This article originally published in 1906 (hence, is now in the public domain) was
manually transcribed in 1994 by a colleague of mine for
placement in the Black Studies area of our internet gopher. We
thought then that it deserved a wider audience. It still does.
Atlantic Monthly (
Boston, Mass), v. 97, Feb. 1906, pp. 245-250
page 245
The Joys of Being a Negro
by Edward E. Wilson
Some time ago I received a beautifully engraved card inviting me to
spend my winter at a certain aristocratic Southern hotel. In I know not
what way - perhaps because I was duly enrolled among the lawyers of a
Northern city - my name had drifted with a few others into the hands of
the proprietor of this hostelry. I am sure there was no intention
either on my part or on the part of my name to impose on any one. In
America, one may have whatever name he chooses, and mine was of the
plainest kind; it was neither parted in the middle nor preceded by de
or von; it had, indeed, an absolute and hopeless democracy in sound
and meaning.
But to the point. When I received the above invitation, flinging off
realities for a moment, I yielded to my fancy and began forthwith to
imagine myself, after collecting from every conceivable source overdue
fees, and after such extensive borrowing as my credit would allow, going
to this exclusive winter resort and offering myself as a guest thereof.
Fancy was not so extravagant, however, as to allow me to ride thither in
a Pullman, because not even fancy could evade certain laws enacted by
fastidious legislators preventing person of my ancestry from so
traveling. Nor, as being beneath the dignity of a select resorter, did
I care to try the delights of a ride in a freight car; although such a
ride was most ingratiatingly recommended by a writer in the Atlantic a
short time since. Arrived, in imagination, at my destination, I look up
the broad shrubbery-fringed esplanade leading to the hotel; but I see no
black servitor with shining ivories hastening to meet me. As I enter
the hotel I am sensible of an excitement - the mixture of curiosity and
consternation - created by my coming; the factotums of my own race about
the hotel gaze at me in speechless wonder, or else whisper meaningly to
one another; as I stalk to the clerk's desk and ask to register, I
gorgonize that hitherto unabashed individual; the loungers, amazed, sit
upright, like statues in the Hall of Silence. Imagination picturing
true, I will not dwell upon what happens thereafter. Suffice to say,
that if I escape unbruised and unarrested, and can make my way with the
aid of freight car or any other vehicle through the dark and tortuous
ways of a hostile country to that city of the North whence I came, I
shall ever afterwards recall my safe return with soul-sincere
thanksgiving.
Now I ask in all seriousness, what member of any race could have such a
thrilling experience in his imagi-
p. 246
nation, from the mere imaginary acceptance of an invitation duly
directed and solemnly sent to him?
Such an experience in reality at a Northern hotel or in a Northern Young
Men's Christian Association would, in some quarters, call forth a deal
of gratuitous sympathy. An idea has unfortunately got abroad that being
Negro is like being in solitary confinement, - away from the rest of the
world. It is though, indeed, that there could be no place chosen so
gloomy or so hopeless in which to be born as among this race composed to
some extent of descendants of Ham. Yet the whole question depends - as
all other things do in life - on the point of view and the state of
mind. I can never forget how near I came once, at a certain institution
of learning, to rustication, because I insisted, in the face of frequent
and emphatic asseverations of the Professor of Philosophy to the
contrary, that objects were objects and things existed outside of the
mind. Since then I have seen how cheerful was the view of the good
professor, and how a Negro adopting it can experience joys such as no
white man can ever know.
Worn as is the saying that life's happiness lies in anticipation, it is
a truism that perfectly fits the Negro's case. So much lies before him,
the things he can hope to achieve are so much more numerous than those
which the Aryans can look forward to, that his pleasures of hope are
endless. And why should he end them? Why seek disillusion in
attainment? Was Sancho Panza happier when he was hoping for, or when he
had come into his government? With the Negro it is but seldom that
delights grow stale by being transformed from the imaginary to the real.
He may have suffered here and there such disillusioning, but not enough
to render him cynical. He had faith, it is true, that the coming of his
freedom would solve all questions for him; yet he found it but broadened
his field of anticipation. He as firmly believed that his advance in
education would help him, but this merely served to show the measureless
distance between him and satiety. He is in position to pity the
self-extolled Aryan who, if American, thinks himself nearing the limits
of perfection.
In fact the Negro is the rustic of America. Of the doings of this great
and busy nation he is but a spectator. He stands as the procession
passes, with mouth agape. He imagines that ever new wonders are to
arrive, and his fancy creates a veritable Arabian Nights. What is
common to others is a source of admiration to him.
