Birth of a Notion; Or, The Half Ain't Never Been Told: A Narrative Account with Entertaining Passages of the State of Minstrelsy & of America & the True Relation Thereof

Chapter 6. A Middle Passage, or Bridge: Traversed by Frederick Douglass, William Henry Lane, and a Sense of the Increased Speed of Things, 1843–1848

94 Chapter 6 A Middle Passage, or Bridge Traversed by Frederick Douglass, William Henry Lane, and a Sense of the Increased Speed of Things 1843–1848 VOICE OF THE BLACK EYE: &, 1843: Witnesses the first Christmas card & “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens, short stories by Edgar Allen Poe. “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean (Columbia the Land of the Brave)” is the day’s popular musical favorite. & then one fine morning some time around about then, the Worker is a-wakened by a hiss, clack & rumble. Passing him by is a parade of new fangled doohickeys & hickeymadoos. “Chirographer” (a.k.a. type-writer), the first long distance telegraph wire, strung between Baltimore & D.C., the Howe Sewing Machine. & The Worker looks up & every-thing begins to accelerate 2, 3, 4. 123412341234 until its like Little Black Sambo hotfooting it from the tiger. But, instead of The Worker’s Time melting like butter it multiplies, till it’s on all The Worker’s hands, & it takes some newfangled doohickey or hickeymadoo or new amusement to kill it. Cross cut: { Birth of a Notion: Or, The Half Ain’t Never Been Told } 95 RASTUS: Abolitionists scold & sermonize, minstrels entertain. VOICE OF THE BLACK EYE: & so it’ll be so forth & so on, &/so for the next decade or so, amusement & science, minstrels & manumission, symbolized by Darwin sailing the oceans blue, collecting wildlife specimens: fauna & fossils to systemize, & Barnum, assailing the notions of true, projecting life’s wild specimens: freaks & fascinations, to tantalize, each applying the principle of THOMAS ROBERT MALTHUS, English parson Malthus (1766–1834) said industrialized society’s incomes outpace population growth, which out-pace food production, which proves war, plagues, slavery & infanticide are all good for the stimulation of more Industry & the discouragement of indolence, Doodah. So, the finest, the fittest (& most foul, I might add) Succeed, Malthus reasons, & the ordinary & hindmost gush in a rush like slush from a busted barrel’s bottom, Ha ha. Cross cut: RASTUS: Abolitionists scold & sermonize, minstrels entertain. PADDY: & the form solidifies itself. VOICE OF THE BLACK EYE: & in 1844. “Buffalo Girls (Won’t You Come Out Tonight?)” by the pseudonymous “Cool White” (nudge nudge) is a hit. { Bill Harris } 96 A newly patented 6-shooter comes out & a handful of Texas Rangers use it to bump off 150 Comanch. “What,” the first message sent by telegraph wire asks, “hath God Wrought!” The YMCA is founded in London. Barnum’s American Museum continues to pull them in. A wood pulp process produces paper cheap enough to print pap to placate the mass, the pawns, moving forward 1 square at a time. “All for one & one for all,” cry the heroes of African-French novelist Alexandre Dumas’ (1802–1870) The Three Musketeers. RASTUS: Meanwhile, abolitionists scold & sermonize; minstrels entertain. EYE OF THE BLACK VOICE: & in 1845 machinery improvements of every sort multiplied like rabbits: raw cotton & wool are mechanically combed; steam pumps down, becomes compound, wheels around & around, spins out hydroelectricity, power from running water, splish splash; work goes faster & faster till the workers huff & puff, their eyes spinning like Barney Google’s bonging & bugging at the lurid illustrations in The Police Gazette, that scandalous rag. & James O. Andrews has slaves. There are objections. Serious ones. Andrews is a bishop of the Methodist Episcopalian Church. Bishop: Middle English, from Old English bisceope, from Vulgar Latin *ebiscopus, from Late Latin episcopus, from Late Greek episkopos, from Greek, overseer: epi-, epi- + skopos, watcher. “1. A spiritual superintendent or overseer in the Christian Church.” The Methodist Episcopalian Church splits into northern & southern blocs. Bishop Anderson, in his burgundy rig, maneuvers diagonally { Birth of a Notion: Or, The Half Ain’t Never Been Told } 97 across unoccupied spaces, keeps his slaves (did you note the “overseer” in the definition above?) & his Bishop’s gig. Doodah. & Florida becomes the 27th state, & the U.S. gets dibs on the Republic of Texas. It annexes it from Mexico. Mexico cries foul. War ensues. The 267,338 square miles become the 28th state. Friendship is its Motto. Friendship, remember, is Amistad in Spanish. The mockingbird, Florida’s state bird, is gray & white. Its M.O. is aping the songs of other birds. It, therefore, is the avian equivalent of the Minstrel. Doodah. RASTUS: In that same year, & coincidentally or not, the Knickerbocker Magazine asks, “Who are our true rulers?” In its wisdom, or audacity, & in one fell swoop, condemning the majority’s methods & motives, lays it out thusly: “The Negro poets, to be sure.” Then, in one fell swoop, knock & mock the reality of the minstrel mentality, both methods & motives...