Black Uplift

By: Graham Russell Gao Hodges

Source:

 Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass

Black Uplift

African American activists in the antebellum and post–Civil War eras invoked a language and political strategy of black uplift or elevation. Composed of ideas and actions about physical, mental, or intellectual and personal morality and the realm of the soul, black activists, through speech and literature, used uplift as a general program to improve the race. Uplift was also intended to refute white racism prevalent in the literature and public activities of the nineteenth century. Accordingly, two key components were respectability and self-help. Frederick Douglass, for one, noted that only racism kept “the avenues of wealth and honor” from being open to all who chose to enter them. Respectability and wealth were not just accessories to wealth and fame, but required individual action, particularly virtuous assistance to the race or against slavery as well as a purer soul. Blacks also shared the general anxiety over confidence men or tricksters and so urged an “uprightness of character.” Black elites thus condemned criminality, ludicrous or showy clothing, and laziness. Austin Steward, for example, sought and gained editorial censure of Israel Lewis for embezzling funds from the struggling Wilberforce Colony in Upper Canada.

Black uplift emphasized literacy and education. David Ruggles wrote a series of articles in the January and February issues of the Emancipator extolling the virtues of a free press, especially an antislavery one, and urging African Americans to support the Emancipator and others like it through subscriptions and to read it constantly. Blacks formed literary societies in many cities from the 1820s until the end of the century, founded high schools and universities, and touted teaching to be a highly honorable profession. Influenced by the popularity of Benjamin Franklin during the antebellum period and by their own aspirations, black elites extolled as well the virtues of labor. Innumerable slave narrators recalled their own efforts to educate themselves and described themselves as the hardest workers on a plantation by rising to positions of leadership and sometimes even purchasing themselves. Even after escaping to the North, African American narrators prided themselves on hard work. In time, as the example of Douglass's North Star shows, blacks tied work and activism together.

Adoration of Franklin and the need to create their own community in a racist society meant African Americans sought uplift through organizations. Mutual societies, benevolent organizations, and literary societies were to inspire a more elevated black citizenry. One key element was temperance. As in white society, black leaders castigated excessive drinking and compared it with slavery. Another source of worry was ostentatious dress in part because it attracted racist ridicule but also because black elites contended that merit was far more significant than fancy dress.

African Americans found themselves in a paradoxical situation within black uplift. As did their male counterparts, black women experienced harsh racism and derision in public discourse. Within black society they were expected to support men and to avoid competition for leadership. As “Ellen” wrote in the Colored American, black women should best influence their men by the fireside and provide solace over the hardness of life. Later, Francis Ellen Watkins argued that the home should be the birthplace of affections where women could support and transform their husbands. Other black women urged more public roles by forming benevolent societies and organizations such as the Dorcas Literary Society and by teaching in public schools.

Black uplift was a response to the scurrilous racism of the nineteenth century. Experiencing anxiety over the vulgar representations of black society and politics in the popular press, black activists used self-elevation as a tool to counter such prejudice. Black conventions urged reform of the white press and urged the creation of a black media to counter racist imagery. Worrying about the many evils among themselves, black uplifters condemned the antics of the black poor as much as they resented the insults of white racists. One curative was to leave the cities. Douglass's North Star editorialized that a cause for the degradation of blacks was overcrowding in the city and urged them to move to the countryside and follow the example of the virtuous yeoman farmer. Black conventions later pushed the need for more black-owned businesses.

“Distinguished Colored Men,” chromolithograph published by A. Muller of New York in 1883. The portraits are: Frederick Douglass (at center); Robert Brown Elliott (top left); Blanche K. Bruce (top right); and (clockwise around Douglass, starting at twelve o'clock) William Wells Brown, Richard T. Greener, Richard Allen, J. H. Rainey, E. D. Bassett, John Mercer Langston, P. B. S. Pinchback, and Henry Highland Garnet.

Library of Congress.

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The drive toward uplift was critical in the fight against slavery and for black civil rights. As blacks declared themselves independent and virtuous people, they made slavery seem all the more oppressive and the denial of civil rights all the more evil. Respectability became a form of resistance to the tyranny of the slave power. After the Civil War, black uplift, along with service in the war and the renewed egalitarianism of white society, became the key arguments for black citizenship.

See also Black Abolitionists; Black Politics; Black Press; Canada; Civil Rights; Civil War; Douglass, Frederick; Entrepreneurs; Franklin, Benjamin; North Star; Racism; Ruggles, David; Slave Narratives; Slavery; and Temperance.

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