One who basks in the sunshine of adulation, who is constantly told or
constantly telling himself that his is the very climax of civilization,
the heir of all the ages, knows not what it is to feel the heart beat
quickly at a word of praise. Heap abuse upon one, however, misrepresent
his every action, call his assertion of his ordinary rights insolence,
scoff at his efforts at deference and politeness as servility, and then
a kind word to him is as a grateful palm in the midst of a desert.
While in particular instances a chance encomium may reach a Negro, yet
on the whole he is little subject to that soul-deadening anaesthetic, -
flattery. With him plain speaking is the vogue; a spade is a spade,
however black; and consequently he is not led by ill-advised laudations
to look upon himself as perfect, - a boon which will forever keep him
struggling forward, and because of which he ought, without ceasing, to
rejoice. A few, indeed, are so constituted that this plain-speaking
frequently directed at them reduces them to a pachydermatous state
(which if reached by philosophers would be called the Centre of
Indifference), wherein they remain unmoved by calumny even. The dullest
can see the advantage of such a condition. A few others, all too
sensitive, wilt and wither under this hard candor; but the great world
cannot stop to care for the few.
To attract attention monstrari digito has, since the existence of
man, been the chief support of his vanity and ambition. Herostratus, in
olden times, burned
p. 247
Diana's Temple to become immortal. And to what shifts have not men
resorted to gain a modicum of notoriety, to stand for a moment in the
limelight? How happy, then, must the Negro be, when, if fairly dressed,
entering a public place with wife or sweetheart, he, without effort on
his part, arouses a bustling curiosity that good manners, even, do not
restrain! he is stared at, whispered about, - becoming the centre of
all glances; and despite the fact that a little scantness of morals - a
little illegal Mormonism - has left many Negroes with features scarcely
distinguishable from those of the most rampant Anglo-Saxons, if his
companion happens to be light of color, fair-haired and blue-eyed, yet
having either a bar sinister or an African ancestor somewhere in the
far-off past, the attention he receives is riotous.
But all things have their recompense. Does a theatre refuse to sell me
a first class seat? or rather, not refusing because of the law; falsely
pretend that all such seats are sold? Does a heartless real estate
dealer decline to sell me a house outside of the slums? - I simply call
on a white Negro to buy one for me, and go off, gloating over the fact
that the proud Aryan has put it in my power to triumph over his
unrighteous exclusiveness. More than once Negroes have, because of what
is known as their "white reinforcement," moved along in intimate
relations side by side with those the very breath of whose lives was the
hatred of anything African: Now I challenge the world to show me an
Aryan who can successfully pass for a Negro.
Moreover, it is a great wonder that the blacks have so little
haughtiness when they find themselves the topic for magazine and
newspaper articles, the inspiration for many marvelous songs, the
subject on innumerable discussions in the very Congress of the United
States, and not seldom the moving spirit in those latter-day gems of
literature, - race novels.
Many have thought the common belief that all Negroes are alike was a
fact much to be deplored; but here again is an almost universal mistake.
The surprise, the pleasant shock, that the Aryan gets when now and again
he finds this belief upset, in no small measure atones for any injury
done to the less fortunate race. I remember once upon a time meeting on
a railroad train an elderly gentleman full of good intentions toward the
heathen and downtrodden, and somewhat officious withal. I had in my
hand a score of the opera Rigoletto, which had been sung in my city
the night before. A book in the hands of a Negro quickly attracted the
benevolent gentleman's attention. he then perused me from head to foot,
as though I was the strangest of creatures. I could see condescension
oozing from every pore. "Young man," he said, "I see you are trying to
elevate yourself. This is a glorious country, where every man has a
chance. The nation shed its blood for you. What book have you there?"
I meekly showed it to him. "Ah, music - opera - you enjoy that! You
are different from the rest of your people. My family was at that
opera. I know very little about music myself." Not less than the
writer; but here was my chance for revenge. I dragged forth and
criticised out of hand musician after musician (my knowledge of them
having been obtained much after the manner of Pendennis's acquaintance
with things while working with Warrington on the Pall Mall Gazette), -
Wagner, Verdi, Bach, Bizet, Strauss, Donizetti, Gounod, and such others
as my ransacked memory afforded. My new-found acquaintance was the very
picture of amazement, - began to retreat when I appealed to him to
decide whether the world was most indebted to Mozart or Wagner for
dramatic music; but I was unrelenting, and, pursuing, poured upon him
such volleys of "counterpoint," "arias," "ensembles," "phrasings," that
he dropped into his seat mute and helpless. Should any one object that
I was guilty of pretentiousness, even of deception, I admit it, but
plead self-defense, which justifies ex-
p. 248
treme measures, - even to the taking of human life. What right had he
to assume because I had a book in my hand that I was a prodigy, and to
affront me by telling me so?
