Over time, I've become increasingly convinced that to influence the future we not only have to gain control of the present but repair the past. To tell our own stories, our own histories – the mundane as well as the extraordinary because one thing sometimes lacking from historical narratives about people of color is the comfort of normalcy. If we don't tell them, who will?

To start, I've been working to put names and lives to the people in the old photos we have - the ones my mom remembers at any rate. Not all are family, some are just people whose lives intersected, but I'm going to tell their stories too. It's an interesting project for me… turns out that, in the process of filling in the blanks – with the help of other family members and Google - I'm learning about parts of history that I'd forgotten, or never knew and finding some of it fascinating. You never know what might pop up.

I'd love to build a vast collection of stories of others, or links to them, so I'm planning to start an "Our History" soapbox and forum space at intrapolitics.org, where we can gather the memories, help each other out with the history (especially us folks who never paid attention) and have another space where our stories are told. If you already have a collection, put the links in comments.

Though, as I mentioned, I've been thinking of this for a while, funnily enough it's a relative whose existence I was unaware of until 3 days ago who gave me the final push. In 1909 my great-great-great uncle, J.W. (John Wesley) Grant wrote a book called Out of the Darkness: or Diabolism and Destiny, which is a fictionalized account of his life. I've not read the book yet, but when I read the introduction (below the fold) my first thought was, "Dang, except for the language, this could have been written yesterday… "


INTRODUCTION.

Injustice swift, erect and unconfined,
Swoops the wide earth, and tramples o'er mankind. —
Homer.

The prevailing sentiments in this country, and especially in the South, are intensified in a large measure by much that is sent out from the public press of the land on the race question.

Although much has been said on the platform and in public print about the Negro, very little has been spoken or written in his favor. Few have been the words uttered in commendation of his
achievements, save by the Negro himself. Even historians, when they have mentioned the Negro at all, have done so usually in terms of derogation; a spirit of malevolence breathes through
nearly all they say concerning him.

The historical and literary libels, the minstrel shows, the "rag time" music and advertising designs have all, at all times, held the Negro up to contemptuous gaze, and pictured him as a fawning fool! It is, indeed, puzzling to understand why our national and world historians have so studiously and flagrantly failed and refused to accord the Negroes their merited place in the annals of the nation and the world. Why have they persisted in dealing with the Negro as an execrable outcast?

At the same time as came the Pilgrim Fathers came also the Negro; the former to freedom, honor and glory, and the latter to slavery, degradation, persecution, ignorance and vice! But side by side
with the free white American, the enslaved black American has labored, fought, bled and died for the glories of American institutions, and yet little notice, small praise, and no honor have been given him for what he has done!

Massachusetts alone, of the members of the Union, has paid some tribute of respect to the memory of her black heroes. To the Negro, she stands out like a bright star in the black night of the oblivion which envelops his path of glory. This mother of freemen has not wholly neglected her dark defenders! She at least is not one of the cabal whose purpose seems to be to keep the Negro down.

Three hundred years of neglect is, we think, quite enough to convince the Negro that his story, if told at all, must be related by himself. Of course, being shut up in the dark prison-house of bondage for two hundred and fifty years, the array of facts he has been able to gather is meager indeed. Still he is in possession of many points concerning his life, both as a slave and freeman, which form a part of the unwritten history of the race. If anything is to be told to the Negro's credit, he himself must tell it.

Tales of the weakness, wickedness, foibles and follies of the Negro have been told and published with flaming headlines for centuries by thousands of writers and periodicals. The Negro has been held up in cartoons, show-bills and advertisements till he is regarded as a grinning, groveling fool the world over! He has been published by the press and public writers as a rapist and henroost robber, till he is looked upon as a beast of prey. In places where the Negro is not known, he is considered a ravenous beast. Those people who never saw a Negro are not told that for five years Negroes watched over and cared for the white women and children of the South, while their masters were away fighting to perpetuate their chains and slavery, and that though at their mercy, there was never one case of assault or attempt at undue familiarity during those dark days.

The garrulous traducers of the Negro do not tell that not one-tenth of the Negroes lynched are even accused of rape, or that they are put to death violently on suspicion of almost any offence, and often for no offence at all. These exploiters of Negro wickedness do not tell that justice for him in Southern Courts is a thing rarely thought of; they do not tell that the courts are supply machines for the State farms and big private plantations where convicts are worked; that it is a part of the business of the courts to supply peons for fields and mines.

Down the path of the centuries have come stories of the character and achievements of the Negro, but so distorted and blackened by prejudice and hate that the authors themselves cannot credit their garbled fabrications!

