Queen Essays

Overview:

The paper must be 5 pages of prose. (Prose does not include images, title pages, bibliographies, etc.)

• The term paper must written in 12-point, Cambria font or an equivalent font with one inch margins.

• You must make specific references to the course materials (primary and secondary sources)

The paper will be graded on the following criteria:

a) The quality of your historical analysis—Do you have a coherent thesis? Does your paper trace change over time? Does its argument demonstrate historical specificity ?

b) The quality and clarity of your writing—Did you proofread your essay for misspellings, typos, and word choice errors? Do you break your essay into paragraphs? Do you have a strong introduction and conclusion? Did you use proper and complete citations?

c) Incorporation of primary and secondary sources from the class readings. The exam is meant to demonstrate mastery of the course materials. Using outside sources is not required, so focus instead on using the work you have already read this semester. Do you cite readings from a variety of weeks? Do not simply use one week's readings. This is a final exam and should show comprehensive knowledge.

To make it less stressful for you, I have made this is an open book exam. However, students are expected to hand in original work. As stated at the beginning of the semester and posted to Canvas, students are not allowed to share work with one another, use sources without proper acknowledgement, or use AI and AI adjacent technology to complete this exam. If you have questions, please contact the professor. Again, remember to cite all sources fully.

ESSAY QUESTION:

How did issues concerning race and ethnicity influence U.S. immigration policy since the nation's founding? You should be sure to use illustrative examples that span the entirety of American history. In other words, choose a minimum of three examples to cover early America, the 19th century and the 20th/21st centuries. You should aim to discuss how things changed over time and/or what trends stayed the same.

"Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac": White Supremacy, Antiblack Racism, and the New Historicism

Author(s): George Lipsitz

Source: American Literary History , Winter, 1995, Vol. 7, No. 4 (Winter, 1995), pp. 700- 725

Published by: Oxford University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/490070

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"Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac": White Supremacy, Antiblack Racism, and the New Historicism George Lipsitz

Racism is like a Cadillac.

Malcolm X

Old Cadillacs never die.

Dizzy Gillespie

The Scar of Race By Paul M. Sniderman and Thomas Piazza

Harvard University Press, 1993

Living with Racism: The Black Middle-Class

Experience By Joe R. Feagin and Melvin P Sikes

Beacon Press, 1994

Race in America: The

Struggle for Equality Edited by Herbert Hill and James E. Jones, Jr.

University of Wisconsin Press, 1993

The Black Atlantic.

Modernity and Double Consciousness

By Paul Gilroy Harvard University Press, 1993

In the first volume of his autobiography (published in 1971), Chester Himes recalls how his African-American family offended their white neighbors in rural Mississippi at the end of World War I by becoming the first owners of a private automo- bile in their county. The sight of a black family riding around in such a modern, expensive, and noisy vehicle (loud enough to frighten their neighbors' mule teams) outraged white farmers to such a degree that they secured the dismissal of Himes's father from his job at Alcorn A&M University and then forced the fam- ily to leave the state. Writing from a distance of more than 50 years and in the aftermath of the passage of major civil rights legislation ending de jure segregation, Himes insisted on the en- during relevance of his childhood memory, explaining "… I must confess I find white people just the same today, everywhere I have been, if a black man owns a big and expensive car they will hate him for it" (8).

The story serves as an appropriate introduction to Himes's autobiography, which at every turn emphasizes the ceaseless and unremitting pressure of white racism on the author's life. But his story is one of a man who relishes resistance as well as a man who suffers repression. Immediately after detailing the incident about that car, Himes concedes that part of the hostility that it

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American Literary History

caused among whites came from his mother's "attitude," noting "she always carried a pistol on our car rides through the country, and whenever a cracker mule driver reached for his rabbit gun she beat him to the draw and made him drop it" (8).

Malcolm X also talked about cars to emphasize a point about white supremacy when he told his followers in 1964 that racism was like a Cadillac. He explained that the General Motors Company brought out a new model of their car every year, that the 1960 version differed from the one produced in 1950, but both automobiles were still Cadillacs. Similarly, Malcolm X ex- plained, racism also changed its contours and dimensions. The racism of 1964 might not look like the racism of 1954, but it was still racism. He warned his audience against thinking that racism had ended because it looked different, while at the same time cautioning them that they could not defeat today's racism with yesterday's slogans and analyses.

The dialectical tension between continuity and rupture in- forming the metaphors about racism deployed by Himes and Malcolm X offers important epistemological insights for schol- ars trying to understand the role of white supremacy and anti- black racism in the American literary imagination. Although both men's observations appear to make broad and essentialist claims about the "nature" of white racism, both the puckish pes- simism of Himes and the shrewd skepticism of Malcolm X stemmed as much from the strategic imperatives of their respec- tive speech situations as from any commitment to abstract prin- ciples. Like all utterances, their remarks intervened in a dialogue already in progress, in a tactical situation where metaphors about continuity and change held ideological force.

Himes and Malcolm X knew that self-satisfied narratives

lauding progress in race relations functioned as strategic weap- ons on behalf of a program of "gradualism" that evaded the just demands of black people and irresponsibly deferred remedial ac- tion to some moment in the distant future. But they also under- stood that stories denying the possibility of change worked to fuel defeatism and resignation within their own communities. The speech situations they faced required them to neutralize the rhetoric of progress without belittling the important gains that had been made through struggle in the past-or that might be obtained through social contestation in the future. Thus, their comments were not so much claims about cars, white people, or even racism as much as they were ways of encouraging listeners to look beneath surface appearances, to distrust deterministic paradigms of inevitable progress or hopeless resignation.

With their metaphorical stories, Himes and Malcolm X

Racist Culture:

Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning By David Theo Goldberg Blackwell, 1993

Keeping Faith: Philosophy and Race in America By Cornel West Routledge Press, 1993

Towards the Abolition of

Whiteness. Essays on Race, Politics, and Working Class History By David Roediger Verso Press, 1994

Race Rebels

By Robin D. G. Kelley Free Press, 1994

701

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702 "Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac"

communicated principles about inquiry and interpretation that are as relevant to scholars today as they were to activists in the civil rights era of the 1960s and 1970s. By understanding the tac- tical and strategic imperatives of the discourse in which they found themselves, Himes and Malcolm X displayed what Walter Benjamin called "presence of mind" (One-Way Street 98-99). Benjamin argued that people consult fortune-tellers and mystics because they are afraid that some important part of the present might be escaping them. I submit that we do intellectual work for much the same reason. This is not to advocate "presentism," a term used by historians to describe the process of distorting facts about the past in order to suit our present needs, interests, and inclinations. What I mean by "presence of mind" entails the search to know as fully as possible the forces that shape us as we engage in research, analysis, and argument. Writing about race today requires us to understand the suppressed and silenced di- mensions of racial power in our time as well as its long legacy in our individual and collective pasts.

The books under review here present interpretations of the role of race in US society. They display many of the same anxie- ties over continuity and change that occupied the attention of Himes and Malcolm X a generation ago. Valuable in their own right as systematic studies of an overwhelmingly important issue, they also offer us tools for acquiring the presence of mind neces- sary for studying the racial imagination in American literature.

In recent years, an impressive array of original, innovative, and generative scholarship on African-American writing, white supremacy, and antiblack racism in American literature has un- covered a broad range of new authors and new works to study, developed dynamic ways of rereading familiar classics, and raised important questions about the connections between liter- ary texts and their social contexts of production, distribution, and reception. From Houston Baker's Foucauldian archaeology to Hazel Carby's delineation of the intersections of race and gen- der, from Henry Louis Gates's sophisticated examination of can- ons and canonicity to Valerie Smith's illuminating evaluations of subjectivity and self-discovery in African-American narratives, antiracist writing in the 1980s played a prominent role in the development of new ways of reading, critiquing, and understand- ing literature. Superb studies by Thadious Davis, Frances Foster, Claudia Tate, and Mary Helen Washington of previously ignored or undervalued writers, along with innovative explorations of the role of race in the white literary imagination by Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Toni Morrison, and Eric Sundquist, have definitively demonstrated the richness of looking at literary production, dis-

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American Literary History 703

tribution, and reception in its broadest social and historical con- texts.'

This flowering of research signals something positive: it stems, at least in part, from the victories of movements for social change in the 1950s and 1960s, from the ways in which egalitar- ian and antiracist struggles opened up cultural and social oppor- tunities for aggrieved individuals and groups. At the same time, the centrality of racial issues in contemporary literary scholar- ship also demonstrates our failures: the discouraging continuity of white supremacy in our society serves as a register of a broader racial crisis that brings home the inability of yesterday's social movements to transform sufficiently the power of racism as a force framing culture, ideology, and life chances in America.

All around us, we see both stasis and change, continuity and rupture in race relations. Black writers are doing surprisingly well in publishing houses and bookstores at a time when black people are faring very poorly in the economy and in the courts. Black culture has made its way into classroom lessons and onto required reading lists at a time when black students are finding it harder to stay in school. Black idioms circulate everywhere in popular speech, song, slang, and style, but police repression, poverty, and prejudice leave black people with ever declining ac- cess to public places and public resources. Many of the key insti- tutions of our society seem open to black culture, but not black people. They want the music, but not the musicians; they want the art, but not the artists; they want the literature, but they ig- nore the context that gives the literature its determinate con- tours.2

The accomplishments of antiracist scholarship have been real and substantive, but they emerge from and participate in complicated and contradictory realities. Our ability to address adequately and accurately the role of race in American literature increasingly depends upon producing a better theorized under- standing of race itself, as a social text as well as a literary trope, as an ongoing historical process as well as a historically specific object of study. Recent research on white supremacy and anti- black racism in American literature has succeeded brilliantly in delineating how authors have struggled with literary apparatuses and institutions, how battles over words in print have reflected broader social divisions and antagonisms.

Yet, by focusing mainly on the technologies of writing and their attendant social relations, literary critics have often over- looked the ways in which racial identities and hierarchies have been "written" into existence in "social texts" like law, labor or- ganization, and ideology. It is necessary but not sufficient to add

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704 "Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac"

black authors to the curriculum and the canon, to interrogate the overt and covert role of race in the cosmologies of canonized authors and texts, and to challenge both the static universalisms that deny difference and the static essentialisms that fetishize and reify it. But we also need to see how the contexts in which we work shape our stances toward canonicity itself, toward litera- ture as an institution, and toward questions about the con- junctural, composite, and contested nature of social identities.

We need to know more about the uses and effects of literary texts as nodes in a network, as parts of a system of overdetermi- nation rather than as independent crucibles of identity and meaning. We need to know how race becomes textualized in American social life, as well as how it becomes instantiated in literary works. In addition, while the best studies of race and the American literary imagination have been firmly grounded in the methods of New Historicism, they have too often privileged transhistorical generalizations about race and culture over more nuanced delineations of change over time. Sometimes they re- duce all of black history to the question of slavery or treat the history of race in isolation from the histories of class, gender, and social institutions.

Issues of rupture and continuity are always at the core of historical inquiry because they set the boundaries for the difficult task of periodization-of deciding how to explain both the things that change and the things that remain the same over time. But periodization is never fixed in historical events themselves: it is a hermeneutic tool utilized by researchers to enhance under- standing and analysis by emphasizing some parts of the past over others.

These issues of social textualization and historical periodi- zation are crucial to the future of New Historicist criticism of

race and American literature. Acquiring new objects of study and developing new methods of interpretation and analysis will not suffice if at the same time we misread the enormously com- plex social, cultural, and ideological forces that have congealed to create the special pathologies of racism in the US. If New Historicist criticism is to offer more than a thin historical gloss on literary appreciation and interpretation, if it is to live up to its professed goal of delineating the mutually constitutive rela- tionship between literary texts and social contexts, we need to move beyond the narrow limits of our disciplinary training in the humanities or social sciences and become truly interdisciplinary. This means that scholars trained in the humanities need to move

beyond textual issues and develop expertise about social struc- ture and history, while social scientists need to learn from hu-

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American Literary History 705

manists how to account fully for the role of language and culture as active forces shaping history and social structure.

I review here eight books on white supremacy and antiblack racism in the US. Written by political scientists Paul M. Snider- man and Thomas Piazza, sociologists Joe R. Feagin, Melvin P. Sikes, and Paul Gilroy, legal scholars Herbert Hill and James E. Jones, Jr., philosophers Cornel West and David Theo Goldberg, and historians David R. Roediger and Robin D. G. Kelley, these books offer literary scholars important evidence about the struc- tural and historical dimensions of American racism. But they also show that social scientists and humanists outside of litera- ture still have much to learn about textualization and about lan-

guage as a social force. Most important, they raise issues that help us understand the importance of textualization and periodi- zation in our own scholarship, no less than in the literature that we analyze.

Sniderman and Piazza emphasize rupture over continuity in The Scar of Race. They argue that racism today differs dramat- ically from the racism of the past, boldly declaring that "race prejudice no longer organizes and dominates the reactions of whites; it no longer leads large numbers of them to oppose public policies to assist blacks across-the-board. It is … simply wrong to suppose that the primary factor driving the contemporary ar- guments over the politics of race is white racism" (5).

In arguing that few whites openly endorse discrimination or claim that blacks are innately inferior (40), Sniderman and Piazza rest their conclusions largely on interpretation of data they assembled through survey-sample public opinion polls of whites in the San Francisco Bay area. They find strong support for fair-housing laws and other pieces of legislation outlawing discrimination (98, 124). They learn from their interviews that educated people are less likely to approve of bigotry than people with limited schooling (47), and they discover that respondents who hold negative views of blacks in general are nonetheless will- ing to endorse government and private assistance for individual blacks who demonstrate good character (76). Perhaps most im- portant, they utilize a sophisticated polling system that demon- strates that aggressive counterarguments can change the minds of respondents who express bigoted opinions, especially when negative stereotypes of blacks are connected to social welfare is- sues (11, 137).

Yet the picture presented by Sniderman and Piazza's inter- view data demonstrates the continuity of racism as well. Their findings disclose that 61% of whites believe that "most blacks on welfare could find work if they wanted to" (40), that nearly 50%

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706 "Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac"

of whites agreed that "if blacks would only try harder, they would be just as well off as whites" (41), and that an equal number of whites claimed that "black neighborhoods tend to be run down because blacks simply don't take care of their own property" (42). Indeed, the two political scientists concede that "what is striking is the sheer pervasiveness throughout contemporary American society of negative characteristics of blacks" (50).

How can Sniderman and Piazza declare that white racism

has become less important when their own findings reveal such hostility to black people? Their answers are not convincing, but they are instructive. Sniderman and Piazza concede that simple prejudice does feed negative opinions about blacks among whites, but contend that these opinions cannot be reduced to bigotry because "these characterizations capture real features of everyday experience" (43). To support their claims, they note that blacks "were responsible for one in every two murders" in 1990 and for "more than six in every ten robberies" in 1989, that in 1988 "63.7 percent of black births were out of wedlock," and that "the average Scholastic Aptitude Test score of blacks, in 1990, was 737, compared with an average white score of 993" (44).

Aside from their ingenuous presentation of these statistics as if they have never been challenged (by scholarly studies exposing the hostility of police officers and judges to black sus- pects, explaining the logic of extended households and female- headed families given current employment, wage, and welfare policies, and examining the cultural biases and poor predictive capacities of standardized tests), Sniderman and Piazza at this point inject speculations that their research does not support. Their original questions ask whether blacks on welfare could get jobs if they tried, if blacks could be as well off as whites if they would only try harder, if black neighborhoods tend to be run down because blacks do not take care of their property, if most blacks have a chip on their shoulder, and if blacks are more vio- lent than whites. One might argue that the large numbers of blacks convicted of murders relates to the question about the vio- lent nature of black people, yet that question drew the lowest level of white agreement with only 20% claiming that blacks are more violent than whites. But what is the relevance of SAT scores

or births out of wedlock to questions about keeping up neighbor- hoods or working hard? These spurious connections do not come out of the data but are inserted by Sniderman and Piazza as mo- tivations for answers to questions about completely unrelated is- sues. Only if one assumes that any negative action by any black is evidence about all blacks-or that homeowners generally worry about their neighbors' SAT scores-could we possibly conclude

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American Literary History 707

that the "facts" cited by Sniderman and Piazza explain the opin- ions in their data.

Sniderman and Piazza also attempt to minimize the role of bigotry in shaping the negative comments their respondents make about black people by turning to data from the 1991 Na- tional Race Survey that found that African Americans were even more likely than whites to agree that black people are aggressive and violent, boastful, complaining, lazy, and irresponsible. Be- cause these results make it seem that black people have a low opinion of themselves, Sniderman and Piazza conclude that the negative comments made by whites in their own survey are justi- fied and based on experience. Had this standard been in effect during the Brown v. Board of Education case, Kenneth Clark's experiments showing that black children had negative self- images would have been used as justification for segregation rather than as a rationale for integration as the Supreme Court decided. But more important, it should be noted that once again Sniderman and Piazza assume that any negative statement about blacks becomes equal to any other. If blacks think other blacks are boastful, then whites are justified in thinking that the mate- rial advantages they enjoy in comparison to blacks should be attributed to black people's laziness rather than to unequal op- portunity.

The authors of The Scar of Race do not ask blacks the same questions they ask whites, nor do they draw upon existing survey data collected by others about black opinions and attitudes. They pointedly ignore, for instance, the in-depth experiential survey by Feagin and Sikes that forms the basis for Living with Racism: The Black Middle-Class Experience. Interviews with middle-class blacks in the Feagin and Sikes study reveal their attitudes toward whites, but they also disclose important evidence about how white people actually behave-an important counter to the self- serving representations of white open-mindedness so evident in The Scar of Race. The middle-class blacks surveyed by Feagin and Sikes detail the pervasiveness of racial insults and indignities in every sphere of American life, from navigating public places to pursuing an education, from building careers and businesses to securing shelter. The book's chapters about public space and educational institutions initially appeared in scholarly journals in 1991 and 1992, two years before the publication of Sniderman and Piazza's book.3 Yet the authors of The Scar of Race chose to use their own data and ideological justifications for what white people say rather than looking systematically at what white people actually do or how they appear to black people while they are doing it.

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708 "Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac"

In their opening and concluding chapters especially, Snider- man and Piazza frame issues of rupture and continuity in Ameri- can race relations in a particularly deficient way. They construct a narrative that looks back to the civil rights era as a golden age when race "was a problem of the heart" (1). For them, defense of de jure segregation hinged on notions of black inferiority, and the civil rights movement triumphed when a consensus formed around the idea that "it was wrong-unequivocally wrong, un- ambiguously wrong-to make it a crime for a black to drink from the same water fountain as a white … or to attend the

same school" (1). They argue that blacks shattered this integrationist consen-

sus themselves when they began to follow a "race conscious agenda" that violated the American creed (177). Then, race- conscious policies like affirmative action turned civil rights into "pork barrel" politics (129) that they claim alienated a number of whites so profoundly that "they have come to dislike blacks as a consequence" (8). After the passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 "the voices of separatism began to drown out those of integration; and the headlines came to be dominated not by Martin Luther King, Jr., but by Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown, then in the fullness of time, by Marion Barry, Ta- wana Brawley, and the Reverend Al Sharpton" (177).

The rhetorical flourishes in Sniderman and Piazza's conclu-

sions make their book more revealing as a symptom of our cur- rent racial crisis than as a critique of it. In a book that claims the existence of a dramatic rupture in the history of US race relations, trotting out Barry, Brawley, and Sharpton has a de- pressingly familiar ring to it-using instances of alleged black malfeasance to justify white racism is one of the oldest tropes of North American racism. For example, when W. E. B. Du Bois edited the NAACP journal The Crisis earlier this century, his all- white executive board chided him for printing the names of blacks who had been lynched, and insisted that he "balance" these accounts with lists of blacks who had committed crimes, as if lynchings could be protested only if no black people ever broke the law.

Careful readers might also note that Sniderman and Piaz- za's chronology fails to mention that King followed passage of the Civil Rights Act with campaigns against housing discrimina- tion in the North in 1966, that he championed opposition to America's "unjust and immoral war in Vietnam" as a civil rights issue in 1967, and that he died trying to build an interracial Poor People's Movement in 1968. If white people were as enthusiastic about his vision as Sniderman and Piazza imply, why did these

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American Literary History 709

campaigns attract so little support and fail so miserably to change public and private policies? In addition, by using Barry, Brawley, and Sharpton as evidence of how "the voices of separat- ism began to drown out the voices of integration," Sniderman and Piazza do not seem to be aware that Barry, Brawley, and Sharpton are not separatists; what unites them is that they are famous blacks whom white people think are guilty of misbehav- ior. This does not explain why their putative violations should consign black people to discriminatory treatment when similar behavior by Richard Nixon, Charles Stuart, Susan Smith, or the Reverend Jimmy Swaggart does not seem to affect the life chances of European Americans.

As a historical narrative, Sniderman and Piazza's account is wrong in almost every respect. Concrete social struggle, not some amorphous consensus, secured passage of the Civil Rights Act. Direct action protests by civil rights advocates provoked violent repression and sparked civil disorders that key opinion leaders sought to salve with meliorative reforms. Contrary to Sniderman and Piazza's account, those who supported civil rights legislation had interests, not just "ideas" on their minds; Lyndon Johnson, for example, wanted to expand the potential pool of black voters in the South to counter growing Republican strength in white suburbs. Opponents of civil rights legislation did not rely solely on arguments about black inferiority as the authors of The Scar of Race allege; Barry Goldwater, George Bush, and Ronald Reagan all opposed the 1964 law, not by citing the biological superiority of whites, but rather by claiming that the law violated states rights and that it threatened rather than enhanced racial harmony (see Lipsitz 65-119; West 271-91; Sitkoff 127-97; Franklin 476-97).

Although offered as advice for liberals interested in building an electoral coalition supporting public policies aimed at helping blacks, The Scar of Race is curiously silent about the politics of whiteness in our society, about the open, public, and sustained discourse about race carried on by neoconservatives and their allies since the 1960s. From Spiro Agnew's public humiliation of black leaders in Baltimore for their "failure" to prevent riots when King was shot to Richard Nixon's "Southern strategy" pro- moting resistance to desegregation, from the legal and public re- lations campaigns waged by the wealthy neoconservative founda- tions like the Heritage Foundation and John M. Olin Institute Foundation against affirmative action to the elevation of Clar- ence Thomas to the Supreme Court, race has been at the center of neoconservative efforts to build the countersubversive elec- toral coalition needed to dismantle the welfare state and advance

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710 "Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac"

Sniderman and Piazza

are not convincing when they argue that a monumental change has already taken place in the discourses of American racism, but,

paradoxically, the very continuity revealed in their account reminds us

how much we need that

change.

the agendas of big business. But Sniderman and Piazza evade any mention of these initiatives, and instead attribute the unrav- eling of the civil rights coalition primarily to the bad behavior of blacks. Whites have neither interest nor agency in their account, only attitudes.

While Sniderman and Piazza's account does not succeed as

scholarship, it needs to be taken seriously as storytelling. The Scar of Race mobilizes and enacts our culture's double standards about race. Narratives of black misbehavior eroding the good will of whites have always fueled racist reaction; in our own day it is a story that writers love to write and publishers love to tell, a tale that reviewers routinely salute as "novel," even though it is as old as the nation itself. But it is here where literary scholars might take special note.

All fiction written today by and about black people circu- lates in a network that includes fictions like the ones disguised as social science in Sniderman and Piazza's narrative. Their story is a social text as well as a book, a widely disseminated story that reinforces itself every time its basic contours are repeated in the speeches of politicians, the content of television news and enter- tainment programs, the comments of callers to talk-radio pro- grams, and the actions of social institutions like home lending agencies, realtors, zoning boards, personnel departments, and schools. The challenge for both literary and scholarly production in this context is to avoid complicity in the erasures effected by stories that obscure actual social relations and hide their own

conditions of production and distribution. Literature as an institution has been no less complicit with

dominant power in this respect than social science, journalism, or any of the other arts. The conventions and conditions of cul- tural production in our society encourage all of us to author sto- ries that effect false reconciliations between antagonistic social interests, that represent systemic social problems as solely private and personal issues, and that hide the interests and privileges of those empowered to speak. Sniderman and Piazza are not con- vincing when they argue that a monumental change has already taken place in the discourses of American racism, but, paradoxi- cally, the very continuity revealed in their account reminds us how much we need that change.

In Race in America: The Struggle for Equality, edited by Hill and Jones, a distinguished group of sociologists, historians, and legal scholars shows how white racism has shaped the trajectory of race relations since the civil rights era. In 16 carefully re- searched and cogently argued chapters, the authors fill in the missing links between the civil rights era of the 1960s and the

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American Literary History 711

race-conscious politics of subsequent decades. They show how many of the victories won by the civil rights movement came in the form of carefully managed concessions designed to insulate and contain the structural consequences of legal equality. They stress the central role of social contestation and struggle in bring- ing about change. Most important, they detail massive, system- atic, and unrelenting white resistance to the desegregation of schools, neighborhoods, and jobs after the passage of the civil rights acts, and they remind us that it was precisely this broad scale defense of white privileges that led to affirmative action and other reforms in the first place.

Patricia J. Williams's "Fetal Fictions: An Exploration of Property Archetypes in Racial and Gendered Contexts" is par- ticularly effective because it succeeds so well in mapping the con- junctural nature of race, class, and gender in shaping social iden- tity and because it skillfully connects personal and subjective experiences with broader social analysis. But the chapters in Race in America that rely on more traditional empirical aca- demic accounts are also excellent, especially those by Aldon Morris, Gary Orfield, Hill, and Jones.

Gilroy, a brilliant reader of literary texts employed as a soci- ologist, and philosophers Goldberg and West provide powerful tools for engaging and transcending racism in their new books, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning, and Keeping Faith: Philosophy and Race in America. Each treats racism as a long-standing but decidedly dynamic and distinctly historical phenomenon. Each argues that race is a fiction, that no basis exists in biology or anthropology to categorize people along ra- cial lines. Yet each also demonstrates that social constructs can

have sinister social causes and consequences. Gilroy, Goldberg, and West reject definitions that relegate racism to the realm of purely personal prejudices and practices, what Goldberg calls the "law of universal reduction" (104), but also challenge the idea of any innate, transhistorical, or universal racism. Similarly, they reject methodologies that deny racism's independent existence and explain it only as a subordinate category within other forms of economic and political domination. Instead, they investigate, analyze, and interpret the emergence and endurance of Euro- American white supremacy as a historical phenomenon with en- during effects on our common intellectual, cultural, and social life.

Gilroy and Goldberg especially trace contemporary racism to the distinctly modern categories of the Enlightenment: nation- ality, ethnicity, authenticity, and cultural integrity (Gilroy 2).

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712 "Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac"

John Locke's justification of the Royal Africa Company's slave expeditions as "just wars" and Immanuel Kant's belief in funda- mental differences in the rational capacities of blacks and whites serve as revealing examples, not because they contradict the lib- eral ideals of the Enlightenment but because they flow logically from its commitments to categorizing, classifying, and control- ling. Gilroy notes that the rationality of modernity originated, in part, in the slave-labor sugar plantations of the Caribbean (47), while Goldberg identifies the presence of racialized language and preconceptual elements of racism even in antiracist documents and arguments (42). These authors insist on viewing slavery and racism as "part of the ethical and intellectual heritage of the West" (Gilroy 49) rather than as the special property or special problem faced only by blacks.

A central contribution of these books is their delineation of

how racism and resistance against it get written into the com- monplace practices of everyday life and culture. West offers pow- erful and persuasive critiques of the racialized assumptions or- dering modern art and architecture (45-66), Goldberg produces a brilliant reading of urban spatial arrangements as the political unconscious of racism in cities all over the world (185-205), and Gilroy offers an original and inspired reading of the role of race in Richard Wright's modernism and internationalism (147-86).

Remembering the roles played by racism and slavery in the evolution of the Enlightenment is important for these authors, not because they want to distance themselves from Western tra- ditions of thought and reason, but rather because they claim a special place for antiracist thought within them. Because anti- racist writers have to confront directly the racist elements of En- lightenment thought that others have the luxury of ignoring, the antiracists by necessity must do better work, must imagine ways of fulfilling the worthy goals of the Enlightenment without col- laborating in its uninterrogated racist subtexts. As Gilroy ex- plains, slavery and its aftermath forced diasporic Africans in the West "to query the foundational moves of modern philosophy and social thought, whether they came from the natural rights theorists who sought to distinguish between the spheres of mo- rality and legality, the idealists who wanted to emancipate poli- tics from morals so that it could become a sphere of strategic action, or the political economists of the bourgeoisie who first formulated the separation of economic activity from both ethics and politics" (39).

The critiques presented by Gilroy, Goldberg, and West en- able us to shift the terms of racial debate away from the terms

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American Literary History 713

favored by traditional social science-why blacks are not more like whites-toward an infinitely more useful and instructive is- sue: what intellectuals and artists from aggrieved black commu- nities have been able to create as a result of the specific circum- stances they confront.

West describes a "New World African modernity" that emerges when "degraded and exploited Africans in American circumstances" use "European languages and instruments to make sense of tragic predicaments-predicaments dispropor- tionately shaped by white supremacist bombardments on black beauty, intelligence, moral character, and creativity" (xii). West celebrates the skill of black artists and intellectuals in drawing on cultural traditions to critique white supremacy; he cites Horace Pippin's art, Bessie Smith's music, and Sterling Brown's poetry as creations that transcended the art of uplift and protest allowed to blacks in the white world to articulate and affirm traditional

African and African-American paradigms of art as healing. West also shows that New World Africans gravitated toward newness and novelty, innovation and improvisation, as tools for changing their condition (xii). Gilroy stresses the fundamental commit- ment to modernity in black art and literature, showing how a "politics of fulfillment and transfiguration" appealed to ag- grieved peoples who longed for change, not just out of an ab- stract artistic commitment to progress, but because of their fun- damental struggle for justice (37). Perhaps most important, he shows how the lessons learned through struggle by diasporic Af- ricans can serve all people because of their sophisticated cri- tiques of exploitation and hierarchy.

Cultural production provides important evidence for Gil- roy, Goldberg, and West because they understand not only the influence of social conditions on cultural texts and the role of

cultural texts in social life, but also the inevitable textualization of social life by dominant groups who circulate stories that repre- sent their own power as necessary and inevitable. Following the intellectual traditions of antiracist resistance within aggrieved communities of ordinary people, they find epistemological and ontological principles vital to improving scholarly research. Just as the burdens of slavery and racism are not the special property of blacks alone, the insights and ideological critiques of ag- grieved populations forced to open up the suppressed contradic- tions of the Enlightenment have generalizable validity for people from all backgrounds.

Self-reflexive about their roles as intellectuals, Gilroy, Gold- berg, and West offer concrete programs for antiracist thought

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714 "Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac"

By stressing the ways of knowing that emerge from antiracist intellectual and political struggle, Gilroy,

Goldberg, and West demonstrate that

multiculturalism is not

just a matter of adding the experiences of "Others" onto what we

already presume to be true about culture and

history.

and action. Gilroy shows how a hermeneutics of suspicion and a hermeneutics of memory can guide intellectual critique and cultural practice grounded in "the mimetic functions of artistic performance in the processes of struggles towards emancipation, citizenship, and eventually autonomy" (71; see also 57). Gold- berg offers a carefully conceived program of pragmatic antirac- ism based on the presumption that racialized definitions of self and social structure are so pervasive in our society that they can- not be altered by simple "color blind," "non-racial" thinking (213).

West calls for intellectuals to become "critical organic cata- lysts" (27) who blend the paradigms, viewpoints, and methods of traditional scholarship with the insights, ideas, and experiences of aggrieved communities. Crucial to this role is the development of "genealogical materialist analysis of racism" based on genea- logical inquiry into the origins, evolution, and enabling condi- tions of racist practices, a microinstitutional and local analysis of the actual mechanisms that instantiate or resist racism in so-

cial life, and a macrostructural approach that connects class ex- ploitation, police power, and bureaucratic domination to the maintenance and regeneration of racisms around the globe (268).

By stressing the ways of knowing that emerge from antirac- ist intellectual and political struggle, Gilroy, Goldberg, and West demonstrate that multiculturalism is not just a matter of adding the experiences of "Others" onto what we already presume to be true about culture and history. The significance of marginalized peoples to cultural studies does not lie in their marginality, but rather in the role that marginalization (not to mention oppres- sion and suppression) plays in shaping intellectual and cultural categories that affect everyone. Like the feminist epistemologies of Sandra Harding, Donna Haraway, and Teresa de Lauretis, these books turn to the perspectives of aggrieved individuals and communities not because of who they are, but because of what they have been forced to learn because of how they have been treated (see Haraway 183-201; De Lauretis 119-31; Harding 136-62).

Both continuity and rupture pervade the analyses of racism offered by Gilroy, Goldberg, and West. Tracing present racist practices back to the core categories of modernity, they help us understand the endurance of racist hierarchies despite the long tradition of critique against them. Yet they also contest the possi- bility of a universal or transhistorical racism impervious to social or intellectual challenges. "In contrast to the prevailing picture of a singular and passing racism," Goldberg writes, "I will be developing a conception of transforming racisms bound concep-

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American Literary History 715

tually in terms of and sustained by an underlying culture" (8). This project holds particular importance for New Historicist lit- erary critics precisely because it is historical, because it traces how racism changes over time, how there has always been racism in the US at different times and different places but never exactly the same racism.

In the spirit of that kind of attention to change over time, historians Roediger and Kelley offer even more finely delineated and carefully nuanced historical accounts of US racial identities in Towards the Abolition of Whiteness and Race Rebels. Both au- thors are superb researchers who combine mastery of macroso- cial economic and political history with an uncommon attention to the microsocial textures of everyday life as they are experi- enced by ordinary people. Although they are not students of can- onized literary texts, they offer insightful critiques of how domi- nant power relations become textualized in language and law, as well as of the ways in which the cultural creations of aggrieved communities author and authorize oppositional "texts" and practices.

Roediger reminds us that racial identities affect white people too, that whiteness is a category that requires historical explanation because it has been a social construction with ca- lamitous consequences. Building on his previous study of the ori- gins and evolution of white identity in the American working class before the Civil War, he traces the continuity and permuta- tions in white identity as they have affected gender, work, social movements, ethnicity, language, and historical scholarship from the Civil War to the present.

Towards the Abolition of Whiteness contains many brilliant moments, but students of the racial imagination in American lit- erature will be most interested in Roediger's sensitive, knowing, and complex mapping of the role played by whiteness in both constructing and destabilizing European-American ethnic iden- tities (181-98). His account reveals much about the logic of New Historicism because it underscores the impossibility of separat- ing cultural texts from the textualization of cultural and social life. Roediger also offers a fascinating etymology of the word "gook," a racial epithet used by US soldiers since the nineteenth century against indigenous populations in diverse locations in- cluding Haiti, the Philippines, Nicaragua, the Arabic Middle East, Hawaii, Korea, and Vietnam (117-20). This curiosity about the origins of white supremacist slang is indicative of Roediger's sophisticated grasp of social life as a totality made up of both macrosocial structural institutions and microsocial practices and experiences.

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716 "Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac"

In a chapter that exemplifies the best possibilities of histori- cally grounded cultural criticism, Roediger details labor poet and humorist Covington Hall's struggles to popularize a new lan- guage of labor, race, and gender among southern timber workers in the early part of the twentieth century. In this discussion, Roe- diger shows not only how struggles over resources necessitate struggles over culture but also how enduring cultural conserva- tism can undermine political radicalism (127-80). Rejecting any temptation to make simple and one-dimensional relationships between social structure and culture, he accomplishes the far more difficult feat of showing the mutually constitutive relation- ships connecting the culture of everyday life to the broad distri- bution of wealth, power, and life chances in society.

Roediger's explorations of whiteness provide a perfect intro- duction to Kelley's Race Rebels, a stunningly original and illumi- nating history of episodes when poor and working-class people in America have mobilized on behalf of their own interests in

the face of systematic discrimination and exploitation. Ever since Herbert Gutman's generative 1973 essay "Work, Culture, and So- ciety in Industrializing America, 1815-1919," social historians have developed ever more sophisticated ways of exploring popu- lar resistance to concentrated wealth and power, but Kelley raises this discussion to an entirely new level. Imagination and ingenu- ity characterize his efforts, but Kelley's best skill is his mastery of empirical data-he finds more and better evidence than any- one in the field.

From Kelley's introductory reminiscences about working at a fast-food restaurant when he was a teenager to his cogent ob- servations about how wage labor shaped the nature of the civil rights movement in Birmingham, Race Rebels delineates the in- tersections of race and class in the US in important and enlight- ening ways. It combines a comprehensive and convincing analy- sis of the broad social forces that shape individual and collective behavior and an attention to the quotidian that often appears only in novels. Most important, Kelley understands how prevail- ing power relations-and resistance to them-often become "written" into everyday life as cultural performances.

Drawing on the cultural criticism of James Scott, Michel de Certeau, and C. L. R. James, among others, Kelley explains how dressing up on Saturday nights enabled southern blacks to an- swer back to the deprivations they suffered as underpaid workers and to transform the indignities imposed on them by their work uniforms that marked them as people with subordinate status. He analyzes the role of dancing as a way of reclaiming the work

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American Literary History 717

body for pleasure, and in his tour de force shows how Malcolm X's description of changing into his zoot suit from his work uni- forms as a pullman porter and soda jerk proclaimed a self- affirmation that found full expression in the way that the zoot "uniform"-with its wide shoulders and broad hats underscored

by the zoot suiters' characteristic "walk"-took up physical space on city streets (147-68).

The "presence of mind" practiced by Kelley and Roediger allows for no easy answers about continuity and rupture in US race relations. To be sure, they remind us of the long duration of white supremacist practices and institutions, but they also illumi- nate the innumerable instances of antiracist resistance growing out of the contradictions and inconsistencies necessitated by the insupportable fictions of race. Yet if racism has no absolutely determined innate trajectory in our nation's history, its perpetual presence poisons everything we are and everything we hope to become. It makes every moment a moment of danger, not just because of the potential for explosions of violence like the Los Angeles rebellion of 1992, but because of the ruined lives, wasted talents, and corrupt interpersonal and social relations that rac- ism causes. But the very danger that racism represents can serve constructive ends if it motivates us to create new ways of know- ing and acting.

The same Benjamin who ruminated on our need for "pres- ence of mind" also developed a concept of historical materialism based on "memories that flash up in a moment of danger" ("The- ses" 257). He understood that "presence of mind" impels us to move back and forth between the present and the past in search of a fuller understanding of our condition. Historical research is not just a matter of accumulating evidence about dead people and dead societies; it demands that we constantly refine our questions about the past on the basis of our experiences in the present while also looking at elements of the past we may have overlooked because their ultimate import had not yet become clear. Defined in this way, historical research is too important to be left to the historians alone; it becomes a vital resource for all citizens and scholars interested in creating a better theoretical and empirical understanding of the role of race in our lives.

The racial crisis of our time-and the new ways of knowing that it promotes and demands-points toward a new kind of scholarship based on presence of mind and memories that flash up in a moment of danger. Moving beyond the confines of our training in specific disciplines and studying new combinations of texts in new ways can lead us to a socially responsible kind of

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718 "Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac"

scholarship attuned to addressing the overwhelmingly difficult moral and intellectual challenges we face.

New Historicist literary criticism has many strengths, but too often it displays some characteristic weaknesses-a tendency to privilege the technologies of writing over other cultural prac- tices, reliance on vague and imprecise references to an abstract historical context rather than to definite features of change over time, and an underdeveloped awareness of the connection be- tween literary criticism and the social relations and conditions of our own day. On the other hand, humanities and social science scholars of race and racism display many characteristic flaws of their own. They often underestimate the importance of literature as a force shaping popular ideologies and interpretations, and they frequently forget that cultural expressions are not transpar- ent representations of reality but rather utterances that require theoretical analysis and critique.

What would happen if New Historicist literary critics and the humanists and social scientists studying racism adopted more of each other's methods? The result might resemble some outstanding recent works by scholars working at the crossroads of culture and structure in literary studies and history. Literary critical works offering important examples for emulation include Eric Lott's analysis of minstrelsy and the US working class, Vir- ginia Carmichael's sophisticated interpretation of the fictions fashioned about the Rosenberg spy trials after the fact by popu- lar authors but during the trial itself by lawyers, judges, and jour- nalists, Maria Damon's memorable study of beat poet Bob Kauf- man, and Carl Gutierrez-Jones's original investigation of the role of law in Chicano literature and popular culture. Similarly, recent historical works that display a fine attention to the role of textu- alization in social life include Wendy Kozol's perceptive study of the conflation of patriotism and patriarchy in Life magazine's photo essays during the 1950s, Tricia Rose's dazzling description of the relationship between the 1970s urban crises and the rise of rap music, break dancing, and graffiti writing, and George Sanchez's original interpretation of the roles played by popular culture and trade unions in authoring a new "Mexican- American" identity in Los Angeles during the 1930s.

One way to accomplish this fusion of literary criticism with social science and humanities scholarship about race might be to combine the skills of social analysis and cultural critique by comparing and contrasting contextualized readings of tradi- tional literary texts with stories from other kinds of sources. For example, let us look at three different pieces of evidence-a

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American Literary History 719

scholarly report from the 1880s, a novel from the 1950s, and a once confidential government document from the early 1800s- for what they can teach us about the racial crisis of our own time.

During the 1880s, folklorists in Washington, DC, collected a tale then in wide circulation among that city's African- American residents. This story alleged that when George Wash- ington lay on his deathbed, his last words to his friends and family were "Forever keep the niggers down." With only half- disguised amusement, the scholars wrote that the story was "ac- cepted as undoubtedly true by many, if not most, of the colored people over a wide area" (Levine 88).

The activity of collecting folklore in the nineteenth century often stemmed from paternalistic assumptions about the simplic- ity and naivete of ordinary people. Like geographical expedi- tions, wild West and minstrel shows, or jungle stories, it offered escapist fantasies about traditional peoples and their cultures as a way of easing the pains of modernity and the alienating self- regulating individualism it encouraged. Through that frame, the story about George Washington's dying wish plays a part in rep- resenting black people as nonempirical, superstitious, and gull- ible. Its possible function as a teaching device encapsulating im- portant parts of the experiences of its authors did not strike the folklorists who collected it.

A similar kind of story appears in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (1952) when Dr. A. Hebert Bledsoe explains to the narrator why he collaborates with the power of whites in his job as presi- dent of a black college: "These white folks have newspapers, magazines, radios, spokesmen to get their ideas across. If they want to tell the world a lie, they can tell it so well that it becomes the truth; and if I tell them that you're lying, they'll tell the world even if you prove you're telling the truth. Because it's the kind of lie they want to hear .. ." (140-41). Later we learn that Dr. Bledsoe means what he says. The narrator carries a letter of rec- ommendation from the college president that he thinks will help him secure temporary employment so that he can make enough money to return to school. But he discovers that the letter (which he is not supposed to see) explains that the narrator has been expelled from the school secretly and it advises the prospective employer to keep that information from him (187-91).

Taken by themselves, these passages from Invisible Man can be read as illustrative anecdotes about a general problem-about bureaucracy, duplicity, or subordination. But when placed in his- torical context, they disclose a quite specific and quite racialized history with only incidental connection to the more generalized

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720 "Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac"

alienations expressed so often in modern literature. Consider, for example, what we can learn about the racial crisis of our time by reading these passages from folklore and Invisible Man against a historical document written in 1802 by Thomas Jefferson's post- master general.

The document I have chosen was written on 23 March 1802

by US Postmaster General Gideon Granger and sent in an ex- traordinary letter to Georgia Senator James Jackson. Granger's letter explained his opposition to "employing negroes, or people of color, in transporting the public mails." Describing his com- ments as "too delicate to engraft into a report which may become public, yet too important to be omitted or passed over without full consideration," Granger drew a direct connection between post office hiring policies and the recent revolt in Haiti against slavery and colonialism. Arguing that "we cannot be too cau- tious in attempting to prevent similar evils in the four Southern States, where there are, particularly in the eastern and old settled parts of them, so great a proportion of blacks as to hazard the tranquility and happiness of free citizens," the postmaster gen- eral noted that in Virginia and South Carolina "plans and con- spiracies have already been concerted by them more than once, to rise in arms, and subjugate their masters."

It is not surprising that the successful slave insurrection in Haiti frightened property owners and "free citizens" in the US or that it motivated federal officials to take defensive precau- tions. But the extent of Granger's actions, and his reasons for them, demonstrates dynamics and dimensions of white suprem- acy and antiblack racism of singular and enduring importance. With a comprehensive and systematic logic, Granger argued in his confidential letter to Senator Jackson that banning blacks from positions as postal riders served the interests of slavery be- cause "everything which tends to increase their [black people's] knowledge of natural rights, of men and things, or that affords them an opportunity of associating, acquiring, and communicat- ing sentiments, and of establishing a chain or line of intelligence, must increase your hazard, because it increases their means of effecting their object." He warned that "the most active and intel- ligent" blacks would gravitate to jobs as postal riders, that they would learn important information from their travels, and that they would "in time, become teachers to their brethren." In order to foreclose that end, Granger decided to deny them employment in those positions. "The hazard may be small and the prospect remote," he argued, "but it does not follow that at some day the event would not be certain." Deploying the language of counter- insurgency that so often guides those with power to take repres-

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American Literary History 721

sive measures, Granger warned that "it is easier to prevent the evil than to cure it."

Granger's letter to Jackson constitutes an important mo- ment in American literary history in itself, but it also provides an important resource for analyzing and critiquing the produc- tion of racialized identities and hierarchies in American litera-

ture and American social life alike. No public pronouncement or statute announced any intention to discriminate against blacks, but through a policy of willful, deliberate, and systematic decep- tion, an official at the highest level of government authored and authorized a policy of racial discrimination in order to protect the long-term interests of members of his own race. Slave owners may or may not have reaped direct benefits from Granger's ac- tions, but other whites also enriched themselves because of his decision. Those whites hired as postal riders were not told that they received their positions because of racial privilege; the prop- erty and privileges they passed on to their descendants may have seemed like the fruits of competition in a free market, but they stemmed instead from systematic racial favoritism.

Black people denied employment as postal riders were led to believe that they failed to qualify for these jobs because of their deficiencies as individual applicants. Yet exactly the oppo- site was true; their very potential for oppositional ideas and in- surrectionary actions made them ineligible for these government jobs. We must certainly surmise that black people noticed the effects of Granger's decision and no doubt knew that a policy against their employment existed, but the privileges of power en- abled Granger (and all whites) to escape responsibility for their actions.

The prose of Granger's letter hardly qualifies it for inclusion in the classical canon of American literary history, although its frank disclosures of elite fears of popular protest make it of sig- nificant historical and sociological interest. When one considers that it came from a time in our nation's history when slavery was legal and when overt white supremacy perpetually imperiled the property and persons of even free blacks, it is hardly the most racist document in our national papers of state. But Granger's letter represents an important artifact in American literary his- tory and offers some important insights into how we might con- duct American literary criticism in the future.

Granger's letter enables us to cast the folktale about George Washington's dying wish in a new light. Secret communications among whites at the dawn of the Republic did consign black people to subordinate status. Even though they might not have had access to documents detailing exactly how their suppression

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722 "Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac"

was accomplished, the blacks in Washington certainly saw the consequences of those actions in their own lives, as the story at- tests.

The communication to Senator Jackson by the postmaster general also shows that Ellison's imagination has historical roots; indeed the entirety of Invisible Man is an exploration into the tension between surface appearances and hidden structures of suppression and power. It starts with another kind of deathbed pronouncement-the narrator's grandfather advises his family to teach "the younguns" deception before whites, to "overcome 'em with yeses, undermine 'em with grins, agree 'em to death and destruction, let 'em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open." He justifies his advice by declaring "our life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days, a spy in the enemy's coun- try ever since I give up my gun back in Reconstruction" (16).

These three texts are related to each other and to the larger body of texts (written and unwritten) that have authored and authorized the racialization of life chances in America: for ex-

ample, the confidential City Survey appraisals for the Home Owners Loan Corporation (discovered by urban historian Ken- neth Jackson) that covertly channeled federally guaranteed home loan funds toward whites and away from blacks (see Jackson 195-203). But even more significant, Granger's letter, Ellison's novel, and the story about George Washington's deathbed wish are texts from other times with special explanatory power for our own time because they are memories that flash up in a moment of danger.

During the days of slavery and segregation, we might have missed the true import of Granger's letter, the folktale about George Washington's dying wish, or the episodes in Invisible Man. But in our day, their emphasis on covert actions and decep- tions flashes up to us in a moment of danger as an important way of understanding our own circumstances. They dramatize some important facets of American racism with immediate rele- vance for our presence of mind. They show that racism can be systematic and effective even when unannounced in public; that rational considerations of self-interest and preservation of privi- lege can motivate racist behavior just as surely as private preju- dice or irrational fear; that hypotheses about the nature and ex- tent of white racism that might strike many whites as paranoid can sometimes be traced to accurate knowledge about history among blacks and uninterrogated privileges among whites.

The long history of antiblack racism and white supremacy in the US may make many of us wish to second West's observa- tion that "the extent to which race still so fundamentally matters

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American Literary History 723

in nearly every sphere of American life is-in the long run- depressing and debilitating" (xv). Like those white neighbors whom Himes remembered from his childhood, many whites to- day still seem disturbed and threatened by the prospect of black success-witness neoconservative ideologue Carol Iannone's rid- icule of the literary awards bestowed on Toni Morrison and Alice Walker. In Malcolm X's terms, they may turn out a new Cadillac every year, but it's still a Cadillac.

While racism may never go away, we know that it does change, that it contains unresolved contradictions and is always susceptible to exposure and challenge. Those white farmers who succeeded in driving the Himes family out of Mississippi did not convince Himes that he did not deserve the good things in life; they only showed him that he would have to fight to get what he wanted. New racisms may always supplant old ones-just like this year's Cadillacs roll off the assembly lines to replace last year's. Old Cadillacs never die, but they sometimes become too expensive to support.

Perhaps that is what Dizzy Gillespie had in mind in 1959 when he wrote and recorded "Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac," a song that fuses African chants, old-time spirituals, and a parody of General Douglas MacArthur's farewell speech. At the end of the recording, Gillespie steps up to the mike and says "Old Cadil- lacs never die, the finance company just fades them away." White supremacy and antiblack racism may never die. But that should not stop us from trying to see what we can do to fade them away.

Notes

1. In this review, I address the specific contours of antiblack racism in America, although I know that it is incorrect to reduce racism in the US to a simple binary conflict between blacks and whites, as if the polylateral intercul- tural relations among whites, blacks, Chicanos, Native Americans, and Asian Americans did not exist or did not matter. Yet since the works I am reviewing are for the most part about antiblack racism, I confine my critical remarks to that subject. For detailed and sophisticated analyses of the complexities of intercultural identities and racisms, see Guti6rrez, and Anzalduia.

2. My formulation here paraphrases Charles Keil's powerful observations about popular music and the people who make it in his closing remarks at the International Association for the Study of Popular Music meetings in Mon- treal, 11 July 1985. Author's notes.

3. Feagin, "The Continuing Significance of Race" and "The Continuing Sig- nificance of Racism."

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724 "Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac"

Works Cited

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The National Response to Richard M. Nixon's Black Capitalism Initiative: The Success of Domestic Detente

Author(s): Robert E. Weems, Jr. and Lewis A. Randolph

Source: Journal of Black Studies , Sep., 2001, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Sep., 2001), pp. 66-83

Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.

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THE NATIONAL RESPONSE

TO RICHARD M. NIXON'S BLACK

CAPITALISM INITIATIVE

The Success of Domestic Detente

ROBERT E. WEEMS, JR. University of Missouri-Columbia

LEWIS A. RANDOLPH

Ohio University

Richard M. Nixon viewed an uncontrolled Black Power move-

ment as a major threat to the internal security of the United States

(during the late 1960s and early 1970s). To address this situation,

Nixon developed his Black capitalism initiative as a domestic

version of his widely publicized foreign policy initiative of

detente (which sought to "contain" the power of the Soviet Union

and China). Moreover, just as Nixon and Henry Kissinger

linked concessions associated with detente to Soviet and Chinese

behavior modification, the Nixon presidency offered African

Americans the notion of Black capitalism as an incentive to

move away from the notion of "Bum Baby Bum" (Ambrose, 1989, pp. 125-126). Besides briefly examining the nuances of Nixon's

Black capitalism initiative, this article will focus on the national

discourse generated by this political maneuver. The evidence sug-

gests that although Nixon did not achieve his institutional goals

(campaign promises) related to Black capitalism, he did, indeed,

achieve his larger ideological goal of subverting African American

radicalism.

JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES, Vol. 32 No. 1, September 2001 66-83

? 2001 Sage Publications

66

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Weems, Randolph / BLACK CAPITALISM INITIATIVE 67

THE NIXON ADMINISTRATION AND

BLACK CAPITALISM: AN OVERVIEW

Although the term Black capitalism represented a skillful use of

political rhetoric during the 1968 campaign, Nixon, once elected,

had to move beyond mere words. Unfortunately for the new presi-

dent, his campaign proclamations regarding Black capitalism came

back to haunt him. Because Nixon, during the campaign, had pro-

moted Black capitalism as a major remedy for America's racial ills,

expectations regarding this initiative were extremely high. Thus,

when the Nixon administration's Office of Minority Business

Enterprise (OMBE) literally stumbled out of the blocks after its

establishment on March 5, 1969 (by Executive Order 11458), pub-

lic criticism of the program mounted (Kotlowski, 1998, p. 416).

For instance, the August 30, 1969, issue of Business Week fea-

tured an article titled "Black Capitalism Has A Hollow Ring,"

which focused on the Nixon administration's inability to back up

campaign promises related to Black economic empowerment. The

following testimony, given by Eastman Kodak's Walter Cooper at a

summer session of the House of Representatives Small Business

Committee, graphically illustrated growing disenchantment with

Nixon by both Black and White businessmen. Cooper, a member of

the Small Business Administration's National Advisory Council

for Black Economic Development told Congress, "There is little

evidence to indicate our chief executive has committed his personal

attention to accelerating the delivery of his campaign promise"

(p. 51). For his part, Nixon did take his campaign pledge seriously and,

along with the secretary of commerce, Maurice Stans, sought to

move Black capitalism from the realm of rhetoric to reality. Among

other things, beginning in fiscal year 1970, OMBE's promotion and

implementation of what came to be known as minority business set-

asides assisted a growing number of African American entrepre-

neurs (Kotlowski, 1998, pp. 430-43 1).

Despite OMBE's improved stature and reputation (by the early

1970s), Black capitalism as articulated by Nixon in 1968 remained

a fleeting dream. As Kotlowski (1998) has astutely observed,

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68 JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES / SEPTEMBER 2001

because of a variety of factors (including a limited number of exist-

ing and prospective entrepreneurs in the African American com-

munity), Black capitalism could never have developed into any-

thing more than "a small program with useful but limited impact."

Moreover, had the Nixon administration "worked to build it with-

out indulging in rhetorical flourishes, it might have achieved

quicker results and allayed skepticism" (p. 429).

Notwithstanding the gulf between the rhetoric and reality of

Black capitalism, because of the well-publicized attention that

Nixon gave to this concept, it generated widespread discussion and

analysis during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

THE NATIONAL BLACK ECONOMIC

DEVELOPMENT CONFERENCE (APRIL, 1969)

The National Black Economic Development Conference

(NBEDC), convened in Detroit, Michigan, from April 25th to 27th,

1969, represented one early noteworthy response to Nixon's Black

capitalism initiative. The following excerpt from the NBEDC's

promotional material reflected the diversity of opinion regarding

African American economic empowerment:

Buy Black-Not The Whole Answer Black Capitalism Not The Whole Answer Co-ops Not The Whole Answer Bringing More Money Into the Black Community Not The Whole Answer

New Economic Systems Based On Black Needs. . . A Beginning

Moreover, the NBEDC, itself, featured lively discussion regard-

ing the merits and demerits of Black capitalism and other strategies

to revitalize the economic situation of African Americans.

In his keynote address, Black economist Robert S. Browne

(1969), then a professor of economics at Farleigh Dickerson Uni-

versity, examined the various options facing African Americans in

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Weems, Randolph / BLACK CAPITALISM INITIATIVE 69

their quest for economic development. Early on, Browne acknowl-

edged the aims of Black nationalists in attendance, yet also noted,

I sense that this conference is not primarily to be concerned with the

question of whether national sovereignty is desirable for blacks or how it can be achieved …. Rather it seems to me, we have been brought here to discuss the more modest question of what is achiev- able by black people within the existing limitations of our NOT

enjoying national sovereignty. (p. 4)

According to Browne (1969), the biggest obstacle African

Americans faced in their quest for economic self-determination

was their lack of real access to the six basic levers or sources of

power in the United States: (a) huge personal wealth, (b) the top 22

major corporations, (c) the military-industrial complex, (d) the fed-

eral and state governmental apparatus, (e) the federal legislative

apparatus, and (f) the crime syndicate (p. 7). Moreover, Browne

lamented, "This lack of access to the instruments of power, supple-

mented by white America's vicious racial prejudice toward black

people, has led to our perpetual impoverishment, our self-hatred

and psychological insecurity, our poor educational attainment, and

our social disorganization" (p. 7). In addition, Browne soberly

asserted, "Realistically speaking .. . I see very limited possibility of

our grasping the levers of control in this society" (p. 8).

Notwithstanding his somewhat depressing assessment of Afri-

can Americans' reality, Browne (1969) did assert that Blacks could

launch an effective attack on Black poverty (despite African Amer-

icans' exclusion from the national power structure). He viewed the

various "local development projects, small business programs, job

training, consumer education, vocational guidance, school

improvement, and other community programs" as both useful to

African Americans and nonthreatening to the national power struc-

ture (which recognized that Blacks had to be placated in some way)

(p. 1 1). Yet, Browne also warned, "Our achievement will be of lim-

ited scope and will certainly not bring into being The Black Nation"

(p. 10).

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70 JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES / SEPTEMBER 2001

Although Browne's (1969) keynote presentation offered a cau-

tious, realistic assessment of the parameters of present and future

African American economic empowerment, James Foreman's

(1969) dinner speech titled "Total Control as the Only Solution for

the Economic Needs of Black People" offered a contradictory, if

not surreal, vision of the economic future of African Americans. By

1969, Foreman, one of the founders of the Student Nonviolent

Coordinating Committee, personified the ideological shift from

"We Shall Overcome" to "Black Power" that the Black freedom

movement had taken (p. 1).

Early on, Foreman (1969) denounced those Blacks who sup-

ported notions of Black capitalism. Besides derisively referring to

conservative supporters of Black capitalism as "Negroes," Fore-

man described Black nationalist supporters of Black capitalism as

"black power pimps" (p. 1). He further asserted that

the people must be educated to understand that any black man or

Negro who is advocating a perpetuation of capitalism inside the

United States is in fact seeking not only his ultimate destruction and death but is contributing to the continuous exploitation of black peo- ple all around the world. (p. 1)

In direct variance to the options for Black people articulated by

Browne (1969), Foreman (1969) went on to declare,

Only an armed, well-disciplined, black-controlled government can insure the stamping out of racism in this country…. We plead with black people not to be thinking about a few crumbs…. We say think in terms of total control of the U.S. (p. 6)

After discussing how Black people could take over America,

which included Black workers sabotaging the U.S. industrial base

"while the brothers fought guerilla warfare in the streets" (p. 6),

Foreman (1969) used his speech to announce the future plans of the

NBEDC. He began by acknowledging and thanking the, predomi-

nantly White, National Council of Churches and the Inter-religious

Foundation for Community Organization, which had helped orga-

nize and sponsor the NBEDC. Significantly, the National Council

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Weems, Randolph / BLACK CAPITALISM INITIATIVE 71

of Churches, as early as 1967, had established an Investment Com-

mittee for Ghetto Community Development with the distinct pur-

pose of promoting (and funding) Black economic development

(Investment Committee for Economic Development, 1967, pp. 1-

4). Nevertheless, Foreman declared,

We [Blacks] must begin seizing power wherever we are and we must say to the planners of this conference that you are no longer in

charge…. The conference is now the property of the people who are assembled here. (pp. 6-7)

Foreman then went on to issue what came to be known as the Black

Manifesto, which demanded $500 million in reparations from

America's White churches (pp. 6-7).

Foreman (1969) offered the following rationale for the takeover

of the NBEDC and for the demand for money from White Ameri-

can denominations:

We maintain we have a revolutionary right to do this. We have the same rights, if you will, as the Christians had in going into Africa and raping our Motherland and bringing us away from our continent of peace and into this hostile and alien environment where we have been living in perpetual warfare since 1619. (p. 7)

Among the projects that would be funded by payments from White

American churches was a national Black (mass media) communi-

cations network to disseminate "revolutionary" information to Afri-

can Americans and a national Black university (Walker, 1969, p. 2).

The disparity between Browne's (1969) pragmatic vision and

Foreman's (1969) revolutionary vision for the economic future of

African Americans reflected a similar disparity among other con-

temporary commentators interested in the economic plight of Afri-

can Americans. Significantly, persons who promoted the theoreti-

cal notion of Black capitalism, made popular by Nixon, differed

dramatically as to how they would implement Black economic

empowerment in the context of the capitalist system. Similarly,

critics of Nixon's Black capitalism agenda differed among them-

selves as to what was a viable alternative to increased Black busi-

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72 JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES / SEPTEMBER 2001

ness ownership. Moreover, there were some observers who

changed their original position regarding the merits (or demerits) of

Black capitalism.