When one desires to express a truth it is the fashion to apologize for
the triteness of it; as though the extirpation of triteness from the
earth would not most surely leave us without a shred of truth. It is
therefore without apology that I state the world-wide axiom that
altruism has been the principal factor in the advancement of true
civilization. Those who exercise it are bound to have delights that the
individual who cares but for himself can never hope to attain. What a
scope, then, for selflessness must not the Negro have, when he is told
that he must raise all of his race to a high level of respectability and
intelligence before any individual thereof, whatever his merit, can hope
to receive the treatment accorded to a man and a citizen! At first
blush such a proposition would seem absurd, but the very fact that
Aryans advance it shows that they, as a rule, regard the Negro as
capable of more general cultivation than themselves. And then that
responsibility of one for all and all for one, - how surely it makes
each Negro his brother's keeper, and how each must tremble and deplore
(and I had almost said turn pale) when hears of an offense committed by
any son of Ham.
In Negroes' working for themselves alone, there would, from a larger
view, be something of selfishness. Yet they can fairly claim to have
lightened the burdens of myriads, and to have furnished amusement to
countless thousands who could not, perhaps, have been otherwise
entertained. One often wonders what would become of the cheap
cartoonist and outlandish dialect-writer if the Negro were suddenly
removed from American life; what untimely fate would overtake the melon
joke and the chicken joke. As one contemplates the matter a real alarm
is created; for what would become of certain heavy magazine writers,
sensational novelists, and numberless Lilliputians in newspaper offices?
How many words of detraction would lie unused and rusting thin the
lexicon! How, here and there, philanthropy itself would droop and die!
Giving joy to another is a joy in itself. To keep another in a state of
complacency amounts to the same thing. Of how much just pride the Aryan
would be divested if he no longer had the lowly Negro to measure himself
by, we can never know. Could there be nobility without commons? Could
there be an indomitable Aryan race, whose matchless courage, virtue, and
heroism conquered the American wilderness and overcame its savages, were
there no Negro here clamoring for his share in American life? Not so;
without the Negro as a foil, Americans would be nothing more than plain
white men.
If the satisfaction furnished the superior race sometimes causes the
less fortunate pain, the latter should remember that what benefits the
majority makes for the good of the whole, and that nothing is nobler
than vicarious suffering. The frogs were foolish when they cried out to
the boys, "What is fun for you is death to us." The very wrongs of the
oppressed have more than once called out the finest qualities in their
oppressors, which might have, for the want of incitement, lain dormant
forever. In compensation for injustice at home a deal of commiseration
may be scattered abroad. Who can tell but that certain small, sporadic
iniquities wrought against the blacks in America have so softened the
consciences both of the people and of our ruling powers that they have
been led to sympathize with the oppressed of all the foreign world, and
to utter tearful protests against Armenian outrages and Kishenev
massacres?
In this age where all is doubt, and every statement outside veracious
newspapers is picked to pieces by original investigation, one may,
without being liable to the charge of heresy, stick at accepting
p. 249
the theory that he who enjoys the highest things alone enjoys existence.
It would not be fair to presume that, because one leads a lowly and
unlettered life, he in his own way has not as much solid enjoyment as
the greatest of philosophers, poets, or artists. The youngster,
swallowing with eager gulps the contents of a detective story in which
are recounted the hairbreadth escapes of some matchless sleuth, will,
even though raised in afterlife above such literature, confess, if
ingenuous, that he enjoyed his Old Thunderbolt as much as the Adam
Bede of his later life. And what has brought more real joy to the soul
of the sentimental maiden than, say, When Armor was in Fashion? It
would be many a long year before she would prefer Henry Esmond to it.
There is no aristocracy of enjoyment. Those who tell us that there is
no music but Wagner's, and that the love of melody is an infallible sign
of a vicious taste; no poetry but Browning's, - at least that part of
him that must be guessed at,- thrive by assumption alone. It is
impossible that any considerable portion of the human race shall be
elevated to the level where these alleged highest pleasures are; and to
the many,- the common people have some rights,- those things they
comprehend and delight in give as true gratification as the elect enjoy.
