Early Civil Rights

Hypothesis

Carrie Parker Taylor and her African American pride poem, The Negro’s Challenge, were lost in history primarily due to their emphasis on Black independence rather than Black integration. The lack of communication technology as well as the rampant white supremacy and racial hatred at the time of the poem’s publication made any sort of Black independence movement incredibly difficult to achieve.

Object

My object is a poem written and published by Carrie Parker Taylor, the first Black woman to attend Indiana University. The poem is titled “The Negro’s Challenge.” The poem was published on Friday, October 8, 1915 in the Tulsa Star, a short-lived newspaper for the predominantly black suburb of Greenwood, Oklahoma. The poem, along with Carrie Parker Taylor herself, was only recently discovered by IU archivist Dina Kellams (Kellams 2017). The poem itself makes fun of the concept of white supremacy as well as promoting Black independence. I have chosen this object because it is a prime example of a piece of Black empowerment art that was lost in time. Carrie Parker Taylor was also, for a long time, lost to history. I am attempting to find out what made certain movements “stick,” so it is important to examine a piece of art that did not.

Timeline

The late 1870s marked the beginning of a phase of Black American history commonly referred to as the “Nadir of African-American History.” During this period, national sentiment for white supremacy and racial segregation increased massively, while the quality of life for nonwhites drastically decreased (Gilmore). This period is marked by rampant hate crimes and occasional raids on minority settlements, as is the case with the Black Wall Street massacre. This period of mass oppression immediately followed Emancipation and is generally seen as a time of social regression after the enormous progressive act of abolishing slavery. During this period, however, many Blacks continued to persist in the fight for freedom and racial equality. One of these pioneers was Carrie Parker Taylor, the first Black woman to attend Indiana University Bloomington. She did not finish her degree, largely due to the immense backlash from her presence at IU. After she left, her presence would not even be noticed for over 100 years. However, after leaving IU, Carrie Parker Taylor wrote a poem titled “The Negro’s Challenge.” It was published in her local newspaper, the Tulsa Star in Greenwood, Oklahoma. The same Greenwood that, just over a decade later, would be razed to the ground by a mob of white supremacists. Even despite enormous pushback from every level of society, Black Americans were still attempting to assert their human rights. How do these efforts, successful or otherwise, compare to the efforts made by Civil Rights activists in the 1960s? What made the Civil Rights movement successful? Was the Civil Rights movement successful? Some would argue that to consider Civil Rights “successful” is to consider both institutional and interpersonal racism defeated, which they most certainly are not (Metress 140-141). The answers to these questions about Black successes of the past can reveal possibilities for present and future racial movements.

Digital Component

In order to illustrate the differences between the Civil Rights movement and the New Negro movement in terms of the goals of the various movements, I would like to text mine speeches and works of poetry from the two African American movements and see how their key words and sentiments compare.

This project works best when working with a vast amount of source material, since topic modeling is relatively quick, and measuring the attitude of entire generations of people requires information from all corners of the movement. If I had a year with a graduate assistant, I would have my assistant continue to gather an increasingly large collection of civil rights and New Negro poetry, as well as conducting most of the topic modeling grunt work. I would then, myself, focus on analysis. In addition, I would like to have my assistant deep dive into examining the differences between urban and rural literature. At this stage, urban literature is so much more prevalent and abundant, so that is what I’ve naturally concentrated on. However, one has to assume that Black people wrote poems and prose in rural areas as well as urban. With the help of an assistant, I would like to deep dive into rural pockets of literary activity that may not have been investigated as thoroughly as they could have been.

Original Plan and Hypothesis

Hypothesis: Carrie Parker Taylor and her African American pride poem, The Negro’s Challenge, were lost in history primarily due to the lack of communication technology as well as the rampant white supremacy and racial hatred at the time of its publication.

Digital Plan: In order to illustrate the differences between the Civil Rights movement and the New Negro movement in terms of the goals of the various movements, I would like to text mine speeches and works of poetry from the two African American movements and see how their key words and sentiments compare.

Results and Analysis

I decided to start out by analyzing The Negro’s Challenge. The above word cloud illustrates the 105 most commonly used words in the poem. Notice how often “you’ve” and “we’ve” are used. I at first discarded their presence, but they illustrate a subtle “us vs. them” mentality that is important to note. This is characteristic of New Negro poetry written around this time. This is not to say that New Negro poets were angry, militant, or separationists. Black Independence was a primary focus of the moment, much like putting a stop to police brutality is a primary focus of Black Lives Matter.

The above word cloud illustrates the top 105 words in my corpus of Civil Rights literature from 1945-1975. While the biggest words are obvious, words like “Black,” “White,” and “People,” some of the slightly less common words are intriguing. “American,” “Negro,” “Rights,” and “Country” all appear just one tier below “Black” and “White.” Their presence implies a difference in message from The Negro’s Challenge. The word “rights” in particular illustrates a shift from the desire for independence and separation to a desire for integration and equality.

Obviously, this corpus of texts does not represent the entire history of Black American literature. It does not even fully represent Black literature of the 20th century. However, it does provide a entry point for the study of Black literature. I have found this topic endlessly fascinating and would love to conduct further research.

I would like to conclude in a somewhat unorthodox manner with one of my favorite poems, Claude McKay’s America. It is short, beautiful, and as pertinent today as when it was written 96 years ago.

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate.
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

Bibliography

  • Gilmore, Glenda Elizabeth. “‘Somewhere’ in the Nadir of African American History, 1890-1920.” Freedom’s Story, TeacherServe. National Humanities Center. 1 April 2017.
  • Allen, Chude Pam. “Always Connecting the Struggles.” Social Justice, vol. 39, no. 2/3 (128-129), 2013, pp. 90-95. Green, Percy, et al. “Generations of Struggle.” Transition, no. 119, 2016, pp. 9-16.
  • Kellams, Dina. “Indiana University Bloomington.” Indiana University Archives. Indiana University Archives, 24 July 2015. Web. 25 Feb. 2017.
  • Liberato, Ana S. Q., and John D. Foster. “Representations and Remembrance: Tracing Civil Rights Meanings in the Narratives of Civil Rights Activists and Hollywood Filmmakers.” Journal of African American Studies, vol. 15, no. 3, 2012, pp. 367-384.
  • Metress, Christopher. “Making Civil Rights Harder: Literature, Memory, and the Black Freedom Struggle.” The Southern Literary Journal, vol. 40, no. 2, 2008, pp. 138-150.
  • Nasstrom, Kathryn L. “Between Memory and History: Autobiographies of the Civil Rights Movement and the Writing of Civil Rights History.” The Journal of Southern History, vol. 74, no. 2, 2008, pp. 325-364.
  • Sexton, Jared. “Unbearable Blackness.” Cultural Critique, vol. 90, 2015, pp. 159-178.