INDEPENDENT DERIVATIVES OF

NIXON'S BLACK CAPITALISM INITIATIVE

One of the most ambitious attempts to clearly articulate a frame-

work for Black capitalism was Theodore L. Cross's (1969) book

Black Capitalism: Strategy for Business in the Ghetto. Cross, then

editor and publisher of Banker's Magazine, proposed a massive

cooperative effort between corporate America and the U.S. govern-

ment to enrich underdeveloped Black urban areas. Although Cross

acknowledged that urban Black America was economically and

socially separated from mainstream society, he maintained that "it

encompasses millions of acres of urban real estate which simply

cannot be abandoned" (pp. 138-139).

According to Cross (1969), Black distrust of White businessmen

represented one of the biggest impediments to the economic recon-

struction of urban Black America. Nevertheless, Black Capitalism

urged White businessmen to ignore "the propaganda of black mili-

tants" and pursue "the route of clear logic and justice: the forced

injection of credit, risk capital, and entrepreneurial skills into the

ghetto economy" (p. 69).

Although Cross (1969) implied that Black militancy thwarted

positive economic activity in African American enclaves, others

asserted the exact opposite. For instance, Roy Innis (1969), of the

Congress of Racial Equality, promoted the concept of separatist

economics in an important essay titled "Separatist Economics: A

New Social Contract" (pp. 51-52).

Rather than allow corporate America to coordinate the eco-

nomic revitalization of the Black community, Innis (1969) asserted

that African Americans needed to control this process. "We are not

talking about bringing white businesses into black communities,

but about building economic instruments that themselves can hire

blacks" (pp. 51-58).

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Weems, Randolph / BLACK CAPITALISM INITIATIVE 73

Perhaps ironically, Innis's (1969) observations actually formed

the cornerstone of U.S. Senate Bill 3876 introduced to Congress in

July, 1968, as the Community Self-Determination Bill. This legis-

lation-whose sponsors ranged from the liberal Jacob Javits of

New York to the conservative John Tower of Texas (and was

codrafted by representatives from the Congress of Racial Equality

and associates from the Harvard University Institute of Politics)-

called for the development of federally chartered community

development corporations. These entities would own all businesses in affected neighborhoods and would designate a portion of busi-

ness profits to help finance social services in community develop-

ment corporation-run communities (Sturdivant, 1971, pp. 1 14-115).

Despite its initial support in Congress, critics of the Community

Self-Determination Bill, who asserted that it would move the

nation toward apartheid, ultimately contributed to its legislative

demise (Sturdivant, 1971, p. 115).

Another of the myriad independent proposals generated by

Nixon's Black capitalism initiative was Dunbar S. McLaurin's

Ghetto Economic Development and Industrialization Plan

(GHEDIPLAN). GHEDIPLAN deviated significantly from the proposals put forward by Cross (1969) and Innis (1969). McLaurin, a Black economist based in New York City, possessed a business

and professional background that included ownership of the con-

sulting firm Ghettonomics, Incorporated (McLaurin & Tyson, 1969, pp. 126-13 1).

In a coauthored essay titled "The GHEDIPLAN for Economic

Development" (McLaurin & Tyson, 1969), McLaurin asserted that

simply infusing the ghetto with more outside capital and providing

existing and prospective Black entrepreneurs with corporate pro- fessional guidance (the Cross [1969] approach) would do little to enhance the economic life of Black communities. He based this

conclusion on the premise that Black entrepreneurs, unlike their White counterparts, had problems that transcended mere issues of

capital and training. Because the ghetto businessman had limited access to "the outer and larger business and industrial world with its

opportunities, challenges, and stimuli, [it is] as if he were in a remote, underdeveloped country" (p. 130).

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74 JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES / SEPTEMBER 2001

To alleviate the problems associated with Black America's eco-

nomic and social isolation from mainstream society, the

GHEDIPLAN proposed using that same isolation as an advantage.

Specifically, McLaurin urged the U.S. government to view Amer-

ica's Black ghettos as an underdeveloped nation. McLaurin

believed that this would help resuscitate the economic life of Black

America by focusing on development strategies that would allow

African Americans to develop businesses and industries that could

easily meld with the "outside" economy (pp. 131-132).

Besides proposing that Black America be viewed as an underde-

veloped nation, the GHEDIPLAN, similar to Innis's (1969) sepa-

ratist economics, called for the "local [Black] ownership of the

economy and the control of its destiny" (p.132). Nevertheless,

McLaurin differed from Innis in that he envisioned the

GHEDIPLAN creating a Black economy "strong enough to partici-

pate in, compete with, and become an integral part of the national

economy" (p.132).

Perhaps, the period's most creative proposal related to Black

capitalism was Black economist Richard F. America Jr.'s (1971)

call for a transfer of 10% of Fortune 500 companies to African

American control. Citing historical precedents of the government

stepping in to dismantle corporate monopolies based on the public

interest, America asserted that it would be in the public interest to

modify a situation that has resulted in "the total absence of any

large Black corporations in the United States" (p. 127).

The basic motivation behind America's (1971) bold proposal

was his belief that "the establishment and nurturing of [African

American] small businesses, now being undertaken on an increas-

ing scale, does not satisfy the need for [African American] eco-

nomic independence and self-determination" (p. 125). Moreover,

he envisioned "after about eight corporations have been transferred

to Black control each year for fifteen years, the procedure would be

discontinued, since by then Blacks will have achieved economic

parity roughly equivalent to their proportion of the population"

(p. 136).

Although America (1971) believed there existed enough Afri-

can American managerial talent to run the transferred corporations,

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Weems, Randolph / BLACK CAPITALISM INITIATIVE 75

others were not too sure. For instance, Louis L. Allen (1971), presi- dent of the Chase Manhattan Capital Corporation noted, "No one

can know how to manage a large corporation without experience in

doing just that. Certainly, experience in small company manage-

ment is no substitute" (p. 140). In the end, America's (1971) pro-

posal, similar to those of Cross (1969), Innis (1969), and McLaurin

and Tyson, found itself relegated to the footnotes of American busi-

ness history.

Despite their diverse approaches, Cross (1969), Innis (1969),

McLaurin, and America (1971) believed that Black capitalism (or

some derivative) represented a positive, desirable phenomenon.

Conversely, some observers believed that the notion of Black capi-

talism was a dangerous illusion. Moreover, critics of Black capital-

ism, similar to its proponents, possessed differing perspectives.

CRITICS OF BLACK CAPITALISM

Although the Nixon administration actively promoted Black

capitalism, economist Andrew Brimmer, the period's highest rank-

ing African American in government service, emerged as an out-

spoken critic of this initiative. Moreover, Brimmer, a member of the

Federal Reserve Board, articulated his viewpoint in a number of

venues.

In the May 1969 issue of Nation's Business, Brimmer (1969)

published a brief essay titled "The Trouble With Black Capitalism,"

which focused on racial desegregation's impact on Black business.

After citing how Jim Crow racial segregation contributed to the

growth of Black-owned service sector businesses (barber shops,

beauty shops, hotels, and restaurants), Brimmer observed how

racial desegregation, conversely, contributed to an observable

decline of these same Black-owned enterprises (p. 79).

Besides seeing a bleak future for Black-owned companies in the

service industry, Brimmer (1969) expressed even more doubt about

Black manufacturing concerns. To dramatically illustrate his point,

Brimmer noted how large apparel manufacturers were currently

producing African motif clothing (which undercut the profits of

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76 JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES / SEPTEMBER 2001

Black community-based tailors and seamstresses). Moreover,

based on the perceived growing importance of the African Ameri-

can consumer market, Brimmer urged Black businessmen not to

''count on nationally oriented manufacturing firms leaving the

Negro market to Negro entrepreneurs" (p. 79).

Considering the evidence he presented, Brimmer (1969) pre-

dictably concluded his Nation's Business essay by asserting that

"the only really promising path to equal opportunity for Negroes in

business as in other aspects of economic activity lies in full partici-

pation in an integrated, national economy. It cannot be found in a

backwater of separatism and segregation" (p. 79).

On July 25, 1969, Brimmer testified before the U.S. House of

Representatives Select Committee on Small Business regarding

Black capitalism. Besides reiterating the information found in his

Nation's Business article, Brimmer (1971) observed that the deseg-

regation of the national labor force hampered Black entrepreneurs'

quest to hire and retain quality Black employees (pp. 165-166).

Along with issues related to White competition, Brimmer's

(1971) testimony focused on the tenuous financial situation of Afri-

can American families, the cornerstone of Black capitalism's pro- jected consumer market. He noted that African Americans, on all

income levels, had more installment debt than their White counter-

parts. This reality, among other things, decreased the amount of

Black disposable income and made them "a poorer potential con- sumer for additional goods and services than a family of similar

income that is less encumbered by installment debt payments"

(pp. 167-168).

Besides addressing Congress and the mainstream business com-

munity, Brimmer (1970) took his case against Black capitalism

directly to African Americans. The August 1970 issue of Ebony magazine featured a Brimmer essay titled "Economic Integration

and the Progress of the Negro Community" (p. 118). For those readers unfamiliar with Brimmer (1970), he began this

article by clearly articulating his credentials as an economist and

his belief that "the only promising path to genuine economic prog-

ress of the Negro in America is an accelerated widening of opportu-

nities in an integrated economy" (p. 119). For African Americans

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Weems, Randolph / BLACK CAPITALISM INITIATIVE 77

enamored with various proposals (both government sponsored and

independent) related to Black economic development, Brimmer's

observations in Ebony were sobering to say the least. After dismiss-

ing as a "mirage" the notion of viewing Black America as a separate

nation with (a then) $35 billion in personal income that could be

separately developed, Brimmer elaborated on Black America's

lack of separate economic strength. He noted that although African

Americans constituted nearly 11% of the U.S. population, they

received approximately 6.5% of America's personal income and

owned less than 2% of the country's household assets (p. 119). Taking a definite swipe at the Nixon administration's OMBE

program, Brimmer (1970) dismissed Black capitalism as a "cruel

hoax" and noted that any program aimed at expanding small-scale

Black-owned business "would be running against a strong national

trend. In retailing, the trend is steadily toward large chain-store

units in which economic efficiency is rising rapidly" (p. 121).

Brimmer (1970) closed this thought-provoking essay by reiter-

ating the linkage between economic integration and African Amer-

ican progress. From his perspective, Blacks needed to get inside the

U.S. corporate structure to observe and learn how substantive eco-

nomic power is exercised. Thus, African Americans would hope-

fully be in a position "to share this power and assure that it is used

for them-and not against them" (p. 121).

Whereas Brimmer denounced Black capitalism as unworkable

within the framework of the capitalist system, other African Ameri-

can critics simply denounced capitalism (regardless of the racial

appendage attached to it). Although Nixon hoped that his Black

capitalism initiative would diminish the influence of Marxism in

the Black community, this effort was not totally successful. In fact,

besides Foreman (1969), several other important Black Marxist

critics of Black capitalism emerged during Nixon's first term in office.

Robert L. Allen's (1969) important book Black Awakening in

Capitalist America, among other things, addressed the basic issue

of whether Black capitalism would benefit the entire African

American community or just a relatively few Black entrepreneurs.

He expressed his skepticism by noting, "Simple transference of

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78 JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES / SEPTEMBER 2001

business ownership into black hands, either individually or collec-

tively, is in itself no guarantee that this will benefit the total commu-

nity. Blacks are capable of exploiting one another just as easily as

whites" (p. 153). Although Black Awakening in Capitalist America

decried the worth of Black business ownership, Allen alternatively

offered an ambiguous and utopian (Marxist-tinged) solution to the

economic plight of African Americans.

James Boggs was another prominent Black Marxist author and

critic of Black capitalism. His 1970 book, Racism and the Class

Struggle, included a chapter titled "The Myth and Irrationality of

Black Capitalism." Moreover, Boggs first presented this material as

a coauthored position paper at the NBEDC on April 25, 1969

(Boggs, Johnson, & Williams, 1969, pp. 3-9).

Early on, Boggs sought to clarify contemporary African Ameri-

can discourse that attacked "the system." In no uncertain terms, he

made it clear that the system and capitalism were synonymous.

Moreover, he asserted that "Black underdevelopment is a product of

capitalist development" (1971, p. 151).

Considering Boggs's antipathy toward the capitalist system, he

predictably had nothing but derision for Black capitalism. Calling

Black capitalism a technique "to re-enslave Black people" and "a

dream and a delusion," he noted that the Black working class was

"in no mood to change from one exploiter to another just because he

is of the same color" (1971, p. 152).

For his part, Boggs, besides merely reiterating Marxist dogma,

did attempt to provide specific strategies on how African Ameri-

cans could develop noncapitalist economic structures. In the rural

South, Boggs (1971) proposed that African Americans "under-

take a massive land reform movement with the aim of forcing the

federal government to turn these plowed-under lands over to the

millions of Blacks still in the South, to be developed by Black

community organizations" (p. 157). In the urban North, where

most African Americans resided, Boggs called for "a similar cam-

paign for land reform and acquisition" based on "the principle of

eminent domain" (p. 157).

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Boggs's (1971) non-

capitalist vision for Black America was his desire to fully incorpo-

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Weems, Randolph / BLACK CAPITALISM INITIATIVE 79

rate Black "street people" or "untouchables" into the planning and

implementation of his larger goals for land reform and acquisition

(p. 158). Although Boggs did not offer specific ways to accomplish

this, he correctly observed that substantive African American eco-

nomic development would have to include the active participation

and support of all social classes within the Black community.

Earl Ofari's (1970) book The Myth of Black Capitalism repre-

sented, perhaps, the period's most strident denunciation of Black

capitalism. The following introductory quotes succinctly set the

stage for this work:

You show me a capitalist, I'll show you a bloodsucker. He cannot be

anything but a bloodsucker if he's going to be a capitalist. He's got to get it from somewhere other than himself, and that's where he gets it-from somewhere or someone other than himself.

-Malcolm X

As long as the Man controls the water or electricity coming into your community, it does you no good to control that community. And to control the community in a capitalistic way, like the Man, is not desirable.

-H. Rap Brown

The mode of production in material life determines the general

character of the social, political, and spiritual processes of life. -Karl Marx (p. 3)

Ofari (1970), using E. Franklin Frazier's (1957) controversial

study Black Bourgeoisie as a reference point, asserted that the call

for Black capitalism, based on "a misdirected faith in the myth of

Negro business," came primarily from the Black middle and upper

classes (Ofari, 1970, p. 10). Yet, despite its stridency, The Myth of

Black Capitalism (Ofari, 1970) ultimately offered the least persua-

sive (Marxist-based) argument against Black capitalism. By

directly associating Black business with a nefarious Black elite,

Ofari exhibited a stunning unfamiliarity with census data related to

Black-owned businesses in America. Historically, most Black-

owned businesses have been single proprietorships operated by

African Americans from a variety of economic backgrounds or

classes (Hall, 1935, pp. 496-498).

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80 JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES / SEPTEMBER 2001

AMBIVALENCE REGARDING BLACK CAPITALISM

Besides commentators who consistently endorsed or denounced

the notion of Black capitalism, others publicly changed their minds

about the worth of promoting African American entrepreneurship.

The Reverend Jesse L. Jackson was, perhaps, the most noteworthy

person in this category. In early 1969, Jackson, then National

Director of the Southern Christian Leadership Council's Operation

Breadbasket program based in Chicago, Illinois, issued a press

release denouncing Black capitalism. The February 21, 1969, issue

of Muhammad Speaks (the official news organ of the Nation of

Islam) reprinted Jackson's declarations in an article headlined

"Breadbasket Leader Rejects Black Capitalism" (Black Press

International, 1969, pp. 33-34).

After describing Black capitalism as a divisive force in the Afri-

can American community, Jackson contended that

the issue is not to multiply a few additional entrepreneurs or to develop a few model Black cities or to finance a few Black firms as

pilot programs. But a[t] stake is the demand for the total economic development of the Black community. (Black Press International, 1969, p. 33)

He went on to assert (sounding a lot like James Boggs),

Attaching the name "Black" to capitalism is not a description, but a diversion. The term Black capitalism describes less a goal than a gimmick. We have the responsibility to expose the gimmick rather than delude Black people by justifying explanations of a false goal. (Black Press International, 1969, p. 33)

Ironically, Jackson would later use a gimmick (his Black Expo

programs of 1969 to 1972) to promote Black business and Black

capitalism. In fact, Jackson's Black Expo exhibitions have been

described as

an annual trade fair for black businesses, both local and national, as well as a general celebration of black capitalism, complete with par- ties, concerts by black artists, exhibitions of black paintings and

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Weems, Randolph / BLACK CAPITALISM INITIATIVE 81

sculpture, and other attractions associated with economic exposi-

tions. (Landess & Quinn, 1985, p. 49)

It remains unclear as to why the mercurial Jackson changed his

mind about the efficacy of promoting Black capitalism.

CONCLUSION

In retrospect, the wide-ranging discussion and analysis of Black

capitalism during the first Nixon administration reflected an

unprecedented national interest in promoting substantive African

American economic progress. Moreover, although OMBE pro-

vided only limited assistance to Black businesspeople and none of

the numerous independent proposals for Black economic develop-

ment came to full fruition, the period's discourse regarding Black

capitalism helped Nixon accomplish his larger ideological objec-

tive of "containing" potential domestic Black radicalism. Despite

the efforts of Foreman (1969), R. L. Allen (1969), Boggs (1971),

and Ofari (1970), most African Americans apparently either gravi-

tated toward the various derivatives of Black capitalism or toward

Brimmer's call for complete integration into American society.

REFERENCES

Allen, L. L. (1971). Making capitalism work in the ghettos. In R. W. Bailey (Ed.), Black busi-

ness enterprise: Historical and contemporaty perspectives (pp. 138-149). New York:

Basic Books.

Allen, R. L. (1969). Black awakening in capitalist America: An analytical history. Garden

City, NY: Anchor.

Ambrose, S. E. (1989). Nixon: The triumph of a politician (Vol. 2). New York: Simon &

Schuster.

America, R. F. (1971). What do you people want? In R. W. Bailey (Ed.), Black business

enterprise: Historical and contemporary perspectives (pp. 124-137). New York: Basic

Books.

Black capitalism has a hollow ring. (1969, August 30). Business Week, 51.

Black Press International. (1969, February 21). Breadbasket leader rejects "Black capital-

ism," Muhammad Speaks, 8(23), 33-34.

Boggs, J. (1970). Racism and the class struggle. New York: Monthly Review Press.

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82 JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES / SEPTEMBER 2001

Boggs, J. (1971). The myth and irrationality of Black capitalism. In R. W. Bailey (Ed.), Black

business enterprise: Historical and contemporaly perspectives (pp. 150-158). New

York: Basic Books.

Boggs, J., Johnson, C., & Williams, J. (1969, April) The myth and irrationality ofBlack capi-

talism. Paper presented at the National Black Economic Development Conference,

Detroit, MI. (Available: Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,

Records of the National Council of Churches, Folder 14, Box 35, Record Group 6).

Brimmer, A. F. (1969). Trouble With Black capitalism. Nation's Business, 57, 78-79. Brimmer, A. F. (1970). Economic integration and the progress of the Negro community.

Ebony, 25, 118-121.

Brimmer, A. F. (1971). Small business and economic development in the Negro community.

In R. W. Bailey (Ed.), Black business enterprise: Historical and contemporary perspec-

tives (pp. 164-172). New York: Basic Books.

Browne, R. S. (1969, April). Keynote speech: The need for formulating a Black economic

plan. Paper presented at the National Black Economic Development Conference,

Detroit, MI. (Available: Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,

Records of the National Council of Churches, Folder 14, Box 35, Record Group 6).

Cross, T. L. (1969). Black capitalism: Strategy for business in the ghetto. New York:

Athaneum.

Foreman, J. (1969, April). "Total control as the only solution for the economic needs of

Black people. Speech presented at the National Black Economic Development Confer-

ence, Detroit, MI. (Available: Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylva-

nia, Records of the National Council of Churches, Folder 14, Box 35, Record Group 6).

Frazier, E. F. (1957). Black bourgeoisie: The rise of a new middle class. New York:

Macmillan.

Hall, C. E. (1935). Negroes in the United States, 1920-1932. Washington, DC: Arno.

Innis, R. (1969). Separatist economics: A new social contract. In W. F. Haddad & G. D. Pugh

(Eds.), Black economic development (pp. 50-59). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Investment Committee for Economic Development. (1967, December 1). Report on the

Investment Committee For Ghetto Economic Development (Report presented to the

Executive Committee of the Council). (Available: Presbyterian Historical Society, Phila-

delphia, Pennsylvania, Records of the National Council of Churches, Folder 13, Box 35,

Record Group 6).

Kotlowski, D. (1998, Autumn). Black Power-Nixon style: The Nixon administration and

minority business enterprise. Business History Review, 72(3), 409-445.

Landess, T. H., & Quinn, R. M. (1985). Jesse Jackson & the politics of race. Ottawa, Illinois:

Jameson.

McLaurin, D. S., & Tyson, C. D. (1969). The GHEDIPLAN for economic development. In

W. F. Haddad & G. D. Pugh (Eds.), Black economic development (pp. 126-137).

Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

National Black Economic Development Conference. (1969). YOU ARE INVITED (Invita-

tional flyer). (Available: Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,

Records of the National Council of Churches, Folder 14, Box 35, Record Group 6).

Ofari, E. (1970). The myth of Black capitalism. New York: Monthly Review Press.

Sturdivant, F. L. (1971). The limits of Black capitalism. In R. W. Bailey (Ed.), Black business

enterprise: Historical and contemporary perspectives. New York: Basic Books.

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Weems, Randolph / BLACK CAPITALISM INITIATIVE 83

Walker, L. (1969, April 16). Letter to Charles Spivey. (Available: Presbyterian Historical

Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Records of the National Council of Churches,

Folder 13, Box 35, Record Group 6).

Robert E. Weems, Jr., is a professor of history at the University of Missouri-Colum-

bia. His publications include Black Business in the Black Metropolis: The Chicago

Metropolitan Assurance Company, 1925-1985 (Indiana University Press, 1996) and

Desegregating the Dollar: African American Consumerism in the Twentieth Century

(New York University Press, 1998). He is coeditor, with Arvarh E. Strickland, of The

African American Experience: An Historiographical and Bibliographical Guide

(Greenwood Publishers, 2001). He and Lewis A. Randolph are coauthors of the

forthcoming book Whatever Happened to Black Capitalism? The Rise and Fall of

Richard M. Nixon's Plan for Black America (which will be published by New York

University Press).

Lewis A. Randolph is an associate professor in the political science department and

public administration program at Ohio University. He has published in the areas of

urban development; urban politics; public policy; Black politics; race, class, and

gender; African American social movements; American politics; and Black political

ideology. His forthcoming works include "The Ideological Origins of Richard M.

Nixon's Black Capitalism Initiative," coauthored with Robert E. Weems, Jr., which

will be published in The Review of Black Political Economy, and Black Conserva-

tives Made in America: The Dimensions of Black Conservatism, coedited with

Gayle T Tate, which will be published by St. Martin's Press.

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Presentment of Civility: English Reading of American Self-Presentation in the Early Years of Colonization

Author(s): Karen Ordahl Kupperman

Source: The William and Mary Quarterly , Jan., 1997, Vol. 54, No. 1, Constructing Race (Jan., 1997), pp. 193-228

Published by: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2953317

REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2953317?seq=1&cid=pdf- reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.

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Presentment of Civility: English Reading

of American Self-Presentation in the Early

Years of Colonization

Karen Ordahl Kupperman

R ) ACE in modern times is thought to be indelibly written on the body, visible for all to see. Moderns see races as great divisions of human eings stretching back to prehistory and originating in forces,

supernatural or natural, beyond human control. Only very recently have contemporaries begun to admit the notion that race is socially and culturally constructed rather than immutably predetermined.

This way of thinking about race would have been utterly foreign to English people in the early years of colonization because they did not divide humankind into broad fixed classifications demarcated by visible distinc- tions. They thought in terms of descendants of a single progenitor or of generations that shared characteristics or, sometimes, following humoral theory, of residents of a particular environment. They argued that in most cases visible differences between people were, as they put it, "accidental"- acquired characteristics in modern parlance-resulting from environment or experience. Thus early modern usage cut across the concept of race as modern people customarily use it. They thought in terms of socially and culturally created categories. Like modern people, early moderns expected the body to be emblematic of these categories, and color, posture, and other features were interesting to them because they were accidental rather than inborn.

Early descriptions indicate that English writers who actually spent time in America accepted as self-evident the notion that the Native Americans were from a common stock with themselves and that all differences between the two peoples were accidental. Moreover, they were extremely curious about who these newly revealed folks were, how they had landed in America, and how they fit into the broad categories by which Europeans customarily judged one another. English readers consumed books about the Americans in part because they offered revelation of unknown peoples, and also because

Karen Ordahl Kupperman is professor of history at New York University. She has bene- fited from the comments of members of the Huntington Library Early Modern British History and Early American Seminars on earlier versions of this article, the participants in the seminar Constructing Race: Differentiating Peoples in the Early Modern World, I400-I700, and the Huntington Library's rich scholarly resources and environment. Daniel K. Richter read the arti- cle and helped to tighten the argument.

The William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Series, Vol. LIV, No. i, January I997

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194 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

knowledge of the Indians could help them in thinking about England's problems. 1

By the time English venturers began seriously to found colonies in America, their compatriots were keenly aware of the dangers as well as the benefits brought by Europe's opening to the world and by the wealth and sophistication that accompanied it. Ambivalence pervaded the whole project of expanding into world trade and establishing colonies in America. The English feared the effects of such initiatives as much as they were excited by the prospects of the changes they would bring. England's insularity, the sim- plicity and straightforwardness of its people, were the sources of its strength and virtue. These were already being lost, and anyone with eyes to see knew that opening up the land to further foreign influences would only accelerate the degeneration.

Whereas experienced observers wrote about the American Indians as if the attributes we subsume under the category of race were manipulable and constructed, they and commentators in England constantly expressed con- cern about maintenance of other categorical boundaries. Gender distinctions were crucial; they were determined by nature but required visible and emphatic demarcation. It was a commonplace that in countries such as France, which was considerably farther along in its descent into luxury and sophistication, fashionable dress blurred the sexual division of society. Class and status, equally given by nature, were also vital categories necessary to the maintenance of civility and good order in society. As travelers reported their experiences, their criterion for civility was the degree to which the Indians recognized male-female distinctions and a hereditary hierarchy and maintained these demarcations by outward signs.

English commentators feared their own society was breaking down and that crucial distinctions of social rank and gender were being elided. Elegantly dressed men seemed effeminate, and women, "suting their light feminine skirts with manlike doublets," were too masculine.2 This period saw an unparalleled "rage for novelty and bizarre experimentation in dress," including wearing items of clothing associated with the opposite sex, that defied all attempts to control it.3 As the fundamental distinction between the sexes was elided, the visible demarcation between social ranks was also threatened; the two processes were interrelated because, with expansion, wealth and power were coming into the hands of new people who lacked the lineage and background of the "better sort." If rank was not honored, authority and respect, absolutely necessary to the commonwealth, would also

1 These themes are developed in Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Apprehending Native America (Ithaca, forthcoming).

2 Richard Brathwait, The English Gentlewoman, drawne out to the full Body (London, i63I), constantly returned to the dangers posed by importation of "Phantasticke habits or forraine

fashions," A4, B3v, IO, I4-I5, 23, 25. 3 Aileen Ribeiro, Dress and Morality (New York, i986), chaps. 4-5, quotations on 72-73. I

thank John Styles for calling this source to my attention.

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PRESENTMENT OF CIVILITY 195

go. The literature of this period is shot through with concern for the need to maintain categories and their visible signs. Writers on this subject were keenly aware that trade and contact with the world only hastened dangerous blurring as they brought disproportionate riches to some and unique experi- ence to others.4

This ambivalence forms the context in which ideas of the American Indians were formed, and conceptions of the Indians reflected this mental dividedness. Sometimes writers celebrated their compatriots' sophistication and attainments, castigating the Americans as primitive savages. But then again the very same writers turned and praised the Americans' vigor, sim- plicity, and primary virtue, contrasting that virtue with the luxurious degen- eracy of England. Many observers saw in the Indians the lost world of their own past with all its roughness and its strength, and these writers asked their readers to reflect on the losses and gains England had made along the way to wealth and sophistication.5

Thomas Hariot, for example, wrote that the Indians he knew were " verye sober in their eatinge, and drinkinge, and consequentlye verye longe lived because they doe not oppress nature." A few pages later he returned to his praise of Indian moderation and went on, "I would to god wee would followe their exemple. For wee should bee free from many kynes of diseasyes which wee fall into by sumptwous and unseasonable banketts, continuallye devisinge new sawces, and provocation of gluttonnye to satisfie our unsa- tiable appetite."6 The restless, greedy search for new food sensations was symbolic of all that was wrong with English society; the need for "variety of Sauces to procure appetite" showed how jaded it had become.7

Appetite was emblematic of the more serious greed that was destroying English life, and wealth was squandered on "soft unprofitable pleasures."8 On all sides virtue was dissipated. Blurring of categories meant not only that

4 On the contemporary obsession with honor and anxiety over eroding gender distinctions

and cross-dressing see Anthony Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination in England, i5oo-1800 (New Haven, I995), 23-24, 28, I2I, I26-53.

5 On contemporary perceptions of the dangers of wealth and acquisition of new territories to the commonwealth see Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. I: The Renaissance (Cambridge, I978), chap. 6. esp. I49-50, i62-65.

6 Hariot, notes to woodcuts of John White's paintings published by Theodor de Bry, in

David Beers Quinn, ed., The Roanoke Voyages, i584-i590, vol. i (London, I955), 430, 438. On Ben Jonson's use of the masque form to urge restraint in ostentation as well as in eating and drinking in the Stuart court see Martin Butler, "Ben Jonson and the Limits of Courtly Panegyric," in Kevin Sharpe and Peter Lake, eds., Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England (Stanford, I993), 9I-II5.

7 Thomas Morton, New English Canaan (i637), in Peter Force, comp., Tracts and Other

Papers, Relating Principally to the Origin, Settlement, and Progress of the Colonies in North America . . , vol. 2 (Gloucester, Mass., i963; orig. pub. i838), 39.

8 Richard Hakluyt, "To the Right Honourable Sir Robert Cecil Knight" (I599), dedication to vol. 2, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation (I599-i600), in E.G.R. Taylor, ed., The Original Writings and Correspondence of the Two Richard Hakluyts, vol. 2 (London, I935), 457.

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i96 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

the lower orders refused to honor authority but also that the rich, who should have been the better sort, failed to live up to the responsibilities of their position. Formerly, communities had taken care of their own, and peo- ple had worked for the common good; openhanded hospitality had been the hallmark of the great. Now, the sharpest at cutting corners came out on top, and anyone who cared for integrity or the welfare of others was counted a fool. In a series of sermons and books commissioned to support renewed effort after the initial setbacks in Virginia, ministers thundered on the theme that English selfishness was destroying the values that had made the country strong. William Crashaw compared those who put their own comfort before contributing to the great work of conversion in Virginia to "Sowes" wallow- ing in their own pleasure.9

Even so, however imperfectly its members performed their roles, a status structure existed in England, and those involved in colonization on both sides of the Atlantic saw it as absolutely crucial. People at the bottom of the social scale, even in England, were considered cultureless and uninteresting. Michael Drayton assumed that the Indians would all be like the "meaner sort" of English people. In "To Master George Sandys, Treasurer for the English Colony in Virginia" (i622), he listed the news he and his fellow writers who stayed home hoped to receive from Sandys in Virginia. He went on to write:

But you may save your labour if you please, / To write me ought of your Savages. / As savage slaves be in great Britaine here, / As any one that you can shew me there.10

Drayton demonstrated in the most direct way his assumption that savagery is a constructed category, dependent on social status as much as ethnicity.

Writers who actually went to America proved Drayton wrong-not about the English poor but about the Indians-because they were in no doubt that the latter lived in highly organized societies and recognized key categorical boundaries. The more direct experience a traveler had, the more complex became the description and its lessons. For practical as well as intel- lectual reasons the reports tended to focus on the elites and how they main- tained order and distinction. Such writings held the Indians up as a mirror in which English readers could examine their own society.

Study of the Indians as a formerly isolated branch of the human family offered a way to answer questions that were uppermost in many minds at home: were gender and status distinctions primary, timeless, and inherent? did these categories, as commentators on English life asserted, represent the natural order of things? An affirmative answer would help to settle debates

9 Crashaw, A Sermon Preached in London before the right honourable the Lord Lawarre … (London, i6io), Cv-C2, D2.

10 Drayton, The Works of Michael Drayton, ed. J. William Hebel (Oxford, I932), 3:206-08.

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PRESENTMENT OF CIVILITY I97

about social control in England and support those who favored rigidly enforced markers. Lessons could be drawn from Indian lifeways to reestab- lish order and virtue as the basis of life.

A positive report would mean that a relationship of mutual benefit and understanding could be achieved quickly and easily in America. If the Indians recognized the same distinctions and observed the same codes of conduct as the English, the gap could be bridged easily and peacefully. Reflecting all the time the doubleness of vision they brought to their task, writers assured their audiences that the American natives would benefit from exposure to the sophistication and learning the English would bring them, especially knowledge of the Bible; only intermittently did observers confront the corrupting influences they saw with dismay in their own world.

Even in this early period, however, thoughtful observers were forced to recognize that the newcomers' impact on the Indians' virtue was at best mixed. Moreover, some were horrified to realize that fashionable men and women at home, far from rejecting the Americans as cultureless savages, were actually consuming Indian cultures in their search for the new and the exotic. The colonial reporters' own writing, rather than shaming their com- patriots into a more virtuous simplicity, doubled back and fed the flames of sophistication and luxury.

When early modern English observers examined the American natives, they employed a traditional template for categorizing others. Most eyewit- nesses included a description of the Indians' appearance in their accounts of America, and these almost always followed this pattern. The writers usually began with stature and moved on to color of hair, skin, and eyes. The other elements of a successful description were clothing, jewelry and other forms of decoration, and, often at great length, the way natives dressed their hair. Looking at American Indian life, the reporters were gratified to find the same social and cultural concerns that motivated the English and the same distinguished bearing that set the better sort apart. William Strachey-his choice of words emphasizing conscious performance-had been surprised to find "so much presentment of Civility.""1 Moreover, because elite Americans distinguished themselves and maintained distance from ordinary people through display as English leaders did, these observers reported that the Indians were simultaneously attempting to read English bodies and behavior with the same issues in mind.

Physique and carriage provided valuable indicators of one's place in the world. Countless manuals informed the European gentry and those who aspired to gentle status about how they should act and conduct their lives, and these emphasized proper deportment and presentation of one's body in society. Gait, posture, and clothing all occupied central roles in this litera-

11 Strachey, The Historie of Travell into Virginia Britania (i6U2), ed. Louis B. Wright and

Virginia Freund (London, I953), 64-65.

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i98 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

ture, whose authors included writers as eminent as Erasmus. The shape and presentation of the body reflected the reality of the inner self. 12

Thus when English colonists described the Indians, their descriptions began with physique, and it is noteworthy that Indian bodies were univer- sally praised. Readers steeped in the manuals of gentility would have seen their ideal reflected in these descriptions. Their "perfect constitution," wrote John Brereton of the New England Indians he met, was seen in their strength, agility, and upright carriage as well as in the complete absence of the physical problems that so troubled Europeans of the time. William Wood, also writing from New England, agreed: "I have beene in many places, yet did I never see one that was borne either in redundance or defect a monster, or any that sicknesse had deformed, or casualitie made decrepit, saving one that had a bleared eye, and an other that had a wenne on his cheeke." 13

Many writers considered Indians well proportioned, but there was a wide range of opinions about their typical height. The English thought of themselves as generally of medium height, and some put the Indians into the same category. More often, though, the Indians were deemed tall, taller than Europeans. Opinion also differed on how lean Indians were; some wrote that women were shorter and fatter than men, an indication of good health and fruitfulness. There was no controversy about the admirable, erect posture of the Indians, as "straite as arrowes," according to John Underhill. Thomas Morton, who, like Underhill, wrote of southern New England, thought the Indians' straight spines were a cultural product, the result of being carried on their mothers' backs "by the help of a cradle made of a board forket at both ends, whereon the childe is fast bound, and wrapped in furres." He summed up his impressions: "to give their character in a worde, they are as proper men and women for feature and limbes as can be found, for flesh and bloud as active." John Smith similarly described the Susquehannocks, who "seemed like Giants to the English." One whom he met at the head of Chesapeake Bay was "the goodliest man that ever we beheld."'14 Descriptions

12 On increasing concern with the presentation and control of the body see Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process: The Development of Manners, trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York, I978), chap. 2, and Anna Bryson, "The Rhetoric of Status: Gesture, Demeanour and the Image of the Gentleman in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England," in Lucy Gent and Nigel Llewellyn, eds., Renaissance Bodies: The Human Figure in English Culture c. i540-I660 (London, I990), I36-53. On the sources of aristocratic honor see Mervyn James, English Politics and the Concept of Honour, i485-i642, Past and Present, Supplement 3 (Oxford, I978); William Hunt, "Civic Chivalry and the English Civil War," in Anthony Grafton and Ann Blair, eds., The Transmission of Culture in Early Modern Europe (Philadelphia, I990), 204-37; A. J. Fletcher, "Honour, Reputation and Local Officeholding in Elizabethan and Stuart England," in Anthony Fletcher and John Stevenson, eds., Order and Disorder in Early Modern England (Cambridge, i985), 92-II5; and Frank Whigham, Ambition and Privilege: The Social Tropes of Elizabethan Courtesy Theory (Berkeley, i984), chap. 2.

13 Brereton, A Briefe and true Relation of the Discoverie of the North part of Virginia (i602), in David B. Quinn and Alison M. Quinn, eds., The English New England Voyages,

I602-i608 (London, i983), I57-59; Wood, New Englands Prospect (London, i634), 63. 14 Underhill, Newes from America. . . (London, i638), 5; Morton, New English Canaan, 24;

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PRESENTMENT OF CIVILITY 199

of Indians the writers knew "experimentally" all portrayed the Indians as admirable physical specimens, more-perfect examples of European bodies. As in Europe, the better sort were seen as more attractive, their physical beauty reflecting their inner qualities.

During the later sixteenth century and the early decades of the seven- teenth, as Europe confronted the need to communicate with a wider world, scholars developed the notion that a universal language of gestures linked peoples of all regions. This natural language of signs allowed communication in situations where no spoken language was possible.15 John Bulwer pub- lished a guide to gestures for the use of public speakers in i644 called

Chirologia: Of the Naturall Language of the Hand . . . Whereunto is added Chironomia: Or, the Art of Manuall Rhetorique. A friend who signed himself "Jo. Harmarus, Physician at Oxford" attested to the use of signs, particularly among leaders, in Virginia: "In this garb long ago / We spake with the Indian Apochankano."16 Roger Williams began his book on the Narragansett language with gestures of greeting and in doing so reinforced the notion that communication between English leaders and aristocratic Americans was natural. The Indians Williams knew were of "two sorts, (as the English are.)" in their mode of greeting. Some were "Rude and Clownish" because, although they would return a salute, they would not ini- tiate it. "Others, and the generall, are sober and grave, and yet chearfull in a meane, and as ready to begin a Salutation as to Resalute, which yet the English generally begin, out of desire to Civilize them."17

Because attire played a key role in delineating categories in England, colonists assumed that Indian clothing and hair dressing would be the soci- ety's most important markers, and even brief accounts sometimes devoted more than a page to elaborate descriptions of all the various hair and apparel fashionings the author had seen. Discussions concentrated on details of clothing that changed with seasons, with age or marital status, or that marked higher or lower rank. Readers took satisfaction from knowing that dress performed such social functions.

On the other hand, everyone "knew" that savages are naked. The naked savage, a staple of European assumption, is found even in eyewitness accounts. Some writers gave detailed descriptions of Indian dress; others

Smith, A Map of Virginia (i612), in Philip L. Barbour, ed., The Complete Works of Captain John Smith (i580-i63i), vol. I (Chapel Hill, i986), I49, I50. See Douglas H. Ubelaker, "Human

Biology of Virginia Indians," in Helen C. Rountree, ed., Powhatan Foreign Relations, I500-I722 (Charlottesville, 1993), 53-75.

15 Dilwyn Knox, "Ideas on Gesture and Universal Languages, c. I55o-I650," in John Henry and Sarah Hutton, eds., New Perspectives on Renaissance Thought: Essays in the History of Science, Education, and Philosophy in Memory of Charles B. Schmitt (London, I990), IOI-36.

16 Bulwer, Chirologia, ed. James W. Cleary (Carbondale, Ill., I974), I2. Ironically, i644 was the year when Opechancanough was shot by his English captors after the second great Virginia Indian attack. Jo. Harmarus may have been related to Ambrose Harmer and Charles Harmer, both burgesses in Virginia during the early period.

17 Roger Williams, A Key into the Language ofAmerica (London, i643), I-2.

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200 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

flatly spoke of the Indians as naked. Often writers presented one kind of portrait in one context and used the single adjective naked in others. Naked is thus a complex word, conveying a variety of levels of meaning, and would have been read in that way. Clearly, it did not mean completely without

clothes, which would have been rendered by "stark naked." For many, it seems to have implied that Indian clothing was less elaborate than European, lacking the layers so common at home. English men and women wore, when sleeping as well as awake, a long shirtlike shift over which their outer clothes were tied or buttoned on. A person wearing only a shift was described as naked. 18

Writers who used the term naked often tied it to simplicity in clothing, as when William Bradford and Edward Winslow wrote that southern New England Indians were naked, "onely a skin around their middles." George Percy similarly portrayed the Indians in Virginia as "altogether naked, but their privities are covered with Beasts skinnes beset commonly with little bones, or beasts teeth."19 But even those who wrote of the Indians in this way often emphasized their modesty, another attribute the conduct manuals associated with virtuous carriage. Wood, for example, commended the mod- esty of Indian women, though several times he referred to the Indians as naked and in "Adams livery," and Williams warned against associating nakedness with immodesty. Morton repeatedly praised the modesty of Indian men and women, noting "they seeme to have as much modesty as civilized people, and deserve to be applauded for it"; Bradford and Winslow at Plymouth went further, saying that Indian women were "more modest then some of our English women."20

Williams, throughout his Key into the Language ofAmerica, insisted on a pervasive and literal nakedness among the Indians and presented a more nuanced account. There were two sorts of nakedness. Children, he wrote, went stark naked until age ten or twelve, although girls' genitals were cov- ered from infancy, a claim corroborated by John White's painting of an Indian girl. Adults wore a kind of apron "after the patterne of their and our first Parents" and a long mantle of skins or English wool. Inside their houses, the mantle was cast aside and only the apron worn, but "I have

18 When John Williams of Deerfield was roused from sleep and captured by Indians in I704, he wrote they "bound me naked, as I was in my shirt," in The Redeemed Captive Returning to Zion (I707), ed. Edward W. Clark (Amherst, I976), 45.

19 Bradford and Winslow, A Relation or Journall of the beginning and proceedings of the English Plantation setled at Plimoth in New England (London, i622), known as Mourt's Relation, 32, 34, 62; Percy, "Observations gathered out of a Discourse of the Plantation of the Southerne Colonie in Virginia by the English, i6o6," in Barbour, ed., The Jamestown Voyages Under the First Charter, i606-i609, vol. i (Cambridge, i969), I36.

20 Wood, New Englands Prospect, 96, quotation on 63; Williams, Key into the Language of America, ii8-i9 [misnumbered iio2-III2]; Morton, New English Canaan, 23, Bradford and

Winslow, Mourt's Relation, 59. Elias argues that modesty was linked to internalization of a sense of shame, in Civilizing Process, chap. 2, pt. 9, esp. i8i. Brathwait wrote that modesty is the high- est virtue in women; English Gentlewoman, i8o.

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PRESENTMENT OF CIVILITY 20I

never seen that wantonesse amongst them, as, (with griefe) I have heard of in Europe." Old men made cloaks of fine turkey feathers comparable to English velvet.21

"Naked" as a description seemed automatically to go with the word savage, and promoters without any experience of America used the word freely in their writing. The armchair traveler Samuel Purchas even corrected James Rosier's eyewitness description of Indian women wearing beaver skins, substituting the single word "naked" when he reprinted Rosier's account of New England.22 Its rhetorical use evoked a complex set of meanings with lit- tle relation to what travelers actually saw. For some writers, particularly those whose direct experience was limited or nonexistent, the presumed nakedness of the Indians served a utilitarian purpose. Writers drew conclu- sions about the American climate, arguing that it must be mild if the natives lived comfortably without elaborate clothing.23 Others, citing the support that would flow to the English textile industry from sales to the naked sav- ages of America, argued, as did Richard Hakluyt, that "great multitudes of course clothes" would be sold to those who lived in regions with "sharpe and nippinge winters."24 The poor of England could be employed providing warm coverings for the deprived people of America.

Naked also hinted at a more pervasive deficiency to some writers. To be naked was to be weak and defenseless against both the weapons and the ideas of Europeans. Indians, they implied, lacked a hard shell of complex culture and were therefore open to the new. As Richard Eden wrote in transmitting early Spanish reports and before direct English experience, "these simple gentiles lyvinge only after the lawe of nature, may well bee lykened to a smoothe and bare table unpainted, or a white paper unwritten, upon." The nakedness of the Indians was the guarantee of English superiority. Promoters, especially of early projects, argued, as did Sir George Peckham in 1583, that settlement would be easy, "these Savages, beeing a naked kinde of people, voyde of the knowledge of the discipline of warre." Similarly,

21 Williams, Key into the Language ofAmerica, ii8-2I [misnumbered II0-I3]. 22 Rosier, "A True Relation of the most prosperous voyage . .. in the Discovery of the

land of Virginia" (i605), in Quinn and Quinn, eds., English New England Voyages, 276; Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas His Pilgrimes (i625), 20 vOlS. (Glasgow, i906), i8:343.

23 Richard Whitbourne, A Discourse and Discovery of Newfoundland (London, i620), 55; George Best, "A true discourse of the three Voyages of discoverie . .. conteining certaine rea- sons to prove all partes of the Worlde habitable" (I578), in Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation (I598-i600), I2 vols. (Glasgow, I903-I905), 7:260-6i.

24 Hakluyt, A particular discourse concerninge the greate necessitie and manifolde commodyties that are like to growe to this Realme of Englande by the westerne discoveries lately attempted, written in the yere i584, ed. Quinn and Quinn (London, I993), known as Discourse of Western Planting, 67; see also 29-3I, II5. See Edward Hayes, "A Treatise, conteining important inducements for the planting in these parts," in Brereton, Briefe and true Relation (i602), I72, and Ralph Lane, "An extract of Master Lanes letter, to Master Richard Hakluyt Esquire, and another gentleman

of the middle Temple, from Virginia" (I585), in Quinn, ed., Roanoke Voyages, I:209.

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202 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

Edward Hayes said the Indians were "simple, naked and unarmed."25 The poor simple Indians presented by these writers would welcome the English and their way of life; those few who might attempt to resist could easily be dealt with.

Yet another connotation of naked reversed the equation. Some readers drew the conclusion that the simplicity of the Indians represented a kind of superiority, because they were content with little rather than constantly seek- ing novelty and excess, as so many Christians did. Adam and Eve were naked in Eden, clothed only in "Originall purity," until they sinned and became aware of their shame. Adam could not answer God's question, "Who tolde thee, that thou was naked?" Their need to cover their bodies was the visible emblem of their sinfulness, and God "made coates of skinnes, and clothed them" before expelling Adam and Eve from the garden.26

The association of nakedness with innocence continued to be problem- atic. The Reverend Alexander Whitaker, while he was instructing the captive Pocahontas in the Christian faith, exhorted the English to contribute to mis- sionary efforts, calling the Indians "naked slaves of the divell." His book is a festival of plays on the word naked. Whitaker, a Puritan and the son of a Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge, attempted to subvert the lesson of Genesis, writing that "they live naked in bodie, as if their shame of their sinne deserved no covering." And, he went on, "their names are as naked as their bodie." But his book also offered proof that nakedness really meant simplicity, even virtue. In his opening he addressed the book's readers, charging them to remember that "none other be worthie of God, but those that lightly esteeme of riches. Nakednesse is the riches of nature; vertue is the only thing that makes us rich and honourable in the eyes of wise men." His friend William Crashaw, in the book's preface, said that Whitaker had not written it for publication. If he had, he would have "written it in Latine or in Greeke, and so to have decked it for phrase and stile, and other ornaments of learning and language" as to show his attain- ments. But the Virginia Company decided to publish it nonetheless "so the naked and plaine truth may give a just affront to the cunning and coloured falshoods devised by the enemies of this Plantation."27 Direct prose, naked

25 Eden, trans., "To the Reader," introduction to Peter Martyr, The Decades of the newe worlde or west India (I555), in Edward Arber, ed., The First Three English Books on America (Birmingham, i885), 57; Peckham, "A True Reporte . . . of the Newfound Landes" (I583), in David B. Quinn, ed., The Voyages and Colonising Enterprises of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, vol. 2

(London, I940), 47I; Hayes, "Treatise, conteining important inducements for the planting in these parts," I75. See also Anon., "For Master Rauleys Viage" (I584-I585), in Quinn, ed.,

Roanoke Voyages, I:I30, and Hakluyt, "Epistle Dedicatory" to Sir Walter Ralegh (I587), in Taylor, ed., Original Writings and Correspondence of the Two Richard Hakluyts, 2:377.

26 These are the words of the Geneva Bible (I56o), Gen. 3: II, 2I; see also Elaine Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (London, i988), chap. I. Brathwait, English Gentlewoman, 2, portrayed Adam as clothed in purity though naked in Eden.

27 Whitaker, Good Newes from Virginia (London, i6I3), I, 24; Crashaw, "Epistle Dedicatorie," ibid., A2v, A3v.

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PRESENTMENT OF CIVILITY 203

in its simplicity, was the best way to confront clever, sophisticated enemies. What did this suggest to readers about the primitive simplicity of the Americans confronting English sophistication?28

Some writers applied this lesson directly to the Indians, especially two men writing of their New England experiences. One was William Wood, who wrote to promote the Puritan colony of Massachusetts Bay, and the other was Thomas Morton, the most persistent thorn in the Puritans' side. Morton evoked the Genesis story of the expulsion from Eden:

Now since it is but foode and rayment that men that live needeth (though not all alike,) why should not the Natives of New England be sayd to live richly having no want of either: Cloaths are the badge of sinne, and the more variety of fashions is but the greater abuse of the Creature.

Morton and Wood each argued that the clothes the Indians wore were better suited to their bodies and way of life than English clothing would be. Because of their superior adaptation to the American environment, the Indians, they wrote, should not be encouraged to abandon their traditional ways of dressing. Morton concluded, "and in this kinde of ornament, (they doe seeme to me) to be hansomer, then when they are in English apparrell, their gesture being answerable to their one habit and not unto ours." Wood agreed, saying the Americans did not want English coverings except "a good course blanket, thorough which they cannot see" or a piece of "broade cloth . . .they love not to be imprisoned in our English fashion." They rejected the imported apparel partly because they refused to spend extra time dress- ing themselves and partly "because their women cannot wash them when they bee soyled, and their meanes will not reach to buy new when they have done with their old . . . therefore they had rather goe naked than be lousie, and bring their bodies out of their old tune, making them more tender by a new acquired habit, which poverty would constraine them to leave."29 Wearing the same clothes day after day with infrequent cleaning did not bother the English unduly, and most were accustomed to the lice and fleas that shared their lives.30 Thus, Wood implied that Indian simplicity involved a higher standard of cleanliness and hardiness.

English people and Indians both considered clothing a fundamental demarcator as well as the most immediate emblem of the difference between

28 On this point see Susi Colin, "The Wild Man and the Indian in Early i6th Century Book Illustration," in Christian F. Feest, ed., Indians and Europe: An Interdisciplinary Collection of Essays (Aachen, i987), 23-26.

29 Morton, New English Canaan, 23, quotation on 39; Wood, New Englands Prospect, 65. 30 On this point see Lois Green Carr, Russell R. Menard, and Lorena S. Walsh, Robert

Cole's World: Agriculture and Society in Early Maryland (Chapel Hill, I99), 7I, and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, i650-i750 (New York, i982), 28.

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204 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

the two peoples. Right from the beginning, the Indians were as interested in English clothing as the English were in the Indians' dress. Arthur Barlowe, writing of the initial encounter on his reconnoitering voyage to Roanoke, said that the native name for the region was "Wingandacoa." But the colony's sponsor Sir Walter Ralegh later wrote that the Indians' reply to the explorers' question about their name for the land actually meant, "you weare good clothes, or gay clothes."31 Roger Williams reported that the Narragansetts' word for Europeans meant "Coat-men, or clothed." Williams told them that Christians had been given clothes by God, apparently with- out mentioning the circumstances. In chapter-ending verses he represented the Indians musing on the crimes they had heard were committed in Europe and the oaths they heard Christians in America utter and asking "if such doe goe in Cloaths, And whether God they know?" The Indians, on their part, averred, in Williams's rendition:

We weare no Cloaths, have many Gods, / And yet our sinnes are lesse: / You are Barbarians, Pagans wild, / Your Land's the Wildernesse.

He reminded his readers that Indians and English alike would appear naked before God at the last judgment.32

The social functions of clothes were exemplified in the details, such as whether Americans wore skins with the hair on the inside or outside, which were of consuming interest to many observers. Often a writer simply affirmed that Indians' genitals were decently covered. Some described Indian clothing in detail, and these reports focused on whether clothes reflected gender and age differences. New England writers described long deerskin leggings-"long hosen up to their groynes, close made; and above their groynes to their wast another leather"-that attached to belts or loincloths and extended to their moccasins, and compared these to "Irish trouses." William Strachey, writing of Virginia also likened these leggings to "the fashion of the Turkes or Irish Trouses."33 Virginia observers compared native skin cloaks to "Irish mantels," as did Wood and Martin Pringe in New England.34

31 Barlowe, "The First Voyage Made to the Coastes of America" (I584-I585), in Quinn, ed., Roanoke Voyages, i:98-99; Ralegh, The History of the World (London, i6I4), bk. i, chap. 8, I75-76.

32 Williams, Key into the Language ofAmerica, A4-A4v, 52, 59; I45, I5I, 204 [misnumbered I37, I43, i96].

33 Bradford and Winslow, Mourt's Relation, 34; Gabriel Archer, "The Relation of Captaine Gosnols Voyage to the North part of Virginia" (i602), in Quinn and Quinn, eds., English New England Voyages, II7; Edward Winslow, Good Newes from New England, (London, i624), 6o; Wood, New Englands Prospect, 65; Morton, New English Canaan, 22; Strachey, Historie of Travell, ed. Wright and Freund, 73.

34 Smith, Map of Virginia, i6i; Strachey, Historie of Travell, ed. Wright and Freund, 73; Wood, New Englands Prospect, 65; Pringe, "A Voyage set out from the Citie of Bristoll" (i603), in Quinn and Quinn, eds., English New England Voyages, 222.

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PRESENTMENT OF CIVILITY 205

Much more ink was spent describing the way Indians wore their hair, a subject of intense interest. Hair and its dressing were ideologically charged subjects in England, as the Civil War epithets Roundhead and Cavalier demonstrate.35 Although many writers faulted the Americans' dress because, like that of the Irish, it appeared to embody few discriminations between men and women, hair styles were perceived as involving key distinctions.36 Generally, Indian men were said to shave the hair on one side of their heads, with that on the other side growing long. Some writers said the long hair was allowed to hang down but others portrayed it as tied up at the back of the head in "an arteficiall and well laboured knott." The knots were then ornamented with "feathers of fowles, in fashion of a crownet." Wood saw that "their black haire is naturall, yet it is brought to a more jetty colour by oyling, dying, and daily dressing. Sometimes they weare it very long, hang- ing down in a loose dishevel'd womanish manner; otherwhile tied up hard and short like a horse taile, bound close with a fillet, which they say makes it grow the faster: they are not a little phantasticall or customsick in this par- ticular." According to Wood, boys were not allowed to wear their hair in this way till they were sixteen. Meanwhile, as they approached manhood, boys experimented with cuts "which would torture the wits of a curious Barber to imitate."37

Henry Spelman was a boy of fourteen when he was sent to Virginia, where, much to his surprise, Captain John Smith sealed a bargain by hand- ing him over to live with Parahunt, an adult son of Powhatan. Later, Spelman was able to impart an insider's view of Indian culture that was almost unique. Spelman argued that the dominant hairstyle was utilitarian. Although men allowed the hair on the left side of their heads to grow long, that on the right side was cut short "that it might not hinder them by flap- pinge about ther bow stringe, when they draw it to shoott." But when Samuel Purchas interviewed Pocahontas's brother-in-law Tomocomo (Uttamatomakkin) in England, he extracted an ideologically charged expla- nation. Tomocomo told Purchas that the Virginians' god, Okeus, appeared to the priests and chief men "in the forme of a personable Virginian, with a long blacke lock on the left side, hanging downe neere to the foote," and it was in imitation of Okeus that "Virginians wear these sinister locks." Hair and its cut were as important to Indian culture as to English. Tomocomo

35 During the i640s, parliamentarian pamphleteers ridiculed the long hair affected by the "cavaliers"; see Tamsyn Williams, "'Magnetic Figures': Polemical Prints of the English Revolution," in Gent and Llewellyn, eds., Renaissance Bodies, 93-94.

36 On Ireland see Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass, "Dismantling Irena: The Sexualizing of Ireland in Early Modern England," in Andrew Parker, Mary Russo, Doris Sommer, and Patricia Yaeger, eds., Nationalisms and Sexualities (London, I992), 157-71, who argue that English analysts saw Irish life as deficient in order because the mantle was worn by all

classes and both genders, i65-66. 37 Strachey, Historie of Travell, ed. Wright and Freund, 73-74; Brereton, Briefe and true

Relation, 157-58; Wood, New Englands Prospect, 64.

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206 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

told Purchas that he could not accept the Christian God because of "this defect, that he had not taught us so to weare our haire."38

Among the Indians, as with the English, significant life changes were marked by transformations of hair. Women changed their hair at marriage. Narragansett virgins could be "distinguished," according to Williams, "by a bashfull falling downe of their haire over their eyes." Morton wrote that when a girl came to marriageable age, she wore a red cap for a year to make her eligibility known. Other writers said married women cut their hair dif- ferently from "maides."39 Edward Winslow of Plymouth reported that the father of a dead child would "cut his hair, and disfigure himself very much in token of sorrow."40

But one distinction common in Europe was lacking; even mature men rarely had beards. Because Indians' beards were sparse, many reporters wrote, they plucked the hair from their chins. So firmly established was this perception that when the Jamestown colonists were joined in their explo- rations by one Mosco, "We supposed him some French mans sonne, because he had a thicke blacke bush beard."'41 Brereton wrote that the New England Indians he met wore artificial beards "of the haire of beasts: and one of them offered a beard of their making to one of our sailers, for his that grew on his face, which because it was of a red colour, they judged to be none of his owne. "42

The most basic social and political demarcator of all was color, and observers worked hard to convey what they had seen and the meaning of hair, eye, and skin color. Accounts agreed that Indian hair was black, although some writers thought that children's hair could be lighter. Arthur Barlowe reported seeing children with "very fine aburne, and chestnut colour haire."43 The Pilgrims were deeply puzzled by their discovery of an adult male skeleton wrapped in a sailor's cassock and breeches with "a great quantity of fine and perfect red Powder" and whose skull had "fine yellow haire." There was a "varietie of opinions" as to who the dead man could be. "Some thought it was an Indian Lord and King: Others sayd, the Indians

38 Spelman, "Relation of Virginea" (c. i613), in Edward Arber and A. G. Bradley, eds.,

Travels and Works of Captain John Smith, vol. i (Edinburgh, igio), cxiii; Purchas, Purchas His Pilgrimage, 3d ed. (London, i617), 954; Francis Higginson, New-Englands Plantation (i630), in

Force, comp., Tracts and Other Papers, Relating … [to] North America, 1:12; Brathwait, English Gentlewoman, 24.

39 Williams, Key into the Language of America, 29; Morton, New English Canaan, 23; Strachey, Historie of Travell, ed. Wright and Freund, 114; Winslow, Good Newes from New England, 59.

40 Winslow, Good Newes from New England, 58. William Prynne, The Unlovelinesse, of Love-Locks (London, i628), 6i, argued that in ancient times English people had cut their hair in sign of grief and suggested they should do so in the i62os because of the grievous situation into which England had fallen.

41 Smith, The Generall Historie of Virginia, Newe-England, and the Summer Isles … (i624), in Barbour, ed., Complete Works of Capt. John Smith, 2:173.

42 Brereton, Briefe and true Relation, i58. 43 Barlowe, "First Voyage Made to the Coastes of America," 102.

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PRESENTMENT OF CIVILITY 207

have all blacke hayre, and never any was seene with browne or yellow hayre; some thought, it was a Christian of some speciall note."44

Skin color was another matter, because it, like the clothing worn over it, was a manipulable attribute. Indians were never said to be red in this early period; they were almost always described as tanned or tawny. But their darker color was an artificially produced cultural badge. As such, it was far more interesting than it would have been as an inherited, inborn characteris- tic. Pringe presented the formula "swart, tawnie or Chestnut." Brereton compared Indian color to "a darke Olive," and to William Strachey it was tawny, "as a sodden Quince is of, (to lyken yt to the neerest coulour I can)."45

These descriptions carried no implication that the Indians were of a dif- ferent race, because the writers hastened to add that they were naturally as light-skinned as the English. English observers affirmed that they were, as Strachey wrote, "from the woumb indifferent white," and John Smith asserted flatly, "they are borne white." Gabriel Archer affirmed that the Virginians were tawny but "not so borne," and Wood said of the New Englanders, "Their swarthinesse is the Sun's livery, for they are borne faire."46 Indian color was a cultural artifact, self-consciously produced on a pale background.

