Lecture 1 | African-American History (Stanford)

[Music] this program is brought to you by Stanford University please visit us at stanford.edu first of all it introduced this class by saying that I hope that this class will not always be taught in this room because it's not very appropriate and we're trying to find another room right now but in any case this is the modern African American freedom struggle and what I'll do today is introduce this class by talking about Du Bois as a person who has made a unique contribution and this will be a sample of the kind of lectures because during this quarter I'll focus on a particular individual every day and I'll use this individual as a way of describing certain themes that go much broader than that individual I'll look at the relationships of that individual to others who made major contributions during that period and I think it's really good to start with Dubois because he is such a central figure in African American history um one way of looking at at his centrality is to look at the title of this recent biography Pulitzer prize-winning biography of Du Bois and you notice the subtitle biography of a race imagine that you know a biography of a single person being described as the biography of an entire race and I think that Du Bois to some degree justifies that's not an overstatement to say that by looking at his life we can look at so many of the central themes in African American history one of the things that the boy said about himself actually was that in when he wrote one of his several autobiographies he said not completely immodestly he said I think I may say without boasting that in the period from 1910 to 1930 I was the main factor in revolutionising the of American Negroes toward cast my stinging hammer blows made Negroes aware of themselves confident of their personalities of their possibilities and determined in self-assertion so much so that today common slogans among the Negro people are taken bodily from the words of my mouth well you can see he had definitely a very large view of his role and and I think that when we look at his life after the point in this film at the beginning of the century within the 20th century and he starts the 20th century already 32 years old I think it can be said without question that he is the most influential American intellectual of the century imagine a book written in 1903 souls of black folk which still outsells any of the books that I've written today so this I think indicates that people are still concerned about the voices attitudes and the way in which he conceptualizes the issues of race in America one of the things that I think we could also say is that all subsequent scholarship about African Americans all the stuff that we do all the stuff that is done in CSRA and the African American Studies program can in some ways be seen as a footnote to what do boys has already said I mean if you want to know what csr ii does look at the first page of souls of black folk it outlines the whole agenda for the program if you want to look at what we do in terms of African American sociology look at the Philadelphia Negro written more than 100 years ago if you want to see and engaged intellectual somebody who makes a contribution in terms of his scholarship but also makes a major contribution in terms of public discussion of issues a public intellectual as Cornel West would say well Cornel West learned all of his lessons at the foot of Dubois he is without question the preeminent intellectual but I think he's also the preeminent political thinker of the 20th century just a few of the things that would kind of outline this this role if you look at what he did with the souls of black folk how many of you are aware of the themes in the souls of black folk how many of read it by the way no one any one kind of know about the book okay tell me one of the themes [Music] honey and I want to thank things that stuck out with the park the two John's and how black John was talking about marking new mm-hmm okay well it kind of gets to the differences in terms of perspectives of race the way in which people a different race perceive things differently based on their backgrounds and and that that was a new insight any anything else that yes right and what was that debate the Booker T Washington versus Dubois what were they arguing about because that that's a debate that's still going on today over a hundred years later yes this argument was featured about the way in which African Americans could I guess lumps necessary society where prejudice was very prominent operative Washington field ed african-american question certainly you know not in the social aspects hope society that can function and still be okay well wbd Boyd felt that it would benefit everything Americans immerse themselves within no society as a whole tonight isolate themselves away okay Booker T Washington would would probably say going to a liberal arts school like Stanford what is it going to do for you it's not a practical skill we need to cast down our buckets where we are in 1903 where are most African Americans they're in the rural South they need practical skills and this is this is what he is arguing but in a broader sense he's arguing lift yourself up by your own bootstraps don't think that by integrating into American society you're going to improve the race you're just going to escape from the race and it's and it's probably a useless attempt to try to escape liberal arts education versus vocational education you know all of these debates are still going on separatism versus integration all of all of these ideas that came out of that debate are still divided the black community all and and I think quite frankly many African Americans in their own psyche have elements of the de bois position and have elements of the Washington toning in position