Pauline E. Hopkins: A Literary Biography

Notes

Notes RESTLESSNESS OF THE SPIRIT (1859--1900) Background and Beginnings 1. Throughout history, appellations have been various, divergent, and often hotly debated. In this text the preferred choice is African American, the standard appellation since the 1990s. In some cases, Negro, colored, colored American, or black have been chosen to avoid ahistorical usage. They are employed with a full awareness of their historical context and the controversies surrounding them. 2. Information about James Monroe Whitfield can be found in Blyden Jackson (252); Laryea; and Sherman. 3. For information about the Paul family and their sometimes confusing genealogy, see Horton, Black Bostonians, 40ff.; Horton, Free People, 43–45. A detailed account of Susan Paul’s life can be found in Lois Brown’s introduction to Paul’s Memoir of James Jackson. 4. James Oliver Horton writes about the pattern of family involvement over generations : “If one member of a family was involved in civil rights, anti-slavery, or general social reform, other family members were likely to take part” (Free People 48). See also Gatewood for a general discussion of prominent African American families. 5. The 1870 census showed that 37 percent of the African American population of Boston was born in the state of Massachusetts, whereas 36 percent were migrants from the South, mainly from Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina (see Thernstrom 181). 6. Manuscript versions of both plays can be found in the Hopkins Papers, Fisk University Library Special Collections. There is no date given for “One Scene.” 7. Collison describes the Boston of 1850: “The city shoreline bristled with docks, and hundreds of masts rose from Boston Harbor. A colossal spider’s web of railroad tracks reached out from the center of the city toward the west, north, and south, connecting Boston to the manufacturing centers of Lowell, Worcester, and Lynn and to markets all through New England, the mid-Atlantic states, and the Midwest” (61). Performances and Peculiar Sam 1. Subsequent references to the Hopkins Papers will be abbreviated HP, with folder abbreviated “f.” 315 316 Notes to Pages 35–54 2. For information about Anna Madah and Emma Louise Hyers, who were considered by many to be the forerunners of the later celebrated singers Marie Selika and Sissieretta Jones, see Southern, Music, 244–55, and Southern, “An Early Black Concert Company.” For information about Sam Lucas, see Southern, Music (esp. 237–42), and Holly. 3. According to Daniels, the social acceptance of a stenographer ranked in between “Menial and Common Labor Occupations” and “Professions and Business Proprietorships ” in the category “Higher Grade Manual and Clerical Work” (Daniels 333–97). In his ascending scale “according to their estimation in the community” (345), stenographers ranked above such professions for women as dressmakers, milliners, bookbinders , printers, and telephone operators and below the top professions of clerks and copyists, bookkeepers, agents, and saleswomen. By percentage, 65 percent of all men and 76 percent of all women were employed in “Menial and Common Labor Occupations” (333–34); 25.5 percent of all men and 16 percent of all women were employed in “Higher Grade Manual and Clerical Work” (343–45); and 7.8 percent of men and 5.9 percent of women made their living in “Professions and Business Proprietorships” (357–59). Daniels was a white social worker in Boston at the South End’s settlement for southern black migrants (Schneider 7). 4. In the biography of her father, Helen M. Chesnutt wrote that in the early 1880s Charles Waddell Chesnutt decided to learn stenography. In 1880, at the age of twentytwo , Chesnutt became principal of the Normal School at Fayetteville, N.C., but was looking for some means of earning his living in some other place (16). Therefore, he studied stenography. His dreams were realized when he went to New York and later to Cleveland, Ohio, where he established a successful business as court stenographer: “He was thus able to carry out the plans that he had made before leaving Fayetteville. He could earn his living by this magic gift of stenography, and make a slight start into the field of literature via the gate of journalism” (35). NEGOTIATIONS IN RACE AND GENDER (1900–1905) The Colored American Magazine 1. For general information about the Colored American Magazine, see Johnson and Johnson, Propaganda 1–16; Johnson and Johnson, “Away from Accommodation ”; Bullock 106–18; Charles S. Johnson, “Rise”; Braithwaite, “Negro America’s First Magazine”; Meier, “Booker T. Washington and the Negro Press”; Du Bois, “The Colored Magazine”; and Schneider...