Observers agreed that Indian skin color was accidental, the result of manipulation. Some assumed, with William Wood, that the Indians' darker skin was the "Sun's livery," but others reported that the Indians colored their skin with walnut juice or dyes made from roots and minerals. They did so partly, observers thought, because it rendered them more resistant or less attractive to mosquitoes and other biting insects. More important, they enhanced their skin color because they liked the way it made them look; col- oring their skin was a deliberate act of self-presentation. As Pringe wrote of New England, the natives were tawny "not by nature but accidentally." William Strachey wrote that both men and women "dye and disguise them- selves, into this tawny coulour," the women especially "esteeming yt the best beauty, to be neerest such a kynd of Murrey," by which he meant mulberry- colored. Strachey also drew a comparison with the ancient "Britaynes" who "died themselves redd with woad."47

44 Bradford and Winslow, Mourt's Relation, 11-12. 45 Pringe, "Voyage set out from the Citie of Bristoll," 221; Brereton, Briefe and true

Relation, I57; Strachey, Historie of Travell, ed. Wright and Freund, 70. Sodden meant stewed. 46 Strachey, Historie of Travell, ed. Wright and Freund, 70; Smith, Map of Virginia, i6o;

Archer, "A Breif discription of the People" (i607), in Barbour, ed., Jamestown Voyages, I:103; Wood, New Englands Prospect, 63. Strachey cited John Smith as his source. On the introduction of "red" to describe the Americans see Wesley Frank Craven, White, Red, and Black: The Seventeenth-Century Virginian (Charlottesville, 1971), 39-42, and Alden T. Vaughan, "From White Man to Redskin: Changing Anglo-American Perceptions of the American Indian," American Historical Review, 87 (i982), 917-53.

47 Pringe, "Voyage set out from the Citie of Bristoll," 22I; Strachey, Historie of Travell, ed. Wright and Freund, 70.

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208 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

The writers did not doubt that one of themselves, immersed in that cul- ture, would appear the same. In fact, Ralph Hamor, accompanying Captain Christopher Newport on a state visit to Powhatan, was startled to see

William Parker, who had been captured three years before: Parker had "growen so like both in complexion and habite to the Indians, that I onely knew him by his tongue to be an Englishman."48

American experience forced the English to think anew about how differ- ences between people from various parts of the world should be explained. For example, it cast doubt on any simple relationship between climate and skin color. Unlike William Parker, colonists were happy to report, English people following a European style of life did not find their skin color chang- ing in the New World. The New England settlers whom Wood surveyed "keepe their naturall complexions," though he thought immigrants to Virginia's hotter climate were becoming paler as their blood volume dropped.49

Skin color as a cultural artifact was a subject of great interest but also made many observers nervous, because such manipulation involved the pos- sibility of deception. Color, especially when linked with manipulation, was another word filled with possible meanings. Often it referred to the presen- tation or appearance of actions, especially hidden or disgraceful acts. Bradford and Winslow, for example, castigated the unscrupulous ship cap- tain Thomas Hunt who, "under colour of truking [trading] with them," kid- napped twenty Pawtuxets and seven Nausets, including Squanto, and sold them from New England into slavery in Spain. Or, as in William Crashaw's preface to Whitaker's Good Newes from Virginia, it could mean presentation that cleverly disguised reality: "cunning and coloured falshoods." Father Andrew White, however, evoked a more benign sense when he wrote that Maryland's leaders "bought the space of thirtie miles of ground" from the Indians "To avoid all occasion of dislike, and Colour of wrong," meaning that they wanted to avoid even the undeserved appearance of unscrupulous dealing.50

Partly because of the implication of constructed reality, Indian manipu- lation of skin color was troubling. Father White acknowledged the conven- tional wisdom that the natives painted themselves dark red to keep away gnats but went on: "wherein I confesse there is more ease than honesty," employing honesty in the now-obsolete sense of decorum or comeliness. Even more problematic was the Indian practice of painting designs on the

48 Hamor, A True Discourse of the Present Estate of Virginia … (London, i6i5), 44. 49 Wood, New Englands Prospect, 8-9; see also Crashaw, Sermon Preached in London before

the right honourable the Lord Lawarre, E2. On blood volume in hot climates see Kupperman,

"Apathy and Death in Early Jamestown," Journal ofAmerican History, 66 (1979-ig80), 24-40. 50 Bradford and Winslow, Mourt's Relation, 33; Crashaw, "Epistle Dedicatorie," to

Whitaker, Good Newes from Virginia, A2v; White, A Briefe Relation of the Voyage unto Maryland (i634), in Clayton Colman Hall, ed., Narratives of Early Maryland, i633-i684 (New York, igio), 42. See also color as persuasiveness in David Norbrook, "Rhetoric, Ideology, and the Elizabethan World Picture," in Peter Mack, ed., Renaissance Rhetoric (London, 1994), 140-64, esp. 149.

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PRESENTMENT OF CIVILITY 209

faces and bodies of both men and women. Strachey wrote that "he is the most gallant who is the most monstrous and ugly to behold." White found the red and blue painted faces "gastly."51 Roger Williams provided the words by which English emissaries could dissuade Indians from painting them- selves: "Mat pitch cowahick Manit keesiteonckqus," meaning "The God that made you wil not know you." But Williams also reminded his readers that "our Fore-Fathers in this Nation" similarly painted themselves like "all bar- barous Nations." He wondered why Indians wanted mirrors, having "no beauty but a swarfish colour."52

Strachey linked Indian "annoynt[ing]" of their bodies with colored dyes to domestic concern over "our great Ladies" in England with their "oyle of Talchum, or other Paynting white and redd." One danger of such a practice was its happening behind closed doors out of sight of the unsuspecting pub- lic. On the other hand, reflecting the many-layered debate over face painting in England, Strachey implicitly criticized English women who refused to share the empowerment locked in their cosmetics, saying Indian women who perfected a cosmetic did not keep it secret, as in England, "but they freindly comunicate the secrett, and teach yt one another."53

Some writers admired the Indians' art. As descriptions moved from preparation of the canvas, dyeing the skin, to painting designs on it, the writers' emphasis tended to shift from the virtuous simplicity of Indian life broadly to the equally important theme of the sophisticated ways that the better sort manipulated their self-presentation in the style of European elites. As George Percy, the younger brother of the earl of Northumberland and therefore a man used to aristocratic display, wrote, "some paint their bodies blacke, some red, with artificiall knots of sundry lively colours, very beautifull and pleasing to the eye, in a braver fashion then they in the West Indies." He gave a long description of the "Werowance of Rapahanna" and his train-"as goodly men as any I have seene of Savages or Christians":

the Werowance comming before them playing on a Flute made of a Reed, with a Crown of Deares haire colloured red, in fashion of a Rose fastened about his knot of haire, and a great Plate of Copper on the other side of his head, with two long Feathers in fashion of a paire of Hornes placed in the midst of his Crowne.

51 White, Briefe Relation of the Voyage unto Maryland, 43; Strachey, Historie of Travell, ed. Wright and Freund, 71.

52 Williams, Key into the Language ofAmerica, i65, 192 [misnumbered 157, i84]. 53 Strachey, Historie of Travell, ed. Wright and Freund, 70-71. On control and creativity in

the face-painting debate see Frances E. Dolan, "Taking the Pencil Out of God's Hand: Art,

Nature, and the Face-Painting Debate in Early Modern England," PMLA, io8 (I993), 224-39. Many English authors wrote against the use of cosmetics by English women; see Lucy Gent, Picture and Poetry, i560-i620: Relations between Literature and the Visual Arts in the English Renaissance (Leamington Spa, Eng., i98i), 7-8. One notable example occurs in Prynne, Unlovelinesse, of Love-Locks, 2, who argued that the "Meretricious, Execrable, and Odious Art of Face-painting" insulted God by implying that he was a bungling or unskillful workman.

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210 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

His body was painted all with Crimson, with a Chaine of Beads about his necke, his face painted blew, besprinkled with silver Ore as wee thought, his eares all behung with Braslets of Pearle, and in either eare a Birds Claw through it beset with fine Copper or Gold, he entertained us in so modest a proud fashion, as though he had beene a Prince of civil government, holding his countenance without laughter or any such ill behaviour.

Percy also described the Indian women's practice of tattooing themselves, imprinting designs of "sundry lively colours . . . which will never be taken away."54

Painting and dyeing, combined with artful hair dressing, served the function, according to many of these writers, of delineating differences in status, origin, and role. Such demarcation was absolutely crucial in English society, where knowledgeable men and women learned to read presentations of the self. Portraits contained such obvious markers as the insignia of the Order of the Garter and also many more hidden references to heraldry or to the subject's roles or office. The number and placement of jewels and other ornaments, the colors and shape of the feathers decorating a person's hat, even the length of the draperies behind the sitter in a portrait, indicated the level of regard due him or her.55

Posture as well as decoration conveyed one's position in society as can be seen in new trends in portraiture, especially of elite men and women. Representation of men in positions of power and authority changed in the direction of bolder presentation of the body.

The classic pose was of an armed figure, with one arm akimbo and one leg extended. This is a pose of great arrogance, reserved for those who could command respect, and northern European portraiture in the early seven- teenth century "experienced an explosion of male elbows."56 Many objected to such aggressive postures. John Bulwer, in his guide to gestures for orators called Chironomia, warned that "to set the arms agambo or aprank, and to rest the turned-in back of the hand upon the side is an action of pride and ostentation, unbeseeming the hand of an orator."57 This stance was pro- scribed to any but the better sort. A particularly telling example comes from Massachusetts Bay where Captain John Endecott admitted in i63I that he had been "too rash" in striking "goodman Dexter"; only later, he argued, did he learn that it was "not lawfull for a justice of peace to strike." "But," he

54 Percy, "Observations gathered out of a Discourse," I36-37, 142. Similar reports came from New England; see for example Bradford and Winslow's description of the "Antick" designs painted on the faces of Massasoit's train, in Mourt's Relation, 38

55 Ellen Chirelstein, "Lady Elizabeth Pope: The Heraldic Body," in Gent and Llewellyn, eds., Renaissance Bodies, 36-59.

56 Joaneath Spicer, "The Renaissance Elbow," in Jan Bremmer and Herman Roodenburg, eds., A Cultural History of Gesture (Ithaca, i992), 84-128, quotation on 86. The queen was virtu- ally alone among women in being painted in this posture.

57 Bulwer, "The Apochrypha of Action," Chirologia, sec. 9, 219.

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PRESENTMENT OF CIVILITY 211

FIGURE I

Sir Walter Raleigh and his son Wat, I602, by an unknown painter. By cour- tesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London.

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212 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

U 8 *0 a Ave, ^> (rt -R& – oo .- Am ,?!rt .V~rk-t kter&1 4n27

tihrVp^CPC~i

Copyright the Trustees of the British Museum, British Museum Press.

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PRESENTMENT OF CIVILITY 213

FIGURE III

"One of the wyves of Wyngyna." John White identified this figure for the engraver as "A younge gentil woeman." Copyright the Trustees of the British Museum, British Museum Press.

wrote Governor John Winthrop, "if you had seen the manner of his carriage, with such daring of me with his arms on kembow etc. It would have pro- voked a very patient man."58 Gestures, Francis Bacon concluded, are "a kind of emblem."59

Ralegh and his son Wat were painted in this haughty posture. Ralegh's employee John White painted a Carolina Algonquian leader in the same aris- tocratic attitude, and Theodor de Bry's woodcut of the painting with a note

58 Endecott to John Winthrop, Apr. 12, 1631, Winthrop Papers (Boston, 1929), 3:25. 59 Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, bk. 6, chap. I, in James Spedding ct al., eds., The

Works of Francis Bacon, 14 vols. (London, i857-i874), 3:400, 4:440.

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214 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

FIGURE IV

"The wyfe of a Herowan [weroance] of Secotan." Copyright the Trustees of the British Museum, British Museum Press.

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PRESENTMENT OF CIVILITY 215

FIGURE V

"A cheiff Lorde of Roanoac," according to the engraver's caption. Probably a picture of Wingina, chief of the Roanokes. Copyright the Trustees of the British Museum, British Museum Press.

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2i6 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

S: -m;:% – t!/C to tl~ {<<}~wl' /)z/.4

FIGURE VI

Pocahontas in London, engraved by Simon van de Passe in I6IO. By permis- sion of The British Library, G 7037.

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PRESENTMENT OF CIVILITY 217

B

FIGURE VII Marks of allegiance, engraved from John White's lost original by Theodor de Bry. Copyright the Trustees of the British Museum, British Museum Press.

by Hariot identifying the subject as one of "The Princes of Virginia" was pub- lished and republished as emblematic of Indian authority (see Figures I, II).

Other conventions of portraying highborn women as well as men were extended to American elites. Renaissance painters proclaimed the modesty of their elite female subjects by showing them with their arms in a "self-enclosing gesture," and White linked the American "better sort" to the European by employing this convention in his portraits of Carolina Algonquian women.60 (See Figure III.) White painted separate portraits of a coastal Carolina Algonquian Indian chief and a werowance's wife, each standing with arms folded. Hariot's notes, in explaining this stance, evoked the European language of civility: "they fold their armes together as they walke, or as they talke one with another in signe of wisdome." When Pocahontas was in London, Smith reported, the courtiers who saw her thought "many English Ladies worse favoured, proportioned, and behavioured."61 (See Figures IV, V, VI.)

60 On this convention see Chirelstcin, "Lady Elizabeth Popc," 36-59, quotation on 38. See also Brathwait, English Gentlewoman, 42: "Chastity is an inclosed Garden."

61 Hariot, notes to John White's woodcuts, in Quinn, ed., Roanoke Voyages, 1:439; Smith, Map of Virginia, Iso; Smith, Generall Historie of Virginia, 1o6-07, quotation on 26!. On the recep-

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2i8 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

As they looked at Indian culture, English observers believed they saw a society that recognized the same kinds of gender and status distinctions as their own. Reports of graded status markers in badges, body painting, and tattooing were reassuring because they indicated impressively sophisticated social and communal distinctions and an orderly society. White's paintings and Hariot's explanations of the woodcuts created from them made this point again and again, noting minute differences in patterns of tattooing and hair dressing from village to village and various badges of rank, occupation, and origin. Hariot wrote that most men had marks "rased" on their backs "wherby it may be knowen what Princes subjects they bee, or of what place they have their originall." White drew a figure surrounded by all the region's marks, with an identifying list by Hariot "that they might more easelye be discerned."62 (See Figure VII.) Barlowe, writing about the same society, described an initial scene of general trading between his mariners and the Indians, "but when Granganimeo, the kings brother was present, none durst to trade but himselfe, except such as weare redde peeces of copper on their heades, like himselfe: for that is the difference betweene the Noble men and Governours of Countries, and the meaner sort."63

White's paintings of Indian leaders show them wearing badges of office and assuming postures appropriate to their dignity. The portrait of Wingina, chief of the Roanokes, was reproduced as a woodcut for de Bry's America with a note by Hariot. (See Figure V.) Hariot wrote of the "cheefe men" that "in token of authoritye, and honor, they wear a chaine of great pearles, or copper beades or smoothe bones abowt their necks, and a plate of copper [hung] upon a stringe."64 Williams reported such use of tokens in New England as well, where men, women, and children hung strings of wampum on their necks and wrists. Some wore heavy girdles or collars of wampum, and "Princes" wore "rich Caps and Aprons (or small breeches) of these Beads thus curiously strung into many formes and figures: their blacke and white finely mixt together."65

Some men flaunted exotic adornments in holes punched in their ear- lobes. John Smith said he had seen men wearing "a smal greene and yellow coloured snake, near halfe a yard in length, which crawling and lapping her selfe about his necke often times familiarly would kisse his lips. Others wear a dead Rat tied by the tail." Their heads were adorned with various emblems, some as elaborate as a stuffed hawk with the wings outspread and including such objects as "the hand of their enemy dryed."66 Since rats had been inadvertently introduced by the colonists, it is intriguing to wonder

tion of Pocahontas see Karen Robertson, "Pocahontas at the Masque," Signs, 2I (i996), 55i-83. 62 The list of the pictures with Hariot's notes is in Quinn, ed., Roanoke Voyages,

I:390-462, quotations on 44I, 443.

63 Barlowe, "First Voyage Made to the Coastes of America," I03 64 Hariot, notes, in Quinn, ed., Roanoke Voyages, I:438-39.

65 Williams, Key into the Language ofAmerica, I57 [misnumbered I49]. 66 Smith, Map of Virginia, i6i.

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PRESENTMENT OF CIVILITY 2I9

what kind of statement was being made, especially as "he is most gallant that is the most monstrous to behould." Wood described ear pendants carved in the shapes of animals complementing tattooed "pourtraitures of beasts" that the "better sort" wore on their cheeks and

a Sagamore with a Humberd in his eare for a pendant, a black hawke on his occiput for his plume, Mowhackees for his gold chaine, good store of Wampompeage begirting his loynes, his bow in his hand, his quiver at his back. with six naked Indian spatter- lashes at his heeles for his guard, thinkes himselfe little inferiour to the great Cham; hee will not stick to say, hee is all one with King Charles. He thinkes hee can blow downe Castles with his breath, and conquer kingdomes with his conceit.67

Elite women exhibited the same emblems of rank. In Virginia, Archer saw a woman leader, whose name he rendered as "Queene Apumatecs." She came to meet his exploring party in "state" preceded by an usher. She had "much Copper about her neck, a Crownet of Copper upon her hed." Her female attendants were "adorned much like her selfe (save they Wanted the Copper)." Her posture also bespoke her dignity. She sat "with a stayed Countenance" and permitted "none to stand or sitt neere her."68

What did it mean to call an Indian leader a king or queen? In England, aristocrats and monarchs, knowing that government rested more on honor and credit than on law or force, took care to surround themselves with visual emblems of magnificence, great state, presenting their persons in ways that affirmed their place atop the hierarchy. They staged lavish public spectacles such as coronations, weddings, and investitures. Other displays occurred within the court or noble house, and the most magnificent of these were the masques performed at the Stuart court. The masques, in which the king and courtiers took part, showed royal power bringing harmony to a disordered world and gave visual form to the divine order underlying proper human relationships. They were designed to convey ideas that mortal minds could not grasp directly; their desired effect was to evoke in the affirming audience a sense of wonder or awe.69

67 Wood, New Englands Prospect, 66 68 Archer, "A relayton of the Discovery of our River" (i607), in Barbour, ed., Jamestown

Voyages, I:9I-92.

69 Malcolm Smuts, "Cultural Diversity and Cultural Change at the Court of James I," in Linda Levy Peck, ed., The Mental World of the Jacobean Court (Cambridge, I99I), 99-II2; Steven Mullaney, "Brothers and Others, or the Art of Alienation," in Marjorie Garber, ed., Cannibals, Witches, and Divorce: Estranging the Renaissance (Baltimore, i987) 67-89. On the theatricality of power see also Roy Strong, Art and Power: Renaissance Festivals, 1450-I650 (Woodbridge, Eng.,

i984) esp. chap. 5, "Illusions of Absolutism: Charles I and the Stuart Court Masque," and Stephen Greenblatt, "Invisible Bullets," in Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England (Berkeley, i988), 64-65.

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220 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

It is against this backdrop that we should read reports like that of William Strachey, a member of the London literary world, as he transmitted his impression of Powhatan, who conveyed "such Majestie . . . which often- times strykes awe and sufficient wonder into our people" that, although Powhatan was a heathen, Strachey was persuaded he possessed "an infused kynd of divinenes." John Smith was similarly awestruck. When first brought into Powhatan's presence, he found the "Emperour proudly lying uppon a Bedstead" with "such a grave and Majesticall countenance, as drave me into admiration to see such state in a naked Salvage."70 The performance of mag- nificence required an affirming audience, and Smith and Strachey fell natu- rally into that role.71 When Smith returned to Powhatan with Christopher Newport, he again experienced the effect of majesty: "This proude salvage, having his finest women, and the principall of his chiefe men assembled, sate in rankes as before is expressed, himselfe as upon a Throne at the upper ende of the house, with such a Majestie as I cannot expresse, nor yet have often seene, either in Pagan or Christian."72 No wonder Newport had "fowle trou- ble" trying to get Powhatan, who understood the language of gesture and posture, to "kneele to receave his crowne."73 Later, when Smith was presi- dent in Jamestown and visited Powhatan on an official embassy, he sharp- ened the comparison by describing the ceremony of welcome as "A Virginia Maske."74

Reports from every region echoed the language of English aristocratic self-presentation. John Winthrop sent an embassy to the Narragansett leader Canonicus, and the party "observed in the sachem much state, great com- mand over his men, and marvellous wisdom in his answers."75 Massasoit's great dignity similarly impressed the Pilgrim leaders: "in his person he is a very lustie man, in his best yeares, an able body, grave of countenance, and spare of speech." They described Iyanough, "a man not exceeding twentie-six yeeres of age," as "very personable, gentle, courteous, and fayre condi- tioned."76 Indian kings acted like kings.

Noble women created similar effects. As Strachey described the beloved consort of a deposed werowance, she was not the most handsome woman he had seen in America, "yet with a kynd of pride can take upon her a shew of greatnes." Her attendants dressed her in "a faire white drest deare-skyn,"

70 Strachey, Historie of Travell, ed. Wright and Freund, 6o-6i; Smith, A True relation of such occurrences and accidents of noate as hath hapned in Virginia (i6o8), in Barbour, ed., Complete Works of Capt. John Smith, I:53.

71 See Whigham's discussion of the "enfranchising audience," in Ambition and Privilege, chap. 2, quotation on 45.

72 Smith, True relation of… Virginia, 65. 73 Smith, The Proceedings of the English Colonie in Virginia (i612), in Barbour, ed.,

Complete Works of Capt. John Smith, I:236-37. 74 Smith, Generall Historie of Virginia, i82-83. 75 Winthrop, Winthrop's Journal: History of New England, i630-i649, ed. James Kendall

Hosmer, vol. i (New York, i908), i86. 76 Bradford and Winslow, Mourt's Relation, 37, 50.

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PRESENTMENT OF CIVILITY 22I

adding a collar, necklaces, and earrings of white coral, pearl, and copper and finished with a cloak of blue feathers "so arteficially and thick sowed to- gither, that yt showes like a deepe purple Satten, and is very smooth and sleek." When elite native women were fully decked out, "they seeme as debonayre, quaynt, and well pleased, as (I wis) a daughter of the howse of Austria behoung with all her Jewells." The sense conveyed by these words has evolved. In Strachey's day, "debonair" meant gracious or courteous and "quaint" meant beautiful, handsome, fashionably elegant. Strachey justified this "digression . .. synce these were Ceremonies which I did little looke for carrying so much presentment of Civility."77

Pocahontas in London conveyed majesty through her comportment. As Rebecca Rolfe, she "still carried herselfe as the Daughter of a King, and was accordingly respected."78 When Pocahontas and Smith met in England, she insisted that she would call him father while she was in his country, but, Smith wrote, "I durst not allow of that title, because she was a Kings daugh- ter." She was incredulous: "Were you not afraid to come into my fathers Countrie, and caused feare in him and all his people (but mee) and feare you here I should call you father." But Smith, who was by his own account fear- less in Virginia, was not bold enough to contravene social boundaries in England.79

These portrayals and references were not created frivolously or ironically in an age when every particular of clothing and other forms of display was carefully regulated according to rank. The splendid urban mansions of the English nobility, although they might be more magnificent than the king's residence, were always called houses, never palaces.80 Thus the Jesuit official report from Maryland for the year i639 created a powerful picture when it described Father White as living in "the metropolis of Pascatoa . . . in the palace with the Emperor himself of the place."81 Maryland governor Leonard Calvert, in the most direct way, attested to the authority and majesty of Indian leaders. Writing to his brother Lord Baltimore, the Maryland propri- etor, about "Porttobacco now Emperor of Paskattaway," Calvert, using the language that European rulers reserved for each other, referred to "my Brother Porttobacco."82

Observers of all backgrounds sent reports whose effect was similar. A colonist's story about Powhatan described him acting in the mode of English monarchs. It began: "The greate Werowance Powhawtan in his annuall progress through his pettye provinces." Others talked of events in

77 Strachey, Historie of Travell, ed. Wright and Freund, 64-65. 78 Purchas, Purchas His Pilgrimes, i9:ii8. 79 Smith, Generall Historie of Virginia, 26i.

80 J.S.A. Adamson, "The Architecture and Politics of the London Aristocratic Town House,

g59o-i660," paper presented at Huntington Early Modern British History Seminar, Oct. I4, I995. 81 The English Province of the Society of Jesus, Annual Letter from Maryland, i639, in

Hall, ed., Narratives of Early Maryland, I24.

82 Calvert to Lord Baltimore, [Apr. 25, i638], ibid., I50-59, quotations on I59.

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222 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

"Opochancano's courte."83 New Englander William Wood also wrote of Indian chiefs making annual progresses to inspect their domains; those with "large Dominions" used this occasion to judge the behavior of their "Viceroyes." When the king entered, he was greeted by "an Oration gratula- tory to his Majesty for his love; and the many good things they enjoy under his peacefull government."84 Roger Williams actually traveled "with a great Prince, and his Queene and Children in company, with a Guard of neere two hundred" He wrote that the prince's house was both larger and finer than others'.85 Indian kings behaved as kings, indicating shared understand- ing of the force of self-presentation.

Acting the part was a reciprocal process. Not only did the early modern English believe that identity is created, or assumed, or assigned and commu- nicated to the world through signs, but they also believed in the psychologi- cal power of donning a role. Once a role was taken up and one's outward aspect tailored to the part, a person's actions were subtly molded to its demands. English writers describing American Indian life constantly attested to their belief in the link between changes in clothing and personality.86 The promoter Richard Hakluyt quoted an early chronicle recording the three Newfoundland men brought to the court of Henry VII by John Cabot: "These were clothed in beasts skins, & did eate raw flesh, and spake such speach that no man could understand them, and in their demeanour like to bruite beastes, whom the King kept a time after. Of the which upon two yeeres after, I saw two apparelled after the maner of Englishmen in Westminster pallace, which that time I could not discerne from Englishmen, til I was learned what they were, but as for speach, I heard none of them utter one word."87 As with the captive Englishman William Parker, lan- guage, a culturally constructed indicator, was a surer guide to identity than appearance. The Indians were equally aware of the role-enforcing power of clothes. Powhatan, for example, was extremely reluctant to put on the "scar- let cloake and apparel" that the English sent him until his close adviser Namontacke, who had actually been in England, convinced him "they would doe him no hurt."88

83 William Powell to Edwin Sandys, Apr. I2, i62I, in Susan Myra Kingsbury, ed., Records of the Virginia Company of London, 4 vols. (Washington, D. C., i906-i935), 3:438; Proceedings of the Virginia Assembly, Aug. 4, i6i9, ibid., I74-

84 Wood, New Englands Prospect, 8o. "Your Majesty" became the normal mode of address to the English monarch, replacing "your grace," in the I530s as symbolic of a new level of sovereignty in the throne; Steven J. Gunn, "State Development in England and the Burgundian Dominions, c. I460-c. i56o," paper presented at Huntington Early Modern British History Seminar, Feb. 24, i996.

85 Williams, Key into the Language ofAmerica, I4I, i85 [misnumbered I32, I77]. 86 On this point see Robertson, "Pocahontas at the Masque," 568-73. 87 Robert Fabian, "Chronicle," in Hakluyt, Principal Navigations (I598-i600), 7:I55. In

Ben Jonson's Irish Masque at Court (i613), New English leaders are restored to civility just by doffing their Irish cloaks; see Lisa Jardine, "Mastering the Uncouth: Gabriel Harvey, Edmund Spenser, and the English Experience in Ireland," in Henry and Hutton, eds., New Perspectives on Renaissance Thought 68-69.

88 Smith, Proceedings of the English Colonie in Virginia, 237. For William Parker see note 48 above.

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PRESENTMENT OF CIVILITY 223

Powhatan may have been right to worry, because changes of heart were often signaled or effected by changes in clothes. Indians and English alike associated the wearing of European clothes with Christianity, and it seemed clear that one moved closer to being a Christian by dressing as one. Williams told the Narragansetts that it was God who had given the English "Clothes, Books, &c."89 In i639, the Jesuit missionaries in Maryland reported that the Tayac, a title they translated as emperor, had asked to be baptized and had "exchanged the skins, with which he was heretofore clothed, for a garment made in our fashion." Earlier, Father White, unselfconsciously conflating European dress and Christian values, had written that the Indians "exceed- ingly desire civill life and Christian apparrell."90 Robert Cushman wrote of the Plymouth venture that the younger Indians were ripe for conversion "if we had means to apparel them, and wholly to retain them with us, (as their desire is,)."91 Attiring the Indians was not necessarily the complete transfor- mation the English hoped for, however. The Narragansetts Williams knew wore English clothes only while they were actually with English people and took them off as soon as they returned home.92

Among the Chickahominies of Virginia an eight-man council of "elders" was the governing body. This "stout and warlike nation," loosely allied with Powhatan but anxious not to be drawn fully into his empire, had agreed to become English allies, thus becoming "King James his men," the first king they had ever acknowledged. Both sides honored the power of self-definition through clothing, as the Chickahominy elders, "no longer naturalls," donned red coats, which were to be sent them annually, and "each of them the pic- ture of his Majesty, ingraven in Copper, with a chaine of Copper to hang it about his necke wherby they shall be known to be King JAMES his noble Men." These adornments signified their change of identity, but the English took care to make the copper medal similar to the gorgets worn by werowances. Henceforth, the Chickahominies would call themselves "Tassentasses," which the colonists understood was their name for the English. Meanwhile, the elders, pointing out that Governor Sir Thomas Dale was extremely busy, suggested that they should continue to "injoy their own lawes and liberties" and to be governed by their eight elders "as his substi- tutes and councellors." They would supply corn to Jamestown, which would be paid for in trade goods. Whereas the English presented all this in terms of

89 Williams, Key into the Language ofAmerica, A4v. 90 The English Province of the Society of Jesus, Annual Letter from Maryland, i639, I27;

White, Briefe Relation of the Voyage unto Maryland, 44. 91 See also the case of Captain John Underhill, who had been expelled from Massachusetts

Bay for his challenges to the religious order. To signal his newfound humility when he sought readmission he "came in his worst clothes (being accustomed to take great pride in his bravery and neatness) without a band, in a foul linen cap pulled close to his eyes"; Winthrop, Winthrop'sJournal, ed. Hosmer, 2:I2-I3; Cushman, "Of the State of the Colony, and the Need of Public Spirit in the Colonists" (i622), in Alexander Young, ed., Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers of the Colony of Plymouth. .. (Boston, i841), 260.

92 Williams, Key into the Language ofAmerica, I2I [misnumbered II32].

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224 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

sovereignty and tribute, the negotiations actually produced an alliance and trading pact under which the Chickahominies governed themselves as before.93

All parties to the multicultural exchange of the early years were engaged in learning new languages of presentment and attempting to influence the others' behavior. When the natives desired peace following the great Indian attack of i622 in Virginia, they sent home a captive, Mrs. Boyce "(the Chiefe of the prisoners) . . . appareled like one of theire Queens, which they desired wee should take notice of." Similarly, a Plymouth expedition seeking a lost boy, ten-year-old John Billington, conferred with Iyanough, the Cummaquid sachem, whom they described as "indeed not like a Savage, save for his attyre." Before he directed the searchers to the Nausets, Iyanough introduced "an old woman" seeking news of her three sons who had been among the group kidnapped and sold into slavery in Spain several years before by Thomas Hunt. The English found her weeping "very grievous" but could do nothing to restore her sons or rectify the wrong done her. The Nausets, although they remained "ill disposed to the English" because of the "wretched" Hunt, could and did return John Billington, who was brought to the search party "behung with beades" in another symbolic gesture. As they returned, the Plymouth party again met Iyanough, whose people showed them "all the kindnes they could, Iyanough himselfe taking a bracelet from about his necke, and hanging it upon one of us."94 Both parties to this encounter understood a powerful language of social symbols involving mag- nanimity and hospitality.

Both English and Native Americans also picked up items from the other's culture and adapted them to their own purposes. Just as Queen Elizabeth sought pearls from America to create the elaborate displays she wore as emblems of her greatness, so Indian leaders adapted items from England to the same purpose. Barlowe wrote of the venturers' bemusement at Roanoke when Granganimeo claimed "a bright tinne dishe" from among the array of trade goods. He then "made a hole in the brimme thereof, & hung it about his necke," in imitation of English armor, they thought.95 In actuality, he was fashioning the English dish into a gorget, a badge of authority.

Powhatan, having accepted without kneeling the artifacts of his English coronation, changed and adapted them to his own purposes in reinforcing

93 Hamor, True Discourse, II-I5; Dale, "To the R. and my most esteemed friend, M.D.M. Smith," June i8, i614, in Purchas, Purchas His Pilgrimes, i9:i06-07; Smith, Map of Virginia, I46; Strachey, Historie of Travell, ed. Wright and Freund, 69.

94 Virginia Council to Virginia Company, Apr. 4 i623, in Kingsbury, ed., Records of the Virginia Company, 4:98; Bradford and Winslow, Mourt's Relation, 32-36, 50-53. Inga Clendinnen cites similar gestures by Moctezuma in the earlier Spanish-Mexica confrontation: see her "Cortes, Signs, and the Conquest of Mexico: Models of the Conquest," in Grafton and Blair, eds., Transmission of Culture in Early Modern Europe, 94-5.

95 Barlowe, "First Voyage Made to the Coastes of America," ioo-oi.

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PRESENTMENT OF CIVILITY 225

the exercise of his power. Henry Spelman described the annual coming together of the people to plant corn for the king. When they were finished, Powhatan donned the crown sent him by King James and walked among the planters throwing out beads or placing them in the hands of favored people. At harvest time, the people returned and brought in the corn for Powhatan. Whereas the harvested corn and other offerings from his own people were stored by Powhatan in a specially created building and overseen by an idol, the crown, beads, and other presents from the king of England were stored "in the gods house at Oropikes," the mortuary for the royal line.96

While Powhatan deployed his crown, the symbol of his recognition by King James, as he presented himself to his clients, in England cosmopolitan men and women adopted and adapted-played with-aspects of Indian identity. George Chapman's Masque of the Middle Temple and Lincoln's Inn (i613), performed to celebrate the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth, was set in Virginia. The principal masquers, who were the court's most prominent aristocrats, took the parts of "Virginian Princes," and Inigo Jones's designs played on the correspondence between the noble English and the "noblest

Virginians," the reality underneath the disguise. The i6I5 wedding portrait of Elizabeth Pope, daughter of Virginia Company investor Sir Thomas Watson, is filled with references to Virginia. As in Chapman's masque, white ostrich feathers denote the noblest connections, pearls the riches of the New World. This Elizabeth, passing from virginity to fruitfulness, was portrayed as America.97

At the same time, Francis Higginson reported speculation that the style of wearing one long lock of hair among fashionable young men in England was conscious imitation of the asymmetrical Powhatan male cut. In i6I7, Purchas quoted Sir Thomas Dale and Pocahontas's husband, John Rolfe, on the colonists' belief that the fashion had been "borrowed from these Salvages" by the returning Roanoke colonists over thirty years earlier. Purchas, informed by Tomocomo that his people wore this style in imitation of their god, was indignant: "(a faire unlovely generation of the Love-locke, Christians imitating Salvages, and they the Divell)." Nevertheless, the fash- ion continued. In i63I, Richard Brathwait ridiculed London's "young Green-wits" and their shallow affectations: "A long Locke he has got, and the art to frizle it."98

96 Spelman, "Relation of Virginea," in Arber and Bradley, eds., Travels and Works of Capt. John Smith, cv, cxii; Rountree, Powhatan Indians of Virginia, I09-I2.

97 Chapman, Masque of the Middle Temple and Lincoln's Inn (i613), in The Plays and Poems of George Chapman, ed. Thomas Marc Parrott (London, I914), 2:435-60, 823-29; Chirelstein, "Elizabeth Pope," 36-59.

98 Higginson, New-Englands Plantation (i630), I2; Purchas, Purchas His Pilgrimage, 3d ed., 954; Brathwait, English Gentlewoman, 24; Tamsyn Williams, "'Magnetic Figures,"' 93-94. The earl of Essex was painted with a lovelock in the I59os; see Ribeiro, Dress and Morality, 78. Margaret Holmes Williamson argues that the asymmetrical hair of Powhatan men was meant to indicate a nature that combined male and female elements, in "Powhatan Hair," Man, New Ser.,

I4 (I979), 392-4I3. I thank Cynthia Van Zandt for bringing this source to my attention.

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226 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

Frivolous playing with an Indian identity by London gallants opened the possibility, unwelcome in this optimistic early period, of influence mov- ing in the wrong direction and tapped deep fears among the insular English of how the pursuit of commerce and exchange with the whole world and the wealth it brought to some were changing and distorting English society. William Prynne in England and Roger Williams in New England denounced the wearing of lovelocks copied from America, which Prynne characterized as "Effeminate, Proud, Lascivious, Exorbitant, and Fantastique." These and other elaborate fashions threatened to break down the essential division of English society into two unequivocal genders. Prynne argued that in these "Degenerous, Unnaturall, and Unmanly times," women were being "Hermaphrodited" by "Odious if not Whorish Cutting, and Crisping of their Haire." Men likewise were "wholy degenerated and metamorphosed into women" in their "Womanish, Sinful, and Unmanly, Crisping, Curling, Frouncing, Powdring, and nourishing of their Lockes and Hairie excre- ments." Prynne saw no difference between this importation and the con- sumption of French frippery: "Are not many degenerated into Virginians, Frenchmen, Ruffians?" Williams denied that any Indian would so "forget nature it selfe in such excessive length and monstrous fashion, as to the shame of the English Nation, I now (with griefe) see my Countrey-men in England are degenerated unto." Indian hairstyles and painted faces were foul, he wrote, but "More foule such Haire, such Face in Israel. England so calls her selfe, yet there's Absoloms foule Haire and Face of Jesabell."99

Early observers had done their work too well. They had set out to describe previously unknown peoples in books and pamphlets whose pri- mary purpose was to argue for English colonization of America. Those with a degree of knowledge and experience of Indian cultures, intrigued by what they saw, seized the opportunity to instruct their readers on burning issues involving the course and future of English society; cultural priorities shared across the Atlantic could be construed as authorized by nature. In the process, these observers conveyed a composite portrait whose chief element was the Indians' common humanity with Europeans-even common origins. As writers who ventured to America struggled to report their authentic expe- rience of Indian cultures, they communicated a picture of graceful figures who presented themselves in ways that recognized and preserved all the distinctions English society considered important. These distinctions bespoke a structured society, one in which Europeans could see "presentment of civility."

So close were the Indians to European norms, in fact, that commenta- tors assured their readers that only a series of short steps-aimed at the cre- ation of a favorable context-separated the Indians from achieving full civility. Certainly, they were of the same stock and origins as the English

99 Prynne, Unlovelinesse, of Love-Locks, "To the Christian Reader," 4-8, 25, 32; Williams, Key into the Language ofAmerica, 49, I93 [misnumbered i85].

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PRESENTMENT OF CIVILITY 227

themselves. The Reverend William Crashaw, though he never went to America, confirmed this contention from his own experience. He reported that he had seen living in England a "Virginean" whose skin "was so farre from a Moores or East or West Indians, that it was little more blacke or tawnie, then one of ours would be if he should go naked in the South of England."100 All these reports generated tremendous optimism: the task of bringing together English and Indians, always by "raising" the Indians to English levels, would be easy to accomplish, and soon the two groups would be indistinguishable. Such were the hopes of the early years, informed by the belief that environment was more important than inheritance in determining human character and values and based on the assumption that the Indians, accustomed to manipulating their self-presentation, would naturally seek to transform themselves into Europeans.101

Early writers wilfully misled themselves and their audiences regarding both the American desire for and the ease of that transformation. That the Indians were heathens did not bother them because in this initial period that represented God's choice. The Indians lay in "Ethnicke darknesse" because they had not had access to the truth. The Devil, after all, was active in human affairs only because God allowed it, and the future Jesuit James Rosier argued that it was God who had elected to "darken" the Americans' "understanding," making them a "purblind generation."102 For his own reasons, God had chosen to withhold knowledge of the Gospel from these people until now.

The Indians' own development had brought them to the point of readi- ness. At the beginning of the English colonial period, Thomas Hariot was especially encouraged because the native priests he encountered were most interested in the Christian religion, having been "brought into great doubts of their owne."103 At the end of the first phase of colonization, Roger Williams, who like Hariot had acquired sophisticated knowledge of an Algonquian language, wrote that the Indians, hearing that the English had once been deprived of books, letters, and the knowledge of God, as they were, "are greatly affected with a secret hope concerning themselves."104 But, even in the early i640s when Williams's book was published, others already knew that the Indians would resist acculturation and that the priests were central to the maintenance of American cultural integrity (although this contention was worded somewhat differently).

Over the course of the seventeenth century, as the naivete of simple envi- ronmentalism was proven and the depth of natives' commitment to their own

100 Crashaw, Sermon Preached in London before the right honourable the Lord Lawarre, E2. 101 On these early years in Jamestown see Martin H. Quitt, "Trade and Acculturation at

Jamestown, i607-i609: The Limits of Understanding," William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Ser., 52 (I995), 227-58.

102 "Ethnicke darknesse" is from [Robert Gordon ofi Lochinvar, Encouragements. . . to Under-takers (Edinburgh, i625), D3; Rosier, True Relation of the most prosperous voyage, 297. On Rosier's biography see ibid., 62-64.

103 Hariot, Briefe and True Report, in Quinn, ed., Roanoke Voyages, I:372, quotation on 375. 104 Williams, Key into the Language ofAmerica, A4v.

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228 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

culture and traditions was demonstrated again and again, English commenta- tors, feeling betrayed, came to regard Indian differences from Europeans as fundamental and fixed. The dignity and authority they had celebrated in Indian leaders now stood in the way of the cultural convergence toward European norms they had envisaged. Colonists, faced with native hostility as they competed for land and resources, increasingly thought of the Native Americans as permanently other-and permanently lower. Developing ide- ology, as in contemporaneous Ireland, spread fears of mixing too closely with Indians lest the powerful American environment pull the other way and draw the English away from their civility.105 Races, defined as broad, separate, and immutable categories of people, began to figure in colonists' thinking as an avenue to understanding their own experiences in America, especially the treachery they perceived in Indians' unwillingness to assimilate to their construction of the normal.

105 On the conclusion that English people in Ireland became more like the Irish rather than "raising" the Irish to civility see Nicholas Canny, Kingdom and Colony: Ireland in the Atlantic World, i560-i800 (Baltimore, i988), 36-4I.

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Migration and Human Capital: Self-Selection of Indentured Servants to the Americas

Author(s): Ran Abramitzky and Fabio Braggion

Source: The Journal of Economic History , Dec., 2006, Vol. 66, No. 4 (Dec., 2006), pp. 882-905

Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Economic History Association

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Migration and Human Capital. Self-Selection ofIndentured Servants

to the Americas

RAN ABRAMITZKY AND FABIO BRAGGION

When contracting, European merchants could at least partially observe character- istics such as the health, physical strength, and education of indentured servants. These characteristics, unobservable to us, were likely to influence servitude dura- tion, which is observable to us. We employ a switching regression model to ana- lyze 2,066 servitude contracts from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Servants were positively selected to American mainland colonies in terms of their unobservable human capital and negatively selected to the West Indies. Thus, the relative quality of migrants' human capital may have played a role in the subse- quent relative economic performance of these regions.

Throughout the colonial period, indentured servitude was an impor- tant form of white migration to the New World. Abbot Emerson

Smith and Farley Grubb suggested that roughly half of the white immi- grants who arrived to the American colonies used indentured servitude contracts.' These contracts, under which emigrants would become servants in the colonies, enabled them to finance their trip to the New World.

We focus on servitude migration and examine whether the mainland and the West Indian colonies attracted migrants with different endow- ments of human capital as early as the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- turies. Although the literature looks at the characteristics of servants bound for various colonies as they appear in the surviving records, most aspects of servants' human capital such as education, experience, health, and physical strength are not currently observable and, thus, were not analyzed.2 We infer these unobservable aspects of human capi-

The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 66, No. 4 (December 2006). C The Economic History Association. All rights reserved. ISSN 0022-0507.

Ran Abramitzky is Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Stanford University, Lan- dau Economics Building, 579 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305-6072. E-mail: ranabr@stanford. edu. Fabio Braggion is Assistant Professor of Finance, Tilburg University and CentER, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, P.O. Box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Nether- lands. E-mail: [email protected].

We are grateful to Martin Bodenstein, Timothy Bresnahan, Marco Da Rin, Adeline Dela- vande, Joe Ferrie, Avner Greif, Nisan Langberg, Joel Mokyr, Kathy Spier, Luis Vasconcelos and Gavin Wright for their helpful discussions and suggestions. We would like to thank Jeremy Atack and two anonymous referees for their comments and suggestions. All remaining errors are ours.

SSmith, Colonists; and Grubb, "Incidence." 2 Galenson, White Servitude, pp. 91-96. Servants' ability or inability to sign his contract was

recorded, but this is a rough measure of education.

882

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Migration and Human Capital 883

tal by noting that they could be observed at the time of contracting and were likely to influence servitude duration, which is observable to us. We can therefore econometrically test the relations between unobserv- able characteristics affecting the servitude duration and destination choices.

More specifically, migrants who were expected by the European mer- chants to be more productive received shorter terms of servitude.3 Al- though migrants had choice and so selected themselves to a destination, the duration of the servant contracts offered by merchants per migrant characteristics for different destinations influenced the migrants' choice. Thus, to the extent that individuals who migrated to a certain colonial destination persistently received shorter terms of servitude than their observable characteristics imply, we conclude that they were positively selected in terms of characteristics that are currently unobservable.4 Mi- grants who had to serve a longer term than their observable characteris- tics imply were negatively selected.

Following David Galenson, we restrict our sample to nonadult ser- vants because of uncertainty over the role that unrecorded cash pay-

ments may have played in altering adult servant contract duration.5 We analyze two important collections of English registrations of indentured servants, the two for which enough detailed information has survived to allow our econometric analysis, namely the indentures of 162 contracts from Middlesex County between 1682 and 1685 and the indentures of 1904 contracts from London between 1718 and 1759.

We employ a switching regression model (type five tobit) and esti- mate the length of servitude expected by an individual with certain characteristics in both the mainland and the West Indian islands, taking into account the endogeneity of that individual's migration decision.6 Migrants are assumed to choose their colonial destination based on fac- tors such as their age, gender, literacy, county of origin and the length of the contract expected in each location, which is itself a function of individual's observable and unobservable characteristics.

We find that servants bound to the West Indies were negatively se- lected in the sense that, ceteris paribus, they served half a year more

3 Galenson, "Market Evaluation" and White Servitude; and Grubb, "Auction." 4 On the self selection of migrants, see, for example, Borjas, "Self Selection" and "Econom-

ics"; and Chiswick, "Is the New Imigration" and "Are Immigrants." 5 According to Galenson, White Servitude, the full conditions of the contract for young ser-

vants were recorded and the duration of servitude appears to be the main variable. For adult ser- vants, cash payments at the end of the term were an important contractual clause, but they were rarely recorded.

6 The colonial destination was a major choice variable of prospective servants, Pitman, De- velopment; Smith, Colonists; Galenson, "Market Evaluation" and White Servitude; and Sheri- dan, Sugar.

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884 Abramitzky and Braggion

than predicted by their observable characteristics. Conversely, servants migrating to the mainland were positively selected in the sense that they had to serve over half a year less than predicted by their observable characteristics. Notably, the regression analysis suggests that servants' characteristics that are currently unobservable were more important de- terminants of servitude duration than observable characteristics such as

occupation, literacy, and gender. The nature of human capital selection of immigrants to the Carib-

bean islands and to what later became the United States may suggest the importance of human capital in their subsequent distinct eco- nomic development. Despite a higher initial income per capita in the islands compared to the mainland, by the nineteenth century the United States was well on its trajectory of sustained economic growth while the Caribbean islands lagged far behind. Economists and economic historians have explored the role of factor endowments

and initial distinct institutions in explaining this divergence.7 The finding of this article reveals that the colonies in these regions had, early on, attracted migrants with different endowment of human capi- tal. To the extent that the destination selectivity by human capital that we found here can be generalized to other migrants, then this sug- gests the potential importance of the relative quality of migrants' human capital in the subsequent relative economic performance of these regions.8 In finding that, this article lends support to the work of Edward Glaeser, Rafael La Porta, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes, and Andrei Shleifer that suggests that the different human capital brought by immigrants to the New World may have been important in the subsequent development of good institutions and economic develop- ment.9 It may nevertheless be the case that the selection we find re- flects distinct geographical endowments.

"UNOBSERVABLE" DETERMINANTS OF SERVITUDE DURATION

Our main argument relies on the presence of servants' characteristics unobservable to researchers now but observable to and rewarded by the

7 For example, Engerman and Sokoloff, How Latin America and "Colonialism"; Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson, "Colonial Origins" and "Reversal"; and Acemoglu, Johnson, Robinson and Thaicharoen, "Institutional Causes."

SFor the impact of human capital on economic growth, see, for example, Becker, Murphy, and Tamura, "Human Capital"; Galor and Weil. "Population"; Lucas, "On the Mechanism"; and Mankiw, Romer and Weil, "Contribution." Schultz, "Value," emphasizes the role of human capital in the efficiency of reallocation of resources after economic shocks. Shastry and Weil, "How Much"; and Weil, "Accounting for the Effect," show the importance of health in the cross country variation of income. Becker, Murphy, and Tamura, "Human Capital."

9 Glaeser, La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes and Shleifer, "Do Institutions."

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Migration and Human Capital 885

European merchants who shipped the servants to the New World and sold their contracts once there. In what follows, we describe these char- acteristics and outline their potential importance in determining servi- tude duration.

First, healthier and stronger servants may have received shorter terms of servitude, as they were better suited to the physically demanding work of growing, processing, and transporting the sugar, tobacco, or rice; packing and shipping the staple; building houses and farm sheds; and so on. Besides, the stronger and healthier were more likely to sur- vive the long and exhausting trip to the Americas. Thus, servants de- termined by the merchants to be healthy and strong are expected to have received a shorter length of servitude in the colonies.

Health and physical strength are not observable to us today but were to some extent observable by European merchants and American plant- ers. Grubb considers convict servants and constructs a proxy of physical strength and health by using servants' heights.1' He finds that the price of convict servants in the auctions of Maryland between 1767 and 1775 was 20 percent higher for exceptionally tall servants concluding that the higher price was the result of planters' concern about servant' physical conditions." Grubb's finding is also confirmed by anecdotal evidence. There is evidence that planters walked among convict servants arriving

to the ports, inquiring their trade, examining them like horses and inter- viewing them. When a servant named John Lauson was asked for his trade, he answered that he was a cooper. The planter replied that "That will not do for him" and continued the interview. Lauson later recalled that:13

Some felt our hands other our legs and feet, And made us walk to see were compleat Some view'd out Teeth to see if they was good, And fit to Chaw our hard and homely food

The health of servants was the main concern of merchants and planters. As reported by Bernard Bailyn:

10 Grubb, "Market Evaluation." Data on servants' heights are not indicated in the available in-

formation on voluntary servants used in this work. " Grubb defines exceptionally tall servants as those servants whose height was one standard

deviation above the average height of male British convict servants in Maryland between 1767 and 1775. The secular and cross-sectional differences in human heights have been used by eco- nomic historians as measures of nutritional quality, physical strength, and well-being of indi- viduals. See Steckel, "Stature."

12 Lauson, Felon's Account, p. 8. 13 Ibid.

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886 Abramitzky and Braggion

the dominant concern is clear in the pages of the merchants' letter books. The seller [of servants] were haunted, above all else, by the fear of disease. Every- thing depended on the health of their charges, which was unpredictable and un- controllable.14

Moreover:

the first concern, at the receiving end of the process as at the sending, was thus always health: the best markets were for the "young, healthy, and not de- formed"-a concern reflected in innumerable newspaper advertisements an- nouncing the recent arrival and pending sale of "healthy servants-men, women, and boys." Only slightly less weighty was the stress on occupations and skills."5

Second, correspondence between merchants and planters suggest that planters were looking for servants who were laborious and industrious men, characteristics which merchants could potentially detect but are un- observable to the econometrician.16 By the late seventeenth century and eighteenth century, planters increasingly requested servants who not only

possessed a skill, but had good character and were good in their profes- sion, which are again characteristics that cannot be observed today. Thus, in 1732, a Glasgow merchant wrote to a correspondent to send tradesmen to servitude, but be sure that none but good tradesmen be indentured.17 Similarly, a Bristol merchant was advised by Samuel Martin in 1757 to send him "A good jobbing Sadler & Collar maker who understands tan- ning & dressing leather for his own use" or "A sober Jockey who is a good rider & breaker of young horses. Of this man you must insist upon a good Character for Sobriety & skill in his profession; because generally speaking they are a drunken profligate breed of people."18

Whether a servant was indeed skilled in his profession could be eas- ily detected by planters, thus it made sense for the merchant to verify servants' qualities as best as he could. A planter from Virginia who found out that he was misled by a servant, wrote in his diary in 1758:19

Sent home the fellow sent here for a gardiner. He knows nothing of the matter. Plowman … I keep. He seems a workman and willing fellow.

Third, characteristics such as education, skill, ability, entrepreneurial and managerial skills are important determinants of individuals' produc-

14 Bailyn, Voyagers, p. 330. 15 Bailyn, Voyagers, pp. 330-31. 16 Christopher Jeaffreson writing to his London merchant in 1677; quoted in Galenson, White

Servitude, p. 134. 17 Quoted in Galenson, White Servitude, p. 135. s18 Quoted in Galenson, White Servitude, p. 136. 19 Quoted in Galenson, White Servitude, p. 137.

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Migration and Human Capital 887

tivity, and thus potentially important determinants of servitude duration. These characteristics probably gained importance over time. By the late seventeenth century, the demand for skilled servants increased and ser- vants were often employed as slave supervisors, which meant that ser- vant's qualities such as high ability, ambition, and managerial skills must have been sought for and rewarded by shorter length of servitude. Once again, merchants who dealt with the trade of servants had an in- centive to identify such qualities.

Even the observable surviving measures of skill and experience are rough and incomplete. The merchants, by inspecting, examining and in- terviewing prospective servants, must have had a better sense of the education of a prospective servant than indicated by his ability to sign. Similarly, work experience must have been conveyed better from ser- vants to merchants than is captured by a servant's age, which is the only indication for experience available in the registrations. A servant's oc- cupation, observable to us today, may indicate his skill, but we cannot see how good a carpenter, or cooper, or shoemaker he was. We also cannot observe how motivated and ambitious he was, and we cannot asses from the surviving data his ability to supervise slaves. The mer- chants must have been able to evaluate a servant's productivity better.

A MODEL OF DESTINATION CHOICE

Unlike African slaves, many Europeans migrated voluntarily in the hope of improving their lives. For those who financed the trip using the indentured contract, a main contractual clause was the colonial destina- tion. Abott Smith noted that:

… most striking of all evidences is that which shows servants preferring one colony over another . .. in one way or another, whether by published literature or by word of mouth, a certain amount of sound knowledge and honest opinion got about among prospective emigrants concerning the relative excellencies of various colonies.20

Based on his characteristics, each prospective servant could compare the conditions of the indentured contract in each colony and the expected prospects of various colonies, and choose his preferred destination. In our main analysis, prospective servants are assumed to choose between serv- ing in a mainland colony and serving in a West Indian colony.21

20 Smith, Colonists, pp. 57-58. 21 A second specifications allow servants to have three choices, namely mainland southern

colonies, mainland northern colonies, and the West Indies. Because the results are very similar and for ease of presentation, we present here only the binary choice model. Results from the three-choice specification are available from the authors upon request.

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888 Abramitzky and Braggion

Formally, we employ a switching regression model (type five tobit) that allows for two regimes (in our case migrate to the American mainland or migrate to the West Indies), a criterion function (a migra- tion rule that determines the regime) and two regression equations de- scribing the length of the servitude determination in the mainland and in the West Indies. This framework has been used to study migration, re- turns to schooling, and the way joining unions effects wages.22

Assume that an individual chooses his colonial destination, D , based on the difference between the servitude length in the mainland and the West Indies, LA – LiwI, as well as other individual characteris- tics that may affect one's taste for location, Zi

Di* = 6~Z, + 82[LiA – L,wI] + u (1)

where E(uj) = 0 and var(ui) is normalized to one without loss of general- ity. For every person, we either observe the length of the servitude in the mainland LiA if the servant migrated to the American mainland or

the length of servitude in the West Indies LiwI if he migrated to the West Indies. We do not observe the counterfactual length of term that a mi- grant to, say, the mainland would have served had he chosen the West Indies colonies instead. Note, however, that the length of the servitude reflects a servant's expected productivity, which can be written as a function of his observable personal characteristics Xi affecting expected productivity

Lu = PjX + Eiu (2) where j = WI,A and E(eO ) = OVj, var(eiA) = a22, var(eiwi) = a3.

Thus, if we can estimate the parameters /A and &I, then given a ser- vant's set of characteristics X1, we can predict the length of the servitude

in the mainland (West Indies) for actual migrants to the mainland (West Indies) as well the counterfactual length of servitude in the mainland (West Indies) for those who migrated to the West Indies (mainland).

An important fact to note is that actual migrants may not constitute a

random sample, so that E (LA D =1) = X~ + E (A D =1) and

E (L,I D = 0) = wX, + E (Ew, D = 0) and an OLS regression might produce biased estimators. The terms E (eA D = 1) and

22 On migration, see Robinson and Tomes, "Self-Selection"; and Ferrie, Yankeys. On returns to schooling, see Willis and Rosen, "Education." On unions and wages, see Lee, "Unionism."

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Migration and Human Capital 889

E(ew1 I D = 0) captures migrants' characteristics unobservable to the econometrician that are persistently correlated with the length of servi- tude. For instance, stronger and healthier individuals could choose to migrate to the mainland, and merchants potentially rewarded their strength and health with a shorter term of servitude. The econometri- cian, not being able to observe strength and health, will omit an impor- tant variable from his OLS regression and produce biased estimators. To properly estimate the model requires correcting the estimation for possible self-selection.

Intuitively, the econometrician can check whether servants' unob- servable characteristics from their migration decision are correlated with the duration of servitude. If the unobservable characteristics from

the migration decision are consistently associated with a longer duration of servitude, then migrants are negatively selected (e.g., they are weaker and less healthy). If, on the other hand, the unobservable characteristics from the migration decision are consistently associated with a shorter duration of servitude, then migrants are positively selected (e.g., they are stronger and healthier).

Formally, the servant's decision ruleD/* is unobservable, but his choice between the mainland, D = 1, and the West Indies, D = 0, is ob- servable

D = 1 if D =- ,Zi + 6 2 [LiA – LI] + ui ~=y + E 0 1 3) D = 0 if D,9 = Zi + S2[LiA – Lw,] + u, = 'W + 0 (3)

where Wi is observable and contains all the elements of X and Z.23 To capture the dependence between individuals' migration decisions and their duration of servitude, and assuming that (ei, EiA, EiWI) are distributed Trivariate Normal, it follows that:24

E (LW, I D = 0) = fXi + 013 ((4) S1-4o(y'Wj)

23 We are presenting a switching regression model, with endogenous switch, Maddala, Lim- ited Dependent and Qualitative Variables, p. 223. Although the distributional assumptions used in the analysis are standard, they are strong and might have substantial effect on the estimation. Heckman, "Varieties"; Manski, "Nonparametric Bounds"; and Newey, Powell, and Walker, "Semiparametric Estimation."

24 (Ei, iA, ' iW) are assumed to have the following covariance matrix

a? "12 "13 2U 2 23

r 1

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890 Abramitzky and Braggion

where 0 is the Normal pdf, D represents the Normal cdf, and

– (y'w ) I – (D(r"mi)

is the inverse mill ratio.25 The term

13- O(y'Wj) is the

magnitude of the self-selection of migrants to the West Indies, i.e., it is the magnitude of the effect of unobservable (to us today) characteristics of migrants to the West Indies on their servitude duration.26

Notice the difference between compensating differentials across colo- nies and servants' selection to the different colonies. The compensating differentials reflect differences in the quality of various colonies and are captured by the difference in the constants (between the mainland and West Indies) of regression. The servants' selection reflects differences in the quality of servants bound to the different colonies and is captured

by the term 13 for the West Indies and 23 -(y'W) for

the mainland.

The vector X includes individual characteristics thought to influence the length of servitude in the colonies: age, ability to sign, gender, oc- cupation and the season when the contract was signed. The elements of Z include age, ability to sign, gender and the servants' county of origin (see Appendix A for the definitions of counties). The parameters are identified under the restrictions imposed by the model.27 To identify 61

and 32, there must be at least one variable in X not in Z and vice versa. Both conditions are satisfied: Z includes variable not included in X-the

county of origin, and X includes variables not in Z-the season of de- parture and the occupation category, which are assumed to affect the

25 We are adopting here an identification assumption traditionally used in the literature of self selection (see Heckman and Sedlaceck, "Heterogeneity"): the proportionality assumption. Dif- ferences in the evaluation of unobservable characteristics between locations are captured in the constant term of the regression. Therefore, the coefficient on the inverse mill ratio just captures a pure supply effects determined by the relative capabilities of servants arriving to the colonies, and does not reflect different evaluation of unobservable characteristics in different markets.