on that in that debate what else in the book there's a chapter called the sorrow songs that have to do with the the importance of African American culture as particularly expressed through music you know that's an insight that no one else was was putting forward at that time yes the talented tenth how many of you know that idea yes please okay I I see a few members of the talented tenth right here in this classroom are you all going to get your Stanford education and going to come back and help bring up the race you know that's an idea that the boys put forward so all of this was was part of his contribution if he had just written nothing else if he had died in 1904 he would have still been an important figure in african-american life we would still be talking about him today but what did he do in 1905 anyone now 1905 the Niagara movement the first civil rights protest organization ever formed by black Americans so it's it's a forerunner of the n-double a-c-p which he founds in 1909 anyone here heard of pan-africanism why would Dubois be considered the father of pan-africanism well while he's doing all of this he's going off 1902 the first pan-african Congress key figure there and in all the subsequent pan-african meetings going up through the 1940s all calling for the unity and the liberation of African people wherever they are in the world this is something that he's involved in from the beginning of the century he is an ally and a friend of all of the leaders who emerge an independent Africa during the 1950s and 60s so is that enough well he goes on from there and founds a journal called the crisis the Journal of the n-double a-c-p the n-double-a-cp is the major and oldest civil rights organization still around more than a hundred years later and as a the founder of it and the founder of its journal the crisis he becomes the most influential African American intellectual of his time this is not like today when the crisis might be one of many magazines around that that present the ideas of black people when it innit when it was formed it was one of the few and certainly the most influential national magazine a whole generation of African Americans grew up waiting for the crisis to arrive why because they would find out news about what was going on in the african-american community throughout the nation and sometimes throughout the world they would find out not only political news through the voices editorials about issues such as lynching issues such as world war one what position should we take should we fight should we not fight What did he say on that question by the way said we should why why should we fight in the war wasn't an African American war it wasn't to free that the colonies in Africa yeah he writes an editorial called close ranks says you know we need to contribute to the war effort March off to war and when we return we March come back marching to get our rights in the United States later on he quite regrets that because after the war comes the most one of the most racist periods in American history more race riots the cracking down on black militancy this is when J Edgar Hoover gains his reputation as as a person fighting subversion within the United States trying to get people like Marcus Garvey Marcus Garvey how does he relate to Dubois they actually yeah yeah marcus garvey he the Jamaican comes to the United States after Booker T Washington about the time when Booker T Washington dies Marcus Garvey arrives as a Booker T Washington person because he believes in that lift yourself up by your bootstraps and he has an electric effect gets a mass following something that boys never does get because Marcus Garvey talks more to the working-classes he tries to appeal to those who were who were not able to move in the circles that Dubois moves in Marcus Garvey goes in and over to the n-double-a-cp headquarters in New York after he arrives there he knocks on the door and comes in and what does he see you know here here is a very dark-skinned Jamaican coming to the United States he walks into the office and and he says everybody looked white even the black people looked white and he said this is the organization that's leading the black people it doesn't look like the people he knew in Harlem he talks to Dubois and they and they don't hit it off I mean the voice has a lot of qualities one of them is that he doesn't suffer people who are not quite as intelligent as he is very easily and for him to relate to Dubois he saw him as a demagogue someone who was kind of appealing to people who were not very reflective trying to get their money for this thing called the Black Star steamship line this was you know really in his view just kind of a hustle that was going to put money in the pockets of people in the universal Negro Improvement Association Garvey you can imagine he saw de bois another light-skinned mixed-race kind of person who was not really interested in the in the position of the majority of black people he was interested in integrating into the majority society even though he was a militant in his own terms so the two did not hit it off they their exchanges were very sharp during the during the early 1920s kind of yelling you know names that each other trying to in fact Dubois was very happy when the the government finally cracked down on Garvey charged him with mail fraud getting appealing for money through the mail for this kind of fraudulent black star steamship line threw him in prison and ultimately kicked him out of the country one of what does this indicate about the voice though I think that what it one of the things that he learns from the Garvey experience is that he has to become more concerned about the position of the black majority the black masses even before that he considers himself somewhat of a socialist someone who can who is concerned about trying to