Southern writers, especially, have laid on their deadliest strokes in painting the Negro a beast. While they have done all in their power for three hundred years to crush out of him all the manly instincts, the Negro is still a human and loves humanity and humane treatment. These defamers have so seared their consciences that they have ceased to regard truth or honor when speaking of the Negro. The press load their columns from day to day with police news and the crimes of the Negro; they herald with heat and haste any report of an outrage by him, and seem to take a sort of fiendish delight in promulgating any of his wrongful acts, but they rarely, if ever, utter a word in holding up to the world the millions of honest, God-fearing, industrious, frugal, respectable and self-respecting Negroes, who are toiling on for the salvation of their race! Why do they not sometimes rest their consciences by telling of the thousands and thousands of Negroes who, through oppression, long-suffering and repression, are struggling on up to 'a higher and more exalted plane of living?

Why do they fail to mention the thousands of educated and refined professional, business and laboring men and women, and the multitude of skilled laborers who, although proscribed, are working out the destiny of our race?

Although said to be an indolent race, more than three-fourths of the Negroes are at work. Three-fourths of all the cotton is produced by black labor, and one-half of the cotton farms are owned and controlled by black people. They own and control half the farms in the South.

Many who attempt to give information about the Negro are densely ignorant of what the Negro is doing for his own uplift. Some of these writers have attempted to deal the race a most ignominious
blow, by holding up to the public gaze, at all times and in all places, the very worst type of Negroes. Some have gone further and undertaken to distort the higher type into a knave or fiend incarnate! They ask the world to measure the Negro by his worst clement, while they themselves are judged by their best. The other side of the picture should be seen before judgment is passed. "Who will show us any good?" Who shall tell the story of our suffering and persecution, of our struggles and triumphs over difficulty and wrong, if we keep silent?

If the Negro wishes the truths of the history of his thralldom, persecution, degradation, ostracism, and his successes and triumphs over his enemies and calumniators told, he himself must tell it! I am aware that the apologist and the time-servers condemn such a course and condone these wrongs. The man with an ax to grind at the enemy's place, says, "Sh! sh!" Their song is:


But a race or nation is never helped by the apologist. Christ was no apologist. Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams and Toussaint 'Ouverture were not time-servers—neither were Phillips, Garrison, Sumner, John Brown, Lovejoy, Stowe and Frederick Douglass. Such spirits are the bulwark of liberty and the savers of the nation.

The enemy and the calumniator do not allow one opportunity of vilification or misrepresentation of the Negro to pass. Still, "Truth is immutable and imperishable." The true apostle of truth says, "When I keep silent it is fire in my bones." Woe is me if I lift not up my voice and warn both my people and the enemy of what the signs of the times portend! They thrust her from her watch-tower, but her voice will still be heard in that land!

Like proud Rome, this nation built upon corruption and misrule shall yet lie dethroned amid the ashes of her desolation!

The battle of right against might is on, but the weapon is the pen, which is mightier than the sword! Of course the Negro is a pigmy against giants, but he must deal his sledge-hammer blows, striking for his altars and his fires, for the bloody graves of his sires!

It is commonly reported that most of the publishers are quite anxious to help the defamers of the Negro, so much so that they grasp greedily and publish any diatribe or fabrication that traduces him; but anything which seeks to give the Negro's side of the case is refused by them flatly. They will sometimes publish something which purports to give the Negro side, providing it is of a toadying nature.

If the Negro would have the world to know his dreams, hopes, and the story of his thralldom, he himself must tell it, whether it be the burden of a sigh, or the thrilling, rallying war-cry. The time must come when he shall be willing to die otherwise than by the hand of the lyncher.

Most of the writers and public speakers of the day talk of the destiny of the Negro as though the getting of money, a smattering of education, and houses and lands were the principal thing in his national or racial development. These are, all of them, necessary and important, but what are they worth to a race that accepts a state of servility as its fixed destiny? Patrick Henry uttered the slogan of aspiring manhood. What are houses, land and money to men who are women?

AUTHOR.

Published 1909

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The more things change, eh? Even the sexism is still the same! The book cover photo above is from a site put together by kinfolk... I don't know who they are or the precise relationship (their cousin Jimmy is my Uncle Jimmy), but I've bumped into a few other far flung family members over the past few months, who are also seeking out and filling in the blanks. At that site they have the book in PDF, but also Google books has it in the original print, here.

I'll be putting stories up probably on weekends, hopefully eventually generating some interest in the project. I look forward to others joining in!