26 In the same way, the expected length of servitude in the mainland is

E (LA D= 1)= AXi + 23 W) OD(y Wi)

and the term 23 W) 1- I(7 Wi)

represents the magni-

tude of the self selection of migrants to the mainland. 27 Note that the reduced form Probit (column 1 of Table 1 and Table 2) and the servitude du-

ration equations (columns 3 and 4 in Table 1 and Table 2) are not affected by the exclusion re- strictions of X and Z. However, the estimation of the structural Probit (column 2 of Table 1 and Table 2) does depend on the exclusion restrictions, which are required for identification. Under the exclusion restriction, a variable in X that is not in Z, such as the occupation variable, is in- terpreted as having an effect on the destination choice only through its effect on the servitude duration, but no direct effect on the destination choice.

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Migration and Human Capital 891

migration decision only through their effect on the servitude duration. Several works show pattern of chain migration from a certain British area to a certain colonial region: we therefore find reasonable that county of origins was a strong determinant of the destination choice.28 On the other hand, there is no reason to believe that just being from a certain county would have had an independent and separate effect on contracts' length. We rely on the work by Grubb and Tony Stitt to con- clude that season of departure affected the period of servitude rather than destination choice.29 Similarly, Smith and Galenson show that cer- tain types of occupations were appreciated by colonial planters and po- tentially they could have received better terms of servitude.30

The structural parameters of the binomial model were estimated via a three-step procedure.31 First, the reduced form equation is estimated by Probit maximum likelihood estimation to find yf. Then, using yf, we ob-

tain the Inverse Mill Ratio for each observation: O<ffi. ID (ffi

Second, equa-

tion (for both the West Indies and the mainland) is estimated by OLS.

That is, we run an OLS regression of LiA on Xi and (y, I)

and get

/jA and LiA. Third, equipped with LjA and Liwi, we estimate the structural

decision equation to find the determinants of colonial choice, and de- termine whether or not migrants were expecting shorter servitude in their destination choice.32

THE DATA SETS

Our data sources are the two most important and informative surviv- ing lists of servants registrations from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.33 The first is a list of 823 servants recorded in Middlesex

28 Bailyn, Voyagers; and Horn, "'To Parts"' and Adapting to a New World. 29 Grubb and Stitt, "Liverpool Emigrant Servant Trade," computed correlations between co-

lonial destinations and month of departure and did not find any clear pattern. 30 Smith, Colonists; and Galenson, White Servitude. 31 See Maddala, Limited Dependent and Qualitative Variables, pp. 223-28; and Amemiya,

Advanced Econometrics, pp. 399-402. 32 The standard errors of the r) coefficients have been corrected (using bootstrap method with

1,000 repetitions) for the fact that the regressor is an estimated, rather than observed, value. 33 Four other collections of servants recorded in Bristol (1654-1686), London (1683-1686,

1773-1775), and Liverpool (1697-1707) survived, but they lack information that is crucial to our analysis, as variables such as age, literacy, occupation, and the servitude duration were often not recorded. The Bristol Collection is transcribed in Coldham, Bristol Registers. The London collection is reported by Ghirelli, List; and the Liverpool register is reported by French, List.

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892 Abramitzky and Braggion

County between 1682 and 1684.34 The second is a list of 3,182 servants recorded in London between 1718 and 1759.35 Both lists contain de-

tailed information of the servitude contract, including the name, date of departure, gender, age, occupation, ability to sign, county of origin, co- lonial destination, recruiter's name, and length of servitude, that allow us to analyze prospective servants' migration decisions and the deter- minants of the servitude duration.

Our analysis is more meaningful when the full terms of the contract were recorded and when the length of servitude, rather than cash payments, was the main contractual clause. According to Galenson, this was not the case for adult servants, i.e., those over 21 years old, but was the case for minor servants.36 More specifically, for adult servants, cash payments were probably the main contractual clause but unfortunately, they were rarely recorded for adults. There is little variation in the length of servitude in adult contracts and four years of servitude appears to have been the norm.37

For minor servants, on the other hand, cash payments were consistently re-

corded but were rarely made. The length of servitude was the main source of variation in the contracts of minor servants. Thus, our analysis focuses on minors, which leaves us with 162 observations in the Middlesex sam- ple, out of which 86 individuals migrated to the mainland and 76 to the West Indies, and 1,904 observations in the London sample, out of which 1,087 moved to the mainland and 817 to the West Indies.

There is substantial amount of missing information in these records, most of which is occupation information. More than half of the minors did not have a recorded occupation. There is a debate regarding the in- terpretation of missing recorded occupations.38 Whereas Mildred Campbell argues that servants with missing occupation constituted a random sample of the servant population, Galenson holds that those without recorded occupation indeed did not have any professional

34 The data on servants who left from the port of the Middlesex county, 1682-1684, were re- trieved from microfilms of the original indenture records entitled Plantation Indentures and cre- ated by the London Metropolitan Archives. The original records can be found in the Middlesex Guildhall, in the United Kingdom, and they are also reported in Nicholson, Some Early Emi- grants; and Wareing, "Some Early Emigrants."

35 The data used for servants who departed from London, 1718-1759 come from microfilms of the original records, entitled Agreements to Serve in America and can be found at the Guild- hall, London. This source was transcribed by Kaminkow and Kaminkow, List; and Galenson, "Agreements."

36 Galenson, White Servitude.

37 Galenson, White Servitude, found that for minors, cash payments were recorded when made (in fewer than 6 percent of the contracts) and were almost always made to servants bound for four years. Because most adults were bound to serve for four years and because adults rarely appear to have served less than four years, Galenson concluded that for adults cash payments substituted for reduction of servitude below four years.

38 See Galenson, White Servitude, pp. 39-64, for a detailed discussion.

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Migration and Human Capital 893

skill.39 We consider two specifications, one of which excludes the occu- pation variable from the analysis, and the other treats missing occupa- tion as if the servant had no occupation. We report results from the lat- ter specification, but results from the former specification are qualitatively the same.40

ESTIMATION RESULTS

Our estimation results are presented in Table 1 for the Middlesex sample of 1682-1684 and in Table 2 for the London sample of 1718- 1759. The estimation results of the determinants-of-migration equations are presented in the first and second columns of both tables.41 The first column of Tables 1 and 2 shows results from the reduced-form Probit

regression (D = 1 if y Wi + ei > 0 and D = 0 otherwise), where the choice of destination is determined by individuals' observable characteristics Wi that contain both variables in Xi and in Zi, as well as by individuals' unobservable characteristics ei. The second column of Tables 1 and 2

shows results from the structural Probit (D = 1 if D -= 61Zi + 62[LiA –

Liwi] + ui > 0 and D = 0 otherwise), where the choice of destination is determined by individuals' observable characteristics Zi, as well as by the difference in expected duration of servitude in each destination and an unobservable component ui. The results from estimating the servi- tude duration equations in the mainland and in the West Indies are pre- sented in the third and fourth columns, respectively.

Migrants' Selection to Colonial America

John Riley was nineteen years old when he left Britain in the summer of 1722 to St. Christopher in the West Indies. He signed his indentured contract with a merchant named Christopher Veale from Shoreditch, Middlesex. Riley did not have a recorded occupation, but he could sign his indenture contract. Given Riley's observable characteristics (gender, age, occupation, literacy, and season of departure), our model predicts that he should have served in the West Indies for a little over three and a

half years. However, Riley's indentured contract assigned him five years of servitude, indicating that some factors that are unobservable to us prolonged his period of servitude.

Had Riley gone to the mainland, our model predicts that he would have served an even longer term, which reflects compensating differentials

39 Campbell, "Social Origins." 40 Results from the second specification are available from the authors upon request. 41 Description of the variables is reported in the Appendix.

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894 Abramitzky and Braggion

TABLE 1

MIDDLESEX SAMPLE: ESTIMATION RESULTS

(1) (2) (3) (4) Servitude Servitude

Reduced Structural Duration Duration Form Probit Probit West Indies Mainland

Constant 9.023** 16.97***

(3.902) (1.41) Lus – Lw1 -0.456

(0.500) Age -0.083** -0.202*** -0.245 -0.515***

(0.035) (0.033) (0.182) (0.058) Ability to sign -0.042 -0.086 -0.211 -0.391**

(0.103) (0.101) (0.172) (0.188) Gender -0.114 0.019 -0.192 -0.495**

(0.241) (0.192) (0.197) (0.239) County of origin Northern -0.184 -0.039

(0.164) (0.156) North central -0.129 -0.020

(0.186) (0.158) Western -0.073 0.112

(0.205) (0.149) Southern -0.105 0.037

(0.182) (0.160) Season of departure Fall or winter 0.087 0.402** -0.684

(0.119) (0.153) (0.541) Summer 0.702*** 0.153 -1.693**

(0.066) (1.257) (0.817) "Skilled" occupation 0.443** -0.042 -0.599

(0.086) (0.535) (0.411) No occupation 0.322** 0.223 -0.086

(0.126) (0.283) (0.236) Mill ratio 0.009 -0.935*

(0.801) (0.482) R2 0.35 0.71 LR chi2 88.33 66.67 N 162 162 76 86

Note: For variable definitions, see the Appendix.

between the mainland and the West Indies. At the same time, William Tayler possessed the same observable characteristics as Riley, and he left Britain in the same summer as Riley and even signed his contract with the same merchant (Christopher Veale). Tayler headed to Mary- land and was assigned to serve there for only four years. Although Tayler and Riley possessed the same observable characteristics, Tayler had unobservable characteristics such as health or physical strength that shortened his servitude whereas Riley had unobservable characteristics that prolonged his servitude.

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Migration and Human Capital 895

TABLE 2

LONDON SAMPLE: ESTIMATION RESULTS

(1) (2) (3) (4) Servitude Servitude

Reduced Structural Duration Duration Form Probit Probit West Indies Mainland

Constant 9.862*** 11.589***

(0.576) (0.322)

Lus – Lwi 0.054 (0.098) Age -0.029*** -0.036*** -0.323*** -0.332***

(0.008) (0.007) (0.021) (0.021) Ability to sign -0.084*** -0.079*** -0.006 -0.082

(0.024) (0.025) (0.065) (0.068) Gender 0.178*** 0.199*** -0.130 -0.269**

(0.045) (0.048) (0.165) (0.136) County of origin

Northern -0.135*** -0.136***

(0.040) (0.039) North central -0.071* -0.070***

(0.045) (0.044) Western 0.011 0.007

(0.044) (0.043) Southern 0.044 0.032

(0.037) (0.037) Scotland -0.177*** -0.186***

(0.056) (0.056) Ireland 0.012 0.019

(0.078) (0.079) Season of departure Winter -0.037 0.038 0.152*

(0.041) (0.095) (0.089) Fall -0.171*** 0.139 0.245**

(0.039) (0.107) (0.115) Summer -0.110*** -0.060 -0.003

(0.041) (0.101) (0.103) "Skilled" occupation 0.088*** -0.092 -0.218**

(0.034) (0.077) (0.097) No occupation 0.013*** -0.021 0.150

(0.030) (0.076) (0.094) Mill ratio 0.553** -0.903***

(0.237) (0.320) R2 0.39 0.44 LR chi2 143.53 100.77 N 1,904 1,904 817 1,087

Note: For variable definitions, see the Appendix.

We now turn to the regression analysis that formalizes and general- izes these examples. As shown in the third and fourth columns of both samples, the coefficients on the inverse Mill ratio are positive and big for servants bound to the West Indies in the latter sample and negative and big for servants bound to the mainland in both samples. These re-

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896 Abramitzky and Braggion

sults indicate that servants migrating to the West Indies were negatively selected and servants migrating to mainland colonies were positively se- lected.42 More specifically, our estimation suggests that in both the sev- enteenth and eighteenth centuries, an average servant who migrated to the mainland served about half a year less than predicted by his observ- able characteristics. A servant bound to the West Indies in the eight- eenth century served half a year more than his observable personal characteristics would indicate.43

The difference in the constant terms suggests that, when abstracting from personal characteristics, servitude was shorter in the West Indies than in the mainland. This reflects the higher general desirability of the mainland over the West Indies. The positive and negative coefficients on the Mill ratios (columns 3 and 4) imply that, abstracting from the compensating differentials, there was a negative selection of servants to the West Indies and a positive selection to the mainland.44

The strong selection effects imply that in the seventeenth and eight- eenth centuries, people who were of higher quality-as observed by their contemporaries but not by us-preferred mainland destinations over the West Indies colonies and that those who had lower unobserv-

able qualities were more likely to migrate to the West Indies. These findings are consistent with the historical evidence, which highlighted the fact that migrants to the West Indies were "lazy useless sort of peo- ple … ," and that mainland colonies offered more attractive opportuni- ties for talented servants than did West Indies destinations.45

42 When allowing a servant to choose between northern and southern colonies in the mainland, positive selection of servants to southern colonies such as Virginia and Maryland ap- pears to be stronger compared to northern colonies. Moreover, the results are robust to the in- clusion of the price of sugar in England.

43 Moreover, we find that the unobservable characteristics varied with gender and literacy. In particular, the unobservable qualities of men were better than those of women (i.e., the term

o (7 W) is, on average, bigger for men than for women) in both the United States and the l-CF(y Wi)

West Indies. For example, whereas an average men served in the mainland seven months less than his observable characteristics indicate, women only served four months less than suggested by their characteristics. In the West Indies, men served five months longer than suggested by their observable characteristics, compared to seven months for women. Similarly, literate indi- viduals seem to have brought with them better unobservable qualities than illiterate individuals.

44 The result is robust to the inclusion of year of departure, and birth cohort of the servant (constructed as year of departure minus age of the servant). On the distinction between selection and compensating differentials, see, for instance, Goddeeris, "Compensating Differentials."

45 Pitman, Development, p. 52. Continental colonies are believed to have provided better oppor- tunities than West Indies for talented individuals. Smith noted that in continental colonies: "there

was always a scarcity of labor; always land to be had; always a decent livelihood to be won by those who had the qualities necessary to win it. Thus the freed servant with his new clothes and his small stock of corn need never have lacked for employment. If he desired land and independence he could acquire them in time, even if not immediately on his freedom" (Colonists, p. 293).

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Migration and Human Capital 897

In terms of selection patterns over observable characteristics, our analysis shows (as reported in Tables 1 and 2, column 1) that servants who were more skilled (defined as carpenters, blacksmiths, spinsters, weavers, and shoemakers) were more likely to move to America's mainland. In the case of

the London sample this result is in contrast with that reported by Galenson:

according to his analysis skilled servants were more likely to migrate to the West Indies.46 The reason for this difference lies both on the definition of

skill and on the different methodologies employed: whereas Galenson com- putes the rough proportion of skilled servants in each colonial destination, we control in our regression for other servants' personal characteristics.

However, both Galenson's analysis and ours suggest that individuals who could sign their names were more likely to migrate to the West In- dies rather than to the mainland.47

It is interesting to notice that the selection over unobservable charac- teristics had a larger effect on the length of servitude than the ability to sign or occupation.48 This may either suggest the limited information contained in the observable variables as measures of education and

skills or reflect the relative importance of characteristics such as health and physical strength that we cannot currently observe and measure.

Returns to Human Capital

Galenson estimates returns to human capital in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by joining observations for the West Indies and the

Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, in his Letters from American Farmer published in 1782, writes that: "there is room for every body, in America. Has he any particular talent, or industry? he exerts it in order to procure a livelihood, and it succeeds … Is he a laborer, sober and indus- trious? he need not go many miles, nor receive many informations before he will be hired, well fed at the table of his employer, and paid four or five times more than he can get in Europe" (Smith, Colonists, p. 292).

According to Smith, West Indian colonies "presented no such satisfactory prospects. Except- ing Jamaica they were all of small size, and it was not long before the land was taken up." Ser- vants to the West Indies were described as "Artificers and Laborers that come from Europe, that soon grow lazy and Indolent." They were "Runagadoes and a loose sort of people" (Pitman, Development, p. 54). The English governor commented that a servant arriving to the West In- dies were "a lazy useless sort of people who come cheap and serve for deficiencies and their hearts are not with us" (Pitman, Development, p. 54). Smith asserts that "it is plain that no intel- ligent and informed man or woman would emigrate to the West Indies as a servant after the first years of settlements were over… No doubt there were some good servants, and some success- ful careers even in the eighteenth century, but we must look upon the white servant in the West Indies generally as being unfortunate individual, prized mainly for the color of his skin, unable to find work, apt even to conspire with slaves, a tragic outcast in the colonial world" (Smith, Colonists, p. 295).

46 Galenson, White Servitude, pp. 91-95. 47 Galenson, White Servitude. 48 The results of the probit estimation are robust to the inclusion of year of departure and birth

cohort.

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898 Abramitzky and Braggion

American mainland.49 It is implicitly assumed that the determinants of servitude duration are the same in both locations. Our econometric analy- sis of equation 2 reveals that the returns to human capital differ across co-

lonial destinations. In particular, during the period covered by our analy- sis, age was on average more rewarded in the mainland than in the West Indies. Servants' skills were more important determinants of the servitude

duration in mainland colonies than in the West Indies, especially in the eighteenth century. Servants who were occupied in the Old World in more skilled occupations as carpenters, blacksmiths and spinsters, served about three months less than other servants in the mainland, but got simi- lar terms in the West Indies. Women appeared to have been more valued in the mainland than they were in the West Indies.50o

Our results are consistent across the seventeenth- and eighteenth- century samples. In both samples we find compensating differentials such that, abstracting from personal characteristics, servitude was longer in the mainland compared to the West Indies. Women received a shorter period of servitude in the mainland in both the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the seventeenth century, age was more valued in the mainland colonies than in the West Indies, but in the eighteenth cen- tury this gap disappeared.

Notice that our estimators of the determinants of servitude duration

are not directly comparable with Galenson's.5' In particular, Galenson analyzes a pooled regression and places fixed effects on a thin selection of colonial destinations to measure compensating differentials.52 In our analysis the colonial destination is an endogenous variable, and thus it is not taken as given. In order to have a more powerful test of selection, we group the destinations in two broader categories: West Indies and American mainland.53 In our analysis the compensating differentials on colonial destinations can be measured by looking at the differences in the constants of the two human capital evaluation equations. Another difference between our analysis and Galenson's is that whereas Galen- son has dummy variables for each age group, we introduce a linear rela- tionship between the servitude's duration and age (results are robust for

49 Galenson, White Servitude, pp. 104-05.

50 Galenson suggests two possible reasons for the wage premium received by women. The first is that the demand for them was higher due to shortage of wives for colonists (women con- stituted less than 6 percent of emigrants in this sample), and the second is that women might have been more productive in certain household jobs (such as nursing and cooking) that were demanded by colonists.

5s Galenson, White Servitude, pp. 104-05.

52 The subdivision that Galenson makes of colonial destinations is the following: Antigua, Barbados, Jamaica, Other West Indies, Maryland, Virginia, Other mainland.

53 In another specification, we divide American mainland between Northern colonies and Southern colonies. Our results are robust to this specification.

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Migration and Human Capital 899

including age squared). Despite the differences, our results of the esti- mation of the returns to human capital are qualitatively similar to Galenson's. That is, in both colonial destinations and in both the seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries, we find that older servants had to serve a shorter period to repay their debt, women served shorter periods than men, and whereas literate individuals served a shorter period in the sev- enteenth century, literacy did not have a substantial effect on servitude duration in the eighteenth century.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

During the seventeenth century, the West Indian colonies were con- sidered the richest regions of the Americas. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Barbados's per capita income was 50 percent higher than the per capita income of the American mainland.54 By the begin- ning of the nineteenth century, however, the situation was reversed with the mainland colonies overtaking the Caribbean colonies.

The current research attempting to explain this different patterns of economic development has focused on the role of factor endowments and institutions. The debate has concentrated on which of the two fac-

tors has played a more important role. One perspective emphasizes that geography is the principal factor determining economic development.55 A second perspective lays emphasizes that institutions are the determi- nants of long run economic development.56 The geographic and institu- tional views are not mutually exclusive: geographical location can shape institutions, which, in turn, affect economic performance. In the context of the British colonies in the New World, Stanley Engerman and Kenneth Sokoloff describe how the different geographical envi- ronments of the American colonies, by favoring one type of crop over another, determined the degree of inequality displayed by each colonial society and the quality of institutions constituted.57

In contrast, by emphasizing the different quality of human capital ar- riving in various colonies, this article points out the possible importance of migrants' human capital in explaining the different patterns of eco-

54 Engerman and Sokoloff, "Institutions."

55 Diamond, "Guns"; Gallup, Sachs, and Mellinger, "Geography"; and Sachs, "Tropical Un- derdevelopment."

56North, Structure; North, Summerhill, and Weingast, "Order"; Hall and Jones, "Why Do Some Countries"; Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson, "Colonial Origins" and "Reversal"; Acemoglu, Johnson, Robinson and Thaicharoen, "Institutional Causes"; and Rodrick, Subrama- niam and Trebbi, "Institution Rule."

57 Engerman and Sokoloff, "Factor Endowment," "Institutions," and "Colonialism." Acemo- glu, Robinson, Johnson, "Colonial Origins" and "Reversal," also account for the effects of ge- ography on institutions.

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900 Abramitzky and Braggion

nomic development in the two regions." More specifically, our analysis indicates that both in the seventeenth and in the eighteenth centuries, mi-

grants to the West Indies were negatively selected and migrants to the mainland were positively selected in terms of their unobservable charac- teristics such as ability, motivation, ambition, physical strength and health. These features were associated with half a year reduction of servi- tude in the mainland and half a year increase of servitude in the West In- dies. If the type of destination selectivity by unobserved (to us) human capital characteristics that we found for indentured servants can be gener-

alized to other migrants, then this process may have contributed to the relative difference in economic development across regions in the Ameri- cas. In this sense, our analysis provides further support to the work of Glaeser et al., who have studied economic growth performance for a set of developed and developing countries between 1870 and 2000 and have shown that human capital is a fundamental determinant of the develop- ment of good institutions and a strong predictor of economic growth.59

Although the extent and size of the importance of human capital in ex- plaining the different patterns of economic development in the two re- gions is a topic for future research, we suggest here three possible chan- nels through which human capital may have affected the divergence between the economic development of the mainland and the West Indies.

First, human capital and education have a direct impact on economic growth and an indirect impact on economic development through their effect on institutions.60 The only observable measures of skill that sur- vived to our times are whether or not a servant could sign his contract and his occupation. The unobservable qualities detected by our analysis capture aspects of servants' education and general skills observed by the master that could have an important influence on economic activities. Under this perspective, better unobservable characteristics might have affected differently the economic growth and the development of insti- tutions of the West Indies and the mainland.

Second, as already discussed, health may be an important part of the unobservable characteristics in our analysis. Recent research suggests that between 10 percent and 29 percent of the share of the actual cross

58 Our analysis does not reveal whether good servants may have been attracted to the mainland because of its geography and natural endowment or because the mainland already had better institutions early on. Nevertheless, given our findings, the various explanations of the di- vergence of the two regions should take into account the divergence in the quality of human capital these regions attracted.

59 Glaeser, La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes, and Shleifer, "Do Institutions." 60 For the direct impact, see Becker, Murphy, and Tamura, "Human Capital"; Galor and Weil.

"Population"; Lucas, "On the Mechanism"; and Mankiw, Romer, and Weil, "Contribution." For the indirect impact, see Glaeser, La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes, and Shleifer, "Do Institutions."

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Migration and Human Capital 901

country variance in log-income per workers is explained by variation of health.61 It is reasonable to conjecture that similar results would hold in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century economies mainly characterized by agricultural production, where the health of human actors played an im- portant role in determining performance.

Third, the unobservable characteristics may consist of servants' en- trepreneurial skills, which can contribute to facilitate the adoption of new technologies and the construction of good institutions. Starting from the work of Lowell Ragatz, an important stream of historiography on the British Caribbean colonies depicts the West Indies as a techno- logically conservative environment.62 Planters were overcommitted to crops that exhausted the soil, and they would not adopt best practice techniques when available. Many of them did not live any more in the islands and left the management of the plantations to incapable and dis- honest managers. Historians also recognized the West Indies as a sys- tem incapable of organizing institutions that contributed to economic growth.63 In particular it was noticed that being "the white settlers, mostly young male, and drawn from a low grade set of people," with only a few gentlemen leaders and "no substantial number of those mid- dling Englishmen and Chesapeake societies" constructed bad institu- tions and a general lifestyle that lacked moral and intellectual values. The extent of the failure of West Indian planters is still an object of de- bate, but the historiography on the matter points out that Caribbean colonies were an environment technologically more conservative than the mainland colonies.64

In contrast, American mainland colonies had an environment more receptive of technology adoption. Alan Olmstead and Paul Rhode, for instance, show how cotton planters in the early nineteenth century were actively engaged in matching the technology and the environment.65 They were engaged in systematic research for better seed varieties ca- pable of producing high crops yields. This activity was conducted by the planters themselves and required an enormous amount of curiosity, motivation, and entrepreneurial skills.66

61 Shastry and Weil, "How Much"; and Weil, "Accounting for the Effect." 62 Ragatz, Fall.

63 Bridenbaugh and Bridenbaugh, No Peace; and Dunn, "Sugar." 64 For a re-evaluation of the role of the planters in the West Indies see Green, "Planter";

Sheridan, Sugar; and Ward, "Profitability." 65 Olmstead and Rhode, "Wait a Cotton Pickin' Minute!" 66 Notice, however, that this example may be a consequence of the good people arriving a

century earlier, or simply another outcome of whatever it was that made good people want to go to the mainland.

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902 Abramitzky and Braggion

Appendix: Variable Definitions Variable Description

Gender Woman = 1; Man = 0 Ability to write Sign = 1; Mark = 0 Winter, spring, summer, fall Indicated season = 1; otherwise = 0 American colonies

Mainland Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, New England, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia

West Indies Antigua, Barbados, Jamaica, St. Christopher, Santa Lucia English counties

Northern Yorkshire, Cheshire, Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmorland, Durham, Lancashire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire

North Central Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, Norfolk, Rutland, Hintingtonshire, Lincolnshire

Central Buckinghamshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Surrey, Bedfordshire, Middlesex, Kent, Hertfordshire, Warwickshire, Essex, Oxfordshire, Berkshire

Western Gloucestershire, Shropshire, Herefordshire, Wales, Staffordshire, Worcestershire

Southern Dorset, Cornwall, Hampshire, Sussex, Somerset, Wiltshire, Devonshire

"Skilled" occupations Carpenter, blacksmith, spinster, weaver, shoemaker = 1; otherwise = 0

No Occupation No occupation indicated = 1; otherwise = 0

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ADVERTISEMENTS FOR RUNAWAY SLAVES, INDENTURED SERVANTS, AND APPRENTICES IN THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE, 1795–1796

Author(s): Richard Wojtowicz and Billy G. Smith

Source: Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies , January, 1987, Vol. 54, No. 1 (January, 1987), pp. 34-71

Published by: Penn State University Press

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NOTES AND DOCUMENTS

Richard Wojtowicz Montana State University

and Billy G. Smith

Montana State University

ADVERTISEMENTS FOR RUNAWAY SLAVES, INDENTURED SERVANTS, AND APPRENTICES IN THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE, 1795-1796

Fugitives filled eighteenth-century America. Indians retreated west ward to evade white invasion, European immigrants fled the Old World to begin their lives again, and impoverished Americans roamed

from place to place in search of a livelihood.1 At the same time, people with various skin colors tried desperately to escape their bondage in the New World. When these slaves, indentured servants, and apprentices made a break for freedom, they often encountered citizens willing to apprehend them for the rewards their masters offered. Benjamin Franklin recounted how he was questioned while eloping from his apprenticeship, and that he uwas suspected to be some runaway servant, and in danger of being taken up on that suspicion."2 Blacks, mulattoes, Indians, and young whites could be challenged by any citizen, and if they were unable to produce papers certifying their freedom, then they

were liable to incarceration until the authorities were satisfied about

their status.3 If the threat of crime and physical violence contributes to the tensions and alienation in modern American cities, the level of

suspicion and scrutiny among strangers in early America must have created similar problems for that society.

Newspaper advertisements offering rewards for the capture and

34

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RUNAWAY SLAVES 35

return of runaways provide a cache of information about their physical and personal characteristics and their probable means of escape. Natu rally these records must be interpreted judiciously since the descriptions were reported by masters, some of whom may have been deceived by their workers or imagined their bound laborers as they wished them to be. Yet scholars have used such evidence profitably. Notably, Gerald R.

Mullin relied on notices for escaped blacks to interpret slave culture and personality types in eighteenth-century Virginia; other historians have drawn composite portraits of fugitive slaves.4 All of these studies, however, have focused on the south, and few scholars have examined these sources for data on servants or apprentices.5 The Pennsylvania Gazette, Philadelphia's foremost newspaper dur

ing the eighteenth century, enjoyed wide circulation in the Mid-Atlantic area and the Upper South.6 Between its establishment in 1728 and the end of the century, the Gazette contained thousands of notices for runaways, most of whom fled masters who lived within the region. (One irony of the publication of these advertisements, of course, is that Ben Franklin, one of the newspaper's founders, had himself fled from his apprenticeship).

All of the advertisements for runaway slaves, servants, and appren tices as well as the notices by officials who held actual or potential fugitives in their custody which appeared in the Pennsylvania Gazette in 1795 or 1796 are reproduced below.7 Some advertisements were pub lished several times; we included the repeated ones only in those few cases when they provided significant additional information. The date of publication appears at the top of the advertisement and the date of submission at its bottom. We have silently expanded some abbreviations and occasionally altered punctuation and spelling to make the text more comprehensible. Capitalized and italicized words remain as in the original.8

ADVERTISEMENTS FOR RUNAWAYS FROM THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE

January 7, 1795 Eight Dollars Reward

RAN AWAY from the subscriber, living in Pixton township, Dau phin county, about 6 miles from Harrisburg, on Friday, the 19th instant,9 a Negro BOY, named SAM, 17 years of age, 5 feet 9 or 10 inches high, well made, has very large feet, large featured, and thick lips,

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36 PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY

much pitted with the small-pox; had on when he went away, a brown coloured hunting-shirt, under jacket with strings to it, and trowsers of the same, a pair of coarse tow10 trowsers, and a linen shirt. It is probable he will change his name and clothes. Whoever takes up said Negro, and secures him in any jail, so that his master may get him again, shall have the above reward, and reasonable charges.

BENJAMIN DUNCAN December 26, 1794

January 7, 1795 Eight Dollars Reward

RAN AWAY, on the night of the 28th of November last, from the house of James Martin, in the Falls township, Bucks county, state of Pennsylvania, an Apprentice BOY, named WILLIAM STARKEY, between 17 and 18 years of age, about 5 feet 7 or 8 inches high, a little stoop shouldered; and brown complexion; took with him, one dark brown fulled linsey11 coat, one light coloured broadcloth ditto12 and one green ditto, three under vests, one of which was spotted velvet, one brown linsey, and one green ditto and a pair of old leather breeches, with a patch on the right knee, a pair of footed woolen stockings, with old shoes and large plated buckles, and a white hat. Any person taking up and securing said Apprentice in gaol, or otherwise, so that his master may get him again, shall receive the above Reward, and all reasonable charges paid, by applying to the subscriber, in the township aforesaid.

JOHN HULME December 15, 1794

January 7,1795 Six Dollars Reward.

RAN AWAY from the subscriber, Paper-Maker, in Lower-Merion township, Montgomery county, a German Servant MAN, named CONRAD HEIDI, about 22 years of age, about 5 feet 5 or 6 inches high, has redish hair, tied behind, a freckled face, down look, and slim; had on when he went away, a blue cloth surtout13 coat, a blue cloth sailor's jacket, a grey cloth under jacket, a pair of black velvet, and a pair of corduroy breeches, and shoes tied with strings. Whoever takes up the said Servant, and secures him in any goal, so that his master may have him again, shall receive the above Reward, and reasonable charges, paid by

FREDERICK BICKING. N. B.14 All masters of vessels, and others, are forbid to harbour or

carry him off, at their peril.

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RUNAWAY SLAVES 37

January 7, 1795 Four Dollars Reward.

RAN-AWAY from the subscriber, living in Stow creek township, Cumberland county, state of New-Jersey, on the 26th of November last, an Apprentice LAD, named DAVID STOGDIN, about 18 years of age, is streight built, well grown, has thick brown hair, which he sometimes wears tied behind; had on and took with him, a lead coloured thick cloth homespun coattee, almost new, very large in the sleeves, an out-side jacket of the same colour, much worn, a deep blue waistcoat, with two rows of metal buttons, one old lead coloured ditto, a new tow and linen shirt, one other ditto a little worn, a pair of redish coloured striped linsey trowsers, one pair of tow and linen ditto, one pair of woolen stockings, of a mixed blue and white colour, broken in the feet, neats leather15 shoes, with yellow metal buckles, a round small brim wool hat, almost new, a silk handkerchief, red, checked large with narrow stripes. Whoever takes up and secures said Apprentice, so that I get him again, shall have the above reward, and reasonable charges if brought home, paid by

DAVID AYARS. December 6, 1794.

January 14,1795 Eight Dollars Reward.

RUN-AWAY on Sunday, the 4th instant, an Apprentice BOY, named JOSEPH WHITE, by trade a Blacksmith, between 17 and 18 years of age, about 5 feet 7 or 8 inches high, of a dark complexion, with black streight hair; had on and took with him, a dark olive coloured cloth coat and vest, two pair of trowsers, the one fustian,16 the other milled linsey, a new, high crowned, wool hat, two pair of pale blue coloured stockings, two homespun linen shirts, almost new, and a pair of strong leather shoes with old buckles in them. Whoever takes up and brings home said Apprentice, or lodges him in jail in the States, shall be entitled to the above reward, and reasonable charges, paid by me,

WALTER LILLY, junr. East-Cain, Chester county, January 5, 1795.

January 14, 1795 Four Dollars Reward.

RAN AWAY from the subscriber, on Thursday the 25th of Decem

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38 PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY

ber, living in Lower-Salford township, Montgomery county, a Negro MAN, named JOE, about 5 feet 5 inches high, was 23 years of age last May, walks lame, has a piece of his little finger cut off; had on and took with him, a new mixture linsey coat, and under jacket of the same, a striped jacket of linen, blue and white stripes, two pair of trowsers, a pair of yellow linsey, and a pair of striped cassimer, two pair of stockings, one pair of pale blue yarn, ribbed, the other black wollen yarn, a new pair of shoes, a new high crowned hat, bound with black tape. Whoever takes up said Negro, and secures him in any jail, so that his master may get him again, shall have the above reward, and reasonable charges if brought home, paid by

JACOB REIFF, Senior. January 8, 1795.

January 21, 1795 Twenty Dollars Reward.

RAN away from the subscriber, living near Nottingham, on Patuxent river, Prince George's county, Maryland, a likely, active Mulatto slave, called HARRY, who since his departure has assumed the name of FLEET. He is about 22 or 23 years of age, and 5 feet 10 inches high; has

grey eyes and sandy coloured hair, which he wears turned up before, and very short and straight behind. He appears confused when spoken to, but when closely examined, much embarrassed. His cloathing cannot be particularly described, as he has been gone ever since July. By a letter from him to his father, dated the 17th of Sept. last, it appears that he was

then in Philadelphia, and he says he expected to sail for London in about two months. All masters of vessels are hereby cautioned against carrying off the said slave at their peril. Whoever takes him up, and secures him in goal, so that I get him again shall receive the above reward, and all reasonable charges for bringing him home.

MATHEW EVERSFIELD.

January 28, 1795 WAS committed to the gaol of Chester county, on the 13th of this

instant, a negro man, who calls himself JOE JENKINS, and acknowl edges to be a slave to MR. JAMES GLEGETT, of George-Town, state of Maryland, his master is hereby desired to come, pay the charges, and take him away, in 4 weeks from the date hereof, otherwise he will be discharged on paying his fees.

THOMAS TAYLOR, Gaoler. Jan. 20, 1795.

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RUNAWAY SLAVES 39

February 25, 1795 Half a Dollar Reward.

Ran away from the subscriber, living in Bridgeton, West-Jersey, an Apprentice LAD, named EZRA WESTCOT, about 14 years of age, has worked some time at the taylor's trade, is small of his age, and has a mole on his right cheek, near his mouth; had on, when he went away, a brown cloth coat and trowsers, a spotted swanskin17 vest, wool hat, muslin18 shirt, and some other cloaths. Whoever takes up said appren tice, and secures him, so that his master may get him again, shall have the above reward, but no charges paid by

ZACHARIAH LAWRENCE. February 16, 1795.

N. B. All persons are forewarned against harbouring said Boy.

February 25, 1795 Half a Cent Reward.

RAN-AWAY from the subscriber, on the 16th instant, a certain indented Apprentice, named JOHN CLERK; he is about 16 years of age; had on when he went away, a bottle green coloured cloth coat, a velvet waistcoat, a pair of cloth overalls, and a roram hat,19 all nearly new; he is very much given to drinking, has, lately, been often observed groggy in the store, and consequently so rude as to throw his shoes through the windows; he was corrected for taking money out of the drawer and getting drunk on Sundays, at an infamous cake and beer-house, after which he absconded. Any person who will bring him back to his master, shall have the above reward but no charges; for although he has activity to be useful, his habits are such as to render him unsafe to be trusted where goods are easily embezzled.

JOHN M'CLELLEN. Princeton, New-Jersey, Feb. 17, 1795.

March 4, 1795 Six pence Reward.

Ran away on the 9th instant from the subscriber, living in East Bradford township, Chester county, a Servant GIRL, named RACHAEL REECE, had two years and seven months to serve; she is very talkative, bold, and fond of the men; had on and took with her, a chip hat with a broad striped green, blue and yellow ribbon, three shifts,

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40 PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY

four short gowns, of different kinds, a yard and a half of striped linen, to

make up into a short gown, 4 stockings, two of which were blue, and the other white, and a pair of good leather shoes. Whoever brings her home to her master shall receive the above reward.

JOSEPH GEST. February 27.

March 11, 1795 WE the subscribers became bound, by an obligation, about the latter

end of the year 1791, in a certain penalty, to deliver up a certain Mulatto, or Black MAN, named WILLIAM LEWIS, if he should be proved a slave; and as the Black Man hath, for the most part, resided since the security was given, in Chester county, Pennsylvania, and no one having appeared to claim him: Therefore these are to give public Notice, that if he hath a master, or owner, he is desired to come within

30 days after the date hereof, and prove property, according to law, otherwise we shall hold ourselves free from the said obligation.

WILLIAM TINSLEY, JOSEPH PENNOCK.

West-Marlborough, Chester county, Feb. 20, 1795.

March 11, 1795 Five Pounds Reward.

Ran away on Sunday, the 1st instant, from the subscriber, an apprentice boy named JONATHAN PAUL, by trade a blacksmith, between 19 and 20 years of age, about 5 feet 7 or 8 inches high, stoop shouldered, brownish hair, and commonly wears it tied behind, grey eyes, pug nose, surly look, subject to very sore shins, has been lately cured, which may be easily seen, very heavy walk, took with him one dark blue cloth coatee, one short light coating jacket, with sleeves, two under vests, one of which was olive corduroy, the other Washington's rib, olive coloured, with metal buttons on each, three pair trowsers, one pair coating almost new, one ditto olive fustian, one ditto striped cotton, two pair grey woolen ribbed stockings, two pair shoes, one pair almost new, three shirts two coarse, and one fine, one calf-skin apron, almost new.?Whoever takes up and brings home said apprentice, or lodges him in jail in the states, shall be entitled to the above reward and reasonable charges by

CHRISTOPHER HERGESHEIMER. Germantown, Feb. 9.

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RUNAWAY SLAVES 41

March 18, 1795 Twenty Dollars Reward.

RAN-AWAY on Sunday, the 15th instant, from the subscriber, living in Lower Merrion township, Montgomery county, a Negro LAD, about 16 years of age, and goes by the name of CALEB BROWN, about 5 feet 5 or 6 inches high, has a round face, and somewhat of a down look, a

mark near one of his temples, speaks coarse, and leans forward in his walk; had on when he went away, a blue sailor jacket lined with white flannel, a linsey under jacket, striped brown linsey trowsers, Russia sheeting shirt, two pair of stockings, one pair blue, the other brown, calfskin shoes, and an old wool hat. Whoever secures said Negro in any gaol, so that his master gets him again, shall have the above reward, and reasonable charges, paid by

FREDERICK BICKING. March 15, 1795.

N. B. All masters of vessels, and others, are forbid to harbour or carry

him off at their peril.

April 1, 1795 Twelve Dollars Reward.

RAN-AWAY from the subscriber, living in Moreland township, Philadelphia county, on Sunday, the 22nd instant, an apprentice LAD, named George Bamford, between 18 and 19 years of age, was bred a farmer; light brown hair, pale countenance, slim made, wears his [hair] tied, grey eyes, slim legs, knock-kneed, and drinks to excess; had on and took with him, a roram hat, striped green cloth coattee, striped velvet vest, thick-set breeches, ribbed stockings, all new, two pair of shoes, a fulled linsey lead coloured coattee, linsey vest and trowsers, striped red and blue, one shift ruffled at the bosom, one flax and tow ditto, both new, two ditto of flax, much worn, muslin neckcloth, a new wallet, marked J. S. with whiter thread. Any person apprehending said Apprentice, and securing him in any jail, so that his master may get him again, shall receive the above reward, and reasonable charges.

All masters of vessels, and others, are forewarned, not to harbour or carry off said Apprentice.

JACOB SHEARER. March 25, 1795.

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42 PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY

April 22, 1795 Four Dollars Reward.

RAN away on the 24th of March last, an apprentice boy, named Daniel Greely, about 16 or 17 years of age, 5 feet 5 inches high, slim made, strait brownish hair, sometimes wears it tied; had on, and took with him, an old shirt, greyish cloth under jacket, a lightish lincey coattee, old buckskin breeches, a pair of striped corduroy ditto, pale blue yarn stockings, and half worn shoes, with plated buckles, also two felt hats, one nearly new. Whoever takes up and secures said apprentice, so as his master may get him again, shall have the above reward, paid by the subscriber, in Newtown, Bucks county, state of Pennsylvania.

STEPHEN TWINING. N. B. The said apprentice took with him a likely young dog, of a

greyish colour, belonging to his master. April 4, 1795.

April 22, 1795 Thirty Dollars Reward.

RAN-AWAY, on the 12th instant, from the subscriber, living in Upper Dublin township, Montgomery county, an Apprentice LAD, named MATTHEW BARNHILL, between 18 and 19 years of age, better than 5 feet high, remarkably thick set, fair hair, tied, very coarse featured, with large nose and eye-brows, has a scar on the right cheek down to the chin, his left great toe apt to be sore with the nail, his beard appears as if he might be more than thirty years of age, has very hairy legs: Had on, when he went away, a high crown castor hat,20 broadcloth

mixt coloured coattee, very much worn, with plated sugar-loaf buttons, spotted velveret21 vest, new cut and ribbed velvet breeches, with sugar loaf but-tons, and silver knee-buckles, grey yarn stockings which have been soaled, half worn neats leather shoes, with double chaped plated buckles, and a fine homespun linen shirt; he had two neckcloths, one white, the other black, is a shoemaker by trade, has two years and seven months to serve; he may loiter about and try to get work, as he had not much money. It is supposed he will make toward Pittsburgh, as his mother lives there with her son-in-law,?Finnemore. Whoever takes up said Apprentice, and secures him in any gaol so that his master may get him again, shall have the above reward, and reasonable charges if brought home to his master, paid by

HENRY TIMANUS. N. B. All masters of vessels and others, are forbid to harbour, conceal,

or carry off said Apprentice at their peril. April 16, 1795.

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RUNAWAY SLAVES 43

April 29, 1795 Eight Dollars Reward.

RAN away, in the evening of the 30th of March, from the subscriber, an apprentice boy, named Joseph Couch, about eighteen years of age, 5 feet 3 or 4 inches high, slender built, dark eyes, brown hair, sometimes wears it tied; had on, and took with him, two upper short jackets, made of home spun thick cloth, lead coloured, one of them new, double breasted, with large white metal buttons on, and three large buttons to each sleeve, the other single breasted, pretty much worn, two home spun waistcoats, of the same cloth, single breasted, one of them nearly new, one new roram hat, another wool hat, half worn, and sundry other cloaths, which cannot be described. Whoever secures the said boy in any goal, so his master may get him again, shall have the above reward, and reasonable charges paid if brought home by

JOSHUA THOMPSON. Salem, New-Jersey, April 10th, 1795.

N. B. All masters of vessels and others are forbid to harbour, employ or take said apprentice away, at their peril.

April 29, 1795 Four Dollars Reward.

RAN away from the subscriber, in Oxford township, Chester county, in the night of the 24th of March last, an apprentice lad, named John Ferguson, about 19 years of age; had on, and took with him, a cloth coat, fulled lincey jacket and overalls, and a pair of nankeen22 overalls, good shoes and stockings, and a good hat. Whoever takes up and secures said apprentice, so as his master may get him again, shall have the above reward and reasonable charges, paid by

Alexander Russel.

April 3.

May 6, 1795 WAS committed to the goal of Chester county, some time ago, a

Negro Man, who calls himself Sam. Roach, acknowledges to be a slave to Benjamin Duncan, of Dauphin county, near Harrisburgh. His

Master is hereby desired to come, pay charges and take him away, in four weeks from the date hereof, otherwise he will be discharged, on paying his fees.

THOMAS TAYLOR, Goaler. April 30, 1795.

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44 PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY

May 20, 1795 Four Dollars Reward.

RAN-AWAY from the subscriber, living in the town of Salem, on Saturday evening last, an Apprentice LAD, named Nathan Long, about 18 years of age, has black hair, which he commonly wears tied; had on and took with him, one fur and one felt hat, a jean coat, lapelled, and one light coating coattee, one fine and two coarse shirts, one pair blue cloth and two pair nankeen trowsers, and good shoes and stockings. Whoever will take up said Apprentice, and secure him in any gaol, so that his Master may get him again, shall receive the above reward and reasonable charges, paid by

JACOB HUFTY. Salem, New-Jersey, May 7, 1795.

June 10, 1795 Ten Dollars Reward.

RAN-AWAY from the subscriber, in Chester, on the night of the 2d of June, instant, an Irish servant LAD, named JOHN BOYLE, about 15 or 16 year of age, 5 feet 6 inches high, stout built, rocks and stoops a little in his walk, round fair face and ruddy complexion, dark short curly hair, and when spoken to appears bashful or diffident; had on and took with him, three shirts, one of which was check, the others white, one forest cloth coat turned, of a brown and yellow mixed colour, lapelled, one short brown sailor jacket, lined with white flannels, one pair of old brown trowsers of the same cloth, one ditto old jean, one ditto new striped ticking,23 one white waistcoat, one old blue surtout coat, a pretty good hat lined with white linen, with some other articles not easy to describe, among which is a piece of coarse napped cloth, the same as his jacket. Whoever will secure the above described Lad, shall receive the above reward. Should the said John Boyle incline to return, he shall be received as kindly as ever, and all former faults forgiven. Masters and owners of vessels are requested to attend to the above.

WM. R. ATLEE. Chester, June 4.

June 10, 1795 Four Dollars Reward.

RAN-AWAY from the subscriber, living in the township of Lower Alloway's creek, county of Salem, state of New-Jersey, on Monday morning last, a servant MAN, named ABNER CARTWRIGHT, about 23 years of age, about 5 feet 7 or 8 inches high, long light hair,

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RUNAWAY SLAVES 45

which he wears tied; had on when he went away, one striped nankeen coat, a spotted cotton jacket, a pair of stockings, half worn boots, a half worn roram hat, and what is very remarkable, he has lost his right ear. Whoever takes up said Runaway, and secures him in any gaol, so that his master may get him again, shall receive the above reward, and reasonable charges if brought home, paid by me,

JOHN BRIGGS. June 3, 1795.

June 24, 1795 Ten Dollars Reward.

RAN-AWAY from the subscriber, on the 29th of April last, an Apprentice BOY, named JAMES DUNBAR, about 18 years of age, 5 feet 7 or 8 inches high, down look, long dark hair, tied behind; had on and took with him a grey coloured short coat, with metal buttons, light coloured overalls, made of coating, one spotted velvet jacket, one ditto broad stripes, white and black, one ditto printed cotton, of a light colour, a round castor hat, a pair of neats leather shoes with buckles. Whoever takes up said Apprentice, and secures him in any gaol in this state, or the adjacent states, and will give information thereof to Michael Roberts, No. 92, Market-street, Philadelphia, or the subscriber, in Trenton, shall receive the above reward, and all reasonable charges.

JONATHAN DOAN. May 18, 1795.

July 1, 1795 Six-pence Reward.

RAN-AWAY on the 14th instant, from the subscriber, living in Horsham township, Montgomery county, a Servant GIRL, named ELIZABETH LIVINGSTON; had on a linsey petticoat and gown.

Whoever takes up the said Servant, shall have the above reward, and no charges.

PHEBE JONES. JUNE 26,1795.

July 8, 1795 Ten Dollars Reward.

RAN-AWAY from the subscriber, on the 19th ultimo,24 an indented Servant LAD, named JOHN CONNELL, lately from Cork, in

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46 PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY

Ireland, about 19 years of age, 5 feet 5 or 6 inches high, tolerably well set, brown hair, hazle eyes, his forehead and top of his head remarkably high, and of a parabolar form, speaks in the Irish dialect, and can converse in the Irish tongue, served some time to the cork making business before he came to America, in which, it is probable, he may endeavour to get encouragement: had on, when he went off, a shirt of white homespun linen, ticklenburg25 trowsers, a lead coloured vest, round black hat, and a pair of heavy shoes tied with strings. Whoever secures said Servant in any gaol, so that his master gets him again, shall receive the above Reward. Masters of vessels, and others, are requested to attend to the above, and not to harbour or take him off at their peril.

JAMES HUNTER, No. 37, North Second-street. Philadelphia, July 4, 1795.

July 8, 1795 Ten Dollars Reward.

RAN-AWAY from the subscriber, living in Pennsborough township, Chester county, on the night of the 28th instant, an Apprentice LAD to the shoemaking business, named JAMES MAXWELL, about 5 feet 6 or 7 inches high, well set, between 19 and 20 years of age, has a coarse dark complexion, long dark brown hair, which he commonly wore tied or quieued; had on and took with him, a new dark striped nankeen coat, stampt cotton waistcoat, red striped trowsers, a pair of striped linen ditto, a pair coloured tow ditto, 3 shirts, one of which was new, one roram and one wool hat, new shoes with pla-ted buckles. Whoever secures the said Apprentice, so that his master may get him again, shall have the above Reward, and if brought home, reasonable charges paid by

JAMES PASSMORE. June 28, 1795.

N. B. The said Maxwell went off in company with a Lad of the name of Isaiah Hollingsworth, about 16 years of age, and it is supposed they will continue together.

August 26, 1795 RAN-AWAY from the subscriber, on the night of the 10th instant, an

indented Servant LAD, named JOHN JOHNSTON, a native of Ireland, about 17 years of age, about 5 feet 4 or 5 inches high, short red hair, sandy complexion, grey eyes, pitted with the smallpox; had on and took with him, an old felt hat, old jacket without sleeves, toilinet26 stripe,

with the back part of country made linen, striped also, with a remarka

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RUNAWAY SLAVES 47

ble piece up the middle, two shirts, one new tow linen, the trowsers, both coloured dark olive. Whoever secures said Servant in the gaol of this county, shall have SEVEN DOLLARS Reward, and reasonable expences if brought home, paid by

JOHN MENOUGH, Junior. New-London Cross Roads, Chester county, August 17, 1795.

N. B. It is supposed the above servant is gone toward Carlisle, as he has relations in that place; he is ill provided for travelling, it is hoped the different ferries will be careful to examine such, &c.

September 2, 1795 Eight Dollars Reward.

RAN-AWAY, on the 24th instant, from the subscriber, living in Northampton township, Bucks county, a Negro MAN upwards of 40 years of age, goes by the name of BRAM, about 5 feet 5 or 6 inches high, leans forward in his walk, loves spirits, and is fond of a violin, one of which he took with him; had on when he went away, a light coloured cloth short coat, a striped pattern under jacket, a fine shirt, and a tow linen ditto, two pair of trowsers, one pair of black and white striped cotton, the other pair tow linen, a pair of black and white speckled cotton stockings, and a pair of light coloured worsted27 ditto, coarse leather shoes, and an old fine hat. Whoever secures said Negro in any gaol, so that his master gets him again, shall have the above reward, and reasonable charges, paid by

HUGH EDAMS. N. B. All masters of vessels, and others, are forbid to harbour or carry

him away. August 26, 1795.

September 2, 1795 Forty Dollars Reward.

RAN-AWAY from the subscriber, living in Oxford township, Ches ter county, state of Pennsylvania, the beginning of last October, a Negro

MAN, named JOE, about 24 years of age, near 6 feet high, of a tawney colour, much given to drink, playing on the fiddle, dancing and frolicking and his disposition is such, that it is expected he will continue so to do; it is thought unnecessary to describe his cloathing, being so long gone, it is supposed he has exchanged them with some of his associates; he has a large scar on his head, a little above his forehead, also a large scar on one of his feet, at the root of the great toe. Said fellow has a

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48 PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY

brother, named Abel Gibbens, who has worked in and about Philadel phia for some years, who is a freeman. I intended to set said slave free at a reasonable period, and still mean the same, it case he returns, or is brought to me. The above reward will be given to any person securing said fellow in any gaol, so that I get him again, and reasonable charges if brought home.

ANDREW LOWREY. August 24, 1795.

N. B. All masters of vessels, and others, are forbid harbouring or carrying him off, at their peril.

September 16, 1795 Six Dollars Reward.

RAN-AWAY, on the 7th instant, from the subscriber, an Irish servant LAD, calls himself AUTHUR O'NEIL, is stout and well built, about 16 years old, and 5 feet 5 or 6 inches high, fair complexion, short black hair lately cut square behind, has a scar on the side of his face near his eye, and has a heavy clumsy walk; had on an old high-crown'd wool hat, blue jacket, black home-made linsey under jacket, dyed tow trowsers, with a hole in the legs, old shoes with strings, and a leather apron tanned with allum. Who-ever takes up said servant, and secures him in any gaol in this state, and gives me information thereof, shall receive the above reward, paid by me, living in Kennet township near Kennet Square, Chester county.

WILLIAM MANSELL. September 14th, 1795.

September 16, 1795 Eight Dollars Reward.

RAN away from the subscriber, living in Salem county, New-Jersey, about three miles from the town of Salem, on the 13th instant, an indented servant lad, named JOHN TEST, about 14 years of age, slim

made and tall, with black hair; had on, and took with him, two hats, part worn, and a thick coat, with sundry other cloaths. Whoever secures said boy in any gaol of this state, or in the gaol of Philadelphia, so that his master may get him again, shall receive the above reward.

JOSIAH MILLER, N. B. All masters of vessels and others are forewarned, at their peril,

from taking off or harbouring said boy. September 14th 1795.

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RUNAWAY SLAVES 49

September 30, 1795 Forty Dollars Reward.

RAN away from the subscriber last night, two Negroe men. One named PETER, about twenty-eight years of age, five feet four or five inches high. He took with him one dark brown homespun worsted coat,

white cashmer waistcoat, jean olive coloured breeches, one fine and two coarse shirts, two light brown cloth coattees, one sagathy olive coloured coattee, one pair of old calfskin shoes, one pair of new shoes hob-nailed, two pair of stockings, one pair of large plated buckles, a new white hat, and one black hat. He is remarkably clear from swearing.

The other named POMPEY, about twenty-four years of age, five feet eight inches high, knock-kneed, and remarkably small legs. He took with him one clouded nankeen coat, fancy pattern'd jean striped waistcoat, nankeen trowsers, a homespun sagathy coatee olive coloured, a homespun striped cloth coat half worn, one pair of cotton stockings, one pair of yarn ditto, one fine shirt, two coarse ditto, two pair of linen trowsers, two pair of hob-nailed shoes, a new black hat and an old hat, besides a variety of other cloaths not mentioned. Said POMPEY is very fond of strong drink, and when in liquor is very quarrelsome. Whoever secures said run-aways in any gaol, so that the subscriber

may get them again, shall receive the above reward, or twenty dollars for either of them paid by

JOSEPH ELLIS. Gloucester county, New-Jersey, September 23d, 1795.

October 7, 1795 RAN-AW AY on the 10th of last May, a young Negro MAN, who

had 5 years and six months to serve, is short and thick, and has a down look, named CUFF, though he has changed his name at other times, and it is probable he may do so again; had on, when he went away, a white coattee and red waistcoat, olive coloured trowsers half worn, felt hat, and skipskin shoes. All masters of families are forbid to conceal, harbour

or hire him, if they do they shall pay 3 quarters of a dollar per day, as I have to pay that to them I hire, and masters of vessels are forbid to hire or carry him away. Let every one act the honest part, and see a certificate of freedom before they employ a Negro. Whoever takes up said Runaway, and secures him in the gaol of Philadelphia, shall have EIGHT DOLLARS REWARD and reasonable charges paid, by

REBECCA SANDHAM.

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50 PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY

October 14, 1795 Eight Dollars Reward.

RAN-away from the subscriber, living in Fairfield township, Cum berland county, West New-Jersey, on the 15th of September last, an indented servant lad, between 17 and 18 years of age, had on, when he

went away, one pair of striped homespun trowsers, a shirt and a wool hat; he is a well set lad, and has lost the fore finger of his left hand, at the second joint. Whoever takes said lad, and secures him, so that the subscriber may get him again, shall have the above reward.

PHILIP WESCOTT. October 14.

October 14, 1795 Eight Dollars Reward.

RAN AWAY from the subscriber, on or about the 2d day of August, an apprentice boy, named PETTIT BRITTIN, about 20 years of age, five feet nine or ten inches high, light complexion, his dress can't be described, as he took all his cloaths with him. Whoever takes him up, and brings him to me shall receive the above reward, and all reasonable charges paid, by

JOHN GORDON, No. 23, North Third-street, Philadelphia.

N. B. His parents live near Morristown, East-Jersey, and it is thought he is gone that way.

October 21, 1795 Forty Dollars Reward.

RAN-AWAY from the subscriber, living at the head of Bohemia, Cecil county, Maryland, on the 9th of August last, a Negroe man, named NED about forty years of age, 5 feet 8 or 9 inches high, of a yellowish complexion, forward and impertinent; had on a coarse tow linen shirt and trowsers, a high crown'd felt hat, and old corduroy or thickset waistcoat, a greyish mix'd cloth coat, and carries a large cane

with a brass head carved, and wears a belt round his waist, on account of

the rim of his belly being broke. The above Negroe worked with Jesse Holt and Samuel Torrance, in Horsham Township, Montgomery county, near Mrs. Ball's tavern these six weeks past, and calls himself Jack; it is likely he will leave that neighbourhood and change his name again, as he was pursued in that neighbourhood on Thursday last, by one of his young masters, who got all his clothes except the above mentioned.

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RUNAWAY SLAVES 51

Whoever takes up the said Negroe, and secures him in Philadelphia gaol, shall have THIRTY DOLLARS, or if brought home, the above reward and reasonable charges, paid by

ABIGAIL RYLAND. October 19.

October 21, 1795 Six Dollars Reward.

RAN away from the subscriber, living in Allen-town, East New Jersey, an apprentice lad, named John W. Jackson, by trade a weaver, about 17 years of age, of fair complexion, light strait hair, and blue eyes; had on, when he went away, a light bearskin coat, homespun linen jacket and trowsers, and a wool hat. Whoever takes up said lad, and brings him to his master, shall have the above reward and reasonable charges, paid by

JAMES GOLVIN. June 26, 1795.

N. B. It is supposed he is lurking about Queen-street, as his parents live there. All persons are forbid to harbour him at their peril.

October 21, 1795 Twenty-five Dollars Reward.

RAN away from Millstone, on Saturday, the 3d instant, a Negrhe lad, named NED, about 5 feet 7 inches high, well set, tolerable black, smooth skin, a small scar over one of his eyes, if attacked closely is apt to stammer in his answers, about 19 years old; had on, when he went away,

a short blue lappell'd coat with metal buttons, a browh short cloth jacket, and tow shirt and trowsers. Also ran away with the above Negroe, from the subscriber, in Trenton, a Negroe man, named DICK, about 28 years old, 5 feet 5 inches high, tolerable black smooth skin, has a bunch of bushy hair behind, and had his fore-top lately cut off; has scars on his back, having been several times flogg'd at the whipping-post; if attacked closely will stammer in his answers; had on, and took with him, an old fur hat, with a remarkable high crown and narrow brim, a blue surtout, and homespun trowsers. Whoever apprehends the above Negroes, and delivers them to ABRAHAM HUNT, at Trenton, or HENRY DIS BROW, at Millstone, Somerset county, New-Jersey, shall be entitled to the above reward, and all reasonable charges, or in proportion for either of them.

N. B. From information, it is evident that said Negroes, have crossed the Delaware into Bucks county, Pennsylvania.

October 12th, 1795.

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52 PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY

October 28, 1795 ONE DOLLAR REWARD.

RAN away from the subscriber, living in Waterford township, Gloucester county, state of New-Jersey, on Thursday the 8th day of October, an apprentice boy, named Elijah Toy, about nineteen years and ten months old, about five feet nine inches high; had on a suit of fustian clothes and a felt hat. Whoever takes up said run-away, and brings him home, shall receive the above reward.