deal with the economic problems of the time he's close to some people in the Socialist Party but the Socialist Party at that point is mostly white people as far as black/white unity especially black working class unity and white working-class unity he knows that that's not likely to happen it's white workers who are in the mobs that are lynching black people so he had he faces this dilemma in the 1920s but the point I would make overall is that by the time we get to the end of the 1920s he's at the height of his influence he's a person who has accomplished a great deal he's approaching 60 years old some people when they're approaching 60 years old might even be thinking about retirement might even be thinking that they their best years are behind them he also at this at this stage has enormous influence an enormous not only influence but contacts networks throughout the country and one thing that kind of to me brings this home is in 1928 his daughter mentioned in the film that his son dies he has a daughter and in 1928 she decides to get married he's very happy about that decides to have a major wedding in part because she's marrying County Collin County Cullen is a poet black poet leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance you can kind of imagine the pride of a father you know here he is in Harlem his daughter is going to marry a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance this is going to be the big event and of course he's editor of the crisis so guess what crisis has even going to cover this 1,300 invitations go out and actually if everyone who wanted to be at the wedding had been invited to the wedding it would have been probably 13,000 invitations had got out because four months after that the voice has to encounter people who are angry because they were not invited to attend this even it is probably the social event of the decade but one of the things I would say about Dubois is as brilliant as he was some things he had blind spots and one of the things that I will develop about each of these individuals is that they had their strengths they had their weaknesses one of the blind spots for Dubois was were the questions of gender sexuality he tried to struggle with this and you can see in his writings him struggling with these issues trying to come to terms as he came to terms with everything else looking at it rationally looking at it as a social scientists might look at it I think we can see W EBD boys's complex and sometimes contradictory attitudes about gender and about raising children in his essay that he writes on the eve of his daughter's marriage the essay is called so the girl marries which he published in the crisis which was of course the magazine that he added it it was published in June of 1928 the problem of marriage among our present American Negroes is a difficult one on the one hand go conflicting philosophies should we black folk breed children or commit biological suicide on the other hand should we seek larger sexual freedom or closer conventional rules should we guide and mate our children like the French or leave the whole matter of sex intermingling to the chance of the street like Americans these are puzzling questions and all the more so because we do not often face them honestly the boys goes on to talk about his role in the in his daughter's selection of a of a spouse my part inmate selection was admittedly small but I flatter myself not altogether negligible we talked the young men over their fathers in grin fathers their education their ability to earn particular sorts of living their dispositions all this incidentally mind you not didactically or systematically once or twice I went along on long letter hunts for facts usually facts were all too clear and only deductions necessary what was the result I really don't know sometimes I suspect that the girl arranged it all and that I was the large and solemn fly on the wheel at other times I flatter myself that I was astute secret wise and powerful truth doubtless lurks between so the girl marries I remember the boy came to me somewhat breathlessly one Christmas Eve with a ring in his pocket I told him as I had told others ask her she'll settle the matter not I but he was a nice boy a rather unusual boy with the promise of fine manhood I wished him luck but I did not dare plead his cause I had learned well I had learned thus the world grew and blossomed and changed and so the girl marries it is the end of an era the sudden break and beginning I rubbed my eyes and readjust my soul I planned frantically it will be a simple quiet ceremony in a church father Oh in a church a course in a church well a church wedding would be a little larger but with counties father and the Reverend Frasier Miller assisting well to be sure well I guess that's possible and indeed probable and there will be sixteen bridesmaids one has to be firm somewhere but my dear whoever heard of sixteen bridesmaids so 1,300 were bidden to the marriage and no human being has 1,300 friends 500 came down to greet the bride at a jolly reception which I had originally planned for 25 of course I was glad they were there I expanded and wished for a thousand three thousand saw the marriage and a thousand waited in the street it was a great pageant I heart swelling throng the symbolism of that procession was tremendous it was not the mayor marriage of a maiden it was not simply the wedding of a fine young poet it was the symbolic march of young and black America because there was Harvard Columbia Smith Brown Howard Chicago Syracuse pin and Cornell there were three Masters of Arts and fourteen bachelors there were poets teachers actors artists and students but it was not simply conventional America it was a it had a dark shimmering beauty all its own a calm high restraint and a sense of new power it was a new race a new thought