If this be true, the Negro, presumed by the thoughtless majority,
because of his environment, to be the most joyless of creatures, has a
much larger share of happiness than many who outwardly appear more
fortunate. (Here we speak of the typical Negro, not the late, revised,
Aryanized one.) First of all he has what satisfaction there is in
knowing that the theory of things is right. In theory he has whatever
any other man has; just as in theory all men are created equal, - the
law is impartially administered, - we are a Christian nation. Though
the Negro is actually excluded from the social, political, and
industrial life of America, there is comfort in the fact that he is not
the least of the non-Aryans in this country. He has been theoretically
placed on equal footing with the great white man by the great white man
himself. Mongolians cannot become citizens of the United States, while
the African from any part of the world and his descendant have this
glorious privilege. It is interesting to note that members of the race
that has so lately flung the proud Aryan into the dust in the Far East
have, on several occasions, once in enlightened Massachusetts (In Re
Saito, 62 Fed. Rep. 126), been refused the citizenship which a Negro may
have for the asking. But after all, such discrimination as is practiced
against him gives him leisure to develop, undisturbed by outside cares,
those things in him worth cultivating. While a German, Irishman,
Frenchman, and even the proud Englishman, who comes to this country,
pools each his individuality in Americanism, the Negro, developing
independence, stands aloof, with a determination to yield only when
longer resistance would be criminal folly.
The negative pleasures of the Negro are not few. He has none of the
burdens of governing, being relieved therefrom by his altruistic Aryan
fellow-citizens. He has none of the troubles and temptations of
millionaires; he expects but little and hence is seldom disappointed.
He carries no revenges concealed in his bosom. He forgives his enemies
easily. Do him a grievous injury, and a modicum of kindness removes
resentment therefor. Bastinado his sensibilities to-day; he will salve
them with biblical quotations, and to-morrow go on his way rejoicing.
From the Bible, indeed, the Negro draws no small portion of his
philosophy of life; and while he may take a passage here and there too
literally, yet he derives such satisfaction from this book that he would
probably assail more truculently an enemy thereof than one who had done
him personal wrong. "Take no thought for the morrow;" "The Lord will
provide;" "Lay ye not up treasures on earth," "Consider the lilies how
they grow, they toil not neither do they spin;"
p. 250
"Man that is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble," - these
and such passages are unction to his soul.
From the Bible, likewise, the Negro draws justification for his failure
to be actively resentful of his wrongs. And who best represents the
Christian spirit, the Aryan raging over the loss of a tooth, demanding a
tooth in return and refusing to be comforted without it, or the humble
black, who hardly smitten on one cheek, meekly present the other to the
smiter? In the lowliness of the Founder of his faith the Negro finds
comfort for his own poverty. He is not so engrossed with earthly
things, but he has a constant eye on Paradise. he believes that like
Lazarus he will recline on Abraham's bosom; while those who enjoyed
without stint this world's goods squirm amidst brimstone with no drop of
water to cool their quenchless thirst.
The contemplation of death, which brings terror to many and to almost
all men sadness, brings to the Negro the idea of rest from labor and
surcease of sorrow. Hence one finds more preparation by him for that
fatal last event than for living, moving, and having his being on earth.
Death, too, is a certain vindicator of equality; not that the Negro is
glad when an Aryan, though a hostile one, goes to the land of darkness;
but he points significantly and with melancholy satisfaction to the fact
that poor Mose, who died a social pariah only yesterday, occupies as
much of his mother earth as the dead colonel who lorded it over him so
haughtily but a short fortnight ago.
Through all his vicissitudes hope is the black man's priceless asset.
This he never loses, how gloomy soever the way. For him there is always
something in the future, no matter how distant. A Negro of uncommon
ability, the advocate of a new education for Negroes, has told them that
in a thousand years they would be fitted to partake of the things the
Aryan now enjoys, and this promise of remote enjoyment the blacks hail
with enthusiasm. Was there ever sublimer faith? The very
heart-wailings of the Negro speak of a brighter beyond. Of joy he
cannot be bereft; his buoyancy overtops any sorrow. Pessimism seldom
knows him. One miracle of deliverance has been performed for him, and
he is confidently expecting another.
Should any question my authority to speak as above for the Negro, I
reply that I became a Negro above thirty years ago; and, being initiated
into all the mysterious rites of the race, have remained one ever since.
Transcribed by Anne Taylor Bowie, UM-St. Louis Thomas Jefferson
Libraries, 21 March 1994. Original file located at gopher
UMSLVMA.UMSL.EDU (The Library/Subject Area Resources/Black Studies).
The preceding item is not intended to state an opinion or to give
offense to anyone, but to augment Black Studies materials available to
electronic researchers.
The gopher cited above was killed several years ago. The original document now resides at:
gopher://gopher.umsl.edu:70/00/library/subjects/blackstu/blackhis/bla0002