ISAAC FISH.

November 11, 1795 Four Dollars Reward.

RAN away from the subscriber, living in Upper-Penn's Neck, Salem county, a Lad, about 18 years of age, 5 feet 9 inches high; had on and took with him an old brown coat, of superfine cloth, an old fustian ditto, a good fur hat, a pair of shoes with hobnails, and sundry other articles of cloathing unknown. Whoever takes up said run-away, and secures him in any gaol, so that his master may get him again, shall have the above reward, and all reasonable charges paid.

HENRY STYNER. November 10, 1795.

December 9, 1795 Thirty Dollars Reward.

RAN-AWAY from the subscriber, at Milstone, Sommerset county, in the State of New-Jersey, on the 3d day of October, a Negro LAD, named NED, 19 years old, about 5 feet 6 or 7 inches high, smooth skin, tolerably black, with a small scar over one of his eyes, has likewise a small one on his upper lip; if attacked closely will stammer in his answer, and speaks quick; had on when he went away, a short lappelled blue coattee, with large metal buttons, a brown cloth jacket and trowsers; it is thought he will change his apparel; he went away with a Negro man belonging to Abraham Hunt, of Trenton, who since has been taken, and says he parted with the aforesaid Negro near Bucking ham, in Bucks county, Pennsylvania. Any person taking up and securing the said Negro in any gaol, so that his master may get him again, shall have, by applying to Lewis Bender, inkeeper, at the sign of the Black Horse north Second-street, Philadelphia, the sum of Twenty Dollars, with reasonable charges, or the above reward if brought home to the subscriber at Millstone.

HENRY DISBRON. December 4, 1795.

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RUNAWAY SLAVES 53

December 9, 1795 Six Cents Reward.

RAN away, on the 24th of September last, from the subscriber, near Swedesborough, Woolwich township, Gloucester county, an apprentice lad, named William Elliott, about five feet ten inches high, stout built, long black hair, and very talkative, had on, and took with him, a clouded green coat, light coloured surtout, with metal buttons, and high crown hat. Any person securing said run-away, so that his master may get him again, shall have the above reward, but no charges, paid by

SAMUEL OGDEN.

January 6,1796 Twenty-four Dollars Reward.

RAN-away, last night, from the subscriber, in Concord township, Delaware county, two apprentices to the paper-making manufactory, one named HUGH GLENN, near 20 years of age, 5 feet 10 inches high, has light hair, fresh coloured, and slender made; had on, when he absconded, a London brown coattee, thickset jacket, spotted flannel under jacket, light cloth trowsers, and a half worn wool hat, and took with him a clouded nankeen coat and plain nankeen pantaloons. The other named THOMAS CARNY, 5 feet 7 inches high, dark complex ion, black hair, and has lost one of the joints of his fore finger on the left hand; had on a London brown coattee, thickset jacket, light cloth trowsers, and a half worn wool hat, and took with him a clouded nankeen coat and trowsers. Whoever takes up and secures said appren tices, so that their master may get them again, shall have the above reward, or Twelve Dollars, and reasonable charges, for either of them.

MARK WILCOX. Dec. 26,1795.

January 13, 1796 RAN-AWAY from the subscriber, on the 19th of December last, an

apprentice lad, named Alexander Weldon, aged 19 years, about 5 feet 8 inches high. Whoever secures said apprentice in any gaol, so that I may get him, shall receive a reward of six pence halfpenny, and if brought home reasonable charges will be paid by

JAMES COLEMAN. Bristol Island, Bucks county, January 7th, 1796.

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54 PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY

March 2,1796 Ten Dollars Reward.

RAN-AWAY from the subscriber, in Oxford township, Chester county, on the 13th day of this month, a Negro man, named ALE, he is a stout well set fellow, 24 years of age, about 5 feet 9 inches high, well acquainted with all kind of country work; Had on when he went away, a short coat and trowsers of grey coating, the trowsers tied with red tape, striped cotton jacket, blue stockings, shoes tied with thongs, an old high crown'd felt hat. The above reward will be paid on my receiving said Negro, and reasonable charges if broght home.

WILLIAM PINKERTON. Oxford, Feb. 22, 1796.

March 16, 1796 Fifty Dollars Reward.

RAN-AWAY from the subscriber, at Three Mile Run, near New Brunswick, Somerset county, New-Jersey, in July 1794, a MULATTO NEGRRO MAN, named PETER, about 5 feet 6 inches high, 30 years old, slim built, narrow face and sharp chin, is very talkative, and has large glaring eyes, he has been owned by the following persons in Somerset county, viz. first by Mr. Beekman, of Griggstown, next by Squire Hoogland, afterwards by Captain Baird, both of the same place; he was afterwards owned by Mr. Brokaw, at Ricefield, from whom the subscriber purchased him. Any person taking up said Negro, securing him in gaol, and giving information to his master, shall have Forty Dollars, and if sent home, shall be intitled to the above reward of Fifty Dollars.

REM GARRITSEN. March 7, 1796.

N.B. The above Negro was seen in Philadelphia in January last, and is supposed to be lurking thereabouts.

March 16, 1796 WAS committed to my custody, on the first day of February, 1796, a

certain NEGRO MAN, who has went by different names, viz. MOSES WHITE, alias, DICK HATBAND, but says he is free, and was born of free parents in the county of Sommerset, state of Maryland, but says he left Maryland about four years since, and lived with Thomas Beason, butcher, near Wilmington, Brandywine, state of Delaware: he is about 5 feet 10 or 11 inches high, very black, and about 26 years of age. His

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RUNAWAY SLAVES 55

master, if he has any, is requested to come and take him away, otherwise he will be sold in three weeks from this date, for his expences, by

JOHN BURY, Jailer. Lancaster, March 8, 1796.

March 16, 1796 Six Gents Reward.

RAN away on the 22d instant, an apprentice boy, named Hubberd Baker, about nineteen years of age, about six feet high, of yellow com-plexion;?had on when he went away, a linsey coat, westcoat and overalls?a checked woolen shirt; it is not known what other cloaths he took with him. Whoever takes up said apprentice and delivers him to his

master, or lodges him in any goal, so that his master can have him again, shall receive the above reward, but no charges paid by

PHILIP JACKSON. Kingston, Luzerne county, Feb. 25, 1796.

March 23, 1796 EIGHT Dollars Reward.

RAN away from the subscriber, an indented servant boy, named James Hand, has dark bushy hair, about 16 years of age: Had on, and took with him, a jean coattee, mixt cloth coattee, waistcoat and trowsers of the same, good felt hat and good shoes, besides other clothes. Whoever takes up said boy and brings him home, or secures him in any gaol, so that his master may get him again, shall receive the above reward, and reasonable charges, paid by

JOHN WARE. Baken's neck, Cumberland county, West New-Jersey, March 14, 1796.

March 23, 1796 EIGHT Dollars Reward.

RAN away from the subscriber, an indented servant boy, named Evans Scott, about 17 years of age, slender made, strait hair, sometimes wears it tied: Had on, and took with him, a snuff coloured coat, a mixed nankeen coattee, a pair of thick cloth trowsers, two pair of woollen stockings, two pair of shoes, three linen shirts, a half-worn fur hat, besides other clothes. Whoever takes up said boy, and brings him home, or confines him in any goal, so as his master may get him again, shall have the above reward, and reasonable charges, paid by

SMITH BOWEN. BRIDGETOWN, MARCH 14, 1796.

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56 PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY

APRIL 6, 1796 COMMITTED to the gaol of the city and county of Philadelphia, a

Negro man, who says his name is NED, and the same person who was advertised on the 19th October, 1796, by Abigal Ryland of Cecil county, in the state of Maryland. His owner is desired to pay charges and take him away, as he will be dealt with according to law. Philadelphia Gaol, April 1, 1796.

April 6, 1796 Twenty Dollars Reward.

RAN away last night from their respective masters in this city, the three following indented German servants: 1. Christian Henry Mal chowff, aged about 26 years, sandy hair, fair complexion, about 5 feet 9 inches high, rather slight built, shrill voice, very much addicted to pleasure, and a great gambler. He had with him an excellent dark brown mixed superfine cloth coat, a lead coloured short waisted cloth coat, and other articles of dress, and generally looks neat and makes a good appearance, a tailor by trade. 2. John Henry Matthias, aged about 28 years, a very great sloven, fond of smoaking, and very lazy, about 5 feet 10 inches high, boney and stout made, stoops, in-kneed and very clumsy in his manner, pockmarked, has lost a fore tooth, light, almost sandy hair, which he wears very full at the sides, and twisted and turned up behind; had on a blue superfine cloth coat with yellow buttons, a green twilled old silk waistcoat, fustian breeches with white buttons, on which are engraved a Griffin crest, a round hat almost new, shoes with ribbons, and blue ribbed stockings, by trade a hair-dresser. 3. Henry Daniel Matthias, brother of the last mentioned servant, aged 24 years, light hair, inclining to sandy, which he wears tied and remarkably bushy, ruddy complexion, blue eyes, in both which he has a remarkable cast, good teeth; he is about 5 feet 8 inches high, slender made, in-kneed, rather clean in his dress; had on a dark coloured surtout coat, buttons of

the same, lead coloured corduroy breeches, a pair of fancy striped cotton stockings, and shoes tied with ribbons, very long quartered, round hat half worn. As these servants were treated with great kindness by their masters, it becomes the duty of every man to prevent their making off. The two last having very little craft about them, their desertion is imputed to the artifice of the first who has proved himself to be a very

worthless, designing and ungrateful character. Whoever will apprehend the said three run away servants, and confine them in any prison, shall receive Twenty Dollars Reward or a proportion of that sum for each?by applying to the Printers hereof. Philadelphia, March 28, 1796.

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RUNAWAY SLAVES 57

April 13, 1796 Ten Dollars Reward.

RAN-AWAY from the employ of the subscriber, living near Wil mington, on the 28th of December, 1795, a Negro man, named PETER, the property of Elisha Price, Esq; of Chester, who had bound himself and heirs to liberate him, on condition of his serving him faithfully four years from the 1st of October last. Said Peter is 39 or 40 years of age, about 5 feet 6 or 7 inches high, square and well built, a little bow-legged, a smooth tongued artful fellow, a noted liar, a great villain, and fond of liquor. He will probably change his name and endeavour to pass for a freeman. He had on when he went away, a new homespun cloth coattee and trowsers of a light colour, an old velvet jacket, and new strong shoes with strings. He understands farming and driving a team, can play on a fiddle, and took one with him belonging to his fellow-servant, and

money belonging to another of his comrades. Said fellow has been a run away almost ever since he was 20 years of age; he has lived in New-Jersey, where he changed his name to Jeffery Homes; has been a voyage or two to sea; has lived in Philadelphia, in Bucks county, and almost every part of Chester county. In September last, he lived with Mr. John Crozer, in Delaware county, where he says he has an Indian wife; but as he has children by four black women, to all of whom he says he is lawfully married, it is not known to which (if to either of them) he will apply to conceal him. Said Peter had leave of absence for four days at the time he ran away, with a permit to pass and repass to and from Delaware county, to see his acquaintance there, and to deliver a letter to his master, Elisha Price, Esq; and to return on the 28th of December, 1795, but he has not delivered the letter, nor been seen in Chester since.

Whoever takes up and secures said fellow in any jail, so that his master may get him again, shall receive the above reward, and if brought home, all reasonable charges paid by Elisha Price, Esq; in Chester, or by the subscriber, on his farm, near Wilmington.

PETER JAQUETT. Long-Hook, January 6, 1796.

N. B. All persons are hereby forbid to employ or harbour said negro.

April 13, 1796 Twenty Dollars Reward.

RAN-away from the subscribers this day, a servant man, named William Williams, about six feet two inches high, very boney, walks stooping, about thirty-two years of age; had on when he went away, an old large brim round crowned hat, half cocked, an old light coloured

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58 PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY

cloth coat and trowsers, light plush vest, strings in his shoes, and is an indented servant to Richard Gibbs; likewise an indented servant man, named Thomas Brown, supposed to be about thirty years of age, straight short black hair, dark eyes, much pitted with the small pox, about five feet seven inches high, roman nose; had on when he ran-away, an old light brown sailor's jacket, new linen trowsers, good shoes with strings, square crowned fur hat, and is indented to Samuel Nicholson. Whoever takes up said servants, and secures them in any goal, so that their

masters may have them again, shall receive the above reward, and all reasonable charges paid, or ten dollars for either.

RICHARD GIBBS, SAMUEL NICHOLSON. Salem county, West New-Jersey, April 3, 1796.

April 20, 1796 RAN-away from the subscriber, living in Bensalem township, Bucks

county, in the state of Pennsylvania, on the 12th instant, a negro slave, named ISHMEAL, well set, about five feet eight inches high, very sensible, and of a genteel behaviour, something of a scholar, about thirty-eight years of age, his sight somewhat bad, a blemish in one eye, if not both, but scarcely perceivable, the little finger on his right hand lays flat, the others on the same hand somewhat stiff, with a cut near his elbow, which left a scar; he is subject to drink; had on, when he went away, a led coloured full linsey coattee, trowsers of the same, a waistcoat near the same, with striped back, a new surtout coat near the same colour, a light cloth coat and waistcoat of the same, one brown coat, two pair of blue woolen footed stockings, much darned, one good fur hat, and one felt ditto. Said fellow plays well on the fiddle. Any person securing said negro in any goal, so that his master may have him again, shall receive four dollars reward, and reasonable charges.

NATHANIEL VANSANT.

April 20, 1796 RAN away from the subscriber, in Hopewell township, county of

Cumberland, and state of Pennsylvania, on the 9th instant, an indented servant boy, named William Watson, about fifteen years of age, of a fair complexion, and short hair; had on, and took with him, two coats, the one long, the other short, jacket and overalls, all of thick cloth filled with grey wool, two shirts, one new, the other old, good shoes, and two pair of stockings, a new pocket bible, and an ink-stand. The same boy got hurt

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RUNAWAY SLAVES 59

in his left elbow when at school, and can hardly comb his own head with said hands. Whoever takes up said boy, and lodges him in any gaol out of this state, shall receive Twenty Dollars, and if in the state, Eight Dollars, with reasonable charges, paid by

ARCHIBALD MUSTARD. March 11th, 1796.

May 18,1796 WAS committed to my custody, on the 11th instant, a Negro man, on

suspicion of being a run-away, who calls himself JACK WILSON, and says his master's name is John Hopkins, and lives in Mountholly. Said Negro is about 5 feet 8 or 9 inches high, wears his hair tied, and of a yellow complexion. His master, if any he has, is requested to come, prove property, pay charges, and take him away, or he will be sold out for the expences, as the law directs, in two weeks from the date of this advertisement, by

CLEMENT ACTON, Sheriff of Salem county, New-Jersey. May 11, 1796.

May 18, 1796 Six Dollars Reward.

RAN-away from the subscriber, on the 8th of this instant, May, living within two and a half miles of West-Chester, an apprentice lad, named FRANCIS COX, between sixteen and seventeen years of age; had on, and took with him, three shirts, two pair trowsers, one pair pieced at the bottom, two sleeveless jackets, one of striped linen, the other linsey, his outside garment a blue coatee, the body a deep blue, and the sleaves a pale blue twilled cloth, an half worn wool hat, and good shoes with strings. He has a remarkable scar over his eyebrow, has a down look, speaks thick, lisps in his speech, and has dark brown hair.

Whoever secures him in any gaol in this state, or delivers him to his master, shall have the above reward, and reasonable charges if brought home, paid by

DANIEL FITZPATRICK.

May 25, 1796 Twenty Dollars Reward.

RAN-away, on the 9th instant, an indented servant lad, named CHARLES ROBESON, about 18 years of age, 5 feet 7 inches high,

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60 PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY

brown hair tied sometimes, is much pitted with the small pox, speaks generally English; had on and took with him, one green linsey coat, a striped pattern jacket, a good felt hat, four home spun shirts, two pair linsey trowsers, one pair yellow and white striped linen ditto, and one pair tow ditto. Whoever takes up said servant, and secures him in any gaol of this or the adjacent states, and will give information thereof to Mr. DANIEL VANDERSLICE, No. 89, Callowhill-street, Philadel phia, or to the subscriber, in New Providence township, Montgomery county, shall receive the above reward.

PETER GUSTER. May 20, 1796.

May 25, 1796 Twenty Dollars Reward.

RAN-AWAY last evening, from the subscriber, an indented German servant, aged about 32 years, named JOHANNES GUNEN, about 5 feet 6 or 7 inches high, has grey eyes, a fresh coloured face, short dark brown hair, he speaks little English, though talkative, if indulged, he says he can speak French, and understands it well, low Dutch is his native tongue; he took with him a variety of clothes, is a farmer brought up, says he was in the French army some time, and then set sail to America from Amsterdam; it is supposed he wears a short white homespun coat, a cocked hat flopped down before, corduroy ribbed breeches, and white jacket. Whoever secures said servant in any gaol, so that his master may get him again, shall have the above reward, paid by the subscriber, in the township of Tredryffrin, county of Chester, and state of Pennsylvania.

WATER LEEVE. May 23d, 1796.

May 25, 1796 Twenty Dollars Reward.

RAN-away last evening, from the subscriber, an indented servant German man, aged about 23 years, 5 feet 6 inches high, named CONRAD FREYBERGER, has grey eyes, a light sallow complexion, his hair, which he wears short, is light coloured and straight, he speaks but little English, though talkative, if indulged, in his own language, or in low Dutch, which he speaks very well; he took with him a variety of clothes, is a baker by trade, and says he came from the Duke of

Wertemberg's dominions. Whoever secures said servant in any gaol, so

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RUNAWAY SLAVES 61

that his master may get him again, shall have the above reward, paid by the subscriber, in the township of Upper-Merion, county of Montgom ery, State of Pennsylvania.

ISAAC MOORE. May 23, 1796.

June 15,1796 RAN away, on the 24th instant, from the subscriber, living in

Frankford, 5 miles from Philadelphia, an apprentice boy, named CLEMENT SMITH, by trade a mason; about 18 years of age, 5 feet 7 or 8 inches high, of a fair complexion, short bushy hair, and is pitted with the small-pox; had on, when he went away, a pair of striped homespun trowsers and a homespun shirt, a striped under jacket, and an old drab coloured coattee much worn, and took with him two pair of new

shoes, and a pair of yellow Nankeen trowsers; he talks both English and German, but is no scholar in either. Whoever takes up and secures the said apprentice, so that his master may get him back again, shall have TEN DOLLARS reward, and reasonable charges, if brought home, paid by DANIEL THOMAS, in Frankford. Frankford, May 31, 1796.

June 15,1796 Twenty Dollars Reward.

RAN away, on the evening of Sunday, the 12th of June, instant, a Dutch servant man, named HENRICUS BECKER, but calls himself HENRY, about 24 or 25 years of age, 5 feet 4 or 6 inches high, has a down look, black curly hair, his upper lip very black, and not much beard; he speaks low, and I think does not hear well; had on, and took with him, one pair of pumps, one pair of soaled shoes, one pair of brown cotton stockings, nankeen coloured jacket and breeches much faded, a muslin handkerchief, which he generally wears tied behind, a blue cloth coat lined with dark blue shaloon,28 with large brass or metal buttons with small knobs on them, a new shirt, and a rorum hat; he also took with him a Dutch Roman prayer book, and an English and Dutch grammar. He calls himself a butcher, but can do very little at the business. Whoever secures said runaway within 150 miles shall have the above reward, if 200 miles Thirty Dollars, and reasonable charges if brought home, paid by

GEORGE G. WOELPPER. Philadelphia, June 14, 1796.

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62 PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY

June 15,1796 WAS committed to the gaol of Chester county on the 8th of June, a

Negro man, who calls himself Aaron Anderson, and acknowledges he is a slave to Mr. Sidney George, in Middle Neck, in Cecil county, in the state of Maryland. His master is hereby requested to come, pay charges, and take him away, in eight weeks from the date hereof, otherwise he will be discharged at that time, by paying his fees.

BENJAMIN MILLER, Gaoler, West-Chester, June 6, 1796.

June 15,1796 WAS committed to the gaol of Chester county, on the 28th day of

May, a Negro boy, who calls himself John Aaron, and acknowledges he is a servant to Mr. John Ross, of Germantown, Philadelphia county.

His master is hereby requested to come, pay charges and take him away, in four weeks from the date hereof, otherwise he will be discharged at that time, by paying his fees.

BENJAMIN MILLER, Gaoler, West-Chester, June 6, 1796.

June 22,1796 Eight Dollars Reward.

RAN away from the subscriber, in Falls township, Bucks county, on the 12th instant, an indented Negro boy, named JEREMIAH PETER JULIS, 17 years of age, about 5 feet 7 or 8 inches high, streight made, and large fore teeth; had on, and took with him, a good wool hat, two shirts, two pair of trowsers, one of which striped, a dark overjacket, two coloured under ditto, a pair of new shoes with double leather strings, and an old pair newly mended and hob-nailed. Whoever takes up said apprentice, and lodges him in gaol so that his master gets him again, shall receive the above reward.

MOSES COMFORT. Sixth month, 14th, 1796.

July 13, 1796 Fourteen Dollars Reward.

RAN away from the subscriber, on the 25th instant, an apprentice to the joiners business, a lad 19 years of age, named ASA PIATT, about 5 feet 6 inches high, sandy complexion, thick set, knockkneed, and squints a little with one eye, had on and took with him, two coats, one of superfine mixed cloth, the other a bottle green, four under jackets, of

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RUNAWAY SLAVES 63

different kinds, two pair of overalls; two pair of stockings, and two pair of shoes. Whoever takes up said lad, and secures him in any gaol or workhouse, so that his master may get him again shall have the above reward, and reasonable charges, if brought home, paid by

JOHN GREEN. Easton, Northampton county, June 30, 1796.

July 13,1796 Sixteen Dollars Reward.

RAN away from the subscriber, living in Norrington township, Montgomery county, an apprentice boy, named Henry Roosin, about five feet seven inches high, a little marked with the small pox, and has light coloured hair; nineteen years of age; he took with him a dark blue coat, with large buttons, one yellow stripped nankeen coattee, buff cassimer jacket, one pair of thicksett and one pair of tow trowsers, and a pair of coarse shoes, lately soaled. Whoever secures said apprentice, so that his master may get him again, shall have the above reward, and all reasonable charges, paid by

LEONARD VANFOSSEN. June 30th, 1796.

July 20, 1796 Three Pounds Reward.

RAN away from the subscriber, living in Chester township, Burling ton county, New-Jersey, on Delaware, about 10 miles above Philadel phia, on the 9th instant, an apprentice lad, named Benjamin Muckle wain, about 19 years of age, and about 5 feet 10 or 11 inches high, he is slender made, round shouldered, light complexion, somewhat freckled, long thin visage, short strait hair, has a down look, and an impediment in his speech; had on, when he went away, a light brown lindsey coattee,

with wooden buttons, olive fustian under jacket and trowsers, all new, a low crowned black felt hat, bound black grained neat's leather shoes, with plain steel buckles, brown homespun shirt, took with him a dirty tow frock, with some things tied up in it, unknown what. Whoever will take up said apprentice, and bring him to his master, or secure him in any gaol within 50 miles of Philadelphia, so that his master may get him again, shall receive the above reward, and reasonable charges paid by

CALEB ATKINSON. N. B. As he has expressed an inclination for the sea, all Masters of

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64 PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY

vessels are therefore forbid to carry him off, at their peril; but if any person should incline to take him, his indenture may be purchased. Ginnaminsink, 7th mo. 13th, 1796.

July 27, 1796 Five Cents Reward.

RAN away from the subscriber, on the 26th of May last, an apprentice lad, named JACOB CHOOPER; had on, when he went away, an Infantry hat and coat, and took with him other cloathing; he is of dark complexion, and 20 years of age. Whoever takes up said apprentice, shall have the above reward, and no charges, paid by

GEORGE SELLERS.

July 27, 1796 Eight Dollars Reward.

RAN-AWAY from the subscriber in the township of Mannington, county of Salem, and state of New-Jersey, on seventh day night last, an indented servant man, named PAUL RAIRDON, a native of Ireland, about 5 feet 8 or 9 inches high, some pitted with the smallpox, sandyish hair and fair complexion; had on, and took with him, a swanskin sailor jacket, homespun shirt and trowsers, and felt hat; a woman went with him, said to be his wife, who has a very mean appearance. Whoever takes up said run-away, and delivers him to th? subscriber, or secures him in any gaol, so that he may get him again, shall receive the above reward, and reasonable charges, paid by

ZADOCH STREET. Mannington, July 18th, 1796.

August 10, 1796 Twenty Dollars Reward.

RAN-AWAY yesterday morning from the subscriber, living at Haddonfield, in Gloucester county, state of New-Jersey, an indented black lad, named MARK NOER, nearly seventeen years of age, about 5 feet 8 inches high, has a remarkable long head, and large hands and feet; had on, and carried away with him, a roram hat, an old beaver hat, two coattees, one of them olive fustian, the other blue forest cloth, white and

black cross-barr'd waistcoat, olive fustian trowsers, black grain neats leather shoes, tied with strings, and other cloathing. Whoever takes up said lad, and secures him in Gloucester gaol, at Woodberry, so that the

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RUNAWAY SLAVES 65

subscriber may have an opportunity to dispose of him, shall be entitled to the above reward.

JOHN EST. HOPKINS. 8th month 8th, 1796.

August 10, 1796 ONE CENT REWARD.

RAN-AWAY from the subscriber, on the 3d of July, an apprentice boy to the blacksmith business, named JOHN ADAMS, about eighteen years old, about 5 feet 7 or 8 inches high, sandy hair; had on, when he went away, a drab coloured coattee, striped muslin jacket, and nankeen trowsers. Whoever takes up said run-away, and will bring him home, so that his master may get him again, shall have the above reward, but no charges, paid by

WILLIAM HANSELL. DARBY, AUG. 6, 1796.

August 17, 1796 Five Dollars Reward.

RAN away from the subscriber, living in Abington township, on the 8th of August, instant, a servant boy, named Lewis Evans, between seventeen and eighteen years of age, 5 feet eight inches high, light hair, and tied, smooth face, and a scar under one of his eyes; had on, and took

with him, a second hand beaver hat, mixt grey coat, striped cotton jacket, the stripe runs cross ways, dyed homespun tow trowsers, a pair of new calf skin shoes. Whoever takes up said servant, and delivers him to the subscriber, shall receive the above reward, paid by

THOMAS LEEDOM, On the plantation of Robert Fletcher.

August 24, 1796 Thirty Dollars Reward.

RAN away from the subscribers, on Staten-Island, on the 13th instant, three NEGRO MEN, one named SAM, belonging to John Journey, thirty-five years old, about five feet ten inches high, middling slim built yellowish complexion, one of his front teeth broke, stoops, and plays on the fiddle.

NEEN, about twenty-one years old, near six feet high, slim and straight, very black, wears his hair tied, big ankles, and clumsey footed. WILL, belonging to Barnet Parl?e, about twenty-two years old, five

feet seven inches high, stout built, yellow complexion, a large scar on his

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66 PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY

forehead and on one of his cheeks, some impediment in his speech, and occasionally wears his hair tied. Their dress would be difficult to describe, as they took changes with them. Whoever takes up said Negroes, and returns them to the subscribers, near the Old Blazing Star, or secures them in any gaol, and gives information that they may be had, shall receive the above reward, and reasonable charges, or ten dollars, with charges, for each of them.

JOHN JOURNEY, ALBERT JOURNEY, BARNET PARLEE. August 15th, 1796.

September 7, 1796 Sixty Dollars Reward.

RAN away yesterday in the forenoon from the subscriber, living in Strasburg township, Lancaster county, in the state of Pennsylvania, the following indented servants, viz.

John Flaugh, born in Saxony, about 27 years of age, of a low stature, stout built, has black hair, and is of a tolerable fair complexion, had on, when he went away, a good hat, a red home made coating jacket, corduroy breeches, white stockings, and a new pair of shoes, tied with thongs, and is a Mason by trade.

Christian Nagle, born in Prussia, about 25 years of age, a little taller than Flaugh; has straight sandy hair, of a fair complexion, and a Taylor by trade, had on, when he went away, a brown home made cloth coat, a pair of bottle green corduroy trowsers and jacket, a good pair of shoes, and a wool hat, almost new, and speaks broken English.

Conrad Dratz, a Hessian, about 24 years of age, is tall and strong built, has black curled hair, which he wears sometimes tied; had on, when he went away, a brown home made cloth coat, almost new, a red home made cloth jacket, a pair of bottle green corduroy trowsers, a good pair of shoes, and a good wool hat, speaks very little English. Whoever takes up the said servants, and secures them in any gaol, so that their

master may have them again, shall receive the above reward, or twenty dollars for any or either of them, besides reasonable charges, paid by

MICHAEL WITHERS. September 7th, 1796.

September 7, 1796 Twenty Dollars Reward.

RAN away from the subscriber, the 27th of this instant, an indented servant man, named JACOB PHASKEL, about 18 years of age, 5 feet 7 inches high, tolerably well set, long black hair, tied with a black thick set

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RUNAWAY SLAVES 67

ribbon, dark eyes and eye brows, his forehead bold, his visage long, and his face full of small red pimples. He took with him a square crown castor hat, about half worn, two tow and flax shirts, and four pair of trowsers, one pair of new nankeen trowsers, that tied at the ancles, with a rip in the upper part of the thigh, and vest of the same, a buff colour, one pair of striped lye coloured flag trowsers, a scarlet vest with fustian back, two waistcoats, and a clouded nankeen and a fustian coat, a pair of old shoes newly patched and soaled, and had remarkable long great toes.

Whoever secures said servant in any gaol or brings him home to his said master, shall have the above reward, and all reasonable charges, paid by

MOSES QUINBY. Amwell township, Hunterdon county, New-Jersey, 9 mo. 6th, 1796.

September 14, 1796 WAS committed to the gaol of Chester county, on the 29th of August,

a negro man, who calls himself ABRAHAM, and acknowledges he is a slave to Mr. JOHN M'CLEARY, of Cecil county, in the state of

Maryland. His master is hereby requested to come, pay charges, and take him away, in six weeks from the above date, otherwise he will be discharged at that time, by paying his fees.

BENJAMIN MILLER, Gaoler. West-Chester, August 31st, 1796.

September 14, 1796 WAS committed to the gaol of Chester county, on the 1st of

September, a negro man, who calls himself DANIEL, and acknowl edges he is a slave to Mr. RICHARD HEATH, in the state of

Maryland. His master is hereby requested to come, pay charges, and take him away, in six weeks from the above date, otherwise he will be discharged at that time, by paying his fees.

BENJAMIN MILLER, Gaoler. West-Chester, September 3, 1796.

September 21, 1796 Eight Dollars Reward.

RAN-AWAY from the subscriber, living in Waterford township, Gloucester county, state of New-Jersey, a mulatto man, named BOB, about 27 years old, and about 5 feet 6 inches high; had on, when he went away, a fustian suit, a castor hat, neats leather shoes tied with buckskin

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68 PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY

strings; he had a scar on his chin. I forewarn all Captains harbouring him. Whoever secures him in gaol, shall receive the above reward.

ISAAC FISH. September 4th, 1796.

September 28, 1796 Ten Dollars Reward.

RAN away, on the 22d of the 6th month last, from the subscriber, living in West-Nottingham, Cecil county, in the state of Maryland, JEREMIAH FAGAN, better than eighteen years of age, light grey eyes, fair skin, and freckled, about five feet eight or nine inches high, short curly dark brown hair, pretty talkative, and apt to swear, when angry, this country born; had on and took with him, a drab coloured coat, with large metal buttons, a short coat, ditto with wooden buttons, both lined with blue and brown lindsey, one fine shirt, two coarse, ditto, fustian jacket and trowsers, olive colour, one pair of coperas and one pair dyed trowsers, two wool hats, one new, coarse leather shoes, with large carved buckles, he is fond of driving a team. Whoever takes up said servant, and secures him in any gaol, so that his master may have him again, shall be entitled to the above reward, and if brought home, reasonable charges, paid by

WILLIAM HAINES. Sept. 27th, 1796.

October 12, 1796 Six Cents Reward.

RAN-AWAY, on the 9th instant, from the subscriber, living in Woolwich township, Gloucester county, state of New-Jersey, an apprentice boy, named WILLIAM RICHARDS, seventeen years of age, five feet eight or nine inches high, very cross-eyed. Whoever takes up said apprentice, and brings him to his master, shall have the above reward, but no charges.

DANIEL MELFORD. N. B. All persons are forbid harbouring him at their peril.

October 12th, 1796.

November 9, 1796 Two Dollars Reward.

RAN-away from the subscriber on Saturday last, an apprentice, named Thomas Nixon, he is a fair countenanced lad, about 17 years of age; had on when he went away, a blue cloth coat, fustian trowsers, a

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RUNAWAY SLAVES 69

round hat, &c. and carried with his several articles of cloathing which cannot well be described. The above reward will be paid for bringing him to his master, or giving information so as he may be had.

JOHN M'GLELLEN. N. B. All masters of vessels are forwarned not to carry him off, and all

persons not to trust him on my account. Frankfort, November 7th.

November 30, 1796 Six Gents Reward.

RAN-AWAY on the 29th ultimo, from the subscriber, living in Goshen township, Chester county, an apprentice lad, named WIL LIAM CINSER, about 17 years of age, a short thick set fellow, round visage, short brown hair; had on a hunting shirt, cloth jacket and tow trowsers, when he went away. Whoever takes up the said apprentice, and brings him home, shall be

entitled to the above reward, but no charges. SAMUEL GARRET, junr.

Nov. 30.

December 7, 1796 Six Cents Reward.

RAN away from the subscriber, on the 21st of September, a bound girl, named Sarah Newton, about seven years of age, fair complexion, black hair and dark eyes; had on a striped cotton short gown and brown petticoat, when she went away. Whoever takes up said girl, and brings her to me, at No. 143, North Front-street, shall receive the above reward, but no charges.

JOHN PATTERSON. PHILADELPHIA, DECEMBER 7, 1796.

December 14, 1796 Seven Cents Reward.

RAN-AWAY from the subscriber, on the 20th of November, an apprentice boy, by trade a Miller, named JOHN TANNER, between 19 and 20 years of age, about 5 feet 7 or 8 inches high, light hair; had on,

when he went away, a new coat, jacket and trowsers, all of clouded nankeen, and took with him a light colourd broad-cloth coat, a striped jean jacket, and mixed red and blue broad-cloth jacket, two pair of trowsers, one striped purple and yellow, the other fulled lindsey, three shirts, one fine, a fur hat, bound with velvet, two pair of yarn stockings,

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70 PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY

and a pair of new shoes, and other cloaths. Whoever takes up said apprentice, and will bring him home, so that his master may get him again, shall have the above reward, but no charges paid, by

BENJAMIN CHAPMAN. WRIGHTSTOWN, NOV. 28, 1796.

NOTES

1. On the wandering poor in early America, see Douglas Lamar Jones, "The Strolling Poor: Transiency in Eighteenth-Century Massachusetts," Journal of Social History, 8 (Spring, 1975), 28-54; Gary B. Nash, "Urban Wealth and Poverty in Pre-Revolutionary America," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, VI (Spring, 1976), 545-584; Allan KulikofT, "The Progress of Inequality in Revolutionary Boston," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., XXVIII (July, 1971), 375-412. Descriptions of the predicaments of some of these individuals are available in Billy G. Smith and Cynthia Shelton, "The Daily Occurrence Docket of the Philadelphia Almshouse: Selected Entries, 1800-1804," Pennsylvania History, 52 (July, 1985), 183-205.

2. L. Jesse Lemisch, ed., Benjamin Franklin: The Autobiography and Other Writings (N.Y., 1961), 37.

3. See the notices below by officials who had picked up individuals who they believed to be runaways. Similar cases appear in Philadelphia's Vagrancy Dockets, 1790-1797, Phila delphia City Archives, City Hall Annex.

4. Mullin, Flight and Rebellion: Slave Resistance in Eighteenth-Century Virginia (London, 1972); Lorenzo J. Greene, "The New England Negro as Seen in Advertise

ments for Runaway Slaves," Journal of Negro History, 29 (April, 1944), 125-146; Daniel E. Meaders, "South Carolina Fugitives as Viewed through Local Colonial Newspapers with Emphasis on Runaway Notices 1732-1801," Journal of Negro History, 60 (April, 1975), 288-319.

5. Sharon Salinger used a few advertisements for escaped indentured servants in "Colonial Labor in Transition: The Decline of Indentured Servitude in Late Eighteenth Century Philadelphia," 22 (Spring, 1981), 165-191.

6. The title of the newspaper, originally The Universal instructor in all arts and sciences; and Pennsylvania Gazette, was changed to The Pennsylvania Gazette when Franklin assumed its ownership in 1729. The newspaper's name changed several more times during the next nine decades of its existence, but always maintained Pennsylvania Gazette as part of its title.

7. All issues of the weekly newspaper are extant for these two years except for the few weeks after Dec. 14, 1796.

8. If the entire advertisement were italicized, we printed it in an unitalicized form.

9. Instant: of the current calendar month.

10. Tow: coarse broken flax or hemp fiber prepared for spinning.

11. Linsey or Linsey-wolsey: coarse woolen stuff first made at Linsey in Suffolk, England, and very popular in the America.

12. Ditto: the same as the aforesaid.

13. Surtout: an outer covering or garment.

14. N. B.: nota bene; take notice.

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RUNAWAY SLAVES 71

15. Neats leather: made from the hide of a bovine animal.

16. Fustian: a type of cloth originally manufactured at Fusht on the Nile; it contained a warp of linen thread and a woof of thick cotton.

17. Swanskin: a fleecy cloth like Canton flannel used especially for linings.

18. Muslin: generally a delicately woven cotton fabric. 19. Roram hat: made of a woolen cloth with a fur face.

20. Castor hat: originally either made of beaver's fur or intended to imitate such. By the 18th century it was often made of rabbit's fur.

21. Velveret: a variety of fustian with a velvet surface.

22. Nankeen: an imported yellow cotton cloth manufactured in Nankin, China.

23. Ticking: either a case or covering containing feathers, flocks, or the like to form a mattress or pillow, or the strong hard linen or cotton material used for making such cases.

24. Ultimo: in or of the month before the present one.

25. Ticklenburg(s): a kind of coarse linen cloth. 26. Toilinet: a kind of fine woolen cloth.

27. Worsted: a woolen fabric or stuff made from well twisted yarn spun of long-staple wool combed to lay the fibers parallel; first made at Worstead in England.

28. Shaloon or Shalloons: a woolen fabric made in Chalons, France.

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A Mumper among the Gentle: Tom Bell, Colonial Confidence Man

Author(s): Steven C. Bullock

Source: The William and Mary Quarterly , Apr., 1998, Vol. 55, No. 2 (Apr., 1998), pp. 231-258

Published by: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2674383

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A Mumper among the Gentle:

Tom Bell, Colonial Confidence Man

Steven C. Bullock

S OMETIME in late spring I74I, a man in clerical attire entered a Princeton, New Jersey, tavern. Magistrate John Stockton immediately recognized the Reverend John Rowland, an important figure in the reli-

gious revival then taking place in the region. Stockton hurried over to invite the visiting worthy to his house. To his surprise, the man responded that Stockton was mistaken; his name was not Rowland. Remarking the strong resemblance, the embarrassed Stockton apologized. The visitor, however, had spoken the truth, perhaps the last time he would do so for nearly a week. He was not Rowland, who was on a preaching tour with William Tennent, Jr., a member of the Middle Colonies' most prominent clerical family. Stockton did not realize it, but he had met an even greater celebrity-the famous confidence man Tom Bell.1

Bell's tavern appearance seems to have been a trial run. The next morn- ing, he hastened to a nearby town to introduce himself to a prosperous farm family as the revivalist. The ruse worked. The self-proclaimed Rowland was invited to deliver the Sunday sermon. He lodged with his hosts for the remainder of the week, seemingly preparing his sermon, perhaps even coun- seling and praying with townspeople and family members. Then, going to church on Sunday with the family, he suddenly claimed to have forgotten his sermon and took the family's best horse to retrieve it. The congregation never heard "Hell Fire Rowland." When the family returned home, they dis- covered their guest, their horse, and their valuables gone.2

Steven C. Bullock is associate professor of history at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. A ver- sion of this article was given as an E. Jerry Whipple Lecture at Willamette University, October 1997. He thanks Joel J. Brattin, John L. Brooke, Richard L. Bushman, Ann Fabian, Wayne Franklin, Robert A. Gross, Peter Hansen, David Jaffee, Jackson Lears, John Nerone, David Samson, David Waldstreicher, and Daniel E. Williams for helpful comments and the National Endowment for the Humanities and the George A. and Eliza Gardener Howard Foundation for financial support.

1 On the episode discussed here and the subsequent paragraph see, besides the general accounts of Bell noted below, Richard S. Field, "Review of the Trial of the Rev. Wm. Tennent for Perjury, in 1742," Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society, 6 (1853), 30-40; Henry W. Green, "The Trial of the Rev. William Tennent," Princeton Review, 40 (i868), 321-44; and Trenton Historical Society, A History of Trenton, i679-I929, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1929), 2:626-29. For the symbolic importance of Rowland in the New Side-Old Side Presbyterian split see Marilyn J. Westerkamp, Triumph of the Laity: Scots-Irish Piety and the Great Awakening, i625-i760 (New York, i988), 170-71, I80-8I, 192-93.

2 Rowland's nickname is noted in Field, "Review of the Trial of the Rev. Wm. Tennent," 35. For a discussion of the real Rowland by a contemporary see Gilbert Tennent, A Funeral

William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Series, Volume LV, Number 2, April i998

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232 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

The elegant deception (for months afterward residents believed the thefts the work of the real Rowland) was only one of Tom Bell's more spec- tacular swindles. Expelled from Harvard in I733, Bell enjoyed a nearly twenty-year career in crime that took him as far south as Barbados and as far north as New Hampshire. The Pennsylvania Gazette reported in I743 that he had been to "every Colony on the Continent, and . . . some Parts of the West-Indies" and that he "knows and talks familiarly of all Person[s] of Note as if they were of his Acquaintance." Newspapers record the use of eighteen names besides Rowland. In the Carolinas alone, Bell posed as Nathaniel More, Robert Middleton, John Campbell, Nathaniel Butler, and Captain Randall from Havana. In Barbados, he was the son of the late William Burnet, former governor of New York and Massachusetts. As these poses indicate, Bell's impostures went beyond acting the part of a minister. His frauds, the Pennsylvania Gazette warned, included "personating different People, forging Bills, Letters of Credit, &c. and frequently pretending Distress."3

Such exploits made Bell not just a common thief but one of the most famous colonial Americans. One hundred stories about Bell appeared in American newspapers from I738 to I755-enormous coverage at a time when British America's few papers concentrated on international news and pub- lished only one issue a week. This fascination continued after his public career ended. A Boston publisher included Bell's name on the title page of a humorous pamphlet in I762, seven years after the last newspaper report of his adventures. Even in I790, an Elizabethtown, New Jersey, magazine reprinted a story on Bell taken from an Irish periodical published eight years before. Although Carl Bridenbaugh's description of Bell as "the most widely known individual in all English America before the advent of the revolution- ary generation" cannot be sustained-George Whitefield's celebrity eclipsed Bell's-few if any native-born Americans outside of politics and religion achieved similar notoriety.4

Sermon, Occasion'd by the Death of the Reverend Mr. John Rowland, Who departed this Life, April

the i2th, I745. Preach'd at Charles-Town, in Chester County, April the i4th, I745 (Philadelphia, 1745), 40-48. Rowland's own account of his career, which omits the Bell incident, is printed ibid., 49-72, as A Narrative of the Revival and Progress of Religion, in the Towns of Hopewell, Amwell, and Maiden-Head, in New-Jersey, and New-Providence in Pennsylvania. In a Letter to the Rev. Mr. Prince, Author of the Christian History. By the Rev. Mr. John Rowland. John Gillies, Memoirs of Rev. George Whitefield, ed. C. E. Stowe (Philadelphia, 1859), 53n, presents a perhaps apocryphal anecdote that portrays people "in a state of insensibility" because of the power of Rowland's preaching. The town where Bell acted as Rowland cannot be located precisely. George H. Ingram, "The Two Hundred and Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the Beginning of Lawrenceville Presbyterian Church," Journal of the Presbyterian Historical Society, 12 (1924-1926), 95, suggests that it may have been Hopewell (now Pennington) or Amwell.

3 Penn. Gaz., Feb. IO, 1743. Newspaper reports place Bell in New York City alone during 1738, 1743, 1744, 1746, 1747, and 1749-

4 Bridenbaugh, "'The Famous Infamous Vagrant' Tom Bell," in Bridenbaugh, Early Americans (New York, i98i), 148. A Serious-Comical Dialogue Between the Famous Dr. Seth Hudson, and the Noted Joshua How (Boston, 1762). The title also promises "A Touch on TOM BELL." "Story of THOMAS BELL, a Native of America," The Christian's, Scholars, and Farmer's Magazine (Elizabethtown, N. J.), 2 (1790), 364-65.

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At first glance, the prospect of wringing truths out of one of the century's most notorious liars seems remote. Bridenbaugh spent years tracking the man, noting "I have pursued him in the colonial newspapers as resolutely as Inspector Javert did Jean Valjean." Bridenbaugh's primary focus, however, was

biographical, an aim suggested by the ways he framed his narratives: in I950, he presented Bell as "a successful Harvard man" with an "amusing career" but, thirty years later, considered him only "a disreputable loser."5 Although Bridenbaugh's extensive research provides a valuable foundation, Bell's career can be seen as more than a good yarn or a moral tale. Like all confidence men (and perhaps all salesmen), Bell sold himself. And, like a good businessman, he shaped his product to his market. In this perspective, Bell appears less a figure of daring originality or deep depravity than one who sensed the gaps and con- tradictions within prevailing cultural ideals and practices.

The stories Bell told and the stories told about him thus illuminate the broader stories his contemporaries told about themselves-and the contexts that gave these narratives their power. Bell's unusual career reveals the struc- tures of work confronted by Americans in more ordinary occupations; more important, his activities provide a vantage point from which to view the elite self-presentations that he counterfeited-and to comprehend their larger purposes. Bell, furthermore, did not simply rehearse some of the central nar- ratives of his culture; he also subverted them. By exploiting their ambigui- ties, his actions challenged their coherence and questioned their power.6

Bell's New Jersey escapade illustrates this process of affirmation and sub- version. Bell used accepted dress, behavior, and language to counterfeit min- isterial status, but his misbehavior called them into question. The real Rowland suffered directly from Bell's ruse: he was (unsuccessfully) prose- cuted for theft. Beyond such immediate mischief, Bell's use of a clergyman's clothes to perpetrate fraud broke the connection among piety, morality, and ministerial garb, rendering it more difficult to trust the sartorial symbolism of a "man of the cloth."

The evidence documenting Bell's career is at once unruly and revealing. Unlike most criminals or confidence men who have attracted scholarly atten- tion, Bell neither wrote nor inspired a lengthy text that lends itself to sus- tained literary analysis. Instead, the primary accounts of his life appear in some fifty separate periodical pieces, more than half of which were reprinted

5 Bridenbaugh, "The Notorious Tom Bell-A Successful Harvard Man," Proceedings of the

Massachusetts Historical Society, 69 (1947-1950), 494-95, and "'Famous Infamous Vagrant' Tom Bell," 121-49, quotation on 139. Bridenbaugh also helped prepare the piece on Bell in Clifford K. Shipton, Biographical Sketches of Those Who Attended Harvard College in the Classes I73I-I735 . . ..

vol. 9 of Sibley's Harvard Graduates (Boston, 1956), 375-86. See also Brooks E. Kleber, "Notorious Tom Bell," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 75 (1951), 4i6-23. Their citations serve as the basis for my work.

6 See Sarah Maza, "Stories in History: Cultural Narratives in Recent Works in European History," American Historical Review, ioi (i996), 1493-1515, and Rhys Isaac, "Stories and Constructions of Identity: Folk Tellings and Diary Inscriptions in Revolutionary Virginia," in Ronald Hoffman, Mechal Sobel, and Fredrika J. Teute, eds., Through a Glass Darkly: Reflections

on Personal Identity in Early America (Chapel Hill, 1997), 206-37.

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234 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

(sometimes more than once) in other newspapers. These accounts consist almost entirely of short reports of Bell's latest exploit or calls for his capture. The reports are generally consistent though frustratingly incomplete, only rarely discussing, or even commenting on, the larger implications of Bell's actions. The first lengthy article devoted to Bell appeared only in I782, long after his public career had ended. His own words appear in print only in a signed letter to a New York newspaper in I749. The precise status of this and other reports is open to question. The letter is probably Bell's (the rival newspaper he criticized never questioned its authenticity), but other stories may have mistakenly attributed actions to him, perhaps even because a clever criminal pretended to be the more famous pretender.7

The significance of this material does not rest solely on its factual accu- racy. Colonial Americans not only believed the stories to be true; just as important, they found them intriguing-and this fascination also requires explanation. The different accounts of Bell's career confirm widespread interest in the man. They also focus attention on the cultural issues his exploits raised.

These broader connections can be understood only in the context of the remaking of American authority around the turn of the eighteenth century. Historians have identified a new assertion of political and economic power by American elites in these years, and they increasingly stress the cultural aspects of these changes. Emphasis on refined manners, classical education, and cos- mopolitan culture can no longer be seen simply as expressions of maturity. Eighteenth-century developments once understood primarily as the logical outcome of political, demographic, or economic shifts now seem enmeshed in a dense network of new symbols, attitudes, and behavioral principles.8

Recent examinations of English history in the same period suggest means of sharpening this analysis. Lawrence E. Klein connects the third earl of Shaftesbury's philosophical writings about the "culture of politeness" to

7 "Story of Thomas Bell, a Native of America" 364-65; New-York Evening-Post, Sept. 4,

'749. 8 The literature on these changes, now often subsumed under the rubric of "gentility," is

extensive. Among the most stimulating recent works on the subject are Richard L. Bushman, "American High-Style and Vernacular Cultures," in Jack P. Greene and J. R. Pole, eds., Colonial British America: Essays in the New History of the Early Modern Era (Baltimore, 1984),

345-83, and Bushman, The Refinement ofAmerica: Persons, Houses, Cities (New York, 1992); Cary Carson, "The Consumer Revolution in Colonial British America: Why Demand?" in Carson, Ronald Hoffman, and Peter J. Albert, eds., Of Consuming Interests: The Style of Life in the Eighteenth Century (Charlottesville, 1994), 483-697; T. H. Breen, "An Empire of Goods: The

Anglicization of Colonial America, i690-1776," Journal of British Studies, 25 (i986), 467-99, "'Baubles of Britain': The American and Consumer Revolutions of the Eighteenth Century," Past and Present, No. ii9 (1988), 73-104, "Narrative of Commercial Life: Consumption, Ideology, and Community on the Eve of the American Revolution," William and Mary

Quarterly, 3d Ser., So (i993), 471-5oi, and "The Meanings of Things: Interpreting the Consumer Economy in the Eighteenth Century," in John Brewer and Roy Porter, eds., Consumption and the World of Goods (London, 1993), 249-60; and Greene, "Search for Identity: An Interpretation of the Meaning of Selected Patterns of Social Response in Eighteenth-

Century America," Journal of Social History, 3 (1970), 205-Il.

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MUMPER AMONG THE GENTLE 235

broader questions of power. Shaftesbury's ideals, Klein argues, expressed and helped legitimate the goals of a particular political persuasion, whiggery. Bell's career suggests that the development of politeness in America was political in an even more basic sense, constituting and sustaining elite authority. This process was particularly important, it can be argued, because American elites faced what Jean-Christophe Agnew's discussion of a similar problem in England calls a "crisis of representation." Agnew traces the broader difficulties of assigning values to persons and goods back to eco- nomic changes that began in the Elizabethan era; the crisis, he argues, cli- maxed in the mid-seventeenth-century civil wars and subsided only at the end of the following century.9

Bell's activities point to a more specific problem growing out of the intersection of the worldwide economic and cultural developments noted by Agnew and a particular American situation. Late seventeenth-century colo- nial leaders faced massive political disorder, both fighting among rulers and challenges from the ruled. From Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia and Culpeper's Rebellion in Carolina in the i670s to the American fallout from the Glorious Revolution in the late i68os, almost every colonial regime expe- rienced at least one major uprising. These conflicts, Jack P. Greene and oth- ers have argued, convinced elites of the need to rebuild a sense of unity and common purpose among themselves and to reestablish their authority over others. At the same time, the expansion of market relationships complicated this task, spreading not only people, goods, and wealth but also ideas and information beyond the range of the personal ties that previously had medi- ated power. The analyses of Klein and Agnew suggest that the ideals and practices of gentility that emerged in the generation after the Glorious Revolution can be seen as responses to these political and cultural crises-as means for elites to reclaim authority through reshaped representations of themselves and their social roles.10

9 Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness: Moral Discourse and Cultural Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1994). On politeness and political thought in Britain see also David H. Solkin, Painting for Money: The Visual Arts and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century England (New Haven, 1993), 29-3i; Nicholas Phillipson, "Politeness and Politics in the Reigns of Anne and the Early Hanoverians," in J.G.A. Pocock, ed., The Varieties

of British Political Thought, i5oo-i8ho (Cambridge, 1993), 211-45, and Pocock, "The Varieties of Whiggism from Exclusion to Reform: A History of Ideology and Discourse," in Pocock, Virtue, Commerce and History: Essays on Political Thought and History, Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1985), 234-37; and Agnew, Worlds Apart: The Market and the Theater in Anglo- American Thought, i550-i750 (Cambridge, i986), esp. i6o-6i.

10 Greene, Pursuits of Happiness: The Social Development of Early Modern British Colonies and the Formation of American Culture (Chapel Hill, i988), 69-71, 92-99, 127-30, 147-49, and passim; Greene, "The Growth of Political Stability: An Interpretation of Political Development in the Anglo-American Colonies, i660-1760," in John Parker and Carol Urness, eds., The American Revolution: A Heritage of Change (Minneapolis, 1975), 26-52, reprinted in Greene, Negotiated Authorities: Essays in Colonial Political and Constitutional History (Charlottesville, 1994), 13i-62. Other historians noting these difficulties include Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York, 1975), 215-92; Breen, "War, Taxes, and Political Brokers: The Ordeal of Massachusetts Bay, i675-i692," and "A Changing Labor Force and Race Relations in Virginia, i660-1710," in Breen, Puritans and

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236 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

Bell's frauds and the stories told about them provide a means of seeing this remaking and its causes in everyday encounters. Bell appropriated the symbols of wealth and political power but did not seek public authority. His clever reworking drew on the weak points in the logic of elite representa- tions-in the process revealing that, like Bell, colonial leaders were attempt- ing to sell themselves through the symbols and practices of gentility.

Bell's polished appearance, quick tongue, and chameleonlike identity also place him in the tradition of the American confidence man. The term itself came into use a full century after Bell became famous. Newspapers instead labeled him a "cheat," an "impostor," or a "sharper." A biography of a contemporary English confidence man describes its subject as a C "mumper,"1 someone who cheats as well as begs. As this range of existing terms suggests, Bell was not the first to assume a new identity to defraud others. Benjamin Franklin's future in-laws were "half ruin'd" by a confi- dence man in the early I720s; early in the following decade, another trickster traveled through Pennsylvania and Massachusetts pretending that his tongue had been cut out by Turks (until a suspicious minister literally choked it out of him).12 Bell, however, is particularly significant. As one of the earliest American criminals to pass himself off as a gentleman-and the first to gain widespread celebrity for such exploits-Bell marks the start of a tradition that scholars have previously seen as beginning with Stephen Burroughs in the late eighteenth century. Just as important, Bell's story makes clear that these two models of character, the gentleman and the confidence man, con- stituted part of the same processes that remade eighteenth-century culture.

Understanding this connection requires following the path of earlier scholars of the confidence man-and moving beyond them. As these stu- dents have shown, study of these men (and, Kathleen De Grave shows, women) illuminates both the conventions they honored and the boundaries they crossed. Gary Lindberg defines the confidence man broadly as any one who seeks to create and manipulate belief in the absence of evidence. Thus

Adventurers: Change and Persistence in Early America (New York, i980), 68-8o, I27-47; Thomas L. Purvis, Proprietors, Patronage, and Paper Money: Legislative Politics in New Jersey, i703-i776

(New Brunswick, N.J., i986), 68, 95-96; David W. Jordan, "Political Stability and the Emergence of a Native Elite in Maryland," in Thad W. Tate and David L. Ammerman, eds., The Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century: Essays on Anglo-American Society (Chapel Hill, I979), 243-73; and Carole Shammas, "English-Born and Creole Elites in Turn-of-the-Century Virginia," ibid., 274-96. John M. Murrin speaks of a stabilization of regimes and a "growth of oligarchy" in the following period in "Political Development," in Greene and Pole, eds., Colonial British America, 44I-45. Gary J. Kornblith and Murrin, "The Making and Unmaking of an American Ruling Class," in Alfred F. Young, ed., Beyond the American Revolution: Explorations in the History of American Radicalism (DeKalb, Ill., I993), 27-79, and Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia, i740-i790 (Chapel Hill, I982), discuss the relative success (and even- tual undoing) of this elite attempt to assert authority.

11 For the various descriptions of Bell see Boston Gazette, Nov. 20, I738; Boston Evening-

Post, Dec. IO, I739; and Penn. Gaz., July I2, I744. The Life and Adventures of Mr. Bampfylde- Moore Carew, Commonly Called The King of the Beggars (London, I779), I42, I43, I50, uses "mumper" and "mumping" extensively.

12 Franklin, Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, ed. J. A. Leo Lemay and P. M. Zall (New York, i986), 33.

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MUMPER AMONG THE GENTLE 237

the ambivalent attitudes of Americans about these figures offers a revealing "expression of a culture drawn to acts of faith and gestures of self-creation." Karen Halttunen and Robert A. Gross use historically grounded studies of confidence men to probe post-Revolutionary culture, providing rich analyses of its peculiar emphasis on the dangers of deceit and the need for sincerity.13

Tom Bell's life and celebrity suggest that the confidence man can be seen as more than an indicator of key values and patterns. Bell was also a subversive, someone who undermines the power of a rule by breaking it. Such a perspective draws on the insights of cultural anthropologists seeking to go beyond a "thick description" of the connections that infuse even seem- ingly banal or unrepresentative subjects with meaning. According to these scholars, viewing culture as, in Clifford Geertz's term, a "context" too easily leads to seeing it as essentially static. The Pacific anthropologist Marshall Sahlins argues that simply recording "the contingency of events, the recur- rence of structures" is not enough. He instead suggests a model that high- lights an ongoing "interaction between the cultural order as constituted in the society and as lived by the people." In this view, events and texts often replicate structures and prevailing patterns but they also can place them "at risk" -challenge, undermine, and even contradict them.14

Drawing attention to this interplay between culture and contingency- between (in Sahlins's terms) prescription and performance-this investiga- tion pursues Bell and the values and practices he exploited for his frauds through three widening circles of analysis. It begins with Bell's activities, arguing that his career involved creative manipulation of the available struc- tures of opportunity. Bell, this section suggests, used common ways of doing business to pursue an uncommon craft. The analysis next moves from work to cultural work, the issues that Bell's actions (and the stories about them) raised for his society and its ways of explaining itself. Just as the norms of colonial society and culture shaped Bell's career, they were both revealed and challenged by it. Finally, the article briefly considers Bell's identity. The argument thus does not provide a continuous narrative of a career. Rather, mirroring the scattered and disjointed nature of the evidence, it offers a vari- ety of perspectives that seek to explain why, as the South-Carolina Gazette

13 De Grave, Swindler, Spy, Rebel: The Confidence Woman in Nineteenth-Century America

(Columbia, Mo., I995); William E. Lenz, Fast Talk and Flush Times: The Confidence Man as a Literary Convention (Columbia, Mo., I985); Lindberg, The Confidence Man in American Literature (New York, I982), quotation on IO; Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, i830-i870 (New Haven, I982). Gross, "The Confidence Man and the Preacher: The Cultural Politics of Shays's Rebellion," in Gross, ed., In Debt to Shays: The Bicentennial of an Agrarian Rebellion (Charlottesville, I993), 297-320, discusses

Burroughs. 14 Geertz, "Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture," in The

Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York, I973), I4; Sahlins, Islands of History (Chicago, I985), xiii, ix. See also Aletta Biersack, "Local Knowledge, Local History: Geertz and Beyond," in Lynn Hunt, ed., The New Cultural History: Essays (Berkeley, I989), 72-96, and Sherry B. Ortner, "Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties," in Nicholas B. Dirks, Geoff Eley, and Ortner, eds., Culture/Power/History: A Reader in Contemporary Social Theory (Princeton, I994), 372-4II.

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238 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

noted a dozen years after Tom Bell entered the Princeton tavern, his "Character and romantic Life, has made a great Noise in every American Colony."15

Five years after the Rowland episode, the improbably named Captain Dingee met a man in Newcastle, Pennsylvania, who introduced himself as Lloyd. Dingee treated Lloyd "courteously," not only because he claimed to

be a ship owner, but because he "affect[ed] the air and deportment of a gen- tleman." Dingee agreed to take the man to Philadelphia, some twenty-five miles up the Delaware River. There, left by himself at the dock, Lloyd pro- ceeded to help himself to a pair of stockings, two shirts, three handkerchiefs, and a pair of "scarlet breeches." Dingee realized too late that Lloyd had "chang'd from the Gentleman to the Thief," just as he had previously "chang'd his Name from the FAMOUS INFAMOUS TOM BELL."16

Although not as spectacular as the New Jersey incident, the I746 river- side encounter features two elements of particular importance to Tom Bell's career and self-presentation: clothing and crime. Clothes were both the object of many of his thefts and the means by which he projected the per- sona of a gentleman. Dingee's scarlet breeches formed part of a sartorial his- tory that included a silk jacket at Harvard, "several costly Suits of Cloaths, one of black Velvet" in Barbados, and a pair of "black silk Stockings" worn while escaping from a Philadelphia prison.17 This dress (and the deportment that made it seem natural) provided the capital on which Bell built his crim- inal business.