a new thing rejoicing in a ceremony as the old of the world so you get a little bit of a taste of the voices way of looking at everything rationally trying to mull over all of the various aspects of it and what is surprising is that in all of this musing about the daughter wedding of his daughter he misses the most obvious point that most of the people in Harlem knew at least almost of the people in the artistic community and that is that Countee Cullen was very gay when they went off for a honeymoon County : went off with his lover to Paris in order to set up the place for his bride she arrived to find that there was someone who had already been there and so the boys was the last to know the most essential fact about human relations with respect to his daughter I think that this episode indicates where I would like to take the Dubois story and in the next lecture and that is he's a really great example of what happens from 1928 when the wedding takes place through the rest of his life as I mentioned by 1928 he's already 60 years old many people would be thinking about winding down their career for Dubois though this was just another beginning I can think of very few people during the next 35 years who have as much impact on such of a wide variety of things as Dubois does the major events of that period are all have their impact on him and he has their impact on them 1929 what happens the beginning of the Great Depression as a as an officer in the underlay CP he tries to respond to the depression by changing the organization by trying to get it to to see that the need to reach out to working-class individuals to deal with the economic problems of the depression this of course leads him into conflict with the director of the n-double a-c-p a man by the name of Walter White and the Dubois Walter White conflict shapes many of the debates of the 1930s in the lectures that I'll do for this course I'll talk about other individuals that also de bois interacts with Shirley Graham there's about thirty years younger than Dubois and I think reflects what happens to artists intellectuals as they encounter the depression and many of them move to the left move toward the communist party during that decade Paul Robson the most important artistic figure of that time the leading actor leading singer it's it's hard today to even find a parallel for the kind of dominant role that Paul Rozin played in terms of african-american art during the 1930s and 1940s and yet Paul Robeson also plays a major role in terms of the political changes of not simply the Depression years but World War two and the beginning of the Cold War by bayard rustin who probably how many of you have heard the name just two just one and Rustin is I think important because he was one of the people who helped found the Congress of racial equality developed the tactics of the civil rights movement of the post-war years he was the organizer of the march on Washington how many of you knew that so all of all of these people came out of the context of the 1930s the of the Depression years and I would add to that Ella Baker who plays a major role in in the 1930s 1940s 1950s and even into the 1960s and of course Martin Luther King now Du Bois interacts with many of these people he is a person who goes through many many changes writes a number of important books during the 30s one of them black reconstruction perhaps the most important work of history of that of that time because the boys is the first one to understand the role of black people during the Reconstruction era turning around the dominant historical account that reconstruction was this terrible period in American history in which ignorant black people suddenly gain political power and were it not able to to hold it and the Redeemers white people who came back in to establish re-establish decent government in the south that was the story that was told in most historical accounts before Dubois writes black reconstruction in the mid 1930s during the 1940s he is a leader not simply in terms of african-americans as a member of the n-double a-c-p but as a pan-africanist playing a central role in assisting the movement for African independence and more broadly independence of what we now call the third world now one of the things that we'll have it later on in this class is a waylay we'll be doing a guest lecture on the women who made the Montgomery bus boycott and I've she's spent many years studying these women and her dramatic account of this comes out of that experience of bringing of actually talking to many of these women interviewing them and using their words to tell that story which is usually told as the story of Martin Luther King but instead should be understood as a story of how Martin Luther King was handed an already successful movement by women who organized it I'll also be talking about Bob Moses who some of you should know that named and and once you've read the book and struggle you'll be more familiar with his contribution to the African American freedom struggle then we'll have Vincent Harding one of the major figures in African American history come in for a guest lecture one of three lectures on Martin Luther King why three lectures on Martin Luther King well I'm teaching the course and I think if you come out of this class knowing more about Martin Luther King then you can get in other classes I think that would be a real benefit and also because Vincent Harding and another person who will give a guest lecture Clarence Jones work directly with Martin Luther King where his key aides helped write his speeches and played a central role so they will be able to talk about not only King but their personal reflections about their relationships with Martin Luther King and of course then after the midterm will go to Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael Ericka