In reading through the works of Zora Hurston, W. E. B. DuBois, and T. Booker Washington, I got to travel back in time and got to feel the pain and suffering of the black folks from the past. The three authors completed their works to the best of their understanding, experiences, and chosen disposition to the matter. While the tones and messages of their works differed from one another, addressing various issues at specific levels of either favoring it or opposing it, Hurston, DuBois, and Washington brought to light a single message, of which was to respect the race that had endured so much from the past and yet survived the test of time – the race of African-American.
The three authors had their ways of describing the African-American race in their works. Their ways of writing reflected their personal techniques. Hurston’s approach was more on the artistic presentation of the issue. DuBois approach was historical and incorporated situated cognition in the process of presenting his arguments, relating the events to the present particularly in his academic exploration on the topic of social injustice and discrimination. Finally, Washington’s approach utilizes an autobiographical approach, which made the presentation more realistic to its audience. One work apparently sounded to stir sympathy for the Negro people, clearly reflecting Hurstons’s work. While Washington intended to inspire rather than provoke, and the DuBois was meant to introduce things, concept, or ideas, which were worth pondering on. There were different intentions included in each literary work and each has appealed to me, to the extent that it changed my notion of the history. Now I will never look back to the past, in the same way, ever again. Because now I would do it with much higher admiration and respect for the black people, and never would I regard them as simply as black or Negro, but as respected African-American people of the nation.
In the literary works of above-mentioned authors, they depicted the African-American people in various ways yet there was always the common denominators that bind their works in one way or another.
“I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more or less. No, I do not weep at the world??! Am too busy sharpening my oyster knife” (Hurston, 2).
In Hurston’s How it feels to be colored she emphasized how she embraced her color without an eloquent tone of resentment or hatred. You could feel though from her words that pang of truth with how the society still looked down at her race; but as she said it, she did not care at all.
“BUT I AM NOT tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all” (Hurston, 2).
In Washington’s Up from Slavery he had depicted African-American in that embodying phrase, of which he used in referring to his mother.
She was simply a victim of the system of slavery” (Washington, 13).
This statement spoke not only of Washington’s mother but to all the people of his race. However, it didn’t imply from that statement that Washington was referring to the whites as the victimizer. But rather, he looked at them as victims as well. It was proven through the phrases that referred to his father.
“Of my father I know even less than of my mother. . . I have heard reports to the effect that he was a white man who lived on one of the near-by plantations. Whoever he was, I never heard of his taking the least interest in me or providing in any way for my rearing. But I do not find especial fault with him. He was simply another unfortunate victim of the institution that the Nation unhappily had engrafted upon it at that time” (Washington, 12).
T. Booker Washington was born a slave and had spent his childhood in slavery. They were fortunate though that their owners were not cruel. He had suffered the same deprivation from many things such as decent lodging, proper meal, comfortable clothes, and childhood life, but compared to the other slaves of the other estates they were lucky enough for their kind-hearted owners. Nonetheless, they were still slaves who were hoping and prayed for freedom.
“Now they gradually threw off the mask, and were not afraid to let it be known that the “freedom” in their songs meant freedom of the body in this world” (Washington, 22).
Notwithstanding the color, they wore and the life they were born into, African-American people were unstoppable from conquering their difficulties and arising above their obstacles. One good inspiration was the life of Booker Washington himself who strove his way to Hampton by all means that he could; he survived his life there and became the valuable asset of the Institute for all his intelligence, hard works, and contributions to the further improvement of the education for the Negro people.
W.E.B. DuBois, on the other hand, had depicted the African-American in more provoking and stirring ways. He had recognized the nobleness; and praised the determination of the race, yet he stressed the restrictions that bounded his people due to the veil of color that covered them.
“Thus, Forten and Purvis of Philadelphia, Shad of Wilmington, DuBois of New Haven, Barbadoes of Boston, and others, strove singly and together as men, they said, not as slaves; as “people of color,” not as “Negroes.” The trend of the times, however, refused them recognition save in individual and exceptional cases, considered them as one with all the despised blacks, and they soon found themselves striving to keep even the rights they formerly had of voting and working and moving as freemen” (DuBois, 40).
In his book, The Souls of the Black Folks DuBois had mentioned in there his concrete views of the real situation; of which, his statement was blatantly opposing Washington’s ideology. In DuBois’ point of view he depicted that the African-Americans were still no more than a slave since the Emancipation Proclamation; that the black folks might be free from their owners, yet they were still the slaves of debt and industrial trade.