This section considers the way that this occupation operated, the struc- tures and constraints that made his trade, despite its rarity and notoriety, similar to that of other colonial Americans. Bell's I733 expulsion from Harvard forced him to enter the labor market with few of the advantages available to his classmates. He had to make his way in an economy that forced nearly all workers to engage in a variety of tasks and required capital investment for all but the meanest occupations. Bell's skill lay in his mobi- lization of limited resources, turning to advantage knowledge and situations that might otherwise have seemed tangential to the world of work. The dis- cussion closes by comparing Bell with two other eighteenth-century figures with unusual careers who also shaped themselves to circumstances and cir- cumstances to themselves, Benjamin Franklin and Stephen Burroughs.

Bell's Harvard years molded his life, although only partly in the way his parents had expected. As an eldest son, Tom Junior bore the hopes of an upwardly mobile family whose hard-earned wealth included two slaves and some Boston real estate. Boston's Free Latin School prepared young Bell for college, but his sea captain father died suddenly in I729, failing to leave the

15 South-Carolina Gazette (Charleston), July i8, I754. 16 Penn. Gaz., Aug. I4, I746. 17 Boston Evening-Post, Dec. IO, I739; S.-C. Gaz., Sept. I2, I743; Karin Calvert, "The

Function of Fashion in Eighteenth-Century America," in Carson et al., eds., Of Consuming

Interests, 252-83.

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MUMPER AMONG THE GENTLE 239

capital necessary to fund the ambition of a Harvard degree for his sixteen- year-old son. Bell's family thus needed to sacrifice to allow his matriculation the following year. Among his classmates were Elisha Hutchinson, a member of the prominent family that included, in addition to the first-generation outsider Anne Hutchinson, the ultimate colonial insider, Governor Thomas Hutchinson, Elisha's older brother. Elisha, the faculty decided, belonged at the head of his class; in this largely social classification of the thirty-four new students, the sea captain's son ranked twenty-first.18

The promise of social advance proved elusive. Bell found himself at odds with the rowdy jostling of student culture. His tongue got him into trouble almost immediately. No sooner had he arrived than he provoked a severe beat- ing from an older student. The faculty declared the latter primarily at fault, but Bell still received a private reprimand for his "Saucy behaviour." He became a loner and a thief, engaging in misdeeds that included purloining pri- vate letters from a study and two bottles of wine from an underclassman. The last straw came in I733, when the faculty found "the strongest suspicion of [Bell's] having stolen a cake of chocolate," a theft compounded by "the most notorious complicated lying." Such misbehavior, along with a "scandalous neglect" of studies, led to Bell's expulsion in February of his junior year.

Bell's misadventures had many precedents. As an oversight committee noted five months before his final theft, Harvard tutors faced "great disor- ders." Faculty sanctions ranked Bell's offense as comparable to the mutilation of a tutor's horse that got some of his classmates expelled the previous year and more serious than placing glass in the bed of an older scholar, an infrac- tion that brought only a suspension for some more socially prominent stu- dents. Bell's offenses, however, were distinctive. Unlike most college pranks, his misdeeds were individual and furtive. He never engaged in (or perhaps simply never was caught at) the common undergraduate vice that attracted his class's three highest-ranking members, "playing at cards and dice."19

The dangers of life beyond Harvard were made clear by a suit brought against him just before his suspension-and his twenty-first birthday. Bell had bought, on credit, a silk jacket and expensive hose from a tailor and then refused to pay. Once again Bell failed to fulfill expectations. Suits for debt were common (colonial courts often seemed to do little more than consider them), but the vast majority went uncontested. As in the chocolate incident, where he justified himself through complicated lying, Bell not only refused to admit his guilt; he also placed faith in his powers of persuasion. Bested in an inferior court, he appealed the case and, in the same month he left Harvard, lost again.20

18 For Bell's early life see Bridenbaugh, "'Famous Infamous Vagrant' Tom Bell." Capt. Tom Bell's will is Will # 5845, Suffolk County, Massachusetts, Probate Records, 27:319-22 (Boston Public Library microfilm). For Bell's Harvard career see Shipton, Biographical Sketches,

9:375-76, and Bridenbaugh, "'Famous Infamous Vagrant' Tom Bell," 126-27. 19 Josiah Quincy, The History of Harvard University, 2 vols. (Boston, I840), 1:388-94, quota-

tion on 388. For the disciplinary records of Bell and his classmates see Shipton, Biographical Sketches, 9:389, 4I0, 438 (tutor's horse); 393, 4I2, 449 (glass); 386, 393, 4I2, 438, 448 (cards and dice).

20 Bridenbaugh, "'Famous Infamous Vagrant' Tom Bell," 126.

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240 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

These suits-legal and sartorial-foreshadowed Bell's career. In the future, he would repudiate, not the offense that caused the trouble, but the circumstances that led the tailor to prosecute. He would seek fine clothing not through commerce but through theft, avoiding transactions under his own name. The debt case also underlined Bell's precarious economic posi- tion. His family had sold property to pay for an education that provided access to trade, the professions, and political office, and his expulsion came too late for an alternative investment of family resources. The Bells, further- more, lacked a powerful patron. City fathers turned down the mother's I73I application to sell liquor, even though such licenses were increasingly granted to needy widows. Without education, reputation, or the support of family and friends, the twenty-one-year-old Bell thus faced the problems of adult labor in particularly stark terms.21

Bell's next steps probably included at least some school teaching but are obscure until I738, when authorities in Virginia and New York charged him with crimes. In July, having been arrested for posing as Francis Partridge Hutchinson, perhaps to defraud the wealthy Fairfax family, he escaped from a Virginia county jail. Near the end of the year, he was convicted of forging a letter (presumably a letter of credit) from Boston merchant William Bowdoin to New York's Livingston family. A New York City court sen- tenced him to thirty-nine lashes. Although these are Bell's first known brushes with the law, it seems unlikely they were his first criminal acts. The Boston Evening-Post reported the following year that Bell "has been a Fortune hunting for several Years past." In the dozen years that followed, he would also stay in (and often escape from) jails in Barbados, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts.22

Even for the man who became America's most famous felon, crime was only a part-time job. The precise extent and location of his other activities are unclear, but a I749 letter to a New York newspaper signed with Bell's name lists five different occupations he had followed-merchant, sailor, sol- dier, surveyor, and schoolteacher. A I755 account added that Bell had also "practiced Physic, [and] pleaded Law." He even seems to have played the role of a New Light minister after the I74i New Jersey incident. A I743 newspaper report placed him in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, "preach- ing and exhorting . . . in the new Way."23 The range of Bell's resume, while

21 Ibid; "Boston Selectmen's Records, 17i6-1736," in A Report of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston . . ., s3th Report (Boston, i885), 208-09. On tavern licenses see David W. Conroy, In Public Houses: Drink and the Revolution of Authority in Colonial Massachusetts

(Chapel Hill, 1995), 99-147. 22 Virginia Gazette (Williamsburg), July 2i, 1738; Boston Gaz., Nov. 20, 1738; Boston

Evening-Post, Sept. s0, 1739. Francis Hutchinson, not of the prominent family, graduated from Harvard in 1736; Sibley, Biographical Sketches, 10:34-35. The Boston Evening-Post, Dec. 10, 1739, prints a letter from a Barbados merchant claiming that Bell had earlier drawn "Bills of Exchange in my Brother Fairfax's Name."

23 Bell's letter is in N.-Y Evening-Post, Sept. 4, 1749. The N.-Y Weekly Post-Boy, Sept. ii, 1746, notes a rumor that Bell had enlisted in a New Jersey company as a soldier. The Boston

Weekly News Letter, Apr. io, 1755, reprints a piece originally published in the Antigua Gazette. On Bell as minister see S.-C. Gaz., Nov. 7, 1743.

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MUMPER AMONG THE GENTLE 24I

extreme, is not as unusual as it may look. Colonial American men and women commonly turned their hands to a variety of tasks. Even while building a printing business that enabled him to retire at age forty-two, Benjamin Franklin held salaried posts as assembly clerk and city postmaster. Paul Revere not only engraved prints and crafted fine silver but also cleaned teeth.24

Bell's travels made him more distinctive. Most Americans, even promi- nent ones, kept close to home. The meeting of the Continental Congress marked the first time John Adams traveled outside New England and only the second time Thomas Jefferson left Virginia.25 Apart from governing and seafaring, work-related travel in eighteenth-century America generally involved peddling, preaching, or thieving. Rural peddlers were already com- mon by the time Bell hit the road. Dr. Alexander Hamilton, traveling from Maryland to Maine in I744, met one on Long Island in July the day that Franklin's newspaper reported Bell's arrest in Philadelphia. Just a short time later, Hamilton found his genteel "portmanteau" being mistaken "for a pack" by another peddler in Walpole, Massachusetts.26 John Stockton, fooled by Bell in the Princeton tavern, was again duped by two peddlers in I757. The men, carrying "Packs of Linen and some other dry Goods," were caught passing counterfeit Pennsylvania ten-shilling notes. When magistrate Stockton allowed them to go to Trenton to seek an alibi (leaving their goods as security), they never returned.27

God, not Mammon, prompted the most visible examples of mobility. John Rowland's I739 ordination by the revivalist New Brunswick Presbytery

24 Franklin, Autobiography, ed. Lemay and Zall, 84-85; Aubrey C. Land, "Economic Base and Social Structure: The Northern Chesapeake in the Eighteenth Century," in Stanley N. Katz, ed., Colonial America: Essays in Politics and Social Development, 2d ed. (Boston, 1976), 345-59; W. T. Baxter, The House of Hancock: Business in Boston, I724-I775 (Cambridge, Mass., 1945), 197-2i6; Christopher Clark, The Roots of Rural Capitalism: Western Massachusetts, i780-i860 (Ithaca, i990), iio and passim; Daniel Vickers, Farmers and Fishermen: Two Centuries

of Work in Essex County, Massachusetts, i630-i850 (Chapel Hill, 1994), i98-99, 247-58; John J. McCusker and Russell R. Menard, The Economy of British America, i607-I789: With Supplementary Bibliography (Chapel Hill, i99i), 93-94, 99, 105, 206, 295, 310, 312, 314, 3i8, 325-26. For women's work see Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, "Martha Ballard and Her Girls: Women's Work in Eighteenth-Century Maine," in Stephen Innes, ed., Work and Labor in Early America (Chapel Hill, i988), 70-105.

25 Dumas Malone, Jefferson the Virginian, vol. i of Jeffierson and His Time (Boston, 1948), 98-ioi, 20i. On mobility see Bernard Bailyn, The Peopling of British North America: An Introduction (New York, i986), and Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling ofAmerica on the Eve of the Revolution (New York, i986). For studies suggesting that the i8th-century poor moved often, but not very far, see Douglas Lamar Jones, "The Strolling Poor: Transiency in Eighteenth-Century Massachusetts," J. Soc. Hist., 8 (Spring 1975), 28-54, and "Poverty and Vagabondage: The Process of Survival in Eighteenth-Century Massachusetts," New England Historical and Genealogical Register, 133 (i979), 243-54.

26 Bridenbaugh, ed., Gentleman's Progress: The Itinerarium of Dr. Alexander Hamilton, I744 (Pittsburgh, i992; orig. pub. 1948), 95, 104 (see also i6o). Dr. Hamilton provides a vivid picture of the difficulties of traveling in the 1740s. Penn. Gaz., July 12, 1744. On later peddlers see David Jaffee, "Peddlers of Progress and the Transformation of the Rural North, 1760-i860," Journal ofAmerican History, 78 (i99i), 511-35.

27 Penn. Gaz., Aug. II, 1757, quoted in Kenneth Scott, Counterfeiting in Colonial Pennsylvania (New York, 1955), 92.

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242 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

had been, not to a specific church, but "to the ministry of the Word in gen- eral." Within a year, Rowland was preaching with the "grand itinerant" George Whitefield, one of the few contemporaries who could match Bell's travels. Accounts of Whitefield's journeys often appeared in newspapers alongside reports about Bell. Although the minister passionately courted the publicity that the thief shunned, their movements resulted from broadly similar purposes. Like peddlers, both continually sought new markets where demand for their product (whether gentility or the gospel) was greatest and where novelty heightened the dramatic effects of their presentations.28

Desire for easy pickings also impelled the itinerancy of professional felons. Although most eighteenth-century property thefts involved irregular crimes of opportunity rather than of systematic activity, persistent law- breakers needed to keep moving to stay ahead of the law. Some of the more successful pretended to the same kind of genteel knowledge as Bell. Counterfeiter Joseph-Bill Packer traveled from Boston to North Carolina making and passing false bills while posing as a doctor who specialized in "curing cancers." One of his associates called himself "Doctor Dunston."29

Bell shared not only varied activities and continued mobility with such criminals but also school teaching. Historians point to the many metallur- gists and doctors who engaged in crime and counterfeiting; they fail to note the number of teachers who appear in these accounts. Like Bell, Packer spent a stint at a Virginia school. Counterfeiter Joseph Wilson was captured while running a school. Elizabeth Castle, a confidence woman who (like Bell) trav- eled through Philadelphia in the mid-I74os, pretended to be a "Doctoress" and a "School-Mistress."30 Such activities suggest not only the many oppor- tunities available for educational employment but also the marginal nature of positions contracted for a few months at a time and for low wages.

Teaching provided a starting place for upwardly mobile men as well as a haven for strolling criminals. More than one-third of Bell's Harvard class-

28 Ingram, "History of the Presbytery of New Brunswick," J. Presbyterian Hist. Soc., 6

(1911-1912), 333-34, 346; Harry S. Stout, The New England Soul: Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial New England (New York, i986), i89. For studies of Whitefield that stress his desire for publicity see Frank Lambert, "Pedlar in Divinity": George Whitefield and the Transatlantic Revivals, i737-i770 (Princeton, 1994): Stout, The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the

Rise of Modern Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, Mich., i99i); and Timothy D. Hall, Contested Boundaries: Itinerancy and the Reshaping of the Colonial American Religious World (Durham, N. C., 1994)

29 Packer, "A Journal of the Life and Travels of Joseph-Bill Packer" (Albany, 1773), in Daniel E. Williams, ed., Pillars of Salt: An Anthology of Early American Criminal Narratives (Madison, 1993), 207-i6; Scott, Counterfeiting in Colonial New York (New York, 1953), 77. See also Scott, Counterfeiting in ColonialAmerica (New York, 1957), 179-8i (Dunston) and passim. The best study of criminals in colonial America is Daniel A. Cohen, Pillars of Salt, Monuments of Grace: New England Crime Literature and the Origins ofAmerican Popular Culture, i674-i860 (New York, 1993), 117-42. See also Douglas Greenberg, Crime and Law Enforcement in the Colony of New York, i69i-i776 (Ithaca, 1976).

30 Packer, "Journal of the Life and Travels," 213; Maryland Gazette, Dec. 13, 1749

(Wilson); Scott, Counterfeiting in Colonial Pennsylvania, 55 (Castle). Scott's extensive studies of counterfeiting, which include Counterfeiting in Colonial America and Counterfeiting in Colonial New York, provide the fullest discussions of that subject. See also John L. Brooke, The Refiner's Fire: The Making ofMormon Cosmology, i644-i844 (New York, 1994), 105-28.

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mates kept school, most in the years immediately after college.31 Teaching was attractive to both privileged young men on the verge of lucrative careers and criminals fearful of capture alike, in large part because it postponed the problem of capital. Schoolteachers could board with local families rather than establish their own households (perhaps providing insight into the ways of the relatively well-to-do that would have been useful for confidence men), whereas security beyond the vagaries of casual labor required capital. The nature of this stake could vary, ranging from land for agriculture to craft skills for artisans and financial aid among the most wealthy. Bell possessed none of these, and he refused to act within the networks of family and friends that other young men such as Franklin called on when they left their home base.32

Lacking these resources, Bell took full advantage of other, less obvious, assets, what might be called the cultural capital he assembled at Boston Latin School and Harvard. Bell's frauds gained credibility first from understanding and exhibiting the social skills, attitudes, and cultural practices of gentility. Such tangible signs as knowing how to wear a silk jacket and such intangi- bles as displaying what Captain Dingee called "the Air and Deportment of a Gentleman" served as the foundation for Bell's lies.33 Furthermore, although Bell was clearly not a model student, he would have acquired some learning in Greek, Latin, the Bible, and philosophy, topics that helped establish elite standing. A North Carolina gentleman cheated by Bell judged him "a pretty good Scholar."34

Bell's broad knowledge of people and events proved more directly use- ful. Grammar school and college offered close contact with people whose names would have been known outside the region and whose own connec- tions and information would have been similarly wide. Although the accounts of Bell's methods are not full, some of his crimes suggest the use of such personal knowledge. In a society where gentlemen knew more than most people about the outside world, Bell exploited the uneven diffusion of knowledge to refer to incidents that people in other colonies might only have heard of and to provide details that might be checked to certify his cre- dentials. Bell probably used information about the illness of Colonel Thomas Hutchinson, the father of his classmate Elisha, to sustain his claim

31 Calculated from biographies in Shipton, Biographical Sketches, vol. 9. On teaching see James Axtell, The School upon a Hill: Education and Society in Colonial New England (New Haven, 1974), i87-94, 2ii-i2. Bell's classmates may actually have taught less than the average Harvard class; Axtell suggests that about 40% of all colonial Harvard graduates taught school after graduation (i87-88, 212-13 n. i8). See also the post-Harvard experiences of Robert Treat Paine and John Adams in Richard D. Brown, Knowledge Is Power: The Diffusion of Information in Early America, i700-i865 (New York, i989), 85-87.

32 On artisanal skill as capital see Ronald Schultz, The Republic of Labor: Philadelphia

Artisans and the Politics of Class, i720-i830 (New York, 1993), 5-6. Franklin wrote, "He that hath a Trade hath an Estate"; "Poor Richard Improved, 1758," in Leonard W. Labaree et al., eds., The Papers of Benjamin Franklin (New Haven, 1959- ), 7:342 (hereafter cited as Franklin Papers). The aphorism first appeared in Poor Richard (1742), ibid., 2:333.

33 Penn. Gaz., Aug. 14, 1746. 34 Va. Gaz., Oct. 31, 1745.

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244 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

to the Hutchinson name in I738. Knowledge of a new locality could further the illusion. Bell's perceptive choice of a gullible New Jersey family almost certainly relied on earlier conversations with the Reverend John Guild, one- time minister of a neighborhood parish and Bell's Harvard classmate. Perhaps unwittingly, Bell returned the favor. Guild's candidacy for the new pulpit had been blocked by Rowland supporters until Bell's activities dis- credited the rival candidate and allowed Guild's ordination.35

The ways in which Bell worked within and beyond provincial American contexts can be seen more fully by moving from the common experiences of criminals and other workers to the uncommon lives of two other eighteenth- century men, Burroughs and Franklin. The Memoirs of the New Englander Burroughs, who began his activities as a confidence man in the I78os, makes no reference to Tom Bell, but Burroughs's experiences reveal substantial similarities to his predecessor. Burroughs also had a checkered college career that ended in expulsion. Besides working as a soldier and a sailor, he imper- sonated a minister and taught in a variety of schools, sometimes under a dif- ferent name. Both men seem to have ended their lives as teachers. They also shared a pool of cultural capital, premising their frauds on the behavioral and cultural attributes of gentlemen.36

Burroughs differed from Bell in two important ways. First, Burroughs was an active counterfeiter who spent long periods of time in jail-a result of the growing resort to imprisonment in post-Revolutionary New England. Bell, who never seems to have engaged in coining money, was often incarcer- ated, but he seems to have spent little time in jail, either because he escaped (as Burroughs often did) or was released. More important, Burroughs took his legitimate activities more seriously. Unlike Bell, who simply exploited clerical garb for short-term gain, Burroughs sought to fulfill the duties of a minister and teacher. Accordingly, he disingenuously claimed he was not an impostor, because, unlike someone who "puts on feigned appearances, in order to enrich or aggrandize himself, to the damage of others," he sought only to make a living.37

Burroughs's professed belief in labor as a means to stability and perhaps success drew on the older language of station and office. His activities and his accounts of himself also suggest the shifting meaning of "career," a word that by the early nineteenth century described a person's progress through life, particularly through work. Bell paid little attention to filling an office,

35 Shipton, Biographical Sketches, 8:120-o2 (Burnet), 9:419; Bailyn, The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson (Cambridge, Mass., 1974), II. On colonial elites and their control of information see Brown, Knowledge Is Power, i6-41. On the movement of information see Ian K. Steele, The English Atlantic, i675 to i740: An Exploration of Communication and Community (New York, i986).

36 Burroughs, Memoirs of the Notorious Stephen Burroughs of New Hampshire (1798), ed. Philip F. Gura (Boston, i988). For insightful discussions of Burroughs see Gross, "Confidence

Man and the Preacher," 297-320; Cohen, Pillars of Salt, 155-62; and Daniel E. Williams, "In Defense of Self: Author and Authority in the Memoirs of Stephen Burroughs," Early American Literature, 25 (i990), 96-i22.

37 Burroughs, Memoirs ofStephen Burroughs, 67.

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much less to advancing in it. His career suggests instead the term's earlier, less teleological, meanings-a racecourse or rapid movement. "This Fellow has had a large Swing over this Continent, as well as in some of the West- India Islands, for these several Years," noted a New York newspaper editor in I748, predicting Bell's probable end, "the Swing his Merits deserve."38

Nineteenth-century mythology connected the new meaning of career most directly to another figure, Benjamin Franklin. Second only to the Charleston, South Carolina, newspaper Franklin helped establish, his Pennsylvania Gazette printed more stories about Bell than any other American periodical. Such intense coverage reflected public curiosity, but the interest may also have been personal. Franklin and Bell had similar back- grounds. Both were Boston Latin students from families outside the city elite. Both left family and other possible patrons to engage the world by themselves, relying on book learning and self-presentation. As others have noted, Franklin's rise depended in large part on the confidence man's canny ability to manage his self-presentation, impressing the Pennsylvania governor soon after his arrival, chatting up New Jersey gentlemen while printing their paper money, and borrowing a rare book from an assembly member to improve his chances for patronage.39

Franklin also cultivated internal morality as well as a public face. He later noted that he not only "took care . . . to avoid all Appearances of the Contrary" but "to be in Reality Industrious and frugal." Outward images required manipulation, yet they ultimately needed to be backed by inner character. This ideal, vigorously pursued through careful self-examination and epitomized in Franklin's "Project of arriving at moral Perfection," grew even more important in the years after the Revolution, when character increasingly denoted the sum of a person's moral qualities. Bell, by contrast, exemplifies an earlier meaning of character-a literary genre that delineates a recognizable type through details and idiosyncrasies. Unlike the printer and philosopher of virtue Franklin (who saw type as a means of making perma- nent impressions that could convey instruction), Bell sought only a distinc- tive mark that could create the illusion of reality.40

Bell's representations may even have fooled Franklin himself. In I739, the printer met a former "school-master" who claimed "to understand Latin

38 N.-Y Weekly Post-Boy, Sept. II, 1749. 39 For Franklin as confidence man see Lindberg, Confidence Man in American Literature,

73-89, and Richard Boyd Hauck, A Cheerful Nihilism: Confidence and "The Absurd" in American Humorous Fiction (Bloomington, Ind., 1971).

40 Franklin, Autobiography, ed. Lemay and Zall, 54, 66. My argument does not deny Franklin's role playing, a characteristic discussed most tellingly in Ormond Seavey, Becoming Benjamin Franklin: The Autobiography and the Life (University Park, Pa., i988). Mitchell Robert Breitwieser, Cotton Mather and Benjamin Franklin: The Price of Representative Personality (Cambridge, i984), makes a powerful argument for a deeper consistency at the core of Franklin's identity. For the genre of the "character" see J. W. Smeed, The Theophrastan

"Character"' The History of a Literary Genre (Oxford, i985). I would like to thank Prof. Blakey Vermeule for help on this issue. See also Nian-Sheng Huang, Benjamin Franklin in American Thought and Culture, i790-i990 (Philadelphia, 1994), 4-8.

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246 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

and Greek," gaps in Franklin's education that he labored to overcome by teaching himself Latin. The young visitor took advantage of Franklin's hos- pitality to make off with some of his clothing, including a "fine . . . ruffled" shirt and a handkerchief "mark'd with an F in red Silk." The identity of the man, whom Franklin knew as the Irishman William Lloyd, is unknown, but the similarity to the later Captain Dingee incident (both con men used the name Lloyd and stole clothes when their host's back was turned) suggests that the theft may mark the only recorded meeting between two of the most famous colonial Americans.41

Sometime in I739, a man claiming to be Gilbert Burnet, son of the late governor of New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, arrived in Barbados. Named after his eminent grandfather, a key figure in England's Glorious Revolution and Hanoverian Succession, the visitor moved among the upper echelons of Barbadian society. He persuaded local worthies to lend him ?250 and ingratiated himself with the Jewish Lopez family, whose head "made very much of" him-until the visitor was caught stealing at a family wedding. The father beat the guest and took him before a magistrate. Professing shock at the affront, Burnet sued Lopez for ten thousand pounds. The incident sparked anti-Jewish outrage. Local merchants petitioned the president of the council about the conduct of "the Jews towards the Christians," citing especially "their daring Insolence to . . . a Gentleman of a distinguished Family." A crowd took more direct action; it destroyed the Speightstown, Barbados, synagogue and drove the Jews out of town.42

Soon afterward, even Burnet's most ardent defenders changed their minds. The visitor surreptitiously attempted to catch a boat to Jamaica and, when these plans were thwarted, went into hiding. A week's search located a disguised Burnet lurking outside the town. Replies to inquiries sent to the mainland identified him as the Bostonian Tom Bell.43 According to a for- mer supporter, who now pronounced him "the greatest Villain that was ever born," Bell finally confessed his identity but not his guilt, arguing that "he [had] done no Harm." The court disagreed. He was sentenced to be whipped, placed in the stocks, and branded on both cheeks with the letter R (for "Rogue"). Unfortunately for his later victims, a new governor remitted the branding.

Reported in the mainland press from Williamsburg, Virginia, to Boston, the episode points to yet another side of Bell's activities-some-

41 Penn. Gaz., Feb. 22, 1739. The Dingee incident appears ibid., Aug. 14, 1746. For another Lloyd, perhaps a separate individual or a combination of the person or persons mentioned in other stories, see ibid., July 8, 1742. This Lloyd, then going by the name of Ebenezer Wilson, also was a schoolteacher, preacher, and thief.

42 Accounts of the case discussed here and in the subsequent paragraph appear in Boston Evening-Post, Sept. Io, Dec. Io, '739; Penn. Gaz., Sept. 27, 1739, Apr. i0, I740; Va. Gaz., Nov. i6, '739; Boston Weekly News-Letter, Mar. 13, 1740; and N.-Y Gaz., Mar. 31, 1740. The Penn. Gaz., Feb. IO, I743, gives the name "Thomas" Burnet. See also David S. Shields, Civil Tongues and Polite Letters in British America (Chapel Hill, I997), 275-76.

43 Boston Evening-Post, Dec. I0, I739.

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thing deeper than the difficulty of getting a livelihood or the inconvenience created by the theft of money or scarlet breeches. The stories told by and about Bell also performed cultural work-raising charged issues and helping people think about and through them. Bell's activities and the reports about them drew on some of the period's most compelling cultural narratives, the stories that people told to explain themselves and their society. The Barbados incident drew on two of these. First, by claiming a distinguished lineage, Bell adopted the role of the gentleman, a status that required a polished self- presentation combining learning and self-control. A second closely related theme was compassion, the gentleman's sympathetic concern for the less for- tunate. The gracious new governor played the part in Barbados, probably releasing Bell as part of a general amnesty celebrating his arrival. Later, the impostor himself assayed the role.

Linking power and status to morality, these narratives helped ground the attempts of early eighteenth-century elites to reconfigure their claims to authority in the wake of late seventeenth-century crises. Bell raised awkward questions about this project. His plausible misrepresentations undermined elite claims by suggesting that the presumed links between power and self- presentation were neither as obvious nor as unquestionable as they wanted themselves and others to think. Polite behavior could be counterfeited, com- passion misplaced. Such reinterpretations undercut claims to authority by feeding into another issue of increasing concern to mid-eighteenth-century Americans, hypocrisy. Struggling to hide his identity, Bell could hardly have found appealing the widespread belief that fine outward professions often hid a foul inward reality. Yet colonial leaders, seeking to regain authority by presenting themselves differently, could also find at least some applications of this idea similarly uncongenial. If fine clothes did not make the man-or, more important, reveal him-then their attempts to justify their leadership through display might be only another confidence game. In I723, James Franklin's New-England Courant posed the dangers in stark terms. People who too often observe hollow religious pretensions, the author warned, sometimes "conclude, that Religion itself is nothing but a cunningly devised Fable, a Trick of State, Invented to keep Mankind in awe."44

The troubles stirred up by Bell show the dangers of a similar conclusion about social authority. In Barbados, the community rallied to expel a group of cultural outsiders. In New Jersey, the Rowland incident turned angry vil- lagers, who still believed the real minister responsible, against him and his supporters. When his accusers failed to prove Rowland's guilt because of tes- timony that he had been preaching in another colony that day, they indicted the witnesses themselves-including the Reverend William Tennent. Most of the cases were eventually dismissed, but a local church leader was not so lucky. He was convicted and sentenced to public shaming for "wilful and corrupt perjury."45

44 New-England Courant, Jan. I4, I723. 45 The best discussions of the trials are Field, "Review of the Trial of the Rev. Wm.

Tennent," 30-40, quotation on 36, and Green, "Trial of the Rev. William Tennent," 32I-44.

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248 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

Bell's relative success in avoiding a similar fate depended first on his ability to fulfill expectations about the appearance and behavior of a promi- nent person. Although fine clothing expressed this status most clearly, Bell also relied on other advantages. A Boston jailer described him by noting his "handsom Set of Teeth" and "pleasant Countenance" as well as by recalling that "his Discourse is polite, and he is of a spritely Look and Gesture." A Portsmouth, New Hampshire, man similarly cited Bell's "good Elocution." He "appears like a Gentleman," declared a New York correspondent.46

Such descriptions suggest that Bell had mastered the complex grammar of gentility, manipulating goods, gestures, and attitudes literally to embody refinement. As the people who readily accepted Bell's representations recog- nized, such mastery was uncommon. "Narrow notions, ignorance of the world, and low extraction," complained Doctor Hamilton, were common among "our aggrandized upstarts in these infant countrys of America." Hamilton's extended examination of American refinement in I744 found few who met his standards. A New York doctor, James McGraw, Hamilton noted with disgust, would drink to a person's health and then bow to them "sometimes for the space of a minute or two, till the person complimented either observed him of his own accord or was hunched into attention by his next neighbour." McGraw also practiced "an affected way of curtsieing instead of bowing when he entered a room."47

Bell seems to have exhibited none of the awkward gestures and lapses of taste that made Hamilton so uncomfortable with McGraw. The confidence man had internalized genteel standards, learning not only the basic ideals but also the less often articulated details that, sociologist Pierre Bourdieu suggests, provide the most accurate measure of class background because they are seldom acquired by formal education. Gentility stressed transcend- ing affectation. The aesthetic of politeness, a term originally meaning pol- ished, privileged seemingly effortless grace, not strenuous exertion. Rather than a carefully ceremonious curtsey, Hamilton expected an elegant gesture that, in the words of a I763 almanac, "moves with easy, tho' with measur'd Pace, / And shews no Part of Study but the Grace."48

Bell's genteel air validated his specific claims, but his acts undercut the values gentility sought to represent. Coming from the Latin gens (family) and thus referring to particular blood lines, the term originally denoted high

46 Boston Weekly Post-Boy, Aug. 22, 1743; Boston Evening-Post, Dec. 12, I743; N. – Y Evening- Post, Mar. 25, 1745.

47 Bridenbaugh, ed., Gentleman's Progress, 83, i86. On the ideal of gentility see Bushman, "American High-Style and Vernacular Cultures," 345-83, and Refinement ofAmerica.

48 Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, trans. Richard Nice

(Cambridge, Mass., i984; orig. pub. 1979), i-id. Leo Braudy, The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its History (New York, i986), 478, notes Baldassare Castiglione's related idea of sprezzatura, the ability to perform difficult actions with seeming effortlessness. Franklin significantly entitled his "Society for Virtue," a proposed association of moral men attempting to enlighten the world, "the Society of the Free and Easy," rather than a name expressing strenuous activity; Franklin, Autobiography, ed. Lemay and Zall, 77-78; Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women, 93; "Politeness," Poor Richard Improved, . .. 1763 (Philadelphia, [I762]), Sept.

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birth. Eighteenth-century ideals of gentility, seeking both to incorporate new kinds of wealth into elite circles and to justify the rule of this expanded elite, increasingly emphasized moral qualities that imparted refinement to behav- ior-a major element in the shift that Norbert Elias has called "the civilizing process." This inner quality was expressed most clearly in outward behavior, which could be counterfeited more easily than official titles or family con- nections. In a period when increased travel and communication required rapid judgments about whom to trust and respect, this difficulty spurred a continuing discussion of the attributes of "true" gentility.49

Historians have also begun to probe the rise of gentility. In the wake of recent challenges to the concept of "civilization" itself, "civility" now seems less a simple description of advance out of barbarism than a particular devel- opment that requires explanation. Scholars such as Richard Bushman, Cary Carson, and T. H. Breen have noted the lineage of these values in European aristocratic circles and courtesy books. They have explored American emula- tion of British practices and the corresponding physical reshaping of interi- ors and exteriors as well as examined the development of a consumer market for fine goods that conveyed status.50

Bell's encounters point to another, relatively neglected, aspect of these developments-the attempt to remake the character of human relationships. This goal involved not simply aping aristocrats or seeking status through consumption but efforts to build a society around peaceful social interaction rather than aggression and arbitrary power, a society that could welcome even strangers like Hamilton (or Bell) on relatively equal terms-if they ful- filled polite expectations. Bell's experiences show two important sides of this new view of society. In each, he fulfilled the letter but not the spirit of these new cultural imperatives.

Gentility first helped build solidarity and trust among elites that had been bitterly divided by English revolutions and colonial rebellions. The ideals of politeness provided standards that linked gentlemen across county and colony lines in a time of expanding population and commerce. Gentility repudiated the "passionate . . . harsh and tyrannical treatment" that James Franklin meted out to his sibling Benjamin. The younger Franklin expected "more Indulgence" from "a Brother," a familial standard of concern that he would later expand, through his involvement in Freemasonry, to gentlemen around the world.51 Bell seems to have met these expectations. Although he aggressively sought money and goods, none of the accounts of his activities suggests a resort to violence or harsh words. According to a I755 newspaper

49 "Gentle," "genteel," OED; Elias, The History of Manners, vol. I: The Civilizing Process (I939), trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York, I979); vol. 2: The Court Society (i969), trans. Jephcott (Oxford, I983).

50 Bushman, "American High-Style and Vernacular Cultures," 345-83, and Refinement of America; Carson, "Consumer Revolution in Colonial British America," 483-697; Breen, "'Baubles of Britain,"' 73-I04. See note 8 above for a fuller list of relevant works.

51 Franklin, Autobiography, ed. Lemay and Zall, I5, i6, and n.; Steven C. Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American Social Order, 1730-1840 (Chapel Hill, i996), 50-82.

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250 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

report, he claimed that he "never swore a prophane Oath."52 Bell thus exhib- ited a major component of what Max Weber called the "spirit of capitalism," the ability to defer gratification in hopes of later reward. A comic piece pub- lished in Boston in I762 recognized this quality: "The famous TOM BELL," a character relates, "once told me that he never was drunk in his Life." In the common eighteenth-century locution, Bell was never "disguised in liquor"- because he was so anxious to disguise himself. But Bell used this self-control to take advantage of others, undermining the trust that, Thomas L. Haskell argues, provided an essential precondition for an emerging market society- and, it could be added, for a stable political order based on limited govern- ment and civil society. Bell's activities thus undermined one of the main supports of the social order promoted by gentlemen-the clarity about intentions and morality supposedly revealed by polite behavior.53

Bell's exploits also subverted gentility's other key purpose, expressing and legitimizing moral authority over common people and outsiders. Physical and verbal signs pointed to politeness, but they were not its essence, for the ideal also possessed a strong moral dimension. As the biography of an eighteenth-century English confidence man, one Mister Bampfylde-Moore Carew, noted, gentlemen and ladies have only "the mercer [merchant] and taylor" to distinguish them from common beggars if their claims are defined solely by "their equipage." Among the truly genteel, polished presentation assured honorable morality, and careful manners legitimized gentlemanly authority. Not surprisingly, Franklin's master, Samuel Keimer, was not only "an odd Fish . . . slovenly to extreme dirtiness, [and] enthusiastic in some Points of Religion" but also, in Franklin's description, untrustworthy-"a little Knavish withal." Bell played on this presumed link between cultural presentations and moral character to take advantage of a Chester County, Pennsylvania, man who believed that Bell could be trusted because he acted "like a Gentleman."54

Bell used this connection for his own advantage, a subversion of intent seen in the parallels between his impostures and his financial swindles. Besides taking goods, Bell forged financial instruments to steal representa- tions of value. The bills of exchange (roughly the eighteenth-century equiva- lent of traveler's checks) and letters of credit (similar to bank checks or store credit) that he counterfeited in his earliest frauds offered signs of value that could be used beyond local and personal connections. Bell's financial activi- ties warned against the dangers of such paper representations of wealth; his

52 Boston Weekly News-Letter, Apr. Io, I755. 53 Serious-Comical Dialogue, 20; Haskell, "Capitalism and the Origins of the Humanitarian

Sensibility," 2 pts., in Thomas Bender, ed., The Antislavery Debate: Capitalism and Abolitionism as a Problem in Historical Interpretation (Berkeley, I992), I07-60; Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904-I905), trans. Talcott Parsons (London, I930). On gentility as a response to mobility see Carson, "Consumer Revolution in Colonial British America," 522-49.

54 Life and Adventures of Mr. Bampftlde-Moore Carew, I38; Franklin, Autobiography, ed. Lemay and Zall, 45; Boston Weekly News-Letter, Mar. IO, I743. For a provocative theoretical dis- cussion of the authority of polished self-presentation see James C. Scott, Domination and the

Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, i990).

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MUMPER AMONG THE GENTLE 251

impostures raised similarly inconvenient questions about the physical repre- sentation of authority. Like financial instruments, the ideal of gentility pro- vided widely accepted signs of high status and personal authority. Polite bows, polished conversation, and proper clothing all vouched for the gentle- man when an extensive check of social and commercial credit was impossi- ble. Bell's activities subverted this expectation, warning colonial gentlemen and others that such performances could not be taken at face value.55

Bell's undermining of the gentleman's cultural stock-in-trade can be seen in another crucial issue in his story, compassion-a key term in yet another of his encounters. On a July morning in I743, a gentleman "without either Coat or Wastecoat" entered a New York tavern. After eating breakfast, he requested pen and paper, saying that he needed to write to some of the city's most prominent men about his loss of ?6oo at sea, a substantial sum even for the professed son of a wealthy man in eastern Long Island. He was "well acquainted" with these worthies, he claimed, but could not visit with- out "Cloaths to appear in." The customers' suspicions grew. Finally they confronted him. Wasn't he the famous impostor Tom Bell? The stranger denied the charge. He had never heard the name but, he added, "whoever Tom Bell was, he was a Man that deserved Compassion." Soon afterward the stranger picked up his hat and silently left by the back door.56 Bell repeated the theme six years later, arguing to New York newspaper readers in I749 "that I appear to the Gentry and Clergy, as an object of pity, and subject of prayer." Newspaper items about Bell suggest that this expectation of sympa- thy was not simply a delusion. The South-Carolina Gazette warned in I743 that not only did Bell "impose upon the Compassionate," but "he is remark- ably successful in exciting Compassion in the Ladies." Although other accounts differ, the Gazette writer suggests that sympathetic Barbadian women saved Bell from the pillory.57

The repeated (and unexpected) use of the term suggests its larger impor- tance-and the dangers that Bell posed to elite self-definitions. The genteel face of power was not only carefully controlled but also compassionate. Bell himself contrasted the better gentlemen, marked by prayerful compassion, with his "implacable and ungenerous Enemies," who "authoritatively and arbitrar[il]y commanded" a newspaper editor to print "malicious, cowardly, Reflections and Accusations."58 A I732 correspondent to Franklin's newspa- per suggested a similar division in discussing Philadelphia's slippery winter streets. Unlike either the "thoughtless and indifferent" or the "malicious and

55 For the theatricality of i8th-century elite activities see E. P. Thompson, Customs in Common (New York, i99i). Isaac, Transformation of Virginia, also notes the significance of gen- try culture in establishing power. For the technical details of i8th-century exchange see John J. McCusker, Money and Exchange in Europe and America, 1600-1775: A Handbook (Chapel Hill, I978), and Baxter, House of Hancock, II-38.

56 Penn. Gaz., June 23, July I4, I743.

57 N.-Y Evening-Post, Sept. 4, I749; S.-C. Gaz., Sept. I2, I743. Compare Penn. Gaz., June i6, I743. For earlier reports see Boston Weekly News-Letter, Mar. I3, 1740, and N-Y Gaz., Mar.

3I, I740. 58 N-Y Evening-Post, Sept. 4, I749.

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252 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

ill-natured," the "humane, kind, compassionate, benevolent Class" thought- fully prevented slips by spreading ashes on the sidewalk. Franklin's own patron, Andrew Hamilton, was similarly eulogized: "as a Judge . . . he was compassionate in his Nature, and very slow to punish." He was, the author noted, "the Poor Man's Friend."59

This renunciation of vengeance and cruelty formed a linchpin for another eighteenth-century civilizing process, the attempt to tame the exer- cise of power. Human ability to sympathize with one another first justified limited government. People were not perpetually at war with each other, as Thomas Hobbes suggested, but actually possessed an innate sense of fellow feeling, of benevolence, that united them and made Hobbesian absolutism unnecessary. Sympathy also helped justify the power of American elites. In the decades after i690, leaders increasingly rested their claims on consent, public service, and the repudiation of physical coercion and arbitrary power. As the Reverend William Smith, Franklin's choice to head the new College of Philadelphia, told its first graduating class in I757, "authority" that was "lasting" depended on more than "superior Talents" and "inflexible Integrity"; it also required "unconfined Benevolence." These new attitudes about power spread slowly and unevenly (at first virtually bypassing race relations and only partially affecting gender relations), but they marked the start of a new vision of authority later expressed in Revolutionary republi- canism and humanitarian reforms.60

In I736, Franklin published a story about a Bermuda sea monster whose upper "Body was in the Shape and about the Bigness of a Boy of I2 Years old with long Hair." The deformed and the prodigious had previously been a key sign of imminent judgment or apocalypse, and townspeople pursued the creature. When they were about to strike it, however, "the human likeness surpris'd them into Compassion, and they had not the Power to do it." Bell's appeal to compassion was perceptive, encouraging people to see the

59 Penn. Gaz., Jan. II, I732, Aug. 6, I74I; the latter is reprinted in Labaree et al., eds., Franklin Papers, 2:328.

60 Penn. Gaz., Aug. II, 1757. Humanitarianism has been traced more fully in the post- Revolutionary period. See Halttunen, "Humanitarianism and the Pornography of Pain in

Anglo-American Culture," AHR, I00 (I995), 303-34; Elizabeth B. Clark, "'The Sacred Rights of the Weak': Pain, Sympathy, and the Culture of Individual Rights in Antebellum America,"

JAH, 82 (I995), 463-93; and Louis P. Masur, Rites of Execution: Capital Punishment and the Transformation ofAmerican Culture, 1776-1865 (New York, I989), 50-70. For discussions of the earlier period see Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness; Norman Fiering, Jonathan Edwards's Moral Thought and Its British Context (Chapel Hill, I98I), I93 n. i09, 247-60, and "Irresistible Compassion: An Aspect of Eighteenth-Century Sympathy and Humanitarianism,"

Journal of the History of Ideas, 37 (I976), I95-2I8; and Haskell, "Capitalism." Michel Foucault considers humanitarianism as a new means of asserting power in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York, I977; orig. pub. 1975). For the debates about paternalism in the slave south and elsewhere see Kathleen M. Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia (Chapel Hill, i996), 322-24, 462-63 nn. 8-9. For perceptive discussions of justifications of power in colonial

and Revolutionary America see Morgan, Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America (New York, i988), and Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York, I992).

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MUMPER AMONG THE GENTLE 253

human likeness, not the criminal monster. Bell thus turned elites' attempts to justify their power into a claim on their protection, a strategy that seems to have been at least partly successful. Whipped and nearly branded in the I730S, the increasingly notorious con man seems to have escaped physical punishment in succeeding decades.61

Bell's continued transgressions also revealed sympathy's dangers. As his less generous enemies pointed out, compassion could be misplaced-an argu- ment that played into a third set of stories that went beyond gentility and compassion, that of the outwardly respectable but inwardly vile hypocrite. Once again, Bell raised the issue himself. "Prosecutions Imprisonments, Censures, and Reproaches, &c," he argued in I749, work only on "incorrigi- ble Slaves and Offenders," not on "persons of Education, Penetration and of tractable and ingenious Natures." Rather than making "sincere Converts," such tactics produced "multitudes of Hypocrites."62 Of course, stories about Bell's deceptions pointed to the problem even more directly. The parallels between Bell's implied lessons and the explicit moralizing of New Light min- isters such as Whitefield and Rowland are striking. Both suggested that sur- face image was not enough, that social convention and outer display did not necessarily reveal inner truth. Bell's activities as a New Light preacher were thus deeply ironic, placing an impostor in the position of warning against impostures.

Bell's deceptions also played a part in a rethinking of the concept. Religious arguments previously had singled out primarily those who believed themselves saved but were not-those whom a theologian called "self- deceivers." Such a category not only reaffirmed God's sovereign freedom to save whom he chose but also provided a means of attacking religious oppo- nents whose sincerity could not be plausibly questioned. John Rowland made the theme a central one. According to Gilbert Tennent (whose brother had led the ill-fated preaching tour that provided Bell his opening), Rowland possessed a special "Talent of convincing the Secure."63

61 Penn. Gaz., Apr. 29, 1736; David D. Hall, Worlds of Wonder, Days ofJudgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England (New York, I989), 7I, 77, ii6. For ways in which rulers' attempts to solidify their power can be used by the ruled see Edward P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the Black Act (New York, I978).

62 N.-E Evening-Post, Sept. 4, I749. 63 Thomas Shepard, The Parable of the Ten Virgins Opened &Applied (London, i66o), I2I;

John Flavel, The Touchstone of Sincerity: or, The Signs of Grace and Symptoms of Hypocrisy (i679), (Boston, I73I), 27; Tennent, Funeral Sermon, Occasion'd by the Death of the Reverend Mr. John Rowland, 40-4I; Leonard J. Trinterud, The Forming of an American Tradition: A Re-Examination of Colonial Presbyterianism (Philadelphia, i949), 58-60. Jonathan Edwards used the concept of hypocrisy to distinguish his stance from both radical New Lights and liberal Arminians who fooled themselves through (respectively) false experience and false deeds; Edwards, Religious Affections (I746), ed. John E. Smith (New Haven, I959), I73. See also Ava Chamberlain, "Self- Deception as a Theological Problem in Jonathan Edwards's 'Treatise Concerning Religious Affections,"' Church History, 63 (I994), 54I-56, and William Breitenbach, "Religious Affections and Religious Affectations: Antinomianism and Hypocrisy in the Writings of Edwards and Franklin," in Barbara B. Oberg and Stout, eds., Benjamin Franklin, Jonathan Edwards, and the Representation of American Culture (New York, I993), I5-i6n. I thank Profs. Chamberlain and Mark Valeri for helpful discussions of the religious meanings of hypocrisy.

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254 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

Bell, however, was a deliberate deceiver, not an inadvertent imposter. Perhaps encouraged by the widespread interest in his activities as well as an emerging view of human nature as less deeply conflicted and more easily knowable, warnings about intentional hypocrisy grew dramatically in the years after Bell began his deceptions. By the end of the eighteenth century, fears about dissimulation suffused American culture, seen in both endless charges of political conspiracies and a vogue for novels about the seduction of innocent women who sympathized well but not wisely.64

Both Bell's activities and the increasing fears about deception they helped feed were intimately intertwined with the rise of the newspaper, the medium that spread reports about Bell beyond the people who encountered him. These "public prints" conveyed information that was literally disem- bodied, abstracted from the teller and increasingly seen as operating in a broader public sphere beyond local ties and interests. This abstraction is visi- ble in reports about Bell. Whether printed for the first time or merely clipped from other papers, newspaper accounts spread news of Bell's activi- ties but did little to explain them.65

The dimensions of the difficulties created by knowledge that was at once broader and thinner can be seen in the problems contemporaries had label- ing Bell. Newspapers characterized him most often as "famous." Even before he returned from Barbados, they called him "a famous impostor."66 Soon he became known everywhere as "the noted," "the famous," "the very famous Mr. Thomas Bell."67 Yet some writers distrusted the term. A I743 Portsmouth, New Hampshire, correspondent called him "the famous, or rather infamous Tom Bell." Others labeled him "famous and notorious," even "the famous infamous."68 This tension between fame and infamy reveals the limitations of eighteenth-century categories. The thief was not famous in the highest classical sense of possessing great virtues or performing great deeds. Rather, he was, in modern terms, a celebrity, someone known because of the mass media, so much so that a New York article reprinted in Philadelphia in I752, several years after the last warnings about Bell's crimes, could refer to a deceiver as "almost a second Tom Bell," and Daniel Dulany in I755, ten years before he himself gained fame writing against the Stamp

64 On the reshaping of views of human psychology see James Hoopes, Consciousness in New England: From Puritanism and Ideas to Psychoanalysis and Semiotic (Baltimore, i989), I-64. On late i8th-century fears of deception see Gross, "Confidence Man and the Preacher"; Wood, "Conspiracy and the Paranoid Style: Causality and Deceit in the Eighteenth Century," WMQ, 3d Ser., 39 (I982), 40I-4I; Cathy N. Davidson, Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America (New York, i986); and Larzer Ziff, Writing in the New Nation: Prose, Print, and Politics in the Early United States (New Haven, I99I), 54-82.

65 Charles E. Clark, The Public Prints: The Newspaper in Anglo-American Culture, 1665-1740 (New York, I994). See also Michael Warner, The Letters of the Republic: Publication and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century America (Cambridge, Mass., i990).

66 Boston Evening-Post, Dec. 10, I739. 67 For a few examples see Boston Weekly Post-Boy, Nov. I4, Dec. 26, I743, Mar. I9, I744. 68 Boston Weekly Post-Boy, Aug. 22, I743. N.-Y Weekly Post-Boy, Apr. I4, I746 (reprinted,

Pennsylvania Journal or Weekly Advertiser [Philadelphia], Apr. I7, I746; Va. Gaz., May I5, I746). N.-Y Weekly Post-Boy, Aug. 28, I749 (reprinted, Penn. Gaz., Aug. 3I, I749).

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MUMPER AMONG THE GENTLE 255

Act, could similarly describe a "rascal" who "imposed upon almost as many people as Tom Bell."69

In I743, the South-Carolina Gazette reprinted a story from Philadelphia about "young Mr Livingston, Son of Robert Livingston of Albany," yet another gentlemen whose "proper Name" was soon discovered to be Tom Bell. "He imposed the Name of Livingston on one Mathers of Chester," the report noted, "and this Bell appearing like a Gentleman, persuaded Mathers to let him have two Horses and a Man to bring him up here." A week later, the paper presented the same lesson in moral terms. "Honesty, Plain-dealing, and Simplicity of Manners," it complained, "are laid aside for Good-Breeding, Politeness and Complaisance: Which, interpreted by Actions, mean little else but Dissimulation, Flattery, and Deceit." "Sincerity," the author argued, "is generally profess'd, but scarcely found."70 Within a few decades, Revolutionary radicals employed such elite self-criticism (reinforced by such stories as Bell's) against social leaders such as the Livingstons. "Men affect to know and feel so much more than they do, and to be so much more sancti- fied than they are, that great abatements must be made from their presenta- tions," Connecticut's Abraham Bishop told an audience celebrating the defeat of John Adams: "'Surely every man walketh in a vain show."'71

After vigorously asserting his innocence in a long letter to a New York newspaper in September I749, Bell ended his crimes and settled down in Hanover County, Virginia, as a schoolteacher. In I752, bearing letters of rec- ommendation from local leaders, he traveled to Williamsburg under his own name to solicit subscriptions for his memoirs. The volume would be "useful to others," he argued, warning them about "those Snares and Temptations, by which I have been often entangled." It would also (recognizing the need for capital) "lay a Foundation for my future Livelihood" by helping him "acquire a Subsistance suitable to my Genius and Education." He would not accept advance payment, however, beyond an optional piece of eight. Bell continued to promise publication until the last certain account of him in the West Indies in early I755. A I782 Irish magazine author found Bell at Edenton, North Carolina, where he sought pupils by arguing "he was . . . more able to steer youth clear of the rocks and shoals of immorality, than those who had been careful to avoid them."72

69 Penn. Gaz., Oct. I2, 1752; Dulany to ?, Dec. 9, I755, "Maryland Gossip in I755," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 3 (I879), I45. Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (New York, 1992; orig. pub. i96i), esp. 45-74, suggests an important conceptual distinction between fame and celebrity, but Braudy, Frenzy of Renown, traces a more complex history that makes a simple dichotomy difficult.

70 S.-C. Gaz., Apr. I8, 25, I743. 71 Abraham Bishop, Oration Delivered in Wallingford, On the rith of March I8oI (New

Haven, i8oi), V.

72 Bell's letter, N.-Y Evening-Post, Sept. 4, I749; Va. Gaz., Aug. I4, I752; "Story of Thomas Bell, a Native of America," 365. According to the heading, this story came "from an Irish Publication, in I782," 364. Bell's advertisements follow increasingly popular pedagogical theory about the significance of experience. See Jay Fliegelman, Prodigals and Pilgrims: The

American Revolution against PatriarchalAuthority, 1750-1800 (Cambridge, I982).

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256 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

Bell's new narrative of repentance and reform added to his repertoire of stories about himself-self-definitions that confuse the issue of how Bell should be identified. Even his self-proclaimed change of heart raises ques- tions. The evidence for this newfound rectitude came in precisely the sorts of materials that Bell had previously forged so well, his own word and letters from gentlemen who could not easily be contacted. And his later activities, from collecting subscriptions for memoirs that never got written to advertis- ing his school, continued to exploit his impostures to gain money.

Bell's "going straight" thus turns out to be almost as difficult to read- as full of twists and turns-as his previous stories, tales that Bell kept on telling. He continued to boast of his experience and abilities. In I743, he had told Philadelphia's mayor that "he was well acquainted with Books, skill'd in Law and Divinity, and believ'd no one could tell him any Thing he was not acquainted with before."73 The I755 Antigua article introduced the new claim that he had impersonated a physician. Once again, Bell's ability to manipulate expectations seems to have been successful. According to the New York editor who provoked Bell's I749 letter to a rival paper, his boasting attracted many admirers. He would have been hanged long ago, the editor argued, without the people "who flock round him in every Place, grinning Applause to his redundant Chattering, and thereby supporting him in his unparallel'd Impudence."74 Like his repeated attempts to excuse his crimes or to protest his innocence, Bell's continuing boasts of his deeds undercut his new claims to repentance. The I755 article suggests the seemingly reformed con man still wished to preserve a measure of purity by arguing that he "never took Advantage of, or debauched, Virgin Innocence" and "never stole a Horse."75 Such claims (challenged even by the reporter) suggested that his misdeeds had been limited, perhaps even easily forgivable, an argument that he had used also in I749: "with a little Indulgence, less Assistance, a favourable Censure, and a generous Pardon, I may be easily reclaim'd."76

Establishing Tom Bell's identity-locating a "true self" beneath his fine clothing and fine words-is more difficult than it first appears. Bell drew on identities established by others. Indeed, his impostures merely placed him in the role that he had prepared for and could have expected after attending Harvard. Bell became even more theatrical when he was unmasked, boasting or loudly repenting as the situation required. But he was not limited to the ready-made roles of a hegemonic culture. A I762 pamphlet noted that Bell was so self-controlled that "No Law can bind" him. As contemporaries noted, Bell was an "extraordinary man," who, if he did not create his roles out of whole cloth, at least put them together in a new way.77

73 Boston Weekly News-Letter, Mar. IO, I743. 74 N.-Y Weekly Post-Boy, Sept. II, I749. See a similar report about Bell in Charleston (S.-C.

Gaz., Feb. I8, I744/5), where "a great Concourse of People daily flock[ed] to see him" in the workhouse.

75 Boston Weekly News-Letter, Apr. IO, I755. 76 N.-Y Evening-Post, Sept. 4, I749. 77 S.-C. Gaz., July i8, I754; N.-Y Weekly Post-Boy, Sept. II, I749; Serious-Comical Dialogue, i9.

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MUMPER AMONG THE GENTLE 257

Bell seems to have been an accomplished actor, able to shape his persona to suit the people around him yet keep part of himself distinct from their expectations. Eighteenth-century Americans recognized this theatrical qual- ity; in the words of the last known newspaper comment about him, Bell was a "universal comedian."78 The image of humans as actors has a long and tan- gled lineage. But Bell's career points to the real reason for the theater, the audience. If people author their own lives, others authorize those actions, accepting or rejecting them, at times approving the familiar, at times applauding the new and different. Bell made his living gauging the reaction of his customers; in playing to the crowd, his goal was not self-expression or artistic integrity but the fruits of successful performance. The metaphor of acting also focuses attention on the interchanges among institutions, players, and patrons. Each possesses different experiences, structures, and stories, yet all work together to create a performance. Bell invented his extraordinary career within the limitations formed by his audience (American elites and the people they hoped to dominate) and by his theater (the expanding net- works of communication and trade that had already forced colonial leaders to present themselves differently).

Bell's relationship with print culture suggests the complexities of these interconnections. Printed materials helped support his activities; the seal with arms of the Burnet family that he carried in Barbados was copied from a map published in Boston (Figure I). But Bell's career was also limited, perhaps even ended, by newspaper reports that made him a celebrity in an endeavor that required him to remain unrecognized. In turn, such stories also allowed others to experience these performances apart from their local consequences, a separation from the physical privation of theft and the psychological indignity of being bamboozled that eventually allowed the confidence man to become a romantic hero. Nearly a century later, a New Jersey judge could pronounce the newspaper accounts of Bell "really amusing." This intricate intertwining of the particular decisions of an individual, the spread of a communication medium, and the development of a literary genre warns against seeing individ- uals, events, texts, and contexts as completely separate entities.79

A popular eighteenth-century term for Bell's activities, "mumping," hints at some of the same insights about theatricality. A mumper begs and also, the Oxford English Dictionary notes, plays the parasite. As a mumper (and a mummer) among gentlefolk, Bell was both actor and parasite, repre- senting and challenging the eighteenth-century elite's ideas of themselves and the society they sought to dominate. To return to a commercial metaphor, Bell both bought into-and sold out-the elites' own confidence

78 Boston Weekly News-Letter, Apr. IO, I755. 79 Boston Evening-Post, Dec. IO, 1739 (map); Shields, Civil Tongues and Polite Letters, 275,

mistakenly suggests that Bell's seal was "the Great Seal of Massachusetts" and that he had it with him when he arrived in Barbados. Field, "Review of the Trial of the Rev. Wm. Tennent," 32 (judge). One of the merits of Erving Goffman's classic, but underexploited, work is its insis- tence on seeing not just players but also setting and audience as part of a dramaturgic situation;

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Garden City, N. Y., I959), esp. I2-I4.