Huggins will do a guest lecture on the Black Panther Party as a person who was in the Black Panther Party from its early days in Oakland and founded the Oakland Community School which was the last surviving institution of the Black Panther Party and then Angela Davis Jesse Jackson Tanisha Armstrong one of the TAS for the class will do a lecture on Alice Walker and then Tupac Shakur and finally a lecture about Barack Obama who I think brings a lot of the themes to the present day and will probably go up to December not knowing what the outcome of that story will be so all of this will be in conjunction with learning from the readings and those of you can see that the central thread of the course will come from the textbook that I co-wrote called the struggle for freedom and you'll be responsible for chapters 15 through the end of the book one williams's book on Thurgood Marshall covers a certainly a major figure if I didn't cover him in the book I would certainly have to cover him as with one of my lectures the autobiography of Martin Luther King in struggle which I mentioned as the story of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee the most dynamic and militant of the civil rights groups of the 1960s and Joseph panels till the midnight hour which takes the story of black power into the 1970s just a few words about the requirements for the for the course first of all there will be a required section and with our TAS Tanisha Armstrong do you want to say a few words about yourself [Music] and Julie for here in the primitive history studying 20th century Happy Feet wall here and I'll be happy to one of the things we've done in this course is in addition to having the sections is to give a research option for students those of you are most of you are probably aware that there's the King Institute here on campus which was established when Coretta Scott King named me to edit Martin Luther King's papers and since that time we've been producing a multi-volume edition of Martin Luther King's writings called the papers of Martin Luther King and at the Research Institute we don't only have that project going on that's the liberation curriculum initiative to develop teaching materials for K through 12 schools and we have various kinds of public programs and I'll say a few words about that most recently one of the programs was to present a play about Martin Luther King in Beijing this last summer and three Stanford students were involved in that we try to as much as possible have students involved in that research and any of you who have an interest in that and want to do that in lieu of taking a final in the course you're welcome to talk with with me or with Ganesha about about that possibility I I definitely encourage it the midterm in this class after all is the major test for the class because it is after most of the readings the readings are relatively light after the midterm so I would definitely recommend urge you to not get behind in the readings if everything kind of depends on how you do on the midterm then it behooves you to try to get all the readings done ahead of time yet before you come into class be prepared have your readings completed before you get to that midterm if you do well on the midterm you will probably do well on the final because the final will simply give you an essay pretty much on the same topics that the midterm will touch on in more short answer questions so this course is definitely front loaded when you leave this class start your reading for next week do not get behind this is something that it will be emphasized in the end the sections of the sections provide a wonderful opportunity for you to discuss the readings don't go to sections to find out about the readings as some students sometimes do none of the students in this class will do that though beyond that let's see there will be a final exam which would be kind of a traditional history exam with three questions you have three hours to answer them so those of you who want to do simply the midterm and the final that's fine it's a four unit class for you if you want a fifth unit I would encourage you to either get involved in the research in some ways directed or independent research you can also take on a topic of your own if you have something in mind that fits the topics of this course then you should talk with me as soon as possible are there any questions about that no questions yes yeah this week had have you set up tentative times yet by the way Chris works when I try to it's down but my puppet will be back and you might have noticed that we're being filmed and that's one of the things is going to make the room very hot on a hot day like today this is for the podcasting which Stanford is doing so after this class is over not before it's over you'll be able to download this on your iPods and and some next year's class will be able to watch this year's lectures on their iPods but that will not be on a kind of go home and watch it otherwise it attendance might be bad but but but you'd rather see it live anyway right we also as I mentioned before we will try to get another room that is more spacious particularly as we get our guest lectures because more people come in for those so so I'm if I do find another room through course works we'll send a mailing an email to each of you saying whether we're the new room is so any no questions I have no problem with but as long as they're quiet so okay thank you for coming see you next time [Music] the preceding program is copyrighted by Stanford University please visit us at stanford.edu

Channel: Stanford

Views: 158,784

Rating: 4.6572957 out of 5

Keywords: African-American, culture, black, history, Modern, Freedom, Struggle, civil, rights, movement

Id: lPjfbStnWd8

Length: 43min 41sec (2621 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 06 2008