“I have called my tiny community a world, and so its isolation made it; and yet there was among us but a half-awakened common consciousness, sprung from common joy and grief, at burial, birth, or wedding; from a common hardship in poverty, poor land, and low wages; and, above all, from the sight of the Veil that hung between us and Opportunity” (DuBois, 53).
Washington, however, was seemed to be quite aware of this situation. It was for the same reason that he kept striving to provide his race a better education. Because being free, like being in position or authority, carried with it a great responsibility. There was however a misconception to the idea of freedom, since at that time, being free for the slaves was being free from the labor that they were forced into.
“The whole machinery of slavery was so constructed as to cause labor, as a rule, to be looked upon as a badge of degradation, of inferiority. Hence, labor was something that both races on the slave plantation sought to escape” (Washington, 20).
The labor however was one of the three factors of production that sustained the economy. The ex-slave might resent being in labor now but soon they would find their way back into it to make a living. Especially that time after they were freed, because with their freedom came more duties and responsibilities.
“The great responsibility of being free, of having charge of themselves, of having to think and plan for themselves and their children, seemed to take possession of them” (Washington, 22).
In this light, Washington believed that there were rooms for improvements for the African-American race. The ultimate key was to educate and civilize them; then train them to be self-supporting. He had even encouraged his students to get back into agriculture and house-building but this time with advanced knowledge and mastery on their craft. They needed to strive and help their selves. Otherwise, they would be forever dependent to the other races, and forever looked upon as the problem of the nation.
DuBois, on the other hand, quite believed the opposite. Indeed, he had no doubt of his race’s capability to learn and improve. However, DuBois saw this veil that kept the African-American from the realizations of their life’s greatest dream – an access to real opportunity and a sense of belongingness. Freedmen they might be, but the concept of being free only seemed like a smoke in the air, they felt it whenever they walked into the street or travel to the other places in the “Jim Crow” car as DuBois often expressed it metaphorically.
“. . .while it is a great truth to say that the Negro must strive and strive mightily to help himself, it is equally true that unless his striving be not simply seconded, but rather aroused and encouraged, by the initiative of the richer and wiser environing group, he cannot hope for great success” (DuBois, 46).
DuBois believed on the potential of his race, yet this potential would never materialize unless fully supported and encouraged of those who were already in a higher position.
In his failure to realize and impress this last point, Mr. Washington is especially to be criticized. His doctrine has tended to make the whites, North and South, shift the burden of the Negro problem to the Negro’s shoulders and stand aside as critical and rather pessimistic spectators; when in fact the burden belongs to the nation, and the hands of none of us are clean if we bend not our energies to righting these great wrongs (Dubois, 46).
Indeed, the African-American people had a long way to go then right after they were freed from their owners. The path was quite rough and full of obstacles, but they managed nonetheless. The difficulties never stop from coming into their way, and like any other race regardless of colors and culture, they too were tempted to riches and comfort. In Hurston’s The Gilded Six Bits, several symbolisms were presented there, and the most palpable was the gilded half dollar. It said a lot of things about both the two races. Whatever you could make out of that gilded half dollar it would always boil down to fraud, pretentiousness, hoax, deception, and the like. In the end, Hurston neither accused the character Slemmons for tempting Missie May nor wronged Missie May for committing adultery. In the end, they were all just victims of the persisting condition that started way back to the day of their ancestors; back to the time when the Africa was brought to America.
Regardless of the numerous difficulties they have gone through, they managed it after all. They have gone a long way since the darkest days of the slavery of the African-American people– no need to justify it any further now, the President of the United State, is himself, a strong statement for that. America indeed will never be America now, without the “people of color”.
References
Dubois, W.E.B. The Souls of the Black Folks. Ed. Jim Manis. Penn State University Site. The
Electronic Classics Series. Pennsylvania State University-Hazleton, Hazleton, PA 18202, 2006. Web. 24, Nov. 2014.
Hurston, Zora. How it feels to be colored. The University of Virginia Site, N.d. Web. 24, Nov.
2014.
---. The Gilded Six Bits. Berkeley High School Site, N.d. Web. 24, Nov. 2014.
Washington, Booker. Up from Slavery. Ed. Jim Manis. Penn State University Site. The
Electronic Classics Series. Pennsylvania State University-Hazleton, Hazleton, PA 18202, 2000. Web. 24, Nov. 2014.