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258 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

F;

_~

FIGURE I

Burnet Family Coat-of-Arms. Detail from William Burgis, Boston in New England (Boston, 1728). This map, dedicated to Governor William Burnet, features his family's arms, an emblem of their high status. In Barbados, Tom Bell ordered a seal with this image, presumably using it to secure his letters and to certify his identity as 'Gilbert Burnet. Photograph courtesy of the Boston Athenaeum.

game, their attempt to reconfigure their image and their authority through new stories about themselves. When Bell told some North Carolina gentle- men in 1745 that he would 'make free with their names," he may have meant something more than that he might assume their particular identity: his activities also undermined the larger structures that gave these names their power.80

80 Mum, mump, OED; VaL GL, Oct 31, 1745.

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Reading the Runaways: Self-Fashioning, Print Culture, and Confidence in Slavery in the Eighteenth-Century Mid-Atlantic

Author(s): David Waldstreicher

Source: The William and Mary Quarterly , Apr., 1999, Vol. 56, No. 2, African and American Atlantic Worlds (Apr., 1999), pp. 243-272

Published by: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/2674119

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Reading the Runaways:

Self-Fashioning, Print Culture, and

Confidence in Slavery in the

Eighteenth-Century Mid-Atlantic

David Waldstreicher

Run away in July last, from Nicholas Everson, living in East-New- Jersey, two miles from Perth-Amboy ferry, a mulatto Negroe, named Tom, about 37 years of age, short, well-set, thick lips, flat nose, black curled hair, and can play well upon the fiddle: Had on when he went away, a red-colored watch-coat, without a cape, a brown coloured leather jacket, a hat, blue and white twisted yarn leggins; speaks good English, and Low Dutch, and is a good Shoemaker; his said master has been informed that he intends to cut his watchcoat, to make him Indian stockings, and to cut off his hair, and get a blanket, to pass for an Indian; that he enquired for one John and Thomas Nutus, Indians at Susquehanna, and about the Moravians, and the way there. Whoever secures him in the nearest goal or otherwise, so that his master may have him again, shall have Forty Shillings reward, and reasonable charges, paid by

NICHOLAS EVERSON1

B] ONDSMEN such as Tom are not easily accommodated by traditional understandings of early American history and African-American his- tory. On one hand, his escape is evidence of black agency under the

brutal regime of slavery. On the other hand, so much of Tom's story, as told by his chagrined owner in this advertisement for his recapture, creates diffi- culties for any attempt to isolate and describe a unitary and coherent black (or white, or Native American) historical experience. Whether or not Tom

David Waldstreicher is assistant professor of American studies and history at Yale University. He wishes to thank audiences and participants at the conference "More Than Cool Reason: Black Responses to Enslavement, Exile, and Resettlement," sponsored by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, University of Haifa, Israel, the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, the Yale American Studies Faculty Colloquium, and the Yale African American Studies Colloquium. Special thanks are due to Christopher L. Brown, Steven C. Bullock, Elizabeth Dillon, P. Gabrielle Foreman, Peter P. Hinks, Graham Russell Hodges, Sharon Holt, Matthew Frye Jacobson, Robert D. Johnston, W. T. Lhamon, Jr., Robert Perkinson, Jonathan Prude, Mechal Sobel, Fredrika J. Teute, and Shane White for their helpful suggestions and rigorous criticisms.

1 Billy G. Smith and Richard Wojtowicz, eds., Blacks Who Stole Themselves: Advertisements for Runaways in the Pennsylvania Gazette, i728-i790 (Philadelphia, I989), 34.

William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Series, Volume LVI, Number 2, April i999

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244 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

was a member of an autochthonous slave community or slave culture, he was certainly one of the eighteenth century's quintessential cosmopolitans. He was multilingual, well traveled, skilled in a trade, attuned to the possibilities of life on the margins of settlement, of mixed racial ancestry, and aware enough of appearances to contemplate going-or at least passing as-Native American or Moravian. Historians have rightly used such advertisements to find out as much as possible about who the runaways were, by sex, genera- tion, and occupation. But some of the runaway advertisements also depict slaves pretending to be something else, and, in doing so, becoming some- thing else.2

More than chattel, Tom was an actor in the world of goods, manipulat- ing possessions and perceptions to make and remake himself.3 In fact, Tom had a great deal in common with certain other highly mobile self-fashioners of his day: for example, the appearance-conscious Benjamin Franklin, owner and editor of the newspaper that carried the announcement rewarding Tom's captor; or, perhaps, another Tom-the "famous infamous" Tom Bell, who roamed the colonial seaboard pretending to be various gentlemen of note.4 This article seeks a new way of seeing some blacks in slavery and servitude: as confidence men. Though Tom might not have been typical among eighteenth-century runaways, his strategies were typical of eigh- teenth-century confidence men, and perhaps even many more ordinary free men. The runaways described in many advertisements use the assumptions

2 Ibid.; Graham Russell Hodges and Alan Edward Brown, eds., "Pretends to Be Free": Runaway Slave Advertisements from Colonial and Revolutionary New York and New Jersey (New York, I994); Lathan Windley, ed., Runaway Slave Advertisements: A Documentary History from the i7305 to I790, 4 vols. (Westport, Conn., I983); Windley, A Profile of Runaway Slaves in

Virginia and South Carolina from i730 through i787 (New York, I995); Edgar J. McManus, A History of Negro Slavery in New York (Syracuse, N.Y., i966), IOI-20; Gerald W. Mullin, Flight

and Rebellion: Slave Resistance in Eighteenth-Century Virginia (New York, I972); Peter H. Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from i67o through the Stono Rebellion (New York, I974), 239-68; Marvin L. Michael Kay and Lorin Lee Cary, Slavery in North Carolina, i748-i775 (Chapel Hill, N.C., I995), I2I-36; Shane White, Somewhat More Independent: The End of Slavery in New York City, I77o-I8io (Athens, Ga., i99i), II4-49; John W. Blassingame, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South (New York, I972); Sterling Stuckey, Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America (New York, I987), chap. I.

3 For important insights into North American colonial self-fashioning, including other examples of working peoples' boundary crossing and self-fashioning, see Ronald Hoffman,

Mechal Sobel, and Fredrika J. Teute, eds., Through a Glass Darkly: Reflections on Personal Identity in Early America (Chapel Hill, N.C., i997); William B. Hart, "Black 'Go-Betweens' and the Mutability of 'Race,' Status, and Identity on New York's Pre-Revolutionary Frontier," in Andrew R. L. Cayton and Fredrika J. Teute, eds., Contact Points: American Frontiers from the Mohawk Valley to the Mississippi, I750-I830 (Chapel Hill, N.C., I998), 88-II3; Michael Zuckerman, "Tocqueville, Turner, and Turds: Four Stories of Manners in Early America,"

Journal of American History, 85 (I998-I999), I3-42. 4 Steven C. Bullock, "A Mumper among the Gentle: Tom Bell, Colonial Confidence

Man," William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Ser., 55 (I998), 23I-58; Pennsylvania Gazette (Philadelphia), July 7, I4, I743, AUG. I4, I746. For a runaway servant named John Blowdon who pretended to be a doctor and the son of a rich man, see Pa. Gaz., Mar. II, I73I, Mar. 8, I733, reprinted in Daniel Meaders, comp., Eighteenth-Century White Slaves: Fugitive Notices, vol. I,

Pennsylvania, I729-I760 (Westport, Conn., I993), I5-i6, 32.

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READING THE RUNAWAYS 245

of resource-rich whites to get what they want and need. They manipulate goods and texts to their advantage; they capitalize upon the ambiguities in the dominant racial classification system of eighteenth-century America; they employ their knowledge of the developing colonies, and the expanding mar- ketplace in which they themselves were producers, consumers, and com- modities, to change their identities and gain at least a measure of freedom.

The advertisements that sought to rein in fugitives show the changing possibilities for black resistance in late-colonial America, especially in those areas like the mid-Atlantic where bound servitude had not yet been racial- ized. Billy G. Smith's recent work reveals a mid-Atlantic situation in which slaves' individual acts of running away proved to be profoundly destabilizing, even comparable over the long term to the slave rebellions and other collec- tive acts of resistance in the South and the Caribbean. Such seemingly indi- vidualistic acts, in turn, reshaped black life in the North and put enormous pressure on the slave system elsewhere. Not only did African Americans form the bedrock of several New World colonies, they also moved between all parts of early America, making-and occasionally profiting from-the con- nections between areas of relative settlement and unsettlement, between slave societies and societies with slaves and other unfree laborers. In different gen- erations and in different places throughout eighteenth-century North America, a skilled, experienced, creolized population of working people- black, white, and racially mixed-bridged the seemingly separate, but eco- nomically linked, communities that made up the Atlantic world.5

Any effort to appreciate the nature and impact of unfree mobility, how- ever, needs to be specific to region and to time. The mid-Atlantic colonies have been seen as the seedbed of American ethnic and religious diversity and the liberal "pursuits of happiness." The region may also prove to be where slaves and servants found some of the best ways to resist that emerging capi- talist consensus from within its own structures as well as to develop alterna- tives such as religious practices. If the Middle Colonies were a particularly important and pathbreaking hub of development, with increasing slave importation, immigration, and trade, they were also a middle ground between North and South, and sometimes between the growing coastal cities and an expanding countryside: places perhaps especially open to "creative adaptations" whose meanings have yet to be fully discerned.6

5 Billy G. Smith, "Runaway Slaves in the Mid-Atlantic Region during the Revolutionary Era," in Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert, eds., The Transforming Hand of Revolution: Reconsidering the American Revolution as a Social Movement (Charlottesville, Va., I995), I99-230; Eugene D. Genovese, From Rebellion to Revolution: Afro-American Slave Revolts in the Making of

the Modern World (Baton Rouge, La., I979); Michael Mullin, Africa in America: Slave Acculturation and Resistance in the American South and the British Caribbean, i736-i83i (Urbana, Ill., I992); Gary B. Nash, Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia's Black Community, i720-i840 (Cambridge, Mass., i988); Sylvia Frey, Water from the Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age (Princeton, N.J., i99i); James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton, In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community, and Protest among Northern Free Blacks, i7oo-i86o (New York, I997); Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Cambridge, Mass., i998); and works cited below in note 7.

6 Jack P. Greene, Pursuits of Happiness: The Social Development of Early Modern British Colonies and the Formation ofAmerican Culture (Chapel Hill, N.C., i988); John J. McCusker and

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246 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

The advertisements also exemplify certain extralocal aspects of eigh- teenth-century mainland culture and, in doing so, hint at the magnitude of the project of racialization that whites began in earnest during the late-colo- nial period. This project, inchoate and partial during the era discussed here, proved attractive precisely because of the success the unfree had in putting their extralocal knowledge to use. The scholarly literature on cosmopoli- tanism, the public sphere, and the rise of intercolonial networks has largely ignored slaves and ordinary people such as Tom, but slaves and other work- ing people created a vernacular cosmopolitanism that served runaways espe- cially well. Drawing on new understandings of the "black Atlantic" and the "picaresque proletariat" created by merchant capitalism and by the people of European and African descent who performed merchant capital's highly mobile labor, it is possible to speak of a more mainland vernacular cos- mopolitanism, a racially mixed alternative public that becomes especially vis- ible in the advertisements. What would that alternative public imply for the republican public sphere, epitomized by Benjamin Franklin and his enter- prising use of print, upon which the runaway advertisements so rudely (or, rather, profitably) intrude?7

Such intrusions were in fact a regular aspect of the public sphere of late- colonial America. To late-twentieth-century eyes passing over the columns of an eighteenth-century newspaper, the advertisements can seem surprising, even outrageous, a rude reminder of forms of unfreedom that were doomed. They may then be separated from the other aspects of colonial life the news- papers make visible: the republic of letters, political protest, the world of

Russell R. Menard, The Economy of British America, i607-i789 (Chapel Hill, N.C., I985), chap. 9; White, Somewhat More Independent; Graham Russell Hodges, Slavery and Freedom in the Rural North: African Americans in Monmouth County, New Jersey, i665-i865 (Madison, Wis., '997); Wayne Bodle, "Themes and Directions in Middle Colonies Historiography, I980-I994," WMQ, 3d Ser., 5I (I994), 355-88; T. H. Breen, "Creative Adaptations: Peoples and Cultures," in J. R. Pole and Jack P. Greene, eds., Colonial British America: Essays in the New History of the Early Modern Era (Baltimore, I984), I95-232.

7 Richard D. Brown, Knowledge Is Power: The Diffusion of Information in Early America, i700-i865 (New York, i989); Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge, Mass., I993); Marcus Rediker, "Good Hands, Stout Heart, and Fast Feet: The History and Culture of Working People in Early America," in Geoff Eley and William Hunt,

eds., Reviving the English Revolution: Reflections and Elaborations on the Work of Christopher Hill (London, I988), 236; Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo-American Maritime World, i700-i750 (New York, I987); Peter Linebaugh, The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century (New York, i99i), II9-52, i69-70; Ira Berlin, "From Creole to African: Atlantic Creoles and the Origins of African- American Society in Mainland North America," WMQ, 3d Ser., 53 (i996), 25I-88; W. Jeffrey Bolster, Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail (Cambridge, Mass., I997). On "counterpublic spheres" of working peoples, see Nancy Fraser, "Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy," and Geoff Eley, "Nations, Publics, and Political Cultures: Placing Habermas in the Nineteenth Century," in Craig Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, Mass., I992), I09-42, 289-339. For Franklin as the epitome of the republican public sphere, see Michael Warner, The Letters of the Republic: Publication and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth Century America (Cambridge, Mass., I990), 73-96; Larzer Ziff, Writing in the New Nation: Prose, Print, and Politics in the Early

United States (New Haven, Conn., I990), 83-Io6.

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READING THE RUNAWAYS 247

goods. But what if the advertisements for runaways are considered as consti- tutive of the multiracial, free and unfree social world that the newspapers not only represented but, increasingly, mediated? We know about runaways precisely because notices for them appeared in newspapers, and the circula- tion of newspapers was itself inseparable from the expansion of internal and imperial trade in the mid-eighteenth century. Yet scholars have not attempted to think about the slave advertisements themselves as a print genre and as an essential part of the newspapers they helped subsidize.

This article uses runaway advertisements to analyze the acts of cultural hybridization black and racially mixed people committed for their own pur- poses and then proceeds to evaluate the owners' use of print to counter the mobility of the unfree, to establish or reestablish confidence in slavery and servitude. Benjamin Franklin and the print culture he represents had far more to do with slavery than previously believed, and all the more so because mid-Atlantic runaways insisted, as Franklin had insisted, on using their connections, their knowledge of the world of goods, and their linguistic skills to change their condition. Their awareness of how the system worked cannot be separated from the knowledge and skills that made them such valuable commodities in the first place, as the case of Charles Roberts, a mulatto servant, printer, and runaway, will demonstrate. The knowledge and will exercised by literate runaways like Roberts made it all the more tempt- ing for the architects of the public sphere, such as Franklin and John Holt (Roberts's owner), to find ways to deny the social importance of unfree, and especially black unfree, labor. During the late eighteenth century, the project of racializing differences in status and denying the realities of racial mixture came to be most attractive to people like Franklin and Holt, at least in part because runaways were capitalizing on their knowledge of social differences, of people and places, as assiduously as a successful printer and as craftily as the best confidence man.

It is impossible to know how many slaves and servants engaged in acts of disguise and self-transformation, because the main archive for that knowl- edge is the advertisements themselves. Though the notices advertise these very propensities, the authors had no small interest in denying the very tal- ents that had otherwise proven valuable to them. The advertisements empha- size certain attributes and fail to discover others. Realistic in intent, they are also rhetorical to the core. Runaway advertisements, in effect, were the first slave narratives-the first published stories about slaves and their seizure of freedom. They differ from the later counternarratives of ex-slaves and aboli- tionists in that the advertisements attempted to use print to bolster confi- dence in slavery, rather than confidence in African Americans and their allies. Written by the master class, they not only reveal but also exemplify the profitable contradictions of the mid-Atlantic labor system.

In what sense can slaves and servants-people with the most ascribed identities-have meaningfully fashioned their own selves? Classic and recent work on race in the nineteenth century has stressed the theatricality of the

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248 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

master-slave relationship, in which both masters and slaves played public roles that might not have been fully internalized; or, if they were taken to heart, it was as roles, and not necessarily as unidimensional or transparent facts of life. Black identities, like most identities in multiracial, multicul- tural America, were often made in interactions with the other, where whites and blacks tried out poses and, surprisingly often, played and imitated each other.8

Runaway advertisements offer a particularly useful entry into this role- playing because they necessarily attempt to describe individuals for their conformity to certain expected appearances or their equally generic alleged failure to perform certain roles. The act of running away itself challenged such roles even as it was expected of some bondsmen, and the authors of advertisements often found themselves explaining, directly or by implication, this failure of slavery and servitude as a cultural system (often by casting it as an ultimate success through the master's lack of surprise at the flight and his expectation of recapturing the fugitive). Roles, of course, are only part of reality, and the runaway notices are particularly interesting because they reveal slaves' capitalizing on the expectations of masters by contravening their roles, and the masters in turn explaining (literally, rewriting) their expecta- tions to make room for the tendency of the unfree to run. To get slaves or servants back into the role-to have them captured and returned, like the property they were, rather than the self-motivated persons they also were- owners had to describe what the slaves or servants had done to escape their role and what attributes (positive, negative, or both in their view) they pos- sessed that might or might not help them "pretend to be free."

Four of these attributes stand out in the advertisements: clothing, trades or skills, linguistic ability or usage, and ethnic or racial identity. The first three were the stock-in-trade of the eighteenth-century confidence man, whose manipulation of clothes, language, and the signs of trade or skill-

8 Gilbert Osofsky, "Introduction," Puttin ' on Ole Massa: The Slave Narratives ofHenry Bibb, William Wells Brown, and Solomon Northrup (New York, i969), 9-44; Eugene D. Genovese, Roll,

Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York, I974); Roger D. Abrahams, Singing the Master: The Emergence of African American Culture in the Plantation South (New York, I992);

William W. Freehling, The Road to Disunion: Secessionists at Bay, I776-i854 (New York, i99i),

59-97; Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (New York, I993). For recent analyses that do apply a constructionist or performative understanding of racial identity to the earlier period, with varying psychological and political emphases, see Shane White, "'It Was a Proud Day': African Americans, Festivals, and Parades in the North, I74I-I834," JAH, 8I (I994-I995), I3-5o; Wilson J. Moses, "Sex, Salem, and Slave Trials: Ritual Drama and Ceremony of Innocence," in Werner Sollors and Maria Diedrich, eds., The Black Columbiad: Defining Moments in African American Literature and Culture (Cambridge, Mass., I994), 64-76; Joseph Roach, Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (New York, i996); T. H. Breen, "Making History: The Force of Public Opinion and the Last Years of Slavery in Massachusetts," Mechal Sobel, "The Revolution in Selves: Black and White Inner Aliens," and W. Jeffrey Bolster, "An Inner Diaspora: Black Sailors Making Selves," in Hoffman, Sobel, and Teute, eds., Through a Glass Darkly, 67-95, i63-205, 4I9-48.

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READING THE RUNAWAYS 249

three main indicators of social status among men-made him a particularly disturbing sort of criminal. An expanding hierarchical world that could no longer depend upon intimate knowledge of all persons and their identities- the British, the colonial, the Atlantic world-was increasingly open to such ruses. In England, new literary genres had already emerged to narrate and comment on men and women on the make.9 Yet the art of playing on the confidence of strangers in the markers of identity would seem logically to have been more accessible to the free than to the unfree. Why were so many eighteenth-century slaves and servants successful in their efforts at least tem- porarily to change their status by changing appearances-so successful that the brief notices taken out by masters became a regular feature of newspapers, and now fill volumes? The proliferation of these social types (both the run- away and the confidence man) need to be placed in the context of the expand- ing market of mid-eighteenth-century provincial America and the trade in laborers, as well as goods, that characterized this consumer revolution.

A burgeoning literature describes and analyzes the explosion of material goods on the American scene and the further integration in the British empire of goods that consumption signified for colonists. The port cities of the mid-Atlantic grew rapidly because of this trade. It is less often observed in this scholarship, however, that the consumer revolution entailed, if it did not create, the huge demand for labor that was filled by immigrant and con- vict indentured servants from the margins of the newly named "Great Britain" and by slaves from Africa, the West Indies, and the other mainland colonies. The I740s-the key decade for American integration into the British consumer economy-was also the beginning of an increase in the importation and resale of unfree labor, white and black, in the mid-Atlantic. This proliferation of people-commodities-of laborers as goods-is reflected in the number of advertisements for goods, for the sale of servants and slaves, and for the recapture of runaways in the newspapers, all of which rose in tan- dem and rapidly during the I730S and especially the I740s (see Table I).10

9 J. Paul Hunter, Before Novels: The Cultural Contexts ofEighteenth-Century English Fiction (New York, i990); Christopher Hill, Liberty against the Law: Some Seventeenth-Century

Controversies (London, i996). For a mid-Atlantic example, see William Moraley, The Infortunate:

The Voyage and Adventures of William Moraley, an Indentured Servant (I743), ed. Susan E. Klepp and Billy G. Smith (University Park, Pa., I992).

10 Cary Carson, Ronald Hoffman, and Peter J. Albert, eds., Of Consuming Interests: The Style of Life in the Eighteenth Century (Charlottesville, Va., I994); Richard L. Bushman, The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (New York, I992); T. H. Breen, "An Empire of

Goods: The Anglicization of Colonial America, i690-I776," Journal of British Studies, 25 (i986), 467-99; Breen, "'Baubles of Britain': The American and Consumer Revolutions of the Eighteenth Century," Past and Present, no. ii9 (May I988), 73-Io4; Breen, "Narrative of Commercial Life: Consumption, Ideology, and Community on the Eve of the American

Revolution," WMQ, 3d Ser., 50 (I993), 47I-50I; James G. Lydon, "New York and the Slave Trade, I700 to I774," ibid., 35 (I978), 375-94; Darold D. Wax, "The Demand for Slave Labor in Colonial Pennsylvania," Pennsylvania History, 34 (i967), 33I-45; James A. Rawley, The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A History (New York, I981), 385-4I8; Jean R. Soderlund, Quakers and Slavery: A Divided Spirit (Princeton, N.J., I985), 54-86; A. J. Williams-Myers, "Hands That Picked No Cotton: An Exploratory Examination of African Slave Labor in the Colonial

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250 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

TABLE I

ADVERTISEMENTS IN THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE, I729-I755

Years Average No. (%) No. for No. for No. for No. for per Issue for Unfree Selling Selling Runaway Runaway

Labor Slaves Servants Slaves Servants

1729-1730 6.7 1.71 (25.5) .13 .13 .17 1.29 1731-1732 8.8 2.33 (26.5) .29 .29 .04 1.70 1733-1734 9.0 1.96 (21.7) .42 .33 .04 1.17 1735-1736 14.1 2.54 (18.0) .48 .56 0 1.50 1737-1738 18.1 4.75 (26.3) .92 .71 .17 2.96 1739-1740 20.8 4.71 (22.7) .54 .54 .21 3.42 1741-1742 25.3 5.79 (22.9) 1.25 .92 .21 3.42 1743-1744 28.0 6.88 (24.6) 1.29 .54 .38 4.67 1745-1746 32.3 8.29 (25.7) 1.29 .71 .88 5.41 1747-1748 45.8 10.33 (22.5) 2.02 1.02 .92 6.38 1749-1750 59.1 11.79 (19.9) 2.29 1.08 .94 7.48 1751-1752 82.8 15.71 (19.0) 3.31 2.06 .77 9.56 1753-1754 83.3 16.21 (19.5) 2.79 2.08 .29 11.04 1755 94.3 18.92 (20.1) 2.42 3.33 1.17 12.00

Note: Calculations are based on an examination of the first issue of the newspaper for each month. The category of servants includes African Americans and racially mixed people. By the mid-I75os, many of the advertisements were published on an extra half-sheet; these were not always included in the microfilm and original copies at Yale University and in the William Smith Mason collection of the Benjamin Franklin Papers, Yale University, especially after I756. By I758, the number of advertisements decreased rapidly to the late-I74os level of about 45 per issue owing to the Seven Years' War and its short-term effect on overseas trade and because Franklin and Hall stopped publishing the extra half-sheet. Advertisements took up an increasing amount of space in the paper overall, especially after I748, though this stabilized after I752; see Charles E. Clark and Charles Wetherell, "The Measure of Maturity: The Pennsylvania Gazette,

I728-I765," WMQ, 3d Ser., 46 (i989), 288-90.

Increasing trade on the water and in the interior also translated into a trade in servants and slaves, as these human goods began to move about with the goods they made, finished, transported, and helped show off in the enlarged homes of the genteel. If, as T. H. Breen suggests, "the roads of eighteenth-century America carried peddlers, itinerants and soldiers, all rep- resentatives of an increasingly fluid society," servants and slaves-native born and foreign born-also epitomize this fluidity: their flexibly employed

Economy of the Hudson River Valley to i8oo," Afro-Americans in New York Life and History, ii

(i987), 25-5I; Thelma Wills Foote, "Black Life in Colonial Manhattan, 1664-1786" (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, I99I), 23, 4I-52; Sharon V. Salinger, "To Serve Well and Faithfully": Labor and Indentured Servants in Pennsylvania, i682-i800 (New York, i987) 47-8i; Gary B. Nash and Jean R. Soderlund, Freedom by Degrees: Emancipation in Pennsylvania and Its Aftermath

(New York, I99I), 3-40; Smith, "Runaway Slaves in the Mid-Atlantic Region."

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READING THE RUNAWAYS 25I

muscle and skill made it all possible. Graham R. Hodges finds that in rural Monmouth County, New Jersey, "slaves traveled most often to pick up com- modities for their masters at general stores" and had explicit privileges to buy and sell. When the oft-quoted Dr. Alexander Hamilton made his tour of points north of Maryland, writing in his Itinerarium of the pretenses to gen- tility he saw all about, he did so with his slave beside him. It was Dromo car- rying the baggage into Newport, not his genteel master, who was mistaken for a peddler.11

What Breen calls "the creative possibilities of possession" had a double meaning for the unfree. The exploitation they experienced was heightened by the new possibilities for rapid profit seized upon by many of their owners. Pennsylvanians treated slaves and servants as "interchangeable labor forces," to be bought and sold, for cash or credit, as profit dictated-and it dictated often. In towns and cities, slaves were leased for short periods or sent out to hire themselves and earn wages. In rural areas like Long Island, and other places with close overland or waterborne links to cities, there developed a "highly mobile and multi-occupational African workforce accustomed to lit- tle immediate supervision." 12 This workforce was multiracial-white, black, and mixed-blood, foreign, creole, and native-as well as free, indentured, and slave. Comparing this flexible form of slavery and servitude to the plan- tation slavery gaining strength to the south, historians have seen in these developments only the beginnings of the end of slavery, rather than a newly intensified, capitalist, mixed system of unfree labor in which the presence of both servants and slaves depressed the prices of both and helped solve the problem of high wages for freemen.13 In a sense, commercialization worked

11 T. H. Breen, "The Meaning of Things: Interpreting the Consumer Economy in the Eighteenth Century," in John Brewer and Roy Porter, eds., Consumption and the World of Goods

(New York, I993), 25I; Hodges, Slavery and Freedom in the Rural North, 55-57; Berlin, Many Thousands Gone, 56-57; Carl Bridenbaugh, ed., Gentleman's Progress: The Itinerarium of Dr. Alexander Hamilton, I744 (I948; reprint, Pittsburgh, I992), I50.

On indentured servants, see, especially, Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York, I975); Richard B. Morris, Government and Labor in Early America (I946; reprint, New York, i965), 3I0-53I; Salinger, "To Serve Well and Faithfully"' Daniel E. Meaders, "Fugitive Slaves and Indentured Servants before i8oo" (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, i990); Aaron S. Fogelman, "From Slaves, Convicts, and Servants to Free Passengers: The Transformation of Immigration in the Era of the American Revolution," JAH,

85 (i998-i999), 43-59; Marilyn C. Baseler, "Asylum for Mankind". America, i6o7-i8oo (Ithaca, N.Y., i998), 6-7, 70-II9. Meaders provocatively titles his recent collection of runaway advertise- ments for indentured servants Eighteenth-Century White Slaves.

12 Breen, "The Meaning of Things," 25I; Edgar J. McManus, Black Bondage in the North (Syracuse, N.Y., I973), I3-I4, 47-5I; Salinger, "To Serve Well and Faithfully," 8i; Richard Shannon Moss, Slavery on Long Island: A Study in Local Institutional and Early African-American Communal Life (New York, I993), 97.

13 Q. Nigel Bolland, "Proto-Proletarians? Slave Wages in the Americas," in Mary Turner, ed., From Chattel Slaves to Wage Slaves: The Dynamics of Labour Bargaining in the Americas (London, I995), I23-47; Baseler, 'Asylum for Mankind. " The relative preponderance of servants or slaves, and the choices masters made when they had choices, seem less important here than the similar condi- tions that underlay the expanded acquisition and use of both servants and slaves and the ensuing multiracial character of the servant class, which is too often assumed to have been white. But for a

different view that stresses the decline of slavery, see Richard S. Dunn, "Servants and Slaves: The Recruitment and Employment of Labor," in Greene and Pole, eds., Colonial British America, i80-83.

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252 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

for servants and slaves the way it ultimately did for the free: it created new structures of movement and action-real freedom-yet it could also inten- sify traditional sources of constraint and nascent networks of debt. It should be no surprise that merchant capitalism, and the Anglicization it brought, strengthened slavery and servitude, for both were things of empire adapted to local conditions, like teapots and tax men.14

Clothing was perhaps the most important of the trade goods that prolif- erated in the colonies, and it proved as crucial a matter for the runaways as for genteel men and women. By the early 1730s, colonial spokesmen were arguing that their purchases of clothing made in England, and their resale of such goods to the Indians and the West Indies, made crucial contributions to the imperial economy.15 As the most necessary, transportable, and resal- able of commodities, articles of attire came to support a burgeoning resale market in the colonies. Clothing also illustrates the contemporaneous move- ment of an emulative consumer desire down from the top of society and the emergence of vernacular styles at the bottom. Insofar as average Americans participated in new forms of self-making-in the mode of gentility or other- wise-clothing informed the process. Benjamin Franklin dressed up to be a gentleman in the 1740s and I75os and dressed down to show his virtuous republicanism after he arrived in France as the agent for America. As Steven C. Bullock has shown, the celebrated confidence man Tom Bell succeeded again and again in pretending to be a gentleman in part because of his fine clothing, and he took all opportunities to capitalize upon the trust his clothes gained him in order to steal more clothes. Because of the household nature of much slave labor in the eighteenth-century North, slaves had ample opportunity to take the clothes they washed from the owners they dressed. 16

Advertisements for runaways describe their clothing in great detail: since few people had an extensive wardrobe, describing the clothes was as good as describing the man or woman. All the more reason that slaves and servants took every opportunity to take their own clothes when they absconded,

14 Some historians have shown more interest in giving capitalism the credit for antislavery than in untangling its complex, variable relationship to slavery (not to mention race) in the first place. See, especially, Thomas Haskell, "Capitalism and the Origins of the Humanitarian Sensibility," in Thomas Bender, ed., The Antislavery Debate: Capitalism and Abolitionism as a Problem in Historical Interpretation (Berkeley, Calif., I993), I07-60. Eugene D. Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Fruits of Merchant Capital: Slavery and Bourgeois Property in the Rise and Expansion of Capitalism (New York, i983), serves as a useful corrective, as does Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, I492-i800 (London, I997), esp. 6-I3, 35I-55.

15 Pa. Gaz., Dec. 29, I730, Jan. 5, July I5, I73i. The latter piece excerpts Joshua Gee, The Trade and Navigation of Great Britain Considered … (London, I729).

16 For the importance of clothes, see Jonathan Prude, "To Look upon the 'Lower Sort': Runaway Ads and the Appearance of Unfree Laborers in America, I750-i800," JAH, 78 (I99I-I992), I24-60; Beverly Lemire, "The Theft of Clothes and Popular Consumerism in Early Modern England," Journal of Social History, 24 (I990-I99I), 255-76; Shane White and Graham White, "Slave Clothing and African-American Culture in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries," Past and Present, no. I48 (August I995), I49-87; Bullock, "Tom Bell, Colonial Confidence Man."

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READING THE RUNAWAYS 253

along with those of their masters and mistresses. Sometimes different or finer clothes increased the chances of passing for free or being unrecognized. Hannah, described as "of an Olive Colour," ran with mourning attire, "which she no doubt intends to Dress in, that she may not be known." In I763, many mulattoes dressed in altered French or English military uniforms, no doubt recently earned in service or taken from deceased or deserted sol- diers-another way in which the lives and possessions of slaves, servants, and the not-quite-free overlapped materially as well as personally. In concert with white servants, runaway slaves robbed a Carlisle, Pennsylvania, tailor's shop; in Joppa, Maryland, another group broke into a tailor's shop and a dry goods store. When Jack ran away from Edward Agar, he risked coming back for a change of attire. Some took for use, for resale value, and, perhaps, for spite all at once, such as George Marple's slave George, who went out of his way to filch "another check shirt, and two Silk Handkerchiefs."17

For all its specificity, clothing could mean different things. The most successful runaways, like confidence men, probably changed their styles as often as they altered their stories, depending on the audience. For a servant like Charles Roberts, who according to his infuriated owner "effects to dress very neat and genteel" (and about whom more later), plainer attire might have been the better disguise, especially after his owner, a printer, placed a lengthy notice about him in New York and Philadelphia newspapers. Good clothes were as suspect as poor "negro shoes" (worn, revealingly, by white servants as well as slaves). A New Brunswick, New Jersey, jailer placed an advertisement notifying the public that he had incarcerated two blacks in fine clothing; the imprisoned men said they belonged to a West Indian gen- tleman who had died soon after they arrived in New York City. But did the clothes indicate that they were telling the truth or that they had committed some crime against their owner (dead or alive) or against some heirs by run- ning away? The jailer advertised in a New York paper for their master or master's heirs to come forward, or for testimony of their freedom, a much less likely proposition.18

Masters hoped to get both the clothes and the slaves back, and the rhetoric of the advertisements at times suggests that the most significant dif- ference between the two was their monetary value. The owners' representa- tions of runaways' clothes (including clothes they stole) sought to return these items and the runaways themselves back to the controllable world of goods in response to the attempts of servants and slaves to use clothes to refashion their identities. Often masters accomplished their aim by claiming property in the clothes as personally as in the slave. Writers of advertise- ments occasionally advised would-be captors to look for the monograms in shirts or on buttons. Such detailed renderings as "an ozenbrigs shirt and trowsers, with a new linsey woolsey blue jacket, a felt hatt, good shoes with

17 Hodges and Brown, eds., "Pretends to Be Free," 34, IIO, II3, II5, I2I, I24; Smith and Wojtowicz, eds., Blacks Who Stole Themselves, Io0, III, I33.

18 Hodges and Brown, eds., "Pretends to Be Free," 9I-92, I49-50; Smith and Wojtowicz, eds., Blacks Who Stole Themselves, IS, 34.

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254 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

brass buckles . . . a new broadcloth jacket of a lightish colour and a fine hol- land check'd shirt and trowsers, and a fine white shirt and two cambrick cra- vats and a pair of blewish white stockings" (the former ensemble worn, the latter lifted) placed the absconded persons in the same category as the lengthy lists of such goods that merchants advertised in adjacent newspaper columns.19 In a sense, the owners were truly advertising their own clothes, even if worn by their slaves: the clothes and the laborers had both been stolen, and they both returned to the pages of the newspaper, where both might first have been offered to the public for sale.

If clothing, like the runaways who wore them, proved both mutable and objectifiable, surely hairstyle and texture identified the racially and ethni- cally marked fugitive. Insofar as race meant a group of somatic characteris- tics, white owners up and down the East Coast described woolly hair as a distinctly African trait. Yet as Shane White and Graham White observe in their recent history of black style, runaway advertisements depict a great variety of hairstyles among slaves, "an expressive space that blacks were able to exploit." Distinctive hair could be shaven or grown, and frustrated mas- ters struggled to represent verbally the texture of the hair on the heads of mulattoes and mustees-when they wore "their own Hair" at all. In the early-eighteenth-century cities, blacks had already learned the trade of wig- dressing, which they employed on themselves as well as on whites of differ- ent classes. "Old" or secondhand wigs circulated as clothes did, and their theft was also noted in advertisements. The ability to change one's hairstyle aided flight: those who looked for fugitives were not greatly helped by notices describing a slave who "sometimes wears a wig. "20

For runaways, wig-dressing worked in tandem with the other important trades and useful skills they practiced, skills that made them valuable and increased their chances for temporary or permanent escape. One Kent County, Maryland, mulatto had "worked some Time in a Mill, in a Tan- Yard, and on a Plantation." A Virginia slave advertised in Pennsylvania could "turn his hand to many sorts of trades, and particularly that of a Carpenter." Often masters only reluctantly admitted that their fugitives filled the ranks of the skilled. Disinclined to grant servants and slaves the status of artisans, even though they constituted many of those working in the trades, they preferred to insist that a slave would "pass for a currier," "pretends to be a Tanner," "pretends to be a Black-Smith," "professes to be a Barber, Cook and Sailor. "21

19 Hodges and Brown, eds., "Pretends to Be Free, "36. 20 Shane White and Graham White, Stylin': African American Expressive Culture from Its

Beginnings to the Zoot Suit (Ithaca, N.Y., i998), 6i; Pa. Gaz., Mar. I, I748; Hodges and Brown, eds., "Pretends to Be Free," 2I-22, 27, 74, 272; New-York Weekly Journal, Aug. 26, I734; Smith and Wojtowicz, eds., Blacks Who Stole Themselves, 2I, 23, 76.

21 Hodges and Brown, eds., "Pretends to Be Free, " 56-57, 294; Smith and Wojtowicz, eds.,

Blacks Who Stole Themselves, II4; Maryland Gazette (Annapolis), Sept. 6, I749, Mar. I4, I750; Clement Price, ed., Freedom Not Far Distant: A Documentary History of Afro-Americans in New Jersey (Newark, N.J., i980), 40-42. For slaves and servants employed by artisans, see White, Somewhat More Independent, I0-22; Tina H. Sheller, "Freemen, Servants, and Slaves: Artisans and the Class Structure of the Revolutionary Baltimore Town," in Howard B. Rock, Paul A.

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READING THE RUNAWAYS 255

Even when such skills and aspirations were admitted, they could be dis- paraged, as with Simon, who "talks good English, can read and write, is very slow in his Speech, can bleed and draw Teeth, Pretending to be a great Doctor and very religious and says he is a Churchman." Tom Bell and Stephen Burroughs, the best-known confidence men of the era, pretended to gentility; the unfree most often pretended to the free identity that came with a trade-while sometimes, like Simon or "Preaching Dick," developing less common skills on the side. Those who owned the labor of runaways would have none of it and registered their protest in the rhetoric of pretense that suffuses the advertisements. The accusations of false piety are especially revealing as adjuncts to the attempt to strip the runaways of their hard work and skill, their respectability and success as self-made men and women. Christianity, after all, was a source of strength and self-determination, its possession often itself an argument for equality in the eyes of slaves and their allies. Advertising his "very talkative" thirty-five-year-old slave, one master insisted on using the language of pretense to describe how his slave Anthony "pretends to be a preacher," even while admitting that Anthony "sometimes officiates in that capacity among the Blacks."22

Owners made similar complaints about indentured servants. To a large extent, slaves who ran to practice a trade mirrored the efforts of runaway apprentices and servants to escape a system that attempted to squeeze profit out of scarce labor. Just as people who worked with their hands had to prove their value in public demonstrations, such as the show of diligence Benjamin Franklin made with his wheelbarrow in the streets of Philadelphia, every aspiring person was engaged in an effort of persuasion. To play in this conse- quential game was, for working people, to pursue freedom. When masters and others denied those skills in public, labeling them false, they sought to turn the labor of these people into a still cheaper commodity. For owners as for bondsmen, a relationship existed between pretending to own a trade and pretending to be free, as in the very syntax of the advertisement that William Wood placed in 1777: "He passes himself for a free man and a glasier by trade."23 A glazier was not usually a commodity in the same way that an unfree man was, so an unfree glazier could not simply be spoken of as a glazier. Someone else owned his trade.

Gilje, and Robert Asher, eds., American Artisans: Crafting Social Identity, i750-i850 (Baltimore, I995), 25-29.

22 Hodges and Brown, eds., "Pretends to Be Free," i6, 297; Smith and Wojtowicz, eds., Blacks Who Stole Themselves, 26, I24; Pa. Gaz., Sept. II, I740, Nov. 2, I749. On Stephen Burroughs, see Burroughs, The Memoirs of Stephen Burroughs, ed. Philip F. Gura (Boston, i988); Robert A. Gross, "The Confidence Man and the Preacher: The Cultural Politics of Shays's Rebellion," in Gross, ed., In Debt to Shays: The Bicentennial of an Agrarian Rebellion (Charlottesville, Va., I993), 297-32I. On religion and slavery in the mid-Atlantic, see Graham R. Hodges, Root and Branch: African Americans in New York and East Jersey, i6i3-i863 (Chapel Hill, N.C., forthcoming).

23 W. J. Rohrabuagh, "'I Thought I Should Liberate Myself from the Thraldom of Others': Apprentices, Masters, and the Revolution," in Alfred F. Young, ed., Beyond the American Revolution: Explorations in the History of American Radicalism (DeKalb, Ill., I993), i85-2I7; Hodges and Brown, eds., "Pretends to Be Free, " i96.

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256 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

Commodification was apparent in the growing tendency of slaveowners, rural and urban, to buy, sell, and rent slaves as "short-term speculation," a tendency that led to more running away, as slaves took their chances with prior masters, with new acquaintances, or on their own. Merchant capitalism heightened the commodification of all labor. For servants and especially slaves, the local, freelance jail system in the colonies, like Newgate in the metropolis and impressment on the high seas, acted as an important adjunct to this process of commodification, as jailers too placed advertisements for runaways they had "taken up" and would release for their "charges." The interests of masters who owned runaways sometimes clashed with an arguably greater public interest in having a flexible, skilled, and increasingly mobile labor force. As long as labor was cheap, many farmers and master artisans did not care whether it was bound or free, white or black, or some ambiguous combination of all these. It is generally assumed that this situa- tion led to the decline of slavery and indentured servitude in the long run. The contradictions or stresses in such a system might have made it precari- ous, and the Revolution certainly sped its mutation into something else. But such developments were not inevitable, and certainly not intentional, for, in the meantime, the combination of harsh laws and variable enforcement kept the owning classes in good profits. It was an open secret that many harbored runaways to profit from their cheap labor: a system that allowed for maxi- mum exploitation by the master class and a choice of workplace for some of the unfree.24

Before the Revolution, seafaring ranked among the best prospects for fugitives in search of both a quick getaway and an employer who would not ask too many questions. Slaves and servants ran to ships with regularity, and the advertisements reveal the lure of the sea and the aspiration of many to the life of a mariner. Consequently, advertisements regularly warned "mas- ters of vessels" against granting a berth to particular persons. But they also warned people on land against harboring fugitives, especially in the wake of the wartime disorders that allowed so many to escape. Common ruses for those escaping by land included pretending to be another man's servant, to be en route on an errand, or to be looking for employment (as some surely were, but without permission). After mentioning the locations of his slave Peg's two former owners, Eleazar Oswald wrote in exasperation to the New Jersey Journal: "It is presumed she is gone to Chatham in New Jersey, or else

24 Smith and Wojtowicz, eds., Blacks Who Stole Themselves, 69, 72, 75, 78, 86-87; Hodges and Brown, eds., "Pretends to Be Free, " 96, 98, II5, I49; McManus, History of Negro Slavery in New York, 47-53; Frances D. Pingeon, "Slavery in New Jersey on the Eve of Revolution," in William C. Wright, ed., New Jersey in the American Revolution, rev. ed. (Trenton, N.J., I974),

58. For the commodification of labor, see Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. On regulation and incarceration in England, see Linebaugh, The London Hanged; Nicholas Rogers, "Vagrancy, Impressment, and the Regulation of Labor in Eighteenth-Century Britain," Slavery and Abolition, IS (I994), I02-I3. Immanuel Wallerstein argues that the essence of capitalism is its "commodification of everything," pointing especially to the commodification of labor and of the subprocesses in the supply of necessities such as clothing; see Wallerstein, Historical

Capitalism; with Capitalist Civilization, 2d ed. (London, I995), i6.

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READING THE RUNAWAYS 257

is concealed in this city [Philadelphia], or some place near it, by some free negroes or others, who wish to avail themselves of the service of other peo- ple's servants." As today, trade wars and real wars uprooted people and encouraged the creation. of an informal economy in which official rules of migration and employment do not obtain because employees and (especially) employers benefit more by ignoring them. The frustrated master Oswald threatened to sue as well as prosecute those who aided his runaway. The same conditions that made slaves increasingly valuable also created opportu- nities for them, and headaches for their masters.25

How, after all, could one really tell who was a slave, who a freeman, who a servant, and who a runaway? A vague and roughly accurate common sense forecast that the African born were likely to be slaves, that mulattoes and "country-born" people of color were more likely than Africans to be servants or free, and that recently arrived Irish, Scots, and Welshmen were probably servants. Yet precisely because the markers of clothing and skill were them- selves commodified, and because runaways expertly played the market, these ethnic markers, though relied upon, were often unreliable as guides to the status of persons. So was race, if race means skin color. The culturalist and nationalist understandings of difference preferred today were more com- monly used in the runaway advertisements than those of biological race, although attempts to describe color also appeared regularly. Indeed, the greatly variable terms for the "tawny," "swarthy," "dark," "brown," or even "black" complexion of some foreign-born whites suggests that, despite the continued link of blackness (and often Indianness) to slavery and servitude, whiteness in its modern form-associated with freedom, guaranteed to all those of European descent-did not yet exist in the mid-Atlantic. Instead, as in late-seventeenth-century Virginia, a picaresque, occasionally criminalized class arose for whom race did not matter in the same ways, or as consistently, as it would come to matter.26

Masters often saw color where we see white because of their desire to identify unfree laborers as phenotypically different. At the same time, skilled and cosmopolitan slaves and servants, according to both contemporary impressions and the advertisements taken en masse, were often racially mixed or creole, further complicating any prospective attempt to rely on race-as-

25 Smith and Wojtowicz, eds., Blacks Who Stole Themselves, i8-ig, 35, I48-49; Hodges and Brown, eds., "Pretends to Be Free, " i9, 95, I09-IO, 274-75, 294; Pa. Gaz., May 4, I749; Bolster, Black Jacks, 7-43; McManus, Black Bondage in the North, 47-50, II4. For a vivid sense of the

variable benefits of informal economies, see Sarah Mahler, American Dreaming: Immigrant Life

on the Margins (Princeton, N.J., I995). 26 Pa. Gaz., Oct. 28, I734, Apr. I, I747, Feb. I4, Apr. I3, July 6, I749, Nov. 7, I75I, Oct. 5,

I752; Meaders, comp., Eighteenth-Century White Slaves, 77, Io4; Jack D. Forbes, Africans and Native Americans: The Language of Race and the Evolution of Red-Black Peoples, 2d ed. (Urbana, Ill., I993), 4-5, 66; Prude, "To Look upon the 'Lower Sort,"' ISI; Morgan, American Slavery,

American Freedom. On stages of racial perception in U.S. history after I790, see Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, Mass., i998).

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258 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

skin-color to determine status in the last instance. Color indicated a likeli- hood of servitude, but it was no guarantee of slavery. Later, the decline of indentured servitude and slavery catalyzed by the upheavals of the American Revolution would initiate a re-racialization of blacks of various hues even as it freed many of them. Despite the large numbers of free blacks in the North by I790 and the emancipation measures undertaken in a number of states by that time, the post-Revolutionary North became more like the contemporary South in the matter of racial classification, because blacks constituted the only group largely and permanently subject to adult unfree labor. In such a situation, the incentives for racism along a white-black binary would be even greater.27

Undeniably, brown and black skin color remained associated with slav- ery and servitude all over the Atlantic world during the eighteenth century. Yet color did not resolve the problem of mulattoes, of servants versus slaves, or of free blacks. Although the fundamental mark of race in America has been skin color, argues the philosopher Robert John Ackermann, the history of race as a form of perception shows that the mark of race "can be almost anything": indeed, racism "typically drifts away from skin color to personal- ity characteristics and genetic claims."28 During the late eighteenth and nineteenth century, northerners and southerners would develop a racism that insisted upon inherent, natal black inferiority and cultural difference. In print culture, as in popular theater, that difference and inferiority was demonstrated through a white insistence upon the ubiquity of Black English dialect. In linguistic forms, Black English embodied difference as inequality when whites considered or performed it as a second-rate, incomplete, uncomprehending dialect, lacking the expressive possibilities now celebrated in actual African-American English. White Americans found in culture-in language turned into performance and print-something they could not always depend upon in biology.29

27 Fox-Genovese and Genovese, Fruits of Merchant Capital, 403, 4II; Duncan J. MacLeod, "Toward Caste," in Ira Berlin and Ronald Hoffman, eds., Slavery and Freedom in the Age of the American Revolution (Charlottesville, Va., i983), 2I7-36; Berlin, Many Thousands Gone, 228-55,

358-65. 28 Robert John Ackermann, Heterogeneities. Race, Gender, Class, Nation, and State

(Amherst, Mass., i996), 2I, 29. See also Walter Benn Michaels, "Autobiography of an Ex-white

Man," Transition, 73 (i998), I22-43. For the particular importance of the Revolutionary era in the history of slavery and racism, see Winthrop D. Jordan, White over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, i55o-i8i2 (Chapel Hill, N.C., i968), 269-582; David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, I770-i823 (Ithaca, N.Y., I975); Gary B. Nash, Race and Revolution (Madison, i990); Frey, Water from the Rock; Berlin, Many Thousands Gone, 2I9-357. The runaway advertisements generally support Jordan's claim that the miscegenation that had already occurred was the greatest threat to racial hierarchy-a point that need not depend on Jordan's psychosexual emphasis; see White over Black, I36-78, 542-69.

29 Lott, Love and Theft; Michael Rogin, Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Hollywood Melting Pot (Berkeley, Calif., I996), 19-58; W. T. Lhamon, Jr., Raising Cain:

Blackface Performance from Jim Crow to Hip Hop (Cambridge, Mass., i998); David Grimsted, "Anglo-American Racism and Phyllis Wheatley's 'Sable Veil,' 'Length'ned Chain,' and 'Knitted

Heart,"' in Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert, eds., Women in the Age of the American Revolution (Charlottesville, Va., i989), 338-446; Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Figures in Black: Words,

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READING THE RUNAWAYS 259

Before the late eighteenth century, however, it was much harder to establish a useful fiction of linguistic homogeneity in the black-or white- colonial population. Dialect jokes were directed at all the foreign accents that could be heard among the diverse peoples of early America. Advertisers for runaways commented on language proficiency and accents, or lack thereof, without ascribing a racial essence to bondsmen's linguistic abilities. Indeed, the advertisements were at least as likely to comment pejoratively on an Irish servant's "brogue on the tongue" or indicate surprised pleasure at a Welshman's "good English" as to express irritation at a colored person's Black English. Like trades and clothes, language ability was a matter of value on the open market, to be judged by consumers who knew how to make valuable distinctions based on their own needs. There were "French negroes," "Spanish negroes," "country-born" English-speakers fluent in Dutch or German, and West Indian-born slaves who knew the pidgins of trade as well as distinct local languages; these multilingual slaves were the glue of maritime commerce, of a diverse America growing because of its trade with the world. A healthy colonial world in the age of merchant capital was a multilingual world in which people of mixed background were valued pre- cisely for such skills. Language was a matter of nationality and culture, and nations and cultures were mixing in war and peace.30

Mid-Atlantic masters seem to have been less ambivalent about slaves' language skills than masters in the South. Generally, masters valued their slaves' and servants' multilingualism, as long as their English was fluent, and thought it a problem only if they had run away. Yet those who spoke multi- ple languages or dialects or could write had the most success running away. Recent arrivals who knew little English were often supposed to have been

Signs, and the "Racial" Self (New York, i987), 3-79; White, Somewhat More Independent, 73; John Wood Sweet, "Bodies Politic: Colonialism, Race, and the Emergence of the American

North: Rhode Island, I730-i830" (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, I995), chap. 6; David Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, i776-i820 (Chapel Hill, N.C., I997), 209-I0, 229-3I, 333-42.

30 Bolster, Black Jacks, 40-4I; Berlin, "From African to Creole"; Pa. Gaz., Feb. I0, I744, Jan. 24, I749, Nov. i, I753; New-York Gazette, Feb. I, I768; New-York Mercury, Sept. 2, I754; N.-Y Weekly Jour., May i6, I737; New-York Gazette [Weyman'sW, July 4, I76i; Hodges and Brown, eds., "Pretends to Be Free," 94, I23-24, I46-47. For the emergence of standard Black and white English and its significance, see J. L. Dillard, Black English (New York, I972), which provides an essential starting point, as does Marc Shell, "Babel in America; or, The Politics of Language Diversity in the United States," Critical Inquiry, 20 (I993), I03-27. For the earlier continuum and its significance, see Douglas B. Chambers, "'He Is an African but Speaks Plain': Historical Creolization in Eighteenth Century Virginia," in Joseph E. Harris, Alusine Jalloh, and Stephen E. Maizlish, eds., The African Diaspora (Arlington, Tex., i996), I00-33; Philip D. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry (Chapel Hill,

N.C., I998), 56o-8o. Few advertisements depict an inherent threat in the culturally hybrid world that the

unfree inhabited, with the telling exception of New York City's standard-bearer for the Church of England, Revered Charles Inglis, who in I773 blamed the "bad company" frolicking on "the late Holydays"-probably Pinkster and Whitsunday-for the departure of Dick, his "likely, well-made," English- and Dutch-speaking servant; see Hodges and Brown, eds., "Pretends to Be Free, " I67.

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260 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

stolen or led away by others. Owners hoped that slaves and servants could be marked by their very proficiency in language, as in the case of Cato, who, though branded as a boy in Jamaica, "speaks English as if country born," and of twenty-two-year-old George, whose Staten Island master believed that his tendency to "tal[k] a good deal upon the New-England Accent" would make him conspicuous. If George was in fact a spectacle when he spoke Yankee, the Chester County slave who "speaks Swede and Mulatto well" proba- bly had more options. Richard Swan of Philadelphia did succeed in recapturing his stereotypically named Cuffy after describing him in print as "a Creole, born at Montserrat, and speaks good English and French." This slave (or servant- the advertisement, revealingly, does not say) was marked by a scar and plagued by "sore feet." Yet these handicaps did not keep him from running away again, two months later, under the almost comically Anglo-Irish-sounding name of Billy Farrell.31

Like fast-talking confidence men, linguistically proficient black slaves and servants made a mockery of many attempts to fix accents on them, or even to define their proficiency or lack thereof. A I726 advertisement describes a slave who "talks no English or feigns that he cannot." This owner associated the uncertainty of his slave's language skills with the runaway's insistence on "calling himself Popaw," his African name. If they could not use the runaway advertisements to fix dialect, masters did attempt to isolate and control other slave uses of language, like naming. One-quarter of the runaway advertisements Thelma W. Foote examined for her study of blacks in colonial Manhattan mention surnames or aliases, the use of which, she notes, "provides evidence of the multiple layers of identity adopted by run- away slaves." Runaways regularly changed their names, and the advertise- ments often catalog the known aliases of runaways with a sense of injury and outrage, as masters rightly associated the power of naming with their own privileges as propertyowners: "He always changes his name, and denies his master." This particular slave, an "excellent hammerman" who had run before and who would later be rented out only to run again, was known to his master by the rather generic name of Cuff Dix, but the jailer who adver- tised him six weeks later noted that he "says his name is Willis Brown." When arrested, he carried a bolt of striped linen, which he said he had bought in Salem County, and the jailer who wrote the advertisement associ- ated both the cloth and his acts of speech with his prospective and real trans- formation into "a preacher, as he says, among the Indians." Likewise, Robbin, a fifteen-year-old belonging to Noah Marsh of Westfield, New Jersey, chose the right nickname in "call[ing] himself Levi alias Leave."32

In the master's mind there was some relationship between this insistence on self-naming and Levi's ability to "frame a smooth story from rough mate-

31 Smith and Wojtowicz, eds., Blacks Who Stole Themselves, i9, 24, 36, 62; Hodges and Brown, eds., "Pretends to Be Free," xxx, 69, I20; N.-Y Weekly Jour., Apr. I5, I734; Pa. Gaz., Sept. 4, I740, June 4, Aug. 6, I747.

32 Hodges and Brown, eds., "Pretends to Be Free, " 5, I4, 20, 29, 42, 228; Foote, "Black Life in Colonial Manhattan," 249; Smith and Wojtowicz, eds., Blacks Who Stole Themselves, 40,

41-42, 65, I23-24, I26, I29–30; N.-Y Weekly Jour., Aug. 26, I734, Jan. I9, I736.

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READING THE RUNAWAYS 26i

rials." The ability to take or change names seemed of a piece with other feats of speech, skills that masters admired and desired in their slaves and servants even as they posed capital risk. Even though he "stammers in his speech," Robert Freeland's slave would probably "change his name [and be] at no loss for a plausible story." A "Guinea Negroe" accent was no obstacle to Cuff, a Dutchess County slave whose master described him as "very flippant; he is a plausible smooth Tongue Fellow." Mid-Atlantic servants and slaves engaged in a talkative resistance, appropriate to the cooperative, intimate, yet often public nature of their exploited labor. In calling their runaways smooth talk- ers, some owners tried to capture their mixed feelings about their talking property. More often, they veered between narrating the runaways' daring acts of speech and cursing their slaves for what a later generation of slave- holders would naturalize as a racial propensity to lie, a proof of dishonor.33

One man's or woman's lying, of course, was another's resistance to bru- tal exploitation. The lengthier, more descriptive advertisements often con- nect the runaways' deceit to their most valuable and human characteristics. The master of Buck, a mulatto, lurched between seemingly contradictory descriptions of his bondsman's linguistic and personal abilities, trying but failing to separate speech abilities and virtue for one who seemed "sensible, artful, and deceptive in conversation, firm and daring in his efforts to perpe- trate villainy, though of mild temper, and plausible in speech. "34 Such prop- erty, often literate as well as verbally adept, could not be so easily contained within the descriptive logic of the advertisements. Neither the terms of value nor the rhetoric of pretense sufficed. The longer the advertisement-the more there was to say-the more likely that the escapee's own web of words, his or her confidence game, had already undermined the master's security, or confidence, in ownership, much less in visible markers of racial difference.

Runaways changed their clothes and their names and put their verbal and manual skills to work to leave their masters. But what were they passing for? The exciting new scholarship on "passing," growing out of an inquiry into race and gender and an archive of mainly nineteenth- and twentieth- century texts, generally presumes that slaves and other people of African descent passed for white (and sometimes, while doing so, cross-dressed to pass for men or women).35 In the mid-Atlantic of the eighteenth century,

33 Hodges and Brown, eds., "Pretends to Be Freet," 47, 228; Smith and Wojtowicz, eds., Blacks Who Stole Themselves, 74-75. For antebellum southern slaves as dishonorable liars in the white imagination, see Kenneth S. Greenberg, Honor and Slavery: Lies, Duels, Noses, Masks, Dressing as a Woman, Gifts, Strangers, Humanitarianism, Death, Slave Rebellions, the Proslavery Argument, Baseball, Hunting, and Gambling in the Old South (Princeton, N.J., i996), II-I2,

40-4I . 34 Hodges and Brown, eds., "Pretends to Be Free, " 228; Smith and Wojtowicz, eds., Blacks

Who Stole Themselves, 74-75, I2I-22; Pa. Gaz., June 7, I744, June i, I749. 35 See, for example, Elaine K. Ginsberg, "Introduction: The Politics of Passing," and most

of the other fine essays in Ginsberg, ed., Passing and the Fictions of Identity (Durham, N.C., i996), with the exception of Marion Rust, "The Subaltern as Imperialist: Speaking of Olaudah Equiano," 20-36. See also Werner Sollors, Neither Black nor White Yet Both: Thematic Explorations of Interracial Literature (New York, I997), 246-84.

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262 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

however, to be white was not necessarily to be free; to be black was not nec- essarily to be a slave; and to be a mulatto or racially mixed was not necessar- ily to be either of these. Slaves and indentured servants instead pretended to be free, which only occasionally-but not usually, or even primarily-meant passing for white.36

Passing is as much a product of eighteenth-century capitalism as of mis- cegenation and nineteenth-century racism. Werner Sollors has recently maintained: "Racial passing is particularly a phenomenon of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century. It thrived in modern social sys- tems in which, as a primary condition, social and geographic mobility pre- vailed." If such mobility also existed in the eighteenth century, and supported kinds of passing that were not simply, exclusively, or even primar- ily "racial," much more needs to be explained before the origins and devel- opment of passing, and thus of race in America, will be understood. The same demographic and economic conditions that created the self-made men and the peripatetic footballs of fortune in so many genres of eighteenth-cen- tury print culture also made it possible for slaves and servants to pass as free (or as traveling slaves and servants).37

Passing depends on distinctly marked categories of identity even as it contests them, and early America did not lack for ascribed, clearly marked identities. People were supposed to act according to their station in life, even if more and more people were coming to believe, with Benjamin Franklin, that character and talent, rather than birth, should determine that station.38 How could eighteenth-century white northerners, with their bias toward order and their investments in persons (slaves, servants, children, wives) as property, adapt to the profitable but dangerous mobility that the market brought? Historians of women and the family have shown us how institu- tions like coverture institutionalized patriarchy while allowing women and children to act, quite consequentially, as inheritors and surrogates of men. Colonists had a related technology for surrogacy on the part of servants and slaves. It was called the pass, and in its manipulation by the unfree lie the true origins of passing.

Written passes allowed slaves and servants, unlike the serfs of old, to move over large areas in the service of their masters' interest. Sent on

36 Thus Graham Hodges titles his recent collection of New York and New Jersey runaway advertisements "Pretends to Be Free. " It is true, nonetheless, that such an option was more avail- able to mulattoes, but partly because mulattoes were more likely to be native born and skilled, whether enslaved or not. The history of passing, and of racial mixing generally, needs to be written with greater attention to regional specificities and change over time.

37 Sollors, Neither Black nor White Yet Both, 247-48, citing Louis Wirth and Herbert Goldhamer, "The Hybrid and the Problem of Miscegenation," in Otto Klineberg, ed., Characteristics of the American Negro (New York, I944), 307.

