtly asserts that African Americans had not valiantly served in the War of 1812 and therefore represent the antiheroes. Clark felt that the painting mocked African Americans’ service, and that their apparent trepidation and cowardice defined them as unpatriotic—and therefore undeserving of citizenship. Powell’s Battle of Lake Erie obviously hit a nerve; Clark’s commentary is his attempt to disrupt and challenge the master narrative of American history, while simultaneously using his own family history as a basis to prove that African Americans had valiantly served in the war and, consequently, deserve the rights of citizens.5 Although scant records from that battle survive, historians have verified that African Americans comprised somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of those who served in that historic battle.6 It seems perfectly plausible that Clark’s grandfather may have numbered among them, but a closer look at the records of the Battle of Lake Erie suggests that there is only a slim chance that his maternal grandfather, Samuel Humphries, actually served under Commodore Perry on Lake Erie. The muster rolls at Lake Erie Naval Station cannot be found, but there are some other surviving records that provide a near-complete list of names of those who served, including Samuel Hambleton’s Prize List, compiled so Congress could disburse compensation for those who served in that campaign. Humphries’s name is not found on this list or on the list of those wounded or killed in battle.7 Although the Hambleton’s Prize List is incomplete and contains not only spelling errors but also errors of omission, it is the most definitive extant list of men who served under Commodore Perry during the War of 1812. Moreover, although there is a slight chance that Samuel Humphries’s name may have been omitted or recorded incorrectly, it is doubtful that he served at all, as Clark claims. His story bears remarkable resemblance to the real story of William Anderson, his wife Frances’s grandfather, who heroically served in the American Revolution. Clark also led people to believe that his paternal grandfather was the American frontier explorer William Clark, who, along with Meriwether Lewis, led a pioneering transcontinental expedition through...

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