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African-American History Film Clips
Whether Georgia Governor Hugh M. Dorsey (1871 - 1948) was overwhelmed by a sense of humanity or whether he simply wished to reduce the northern flow of African-Americans from his state in the Great Migration - we'll never know, but the fact stands that in late April, 1921, the Governor stood before the State Committe on Race Relations and spoke of 135 instances in which Black citizens were unjustly treated by White Georgians (The Georgia Government document pertaining to his address can be read here). When it became clear to all that the Black community was not wasting its money or withering under the weight of Syphilis like their White counterparts - it was decided that it was time to erect an interracial hotel in the Nevada casino capital of Las Vegas, and so they did; it was called Moulin Rouge. This column discusses a public address that got a lot people talking back in 1900. Charles Dudley Warner (1829 - 1900) was an honored man back in his time - even today he is celebrated with a website that has preserved his better quotes - but non of those citations were pulled from the controversial speech that is remembered here. In his address as president of the American Social Science Association, Warner openly called into question the usefulness higher education for African-Americans. The news of his prattle soon spread like a prairie fire and thousands of editorials were set to newsprint. Three eloquent responses appear here, one was by the (white) editor of a prominent African-American paper, The New York Age. Robert Watson Winston (1860 - 1944) was, in every sense, a man of his age. A Democratic politician from the state of North Carolina, he penned this highly prejudiced article about segregation (he liked it). He packed his column with all sorts of fifty cent words like "miscegenation", "quadroons" and "octoroon". He was yet one more white Southerner who feared "race blending" and the sharing of political power with African-Americans. He was delighted that so many of them were headed to the more industrialized states in the North.
Here is the NY Times review of Lyrics of Lowly Life (1897) by Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872 - 1906), who was a distinguished African-American poet, novelist, and playwright of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. If Helen had the face that launched a thousand ships, then Dunbar had the poetry to launch at least twenty thousand schools - for it seems that is about how many there are named for him. |
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