38 Sollors, Neither Black nor White Yet Both, 248. On ascribed yet changing identities in the colonial period, see Michael Zuckerman, "Identity in British America: Unease in Eden," in Nicholas Canny and Anthony Pagden, eds., Colonial Identity in the Atlantic World, I500-i800 (Princeton, N.J., I987), II5-58; Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York, I992), pts. I, 2. For the "moments of ambiguity" in colonial identities, see, espe- cially, the essays by Greg Dening in Hoffman, Sobel, and Teute, eds., Through a Glass Darkly, i-6, 9-I2, I57-62, 343-47 (quotation on 5).

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READING THE RUNAWAYS 263

errands, hired out, or told to find casual wage work on their own, city and country slaves found that a pass allowed considerable freedom; they could engage in their own labor and speculation, sometimes earning the money to buy their freedom. Servants were often so mobile that they merely used their indentures (printed forms filled in with names and dates) as passes. The exis- tence of these legal documents, handwritten or printed and filled in, allowed slavery to be an extralocal phenomenon, like trade itself. Slaves who circu- lated functioned for their owners like reinvested money: they earned more money.

What better way, then, to capitalize on the system than to forge a pass, to make an investment in self on the real or imagined credit of a man of property? One slave woman made a "Note to look for a Master" into a "trav- elling Pass." Runaways manipulated written documents, writing their own, stealing them, or changing their meaning. Masters recognized as much by using the same language for these bondsmen's acts of creative writing and re- reading that they used for the ubiquitous makers of false paper and coin in the colonies: their work was forgery, "Counterfeit."39 The picaresque prole- tariat was at its most cooperative and mixed when white servants forged passes for slaves, the resold kept their old indentures, and the freed held theirs and lent them to friends in need. One New Castle, Delaware, slave, himself twenty-four, kept the "old pass" of his father, "who has travelled over most parts of the continent." A master, who perhaps had been duped before, asked reward seekers to remember to look for the forged pass when taking up his two mulattoes and further sweetened the pot by offering an extra two dollars for just the pass itself. Others tried to identify the spurious pass by naming the signatures on it. Not a few members of the owning class were several steps behind their property in realizing the power of literacy. One New Jersey man described the revelation wrought when his property vanished: "It is supposed he has got a false pass; he can read the bible very well. "40

Although it is hard to know how many of the unfree and how many of the runaways were literate, the literacy of some runaways did enable them literally to write their own ticket. One owner was certain that his slave would "pass for a free Negroe, as he can write any Pass he thinks necessary." But slaves did not have to be literate to profit from the trade in passes. Passes written or signed by or in the name of "acquaintences" in Baltimore enabled one Penn, alias James Pemberton, to elude his master in Cecil County for several years between I770 and I775. He hired himself to a tan- ner, then took an indenture to the tanner's relative in Philadelphia, and was recaptured only to run away again. William Murrey, a slave who rejected the

39 Smith and Wojtowicz, eds., Blacks Who Stole Themselves, 4I-42, 44-45; Connecticut Gazette (New Haven), Feb. 7, I756; Hodges and Brown, eds., "Pretends to Be Free," I78. Counterfeiters, in turn, were punished, sometimes with death, for "passing" false coins or bills; see, for example, N.-Y Mercury, Feb. 22, I762. On counterfeiting as a plebeian practice, see Pa. Gaz., Nov. 2I, I735, "A Caution to the Paper-Money Colonies," June 8, I738; John L. Brooke, The Refiners Fire: The Making ofMormon Cosmology, I644-1844 (New York, I994), II5-2I.

40 Hodges and Brown, eds., "Pretends to Be Free, "3, 7I, 95, I03-04, Is8, I77, 206; Smith and Wojtowicz, eds., Blacks Who Stole Themselves, 53-54, 56, 63, 97-98, II2-I3, II9-20, I25, I37, I40.

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264 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

name Quaco, regularly showed a certificate of baptism around Philadelphia to support his claim to freedom. Some masters themselves colluded in the hoarding of passes: the convenience of old passes and their value as insurance against being kidnapped and resold perhaps explains why John Price allowed Jacob Jones, his mulatto servant, to keep the pass he used three years before during his service in the army as well as another of more recent vintage. With no expiration dates, how was one to know that a pass signed by a Somerset County, New Jersey, justice of the peace was either forged or obtained under false pretenses? Old indentures, on the other hand, did have expiration dates that could be used as proof of freedom. In such instances, slaves could pass as former servants. To have a pass was to take control of a past, whether fictive, real, or a little of both.41

In the eighteenth-century mid-Atlantic, one was said to pass false money, to pass for a tradesman, or to pass for free as well as to pass for white, Indian, or mulatto. Where the main markers of identity for men were, not white and black, but rather free versus unfree and genteel versus common, to pretend to be free was as outrageous a pretense, and as potentially subversive, as Tom Bell's traveling up the coast pretending to be a gentleman or Stephen Burroughs's running an amateur mint in rural Massachusetts half a century later. Thus, accounts of runaway exploits filled newspaper columns as regu- larly as stories of confidence men, counterfeiters, and thieves, while employ- ing an identical rhetoric of pretense and villainy. For the skilled, especially, to run away was "very alarming," especially one "in whom his master has put great confidence, and depended on him to overlook the rest of his slaves, and he had no kind of provocation to go off."42

However much they followed their individual interest in employing their slaves and servants abroad, irate owners saw and bewailed the social implications of the runaway as confidence man. In a veritable short story of an advertisement, the printer John Holt implicated his servant, "Charles Roberts, or German," in a Gotham crime wave that had been blamed on black chimney sweeps just weeks earlier.

Deceived by his seeming Reformation, I placed some Confidence in him, which he has villainously abused; having embezzled Money sent by him to pay for Goods, borrowed Money, and taken up Goods in my Name unknown to me, and also on his own Account, pretending to be a Freeman. By this villainous Proceeding I suppose he has collected a considerable Sum of Money, and am also appre- hensive that he has been an Accomplice in some of the late Robberies committed in and near this City. Whoever will take up the said Servant, and bring him to me, or secure him in some of His Majesty's Goals, so that I may get him again, if taken up in the City of New-York, shall have Five Pounds Reward, and a greater, if taken up at a greater Distance. Any Persons who take him up, are

41 Smith and Wojtowicz, eds., Blacks Who Stole Themselves, 69, 72, 88-89, 92-93. 42 Ibid., 37, 69, 93; Pa. Gaz., July 2, I752.

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READING THE RUNAWAYS 265

desired to be careful to carry him before the next Magistrate, and have him well searched, leaving all the Money and Goods found upon him, except the necessary Clothes he has on, in the Hands of the said Magistrate; and to be very watchful against an Escape, or being deceived by him, for he is one of the most artful of Villains.

Against some documents that Roberts presented as proof of his freedom, which Holt pronounced "the most specious Forgeries," the printer appealed to the local authorities and the public, spreading in print his version of Roberts's story: the rogue's near escape from the gallows years before in New Haven through a legal technicality, the new master (Holt) and his repeated kindnesses, and the judge's sentence that had turned this short-term servant, once convicted of a crime, into a long-term, profitably laboring convict, "my Servant for 40 Years, as the Records of the Superior Court at New Haven will Witness."43

Roberts's game, his transgression of Holt's "confidence," went to the heart of not only the self-fashioning of blacks, mulattoes, and the unfree but also to that of free whites. It also provides a vivid example of how resistance was translated by whites into an excuse for still more exploitation. The law, and its imperial and local systems of incarceration, was on the side of the masters; strangers of the wrong look, dialect, or color were regularly commit- ted to jail and then sold "for the charges"-yet another example of the profit, in cash as well as unpaid work, being wrung from the picaresque unfree at every turn.44 But when law was not enough to preserve confidence in slavery and servitude, and in the white men who profited most from them, there were always the advertisements themselves.

For there was another side to the Charles Roberts story, involving John Holt's checkered past, his peripatetic existence, and his questionable finan- cial dealings. The story illuminates Charles Roberts's "artful" schemes, his flight, and his public contestation of Holt's ownership. It also may help flesh out the full meaning of the runaway advertisements, which need to be addressed in terms of their printedness as well as their clues about the lives of particular masters and slaves. A close analysis of Holt's early slave narrative in light of other sources restores the complexity of what happened, again and again, between runaways, masters, and the reading (which is to say, consum- ing) public. It is not Charles Roberts's story. It is John Holt's story, but it can be told in a way he chose not to tell it-perhaps something like the way Charles Roberts told it on the streets of New York.

43 Smith and Wojtowicz, eds., Blacks Who Stole Themselves, 54; Hodges and Brown, eds., "Pretends to Be Free, " 9I-92. For the fingering of chimney sweeps, see N-Y Mercury, Mar. 29, I762; New-York Gazette: or, the Weekly Post-Boy, Apr. I, I762.

44 Hill, Liberty against the Law; Linebaugh, The London Hanged. The new idea of reform- ing criminals through public penal labor applied, insofar as it had been formulated, to freemen, not property, and only developed as bound labor declined during the Revolutionary era; see Michael Meranze, Laboratories of Virtue: Punishment, Revolution, and Authority in Philadelphia, 1760-1835 (Chapel Hill, N.C., i996), 78-85. As slavery disappeared, free blacks came to populate the penitentiaries in disproportionate numbers; see Adam Jay Hirsch, The Rise of the Penitentiary: Prisons and Punishment in Early America (N-ew Haven, Conn., I992), 77.

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266 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

A Virginia native and former mayor of Williamsburg, Holt had landed an appointment as postmaster in New Haven, where in I754 he and James Parker started the Connecticut Gazette, that colony's first newspaper. In June

I757, ?240 worth of lottery tickets were stolen from his office, along with "a considerable Sum of money." Since lotteries could occur only when approved by the state legislature, the robbery was a capital crime in more than one sense of the word.45 Holt accused his servant-Charles Roberts- of the theft. But the family of Humphrey Avery, New Yorkers who legally owned the tickets because their land (Fisher's Island) was the prize in the lottery, did not believe that Roberts had acted alone. Suspecting that Holt had framed Roberts, or put him up to it and profited from the scam, they refused to prosecute the servant. So Holt prosecuted for his own benefit and in winning had Roberts's term extended from its remaining three years to forty-that is, a lifetime. The value of the missing tickets, if Holt had had his way, would have bound Roberts for life.

Holt took Roberts with him when he moved to New York City. By the spring of I762, when he ran away, Roberts would have been free by the terms of his original indenture. Why would Holt want to hang on to a ser- vant who, he later maintained, had repeatedly shown himself to be a "vil- lain"? Why did Holt place what he called confidence in Roberts? A brief filed with a New York court by the Averys provides some clues. In his own brief, as referred to by Samuel Avery, Holt maintained that Roberts's labor was worth little. But Avery gathered impressive testimony that Roberts was the backbone of Holt's newspaper operation: he "worked at the press, wrote on the papers etc." Holt's former partner and employees maintained that Roberts's labor was worth eighty pounds a year; one said he would have been glad to have Roberts as a partner. Moreover, shortly before the lottery theft Roberts had tried to buy his own freedom with money he had earned fiddling, only to have Holt ask two hundred pounds for Roberts's three remaining years of service. Other witnesses held that Roberts had never wronged Holt before his alleged theft of the tickets: a direct contradiction of Holt's testimony in the New Haven court and in print when Roberts ran five years later. Roberts certainly had motive to steal from Holt and to run away, but Holt had motive to implicate Roberts in crime.46

The problem of the "amasing confidence" that Avery saw Holt place in Roberts, and that Holt admitted to in his advertisement of I762, was resolved by Holt in his published portrait of the servant as a villainous confi- dence man. For it was not only Roberts's status but Holt's own that was tied up in this struggle, and not only in the sense of Roberts's very valuable

45 Layton Barnes Murphy, "John Holt, Patriot Printer and Publisher" (Ph.D. diss.,

University of Michigan, i965), 2-Io; N.-Y Gaz.: or, the Weekly Post-Boy, June 27, I757; Beverly McAnear, "James Parker versus John Holt," New Jersey Historical Society, Proceedings, LIX (Edison, N.J., I941), 77-78; V. H. Paltsits, "John Holt," Dictionary of American Biography, vol. 9 (New York, I932), I8I; John Samuel Ezell, Fortunes Merry Wheel: The Lottery in America (Cambridge, Mass., i960), chaps. I-2.

46 Avery v. Holt, Brief, [I772], Samuel Avery Papers, New York Public Library. The Averys were still trying to recover the value of the missing tickets I2 years later.

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READING THE RUNAWAYS 267

unpaid labor. By the time he moved to New York in I760, Holt had acquired a reputation as a debtor, a drunk, and a liar in some quarters. In New Haven, he had taken money from the postmaster's fund and the print- ing business to buy a house, and he never paid his debts there after going to New York, presumably with Roberts, to run James Parker's newspaper. In April I762-at the very moment that Roberts ran away-Parker was desper- ately trying to get a settlement out of Holt and to end their partnership, which he did upon a promise of getting more cash, most of which Holt never remitted. By the mid-I76os, Parker and others were describing Holt in the same terms-"Smooth tongued," a "deceitful knave and Villain"-that Holt had used to describe Roberts.47

Knowing what Roberts and some of his contemporaries knew, then, we are in a better position to read Holt's advertisements for Roberts. Holt pub- lished his first notice on April IS in what was about to become his paper, New-York Gazette: or, the Weekly Post-Boy. It reads at first as a public, legal warning: "Whereas my servant Charles Roberts, alias German, a Mulatto, has villainously abused the Liberty I allowed, and the trust I placed in him . . ." Holt wastes no time in labeling Roberts a villain, proceeding to refer to pub- lic whippings Roberts had received in the past and "the narrow Escapes he has had from the Gallows." He then describes Roberts's multiple purchases on Holt's behalf and on his own, "pretending to be a Free Man." But Roberts, who had other sources of cash such as fiddling, was legally permit- ted to make his own purchases. Without mentioning specific malfeasances, Holt deflates the value of Roberts's tales, of his self-fashioning, by decrying his "plausible Pretences" as "absolute Falsities." He warns all readers "not to have any Dealings with the said servant, not to trust, harbour, or entertain him on my Account whatever without a Note from me." Only then does he declare Roberts a runaway confidence man: "Excessively complaisant, [he] speaks good English, smoothly and plausibly, and generally with a Smile, is extremely artful and ready at inventing a specious Pretence to conceal a Villainous Action or Design." Perhaps sensing that he had made Roberts too impressive, he limits his praise where it might touch on his exploitation of Roberts's talents: "He . . . can read and write tolerably, and understand a lit- tle of Arithmetick and Accounts."48

Holt placed a similar advertisement in the other two New York papers that week. But it did not keep Roberts from circulating or gaining allies, so Holt responded two days later with an even longer advertisement that denied

47 James Parker to John Holt, various dates, New-York Historical Society; McAnear, "James Parker versus John Holt," 82-95, I98-2I2; Avery v. Holt, Brief, Avery Papers; Benjamin Franklin to Jared Ingersoll, Dec. I9, I763, Parker to Franklin, Oct. 27, I764, Parker to Franklin,

June 6, I766, in Leonard W. Labaree et al., eds., The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, 33 vOls. to date (New Haven, Conn., I959-), I0:402-03, II:4i6, I3:302-05; Parker to Ingersoll, Apr. 6, I767, Papers Related to James Parker, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.; Parker to Ingersoll, Oct. II, I767, Ingersoll Papers, New Haven

Colony Historical Society; Alan Dyer, A Biography ofJames Parker, Colonial Printer (Troy, N.Y., I982), xi, 58-59, 69-70, 80, 95-II0, I7i n. 30.

48 N.-Y Gaz.: or, the Weekly Post-Boy, Apr. IS, I762.

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268 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

Roberts's story about being free. This notice goes even further in trying to fit Roberts into the twin stereotypes of the black slave and the confidence man. Charles "effects to dress very neat and genteel," yet his self-presentation is "obsequious, and insinuating"; he not only smiles but speaks "with a cringe." Holt himself appears as the virtuous, innocent, wronged patriarch, telling how he "took him into my family on trial" even after "he was guilty of vari- ous Crimes and Felonies." The lottery ticket affair is not mentioned, and neither is its location, the location of Roberts's labor: the print shop. Roberts is turned into an unskilled domestic, associated with an ambigu- ously introduced status as a former slave. At great length, Holt seeks to turn "one of the most artful of Villains" back into a slave whose value, in every sense, is denied even as it is most publicly reclaimed.49

Print, as Shane White reminds us, was "one of the means of enforcing the slave system." The slave system was also an important means of support- ing print culture and the extralocal market that made print so expansive and interesting. The constitutive relation between slavery and print culture was reciprocal.50 When Samuel Keimer started the Pennsylvania Gazette in I728, he offered each subscriber a free advertisement every six months. The first three advertisements to appear in the paper were for land, for a runaway ser- vant, and a Negro man: "Enquire of the Printer." Is it too much to say that Benjamin Franklin's first wages in "the best poor man's country" came directly from the cash generated by these advertisements? Certainly, Franklin himself, as the rising proprietor of the paper, lost few chances to offer labor- ers and other goods for sale throughout the I730S and I740S. Carrying adver- tisements for runaway horses, servants, and slaves, acting as agent in the sale and recovery of such properties, Franklin and other printers were in the business of expanding the marketplace and keeping property with and with- out legs secure, yet fungible. One New Yorker even kept a registry of slaves for sale and advertised its availability in the newspaper.5'

An examination of the Pennsylvania Gazette reveals that runaway and sale notices constituted a significant number of the advertisements in these papers (see Table I). Printers also produced broadside runaway advertise-

49 N.-y Gaz. [Weyman's], Apr. i9, I762; N.-Y Mercury, Apr. Is, 26, May 3, I0, I762; N.-Y Gaz.: or, the Weekly Post-Boy, Apr. 29, I762. Holt moved his advertisement to the front page of his paper on May 6; he had already made sure it would appear several times in all the New York papers as well as in the Pennsylvania Gazette.

50 White, Somewhat More Independent, ii9. It is helpful here to recall that the cultural sys- tem epitomized by print and energized with republican ideology has also been called "print-cap- italism" and placed in the context of the revolt of the colonies, and the invention of nationalism, in the i8th century; see Warner, Letters of the Republic; Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (New York,

I99I), 37-65. For the formulation of a "reciprocal determination . . . between a medium and its politics," see Warner, Letters of the Republic, xii.

51 Pa. Gaz., Oct. I, Nov. 2, I728, Dec. 23, I729, May II, I732, May 3, I733, May 23, I734, reprinted in Labaree et al., eds., Papers of Benjamin Franklin, i:272, 345, 378; Pa. Gaz., Nov. 27, I732, Apr. 26, Sept. 7, I733, May 30, I734, July 3I, I735, Oct. 7, I736, Mar. 7, I740, Apr. 3, I74I, Aug. 2I, I744, Sept. 4, I746, Aug. 4, I748, Jan. 3, I0, I7, I749; McManus, Black Bondage in the

North, 24-25.

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READING THE RUNAWAYS 269

ments, few of which survive today but that were, like other job printing, a significant source of income.52 But the direct profit motive was only the most obvious way in which printers and print depended on unfree labor because so much of the commerce transacted through the newspaper derived from its fruits.

Owners expressed this common sense by relying more and more on print to recoup their losses. Increasingly, by the I760s, jailers and owners communicated across large distances through print in their efforts to rein in runaways. Virginia masters placed advertisements in New York papers; Connecticut masters wrote to the Pennsylvania Gazette. Printers built an

extralocal network of slave purchase, sale, and capture; jailers placed notices asking masters to pick up their fugitives and pay charges. Buying space in one or more papers and having them run for weeks, masters used advertise- ments as public, legal warnings not to aid their fugitives, threatening prose- cution to "Masters of vessels" and other would-be employers. The more slaves resorted to writing passes and to sophisticated uses of the English lan- guage, the more masters used print to make up for it, lambasting the "evil designing persons" who wrote passes and harbored fugitives, warning the public about smooth-tongued runaways. A particular community was being constructed when John Lloyd of Stamford, Connecticut, asked "any Gentlemen" reading the Pennsylvania Gazette to "be so kind, when they have read their Papers, to cut out the Advertisement, and set it up in the most publick Place, it will be esteemed a Favour." During the upheavals of I776, when more and more slaves were running away, more than one master expressed hope that "loyal whigs" would help recapture his slaves. One of these masters, Hugh Whiteford of Harford County, neglected to place an advertisement in the New York paper, and his mulatto slave was released from jail there in July I776. Realizing that in the midst of the Revolution it was easier to imagine transcending time than space, he asked that "this advertisement may be carefully kept and taken notice of for several years."53

On the more local level, printers and postmasters like Franklin, Holt, and Hugh Gaine served as agents for masters. They were go-betweens, informing masters of the whereabouts of their captured slaves and servants. Naming names, they also preserved anonymity when it was desired by prop- ertyowners. Local slaves were put on the market with advertisements in the paper to "enquire of the printers hereof." Unnamed, the slave would be less

52 Charles E. Clark and Charles Wetherell, "The Measure of Maturity: The Pennsylvania Gazette, I728-I765," WMQ, 3d Ser., 46 (I989), 289-9i; Lawrence C. Wroth, The Colonial Printer (New York, I930), 2I3. Clark and Wetherell find that 22.I% of the advertisements in the Pennsylvania Gazette concern labor, and 3I.5% during Franklin's tenure as editor (299). By con- trast, in an English provincial newspaper, "notices of fugitives, wives, prisoners and soldiers almost never make up more than I per cent" of the advertisements; see C. Y. Ferdinand, "Selling It to the Provinces: News and Commerce Round Eighteenth-Century Salisbury," in Brewer and Porter, eds., Consumption and the World of Goods, 399. At a time when the Pennsylvania Gazette cost IO

shillings per year, an advertisement cost 5 shillings; see Pa. Gaz., June 3, I73I, Oct. 26, I732. 53 Hodges and Brown, eds., "Pretends to Be Free, " 224, 285; Pa. Gaz., Jan. 7, June 5, I746;

Smith and Wojtowicz, eds., Blacks Who Stole Themselves, 53, io6, I31.

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270 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

likely to learn of his or her impending sale and try to affect its outcome. Printers who spread knowledge among the owning class tried to keep knowl- edge from the owned. Their success in doing so was great and, nonetheless, limited. Slaves and black servants like Charles Roberts worked in print shops, and many were literate. Owners were often quite aware that slaves had access to whatever they placed in the paper. Some masters even used the advertisements to ask their prodigal property to return. And a few slaves and servants took out notices themselves, challenging their owners directly, as Charles Roberts might have if John Holt had not owned the newspaper as well as Roberts's labor. In the spring of 1747, Venture Smith, a Long Island fugitive slave, took an advertisement out on a white servant who had run away with him and then stolen his money. At the time, Smith, the white ser- vant, and two fellow travelers were also the subject of an advertisement. The system stayed one step ahead: a large step, but one that some runaways man- aged to leap.54

The promise of print, especially for white men, was the promise of prof- itable disembodiment and impersonality, an exciting new aspect of existence that would improve upon the embodied and personal spaces of social inter- action in everyday life, where value was, not really in the eye of the rational beholder, but in the clothes, the trade (or lack thereof), in the already-deter- mined status of the physical person. Yet some white men used print to reenslave blacks who had run away by disguising their bodies. The advertise- ments reembody the runaways, turning picaresque luftmenschen back into salable commodities.55 Allowing for remarkable acts of self-fashioning and cruel maneuvers of reenslavement, the workings of print epitomized an unfree labor system that depended on the very movement, linguistic skill, and improvisation it sought to contain.

Both masters and slaves appreciated the possibilities and dangers pre- sented by print culture, and the market that print mediated, for black self- fashioning and the institutions of unfree labor. Print was undeniably a

54 Smith and Wojtowicz, eds., Blacks Who Stole Themselves, I46-47; N-Y Gaz.: or, the

Weekly Post-Boy, Jan. 7, I4, I754; Md. Gaz., Dec. 27, I749; Pennsylvania Journal, June I2, I760; N.-Y Mercury, Sept. 5, I757; New-York Gazette; and the Weekly Mercury, Feb. I, I768; [Venture Smith], A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, a Native ofAfrica. .. (New London, Conn., I798), reprinted in Vincent Carretta, ed., Unchained Voices: An Anthology of Black Authors in the English-Speaking World of the Eighteenth Century (Lexington, Ky., i996), 377. The

advertisement for Venture appears in Hodges and Brown, eds., "Pretends to Be Free, " 49-50. In I780, a New Jersey slave contested his master's ownership in a series of advertisements

that appealed to the public on the basis of his master's bad character; for an analysis, see White, Somewhat More Independent, II7-I9.

55 Graham Hodges suggested the term lufimenschen, a word that in the Yiddish context signifies men who literally live on air, unencumbered by the things of this world-such as the marketplace. On embodied and disembodied identities in print and other media, see Warner, Letters of the Republic, esp. 38-42; Warner, "The Mass Public and the Mass Subject," in Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere, 377-40I; and Lauren Berlant, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship (Durham, N.C., I997).

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READING THE RUNAWAYS 27I

collective possession of the master class, but at midcentury some people of color were eluding its grasp. Like other possessions, it could be stolen and appropriated; it could be simultaneously oppressive for most and liberating for some.56 Perhaps owners could have created a truly dependable intercolo- nial network of slave and servant catching through print if it had been in the interest of enough citizens to do so; if the nascent intercolonial net- working that print was making possible had not found other work to do, like fighting wars, developing a republican resistance to taxes, inventing the American nation; if fewer slaves and servants had been literate; or if slavery and servitude had not developed into the highly mobile and flexible labor system that made both so profitable in the first place.

If lawyers were the shock troops of capitalism in the nineteenth cen- tury, then surely printers were some of its advance scouts in the century before. Extending the metaphor, consider slaves and servants as the ordi- nary foot soldiers, who were simultaneously fighting their own private wars.57 Consider further that Holt, Franklin, and other printers did yeoman service in the American Revolution and that runaways like Roberts served on both sides. The intertwined histories of printers and unfree laborers is apt demonstration not only of the interdependence of politics and culture but also of racial politics and the rest of politics in early U.S. history- North as well as South.58

Without an understanding of the mixed-labor systems of the eigh- teenth-century mid-Atlantic, and the mixed-race, ambiguously identified people who did so much of the work, neither slavery, nor print culture, nor the mid-Atlantic itself can gain their proper place in the larger story of late- colonial American history. These first slave narratives reveal that there is much more to the story of slavery and antislavery than rise and decline, acceptance and resistance, or South and North. The stories told by the mid- Atlantic runaway advertisements are, not of the decline of slavery, but rather of its North Americanization. To read these runaways is to come face to face with the modernity of slavery and servitude at its crossroads on the eve of the Revolution, for every characteristic that has been ascribed to the American self-made man, and cited as evidence of his lack of deference and unfreedom, can be seen in the likes of the exploited Charles Roberts.59 And yet every attribute of the eighteenth-century confidence man-or run-

56 By contrast, Jill Lepore stresses the "fatal" consequences of literacy for New England

natives in The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins ofAmerican Identity (New York, I998), 26-47.

57 The role of war in the history of servitude deserves more than metaphoric treatment; see John M. Murrin, "In the Land of the Free and the Home of the Slave, Maybe There Was Even

Room for Deference," JAH, 85 (I998-I999), 87. 58 For similar perspectives on the Revolution in Virginia, and U.S. history generally, see

Woody Holton, "'Rebel against Rebel': Enslaved Virginians and the Coming of the American

Revolution," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, I05 (I997), I57-92; Michael Goldfield, The Color ofPolitics: Race and the Mainsprings ofAmerican Politics (New York, I997).

59 See, for example, Zuckerman, "Tocqueville, Turner, and Turds."

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272 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

away-can be seen in the master and patriot John Holt, and most of all in his dealings with Roberts. That the writers of the advertisements, many of them middling farmers and artisans, were seeking to recapture their property in people suggests that the American free man's narrative-like John Holt's biography and Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography-may also require another reading.

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"We Are Not What We Seem": Rethinking Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South

Author(s): Robin D. G. Kelley

Source: The Journal of American History , Jun., 1993, Vol. 80, No. 1 (Jun., 1993), pp. 75-112

Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of Organization of American Historians

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"We Are Not What We Seem": Rethinking Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South

Robin D. G. Kelley

Each day when you see us black folk upon the dusty land of the farms or upon the hard pavement of the city streets, you usually take us for granted and think you know us, but our history is far stranger than you suspect, and we are not what we seem.

– Richard Wright, Twelve Million Black Voices, 1940

The Negro, in spite of his open-faced laughter, his seeming acquiescence, is partic- ularly evasive. You see we are a polite people and we do not say to our questioner, "Get out of here!" We smile and tell him or her something that satisfies the white person because, knowing so little about us, he doesn't know what he is missing.

-Zora Neale Hurston, Mules and Men, 1935

On the factory floor in North Carolina tobacco factories, where women stemmers were generally not allowed to sit or to talk with one another, it was not uncommon for them to break out in song. Singing in unison not only reinforced a sense of col- lective identity in these black workers but the songs themselves- most often reli- gious hymns- ranged from veiled protests against the daily indignities of the fac- tory to utopian visions of a life free of difficult wage work.'

Robin D. G. Kelley is an associate professor of history, African-American studies, and American culture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Versions of this essay were presented at the University of Virginia, History Department Seminar (1992), the conference "Race, Class, and Gender: Re-Working American Labor History," at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (1992), the Southern Labor Studies Meeting, Georgia State University, At- lanta (1991), and at "Behind the Veil: Documenting African-American Life in the Jim Crow South," sponsored by the Center for Documentary Studies, Duke University, and held at North Carolina Central University (1991).

I want to send a shout out to Diedra Harris-Kelley, Edward L. Ayers, Eileen Boris, Elsa Barkley Brown, Geoff Eley, Elizabeth Faue, Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Robert L. Harris, Michael Honey, Tera Hunter, Robert Korstad, Cliff Kuhn, Earl Lewis, Nelson Lichtenstein, Peter Linebaugh, George Lipsitz, August Meier, Bruce Nelson, David Roediger, Armstead Robinson, Joe W. Trotter, Victoria Wollcott, and the anonymous readers for the Journal of American History for their comments and suggestions. I am especially grateful to David Thelen for his direct but encouraging critique and Susan Armeny for her editing and effort.

I want to dedicate this essay to Herbert Aptheker in recognition of the fiftieth anniversary of American Negro Slave Revolts, a pioneering work that inspired this essay, and to the late Brenda McCallum, a brilliant and imagina- tive historian of black working-class culture who passed unexpectedly and prematurely in September of 1992.

I JacquelineJones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family, from Slavery to the Present (New York, 1985), 140.

The Journal of American History June 1993 75

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76 The Journal of American History June 1993

Throughout the urban South in the early twentieth century, black women house-

hold workers were accustomed to staging so-called incipient strikes, quitting or

threatening to quit just before important social affairs to be hosted by their em- ployers. The strategy's success often depended on a collective refusal on the part of other household workers to fill in.2

In August 1943, on the College Hills bus line in Birmingham, Alabama, black

riders grew impatient with a particularly racist bus driver who within minutes twice

drew his gun on black passengers, intentionally passed one black woman's stop, and ejected a black man who complained on the woman's behalf. According to a bus company report, "the negroes then started ringing bell for the entire block and no one would alight when he stopped."3

These daily, unorganized, evasive, seemingly spontaneous actions form an impor-

tant yet neglected part of African-American political history. By ignoring or be- littling such everyday acts of resistance and privileging the public utterances of black

elites, several historians of southern race relations concluded, as Lester C. Lamon did in his study of Tennessee, that black working people "remained silent, either taking the line of least resistance or implicitly adopting the American faith in hard work and individual effort."4 But as Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, and countless cases like those recounted above suggest, the appearance of silence and accommodation was not only deceiving but frequently intended to deceive. Beneath the veil of consent lies a hidden history of unorganized, everyday conflict waged by African-American working people. Once we explore in greater detail those daily conflicts and the social and cultural spaces where ordinary people felt free to articu- late their opposition, we can begin to ask the questions that will enable us to rewrite

the political history of the Jim Crow South to incorporate such actions and actors. Drawing examples from recent studies of African Americans in the urban South,

mostly in the 1930s and 1940s, I would like to sketch out a research agenda that might allow us to render visible hidden forms of resistance; to examine how class, gender, and race shape working-class consciousness; and to bridge the gulf between the social and cultural world of the "everyday" and political struggles.5 First and

2 Tera W. Hunter, "Household Workers in the Making: Afro-American Women in Atlanta and the New South, 1861-1920" (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1990), 76-82.

3 "Report Involving Race Question," Aug. 1943, p. 2, box 10, Cooper Green Papers (Birmingham Public Library, Birmingham, Ala.).

4Lester C. Lamon, Black Tennesseans, 1900-1930 (Knoxville, 1977), 18. See also, for example, Neil McMillen,

Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age ofJim Crow (Urbana, 1989); John Dittmer, Black Georgia in the Progressive Era, 1900-1920 (Urbana, 1977); Jack Temple Kirby, Darkness at the Dawning: Race and Reform in the Progressive South (Philadelphia, 1972); Paul D. Casdorph, Republicans, Negroes, and Progressives in the South, 1912-1916 (University, Ala., 1981); Robert Haws, ed., The Age of Segregation: Race Relations in the South, 1890- 1954 (Jackson, 1978); Margaret Law Callcott, The Negro in Maryland Politics, 1870-1912 (Baltimore, 1969); I. A. Newby, Black Carolinians: A History of Blacks in South Carolina from 1895-1968 (Columbia, S.C., 1973); and George C. Wright, Life behinda Veil: Blacks in Louisville, Kentucky, 1865-1930 (Baton Rouge, 1985). For the nine- teenth century, see Howard N. Rabinowitz, Race Relations in the Urban South, 1865-1890 (New York, 1978).

5 My definition of "urban" includes mining towns and company suburbs that have a significant black proletariat. Because of space considerations I chose not to include rural areas. On twentieth-century rural resistance, see, for example, William Bennett Bizzell, "Farm Tenantry in the United States" (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1921), 267-68; Ray Stannard Baker, Following the Color Line: American Negro Citizenship in the Progressive Era

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Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South 77

foremost, my thoughts grow out of rereading Herbert Aptheker's American Negro

Slave Revolts, a pioneering study that is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year. In it Aptheker gave us a framework to study the hidden and disguised, not only

locating acts of resistance and plans for rebellion among slaves but also showing how

their opposition shaped all of antebellum southern society, politics, and daily life.6 Second, I am indebted to scholars who work on South Asia, especially the political

anthropologist James C. Scott. Scott and other proponents of subaltern studies maintain that, despite appearances of consent, oppressed groups challenge those in power by constructing a "hidden transcript," a dissident political culture that manifests itself in daily conversations, folklore, jokes, songs, and other cultural prac-

tices. One also finds the hidden transcript emerging "on stage" in spaces controlled by the powerful, though almost always in disguised forms. The submerged social and cultural worlds of oppressed people frequently surface in everyday forms of

resistance- theft, footdragging, the destruction of property- or, more rarely, in open attacks on individuals, institutions, or symbols of domination. Together, the

"hidden transcripts" that are created in aggrieved communities and expressed through culture and the daily acts of resistance and survival constitute what Scott calls "infrapolitics." As he puts it, "the circumspect struggle waged daily by subor- dinate groups is, like infrared rays, beyond the visible end of the spectrum. That it should be invisible … is in large part by design – a tactical choice born of a pru-

dent awareness of the balance of power."7 Like Scott, I use the concept of infrapolitics to describe the daily confrontations,

evasive actions, and stifled thoughts that often inform organized political move-

(1908; New York, 1964), 76-77; Glenn N. Sisk, "Alabama Black Belt: A Social History, 1875-1917" (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1951), 277-87; Allison Davis, Burleigh B. Gardner, and Mary R. Gardner, Deep South: A Social Anthropological Study of Caste and Class (Chicago, 1941), 396-98; Arthur F. Raper, Preface to Peasantry: A Tale of Two Black Belt Counties (Chapel Hill, 1936), 173-74; and Albert C. Smith, "'Southern Violence' Reconsidered:

Arson as Protest in Black Belt Georgia, 1865-1910 '" Journal of Southern History, 55 (Nov. 1985), 527-64. 6 Herbert Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts (New York, 1943). See also his essays and pamphlets, in-

tended for the kind of working-class audiences he had been organizing: Herbert Aptheker, Negro Slave Revolts in the UnitedStates, 1526-1860 (New York, 1939); Herbert Aptheker, The Negro in the Civil War(New York, 1938); and Herbert Aptheker, "Maroons within the Present Limits of the United States,' Journal of Negro History, 24 (April 1939), 167-84. For an appraisal of American Negro Slave Revolts and a history of responses from the histor- ical profession, see Herbert Shapiro, "The Impact of the Aptheker Thesis: A Retrospective View of American Negro Slave Revolts," Science and Society, 48 (Spring 1984), 52-73.

7 James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, 1990), esp. 183. See alsoJames C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms ofPeasant Resistance (New Haven, 1985); andJames C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven, 1976). For a useful critique, see Rosalind O'Hanlon, "Recovering the Subject: Subaltern Studies and Histories of Resistance in Colonial South Asia," Modern Asian Studies, 22 (Feb. 1988), 189-224. The precursors of Scott's work include E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York, 1966); E. P. Thompson, "The Crime of Anonymity," in Albion's Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England, ed. Douglas Hay, Peter Linebaugh, John G. Rule, E. P. Thompson, and Cal Winslow (New York, 1975), 25 5-344; Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley, 1984); Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts; Ray- mond A. Bauer and Alice H. Bauer, "Day to Day Resistance to Slavery 'Journal of Negro History, 37 (Oct. 1942), 388-419; Eugene Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York, 1974), 599-621; Peter Kol- chin, Unfree Labor: American Slavery andRussian Serfdom (Cambridge, Mass., 1987), 241-44; Alex Lichtenstein, "'That Disposition to Theft, with which they have been Branded': Moral Economy, Slave Management, and the Law," Journal of Social History, 22 (Spring 1988), 413-40; Sterling Stuckey, "Through the Prism of Folklore: The Black Ethos in Slavery," Massachusetts Review, 9 (Summer 1968), 417-37.

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78 The Journal of American History June 1993

ments. I am not suggesting that the realm of infrapolitics is any more or less impor- tant or effective than what we traditionally consider politics. Instead, I want to sug- gest that the political history of oppressed people cannot be understood without reference to infrapolitics, for these daily acts have a cumulative effect on power rela- tions. While the meaning and effectiveness of acts differ according to circumstances, they make a difference, whether they were intended to or not. Thus, one measure of the power and historical importance of the informal infrapolitics of the oppressed is the response of those who dominate traditional politics. Daily acts of resistance and survival have had consequences for existing power relations, and the powerful have deployed immense resources in response. Knowing how the powerful interpret, redefine, and respond to the thoughts and actions of the oppressed is just as impor- tant as identifying and analyzing opposition. The policies, strategies, or symbolic representations of those in power-what Scott calls the "official" or "public" tran- script – cannot be understood without examining the infrapolitics of oppressed groups. The approach I am proposing will help illuminate how power operates, how effective the southern power structure was in maintaining social order, and how seemingly innocuous, individualistic acts of survival and opposition shaped south- ern urban politics, workplace struggles, and the social order generally. I take the lead of the ethnographer Lila Abu-Lughod, who argues that everyday forms of resis- tance ought to be "diagnostic" of power. Instead of seeing these practices primarily as examples of the "dignity and heroism of resistors," she argues that they can "teach us about the complex interworkings of historically changing structures of power."8 An infrapolitical approach requires that we substantially redefine our under-

standing of politics. Too often politics is defined by how people participate rather than why; by traditional definition the question of what is political hinges on whether or not groups are involved in elections, political parties, grass-roots social movements. Yet, the how seems far less important than the why since many of the so-called real political institutions have not proved effective for, or even accessible to, oppressed people. By shifting our focus to what motivated disenfranchised black working people to struggle and what strategies they developed, we may discover that their participation in "mainstream" politics – including their battle for the fran- chise – grew out of the very circumstances, experiences, and memories that impelled many to steal from an employer, to join a mutual benefit association, or to spit in a bus driver's face. In other words, those actions all reflect, to varying degrees, larger political struggles. For southern blacks in the age ofJim Crow, politics was not sepa- rate from lived experience or the imagined world of what is possible. It was the many battles to roll back constraints, to exercise power over, or create space within, the institutions and social relationships that dominated their lives.9

8 Lila Abu-Lughod, "The Romance of Resistance: Tracing Transformations of Power through Bedouin Women," American Ethnologist, 17 (no. 1, 1990), 55. I'm grateful to Victoria Wolcott for bringing this source to my attention.

9 My recasting of "the political" is partly derived from my reading of Geoff Eley, "Labor History, Social History, Alltagsgeschichte: Experience, Culture, and the Politics of the Everyday-A New Direction for German Social His- tory?" Journal of Modern History, 61 (June 1989), 297-343.

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Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South 79

Using this revised framework for understanding power, resistance, and politics, the following explores three sites of urban black working-class opposition in the American South in the early twentieth century: the semiprivate/semipublic spaces

of community and household, the workplace, and public space. My remarks are in-

tended to be interrogations that may lead to new ways of understanding working- class politics.

At Home, at Play, at Prayer

Several southern labor and urban historians have begun to unveil the hidden social and cultural world of black working people and to assess its political significance. They have established that during the era ofJim Crow, black working people carved

out social space and constructed what George Lipsitz calls a "culture of opposition"

through which to articulate the hidden transcript free from the watchful eye of white authority or the moralizing of the black middle class. Those social spaces con- stituted a partial refuge from the humiliations and indignities of racism, class pretensions, and waged work. African-American communities often created an al-

ternative culture emphasizing collectivist values, mutuality, and fellowship. There

were vicious, exploitative relationships within southern black communities, particu- larly across class and gender lines, and the tentacles ofJim Crow touched even black institutions. But the social and cultural institutions and ideologies that ultimately informed black opposition placed more emphasis on communal values and collec-

tive uplift than the prevailing class-conscious, individualist ideology of the white ruling classes. As Earl Lewis so aptly put it, African Americans turned segregation into "congregation."'o

Ironically, segregation facilitated the creation and maintenance of the unmoni-

tored, unauthorized social sites in which black workers could freely articulate the hidden transcript. Jim Crow ordinances ensured that churches, bars, social clubs,

barbershops, beauty salons, even alleys, remained "black" space. When southern white ruling groups suspected dissident activities among African Americans, they

10 Earl Lewis, In Their Own Interests: Race, Class, and Power in Twentieth Century Norfolk, Virginia (Berkeley, 1991), 10; George Lipsitz, A Life in the Struggle: Ivory Perry and the Culture of Opposition (Philadelphia, 1988); Elsa Barkley Brown, "Womanist Consciousness: Maggie Lena Walker and the Independent Order of St. Luke," Signs, 14 (Spring 1989), 610-33; Elsa Barkley Brown, "'Not Alone to Build This Pile of Bricks': Institution Building and Community in Richmond, Virginia," paper presented at the conference "The Age of Booker T. Washington," University of Maryland, College Park, May 3, 1990 (in Robin D. G. Kelley's possession); Elsa Barkley Brown, "Uncle Ned's Children: Richmond, Virginia's Black Community, 1890-1930" (Ph.D. diss., Kent State University, in prog- ress); Michael K. Honey, Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights: Organizing Memphis WPorkers (Urbana, 1993); Hunter, "Household Workers in the Making"; Robin D. G. Kelley, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression (Chapel Hill, 1990); Robert Korstad, "'Daybreak of Freedom': Tobacco Workers and the cio, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, 1943-1950" (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1987); Joe William Trotter, Coal, Class, and Color: Blacks in Southern West Virginia, 1915-1932 (Urbana, 1990). Although Peter J. Rachleff's outstanding book and his even more prodigious dissertation are limited to the nine- teenth century and therefore beyond the scope of this essay, he offers one of the most sophisticated discussions of the relationship between community, culture, work, and self-activity. PeterJ. Rachleff, Black Labor in the South: Richmond, Virginia, 1865-1890 (Philadelphia, 1984), 109-15; PeterJ. Rachleff, "Black, White, and Gray: Race and Working-Class Activism in Richmond, Virginia, 1865-1890" (Ph.D. diss., University of Pittsburgh, 1981).

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80 The Journal of American History June 1993

tried to monitor and sometimes to shut down black social spaces- usually swiftly and violently. During World War II, as Howard Odum observed, mere rumors of black uprisings made any black gathering place fair game for extralegal, often brutal invasions. More significantly, employers and police officials actively cultivated black stool pigeons to maintain tabs on the black community. Clearly, even if historians have underestimated the potential threat that rests within black-controlled spaces, the southern rulers did not."

Grass-roots black community organizations such as mutual benefit societies, church groups, and gospel quartets were crucial to black people's survival. Through them, African Americans created and sustained bonds of community, mutual sup- port networks, and a collectivist ethos that shaped black working-class political struggle. As Elsa Barkley Brown points out in her work on Richmond, Virginia, mutual benefit societies, like many other black organizations, "institutionalized a vision of community based on notions of collectivity and mutuality even as [they] struggled with the practical problems of implementing and sustaining such a vi- sion." Although the balance of power in these organizations was not always equal, with males and the middle class sometimes dominant, Brown demonstrates that within benevolent societies all members played some role in constructing a vision of the community.12

Yet we need to acknowledge intraracial class tensions. Mutual disdain, disap- pointment, and even fear occasionally found their way into the public transcript. Some middle-class blacks, for example, regarded the black poor as lazy, self- destructive, and prone to criminal behavior. Geraldine Moore, a black middle-class resident of Birmingham, Alabama, wrote that many poor blacks in her city knew "nothing but waiting for a handout of some kind, drinking, cursing, fighting and prostitution." On the other hand, in his study of a small Mississippi town, the sociol- ogist Allison Davis found that "lower class" blacks often "accused upper-class persons (the 'big shots,' the 'Big Negroes') of snobbishness, color preference, extreme selfishness, disloyalty in caste leadership, ('sellin' out to white folks'), and economic exploitation of their patients and customers."'13

To understand the significance of class conflict among African Americans, we need to examine how specific communities are constructed and sustained rather than to presume the existence (until recently) of a tight-knit, harmonious black

11 Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, 120; Kelley, Hammer and Hoe; Herbert Shapiro, White Vio- lence and Black Response: From Reconstruction to Montgomery (Amherst, 1988), 224-37; Howard Odum, Race andRumors of Race: Challenge to American Crisis (Chapel Hill, 1943), 96-104; Dolores E. Janiewski, Sisterhood Denied: Race, Gender, and Class in aNew South Community (Philadelphia, 1985), 121. For the antebellum period, see Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts, 59. The success of stool pigeons often depended on the strategies black working people used to resist exploitation. Black informers had to maintain a low profile and don a mask in front of other black folk since they were less effective as spies without entry into the community of workers.

12 Elsa Barkley Brown, "'Not Alone to Build This Pile of Bricks"'; Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Woman's Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920 (Cambridge, Mass., 1993); Trotter, Coal, Class, and Color; Rachleff, Black Labor in the South.

13 Geraldine Moore, Behind the Ebony Mask (Birmingham, 1961), 15; Davis, Gardner, and Gardner, Deep South, 230.

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Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South 81

community. This romantic view of a "golden age" of black community- an age when any elder could beat a misbehaving child, when the black middle class min- gled with the poor and offered themselves as "role models," when black professionals cared more about their downtrodden race than about their bank accounts -is not just disingenuous; it has deterred serious historical research on class relations within African-American communities. As a dominant trope in the popular social science literature on the so-called underclass, it has hindered explanations of the contem- porary crisis in the urban United States by presuming a direct causal relationship between the disappearance of middle-class role models as a result of desegregation and the so-called moral degeneration of the black jobless and underemployed working class left behind in the cities.14

Such a reassessment of African-American communities would also require us to rethink the role of black working-class families in shaping ideology and strategies of resistance. Social historians and feminist theorists have made critical contribu- tions to our understanding of the role of women's (and, to a lesser degree, children's) unpaid work in reproducing the labor power of male industrial workers and main- taining capitalism.5 Nevertheless, we still know very little about power relations and conflicts within black working-class families, the role of family life in the develop- ment of class consciousness (especially among children), and how these things shape oppositional strategies at the workplace and in neighborhoods. For instance, if patri- archal families enabled exploited male wage earners to control and exploit the labor of women and children, then one might find a material basis to much intrafamily conflict, as well as hidden transcripts and resistance strategies framed within an ideology that justifies the subordinate status of women and children.'6 We might,

14 The best-known advocate of this position is William J. Wilson. See William J. Wilson, The Truly Disadvan- taged. The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy (Chicago, 1987), 56-57. Recent historical literature and a much older sociological literature challenge Wilson's claim of a "golden age" of black community. See especially Lewis, In Their Own Interests; Trotter, Coal, Class, and Color; Kenneth Marvin Hamilton, Black Towns and Profit: Promotion and Development in the Trans-Appalachian West, 1877-1915 (Urbana, 1991); Robin D. G. Kelley, "The Black Poor and the Politics of Opposition in a New South City," in The Underclass Debate: Views from History, ed. Michael Katz (Princeton, 1993), 293-333; E. Franklin Frazier, Black Bourgeoisie (New York, 1957); St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton, Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City (1945; 2 vols., New York, 1962), II, 526-63; Davis, Gardner, and Gardner, Deep South, 230-36.

15 For a sampling of historical studies of African-American families, see Herbert Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925 (New York, 1976);James Borchert, Alley Life in Washington: Family, Commu- nity, Religion, and Folklife in the City, 1850-1970 (Urbana, 1980); Andrew Billingsley, Black Families in White America (Englewood Cliffs, 1968); Sharon Harley, "For the Good of Family and Race: Gender, Work, and Domestic Roles in the Black Community, 1880-1930," Signs, 15 (Winter 1990), 336-49; and Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow. On women's unpaid labor, the reproduction of male labor power, and the maintenance of capitalism, see Emily Blumenfeld and Susan Mann, "Domestic Labour and the Reproduction of Labour Power: Towards an Analysis of Women, the Family, and Class," in Hidden in the Household: Women's Domestic Labour under Capitalism, ed. Bonnie Fox (Toronto, 1980), 267-307; Jeanne Boydston, Home and Work: Housework, Wages, and the Ideology of Labor in the Early Republic (New York, 1990); Martha E. Gimenez, "The Dialectics of Waged and Unwaged Work: Waged Work, Domestic Labor and Household Survival in the United States," in Work without Wages: Domestic Labor and Self-Employment within Capitalism, ed. Jane L. Collins and Martha E. Gimenez (Al- bany, 1990), 25-45; and Susan Strasser, Never Done: A History of American Housework (New York, 1982).

16 Heidi Hartmann, "The Family as the Locus of Gender, Class, and Political Struggle: The Example of House- work," Signs, 6 (Spring 1981), 366-94; Lois Rita Helmbold, "Beyond the Family Economy: Black and White Working-Class Women during the Great Depression," Feminist Studies, 13 (Fall 1987), 629-55; Susan Mann, "Slavery, Sharecropping, and Sexual Inequality," Signs, 14 (Summer 1989), 774-98.

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82 The Journal of American History June 1993

therefore, ask how conflicts and the exploitation of labor power in the family and household shape larger working-class politics.

Indeed, in part because most scholarship privileges the workplace and production

over the household and reproduction, the role of families in the formation of class consciousness and in developing strategies of resistance has not been sufficiently ex- plored. The British women's historian Carolyn Steedman, for example, points out

that radical histories of working people have been slow "to discuss the development

of class consciousness (as opposed to its expression)" and to explore "it as a learned position, learned in childhood, and often through the exigencies of difficult and lonely lives." Likewise, Elizabeth Faue asks us to look more carefully at the formation

of class, race, and gender identities long before young people enter the wage labor force. She adds that "focusing on reproduction would give meaning to the relation-

ship between working class family organization and behavior and working class col- lective action and labor organization."'17

Such a reexamination of black working-class families should provide insights into how the hidden transcript informs public, collective action. We might return, for example, to the common claim that black mothers and grandmothers in the age of Jim Crow raised their boys to show deference to white people. Were black working-class parents "emasculating" potential militants, as several black male writers argued in the 1960s, or were they arming their boys with a sophisticated un- derstanding of the political and cultural terrain of struggle?18 And what about black women's testimony that their mothers taught them values and strategies that helped them survive and resist race, class, and gender oppression? Once we begin to look at the family as a central (if not the central) institution where political ideologies are formed and reproduced, we may discover that households hold the key to under- standing particular episodes of black working-class resistance. Elsa Barkley Brown has begun to search for the sources of opposition in black working-class households. In an essay on African-American families and political activism during Reconstruc- tion, she not only demonstrates the central role of black women (and even children) in Republican party politics, despite the restriction of suffrage to adult males, but also persuasively argues that newly emancipated African Americans viewed the fran- chise as the collective property of the whole family. Men who did not vote according

17 Carolyn Steedman, Landscape for a Good Woman: A Story of Two Lives (New Brunswick, 1986), 13; Elizabeth Faue, "Reproducing the Class Struggle: Perspectives on the Writing of Working Class History," paper presented at the meeting of the Social Science History Association, Minneapolis, Oct. 19, 1990 (in Kelley's posses- sion), 8. See also Elizabeth Faue, Community of Suffering and Struggle: Women, Men, and the Labor Movement in Minneapolis, 1915-1945 (Chapel Hill, 1991), 15; and Elizabeth Faue, "Gender, Class, and the Politics of Work in Women's History," paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association, Chicago, Dec. 1991 (in Kelley's possession).

18 Whereas most black male social scientists suggested that black mothers inflicted irreparable psychological damage on their sons, feminist scholars understood that learning the dominant codes and social conventions of the South was necessary for survival. See, for example, Calvin Hernton, Sex and Racism in America (Garden City, 1965); William H. Grier and Price M. Cobbs, Black Rage (New York, 1968), 51; Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America (New York, 1984); Patricia Morton, Disfigured Images: The Historical Assault on Afro-American Women (Westport, 1991), 116; Janiewski, Sisterhood Denied, 45; and Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Revolt against Chivalry: Jessie Daniel Ames and the Women's Campaign against Lynching (New York, 1979), 142.

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Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South 83

to the family's wishes were severely disciplined or ostracized from community insti- tutions.'9

Black workers, therefore, participated in or witnessed oppositional politics- whether in community institutions or households -before they entered the work- place or the labor movement. Average black workers probably experienced greater

participatory democracy in community- and neighborhood-based institutions than in the interracial trade unions that claimed to speak for them. Anchored in a prophetic religious ideology, these collectivist institutions and practices took root

and flourished in a profoundly undemocratic society. For instance, Tera Hunter demonstrates that benevolent and secret societies constituted the organizational structures through which black washerwomen organized strikes. In separate studies,

Michael Honey and Robert Korstad suggest that black religious ideology and even some churches were key factors in the success of the Food, Tobacco, Agricultural,

and Allied Workers union in Memphis, Tennessee, and Winston-Salem, North

Carolina. Brenda McCallum illustrates that black gospel quartet circuits were crucial to the expansion and legitimation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (Cio) in Birmingham, Alabama. My book argues that black working people enveloped the Alabama Communist party with a prophetic religious ideology and collectivist values that had grown out of black communities. The subcultures of working people

do not always or automatically suffuse formal working-class organizations. The rela- tionship is dialectical; the political culture that permeated labor organizations, in- cluding radical left-wing movements, often conflicted with aspects of working-class culture. The question historians might explore is whether certain interracial labor

organizations were unable to mobilize sufficient black support because they failed to work through black community institutions or to acknowledge, if not to embrace, the cultural values of the African-American working class.20

Much of southern black working-class culture falls outside "conventional" labor history, in part because historians have limited their scope to public action and formal organization. Part of the problem is that those who frequented the places of rest, relaxation, recreation, and restoration rarely maintained archives or recorded the everyday conversations and noises that filled the bars, dance halls, blues clubs, barbershops, beauty salons, and street corners of the black community. Neverthe- less, folklorists, anthropologists, oral historians, musicians, and writers fascinated by "Negro life" preserved cultural texts that allow scholars access to the hidden tran-

19 On the political ramifications of how southern black mothers raised their daughters, see Elsa Barkley Brown, "Mothers of Mind," Sage, 6 (Summer 1989), 3-10; and Elsa Barkley Brown, "African-American Women's Quilting: A Framework for Conceptualizing and Teaching African-American Women's History," Signs, 14 (Summer 1989), 928-29. Elsa Barkley Brown, "To Catch the Vision of Freedom: Reconstructing Southern Black Women's Political History, 1865-1885," paper presented at the workshop, "Historical Perspectives on Race and Racial Ideologies," Center for Afro-American and African Studies, University of Michigan, Nov. 22, 1991 (in Kelley's possession).

20 Brenda McCallum, "Songs of Work and Songs of Worship: Sanctifying Black Unionism in the Southern City of Steel," New York Folklore, 14 (nos. 1 and 2, 1988), 19-20; Hunter, "Household Workers in the Making," 151-86; Robert Korstad and Nelson Lichtenstein, "Opportunities Found and Lost: Labor, Radicals, and the Early Civil Rights Movement," Journal of American History, 75 (Dec. 1988), 786-811; Korstad, "'Daybreak of Freedom"'; Honey, Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights; Kelley, Hammer and Hoe.

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84 The Journal of American History June 1993

script. Using those texts, pioneering scholars and critics, including Amiri Baraka, Lawrence Levine, and Sterling Stuckey, have demonstrated that African-American working people created an oppositional culture that represents at least a partial re- jection of the dominant ideology and that was forged in the struggle against class and racial domination. The challenge for southern labor historians is to determine how this rich expressive culture -which was frequently at odds with formal working- class institutions -shaped and reflected black working-class opposition.21 Even modes of leisure could undergird opposition. Of course, black working-class

popular culture was created more to give pleasure than to challenge or explain domi- nation. But people thought before they acted, and what they thought shaped, and was shaped by, cultural production and consumption. Moreover, for members of a class whose long workdays were spent in backbreaking, low-paid wage work in set- tings pervaded by racism, the places where they played were more than relatively free spaces in which to articulate grievances and dreams. They were places that en- abled African Americans to take back their bodies, to recuperate, to be together. Two of the most popular sites were dance halls and blues clubs. Despite opposition from black religious leaders and segments of the black middle class, as well as many white employers, black working people of both sexes shook, twisted, and flaunted their overworked bodies, drank, talked, flirted and -in spite of occasional fights – reinforced their sense of community. Whether it was the call and response of a blues man's lyrics or the sight of hundreds moving in unison on a hardwood dance floor, the form and content of such leisure activities were unmistakably collective.22

Much African-American popular culture can be characterized as alternative rather than oppositional.23 Most people went to parties, dances, and clubs to escape from the world of assembly lines, relief lines, and color lines and to leave momen- tarily the individual and collective battles against racism, sexism, and material deprivation. But their search for the sonic, visceral pleasures of music and fellowship, for the sensual pleasures of food, drink, and dancing was not just about escaping

21 Eley, "Labor History, Social History, Alltagsgeschichte," 311-12. Important studies that move discussions of working-class culture beyond the trade union and the sphere of production include George Lipsitz, Rainbow at Midnight: Labor and Culture in the 1940's (Urbana, forthcoming, 1994); Francis G. Couvares, The Remaking of Pittsburgh: Class and Culture in an Industrializing City, 1877-1919 (Albany, 1984); Kathy Lee Peiss, Cheap Amuse- ments: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York (Philadelphia, 1986); Steven J. Ross, Workers on the Edge: Work, Leisure, and Politics in Industrializing Cincinnati, 1788-1890 (New York, 1985); and Roy Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for What We WilI: Workers andLeisure in an Industrial City, 1870-1920 (New York, 1983). LeRoiJones, Blues People (New York, 1963); Lawrence Levine, Black Culture andBlack Consciousness. Afro- American Folk Thoughtfrom Slavery to Freedom (New York, 1977), xi; Sterling Stuckey, Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America (New York, 1987); Stuckey, "Through the Prism of Folklore"; Hazel Carby, "'ItJus Be's Dat Way Sometime': The Sexual Politics of Women's Blues," RadicalAmerica, 20 (no. 4, 1987), 9-22; Charles P. Henry, Culture andAfrican-American Politics (Bloomington, 1990);John W. Roberts, From Trick- ster to Badman: The Black Folk Hero in Slavery and Freedom (Philadelphia, 1989); McCallum, "Songs of Work and Songs of Worship," 9-33; Gladys-Marie Fry, Night Riders in Black Folk History (Knoxville, 1975).

22 On the social meaning of dance halls and blues clubs in southern black life, see Hunter, "Household Workers in the Making," 92-93; Lewis, In Their Own Interests, 99-100; Wright, Life behind a Veil, 138; Katrina Hazzard- Gordon, Jookin. The Rise of Social Dance Formations in African-American Culture (Philadelphia, 1990).

23 My use of the term alternative cultures is borrowed from Raymond Williams, "Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory," Problems in Materialism and Culture (London, 1980), 41-42.

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Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South 85

.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~4

Black men relaxing in a popular bar in Atlanta, Georgia, c. 1940s. Courtesy]. Neal Montgomery Collection.

the vicissitudes of southern life. They went with people who had a shared knowledge of cultural forms, people with whom they felt kinship, people with whom they shared stories about the day or the latest joke, people who shared a vernacular whose grammar and vocabulary struggled to articulate the beauty and burden of their lives. Places of leisure allowed freer sexual expression, particularly for women, whose

sexuality was often circumscribed by employers, family members, the law, and the fear of sexual assault in a society with few protections for black women. Knowing what happens in these spaces of pleasure can help us understand the solidarity black people have shown at political mass meetings, illuminate the bonds of fellowship one finds in churches and voluntary associations, and unveil the conflicts across class and gender lines that shape and constrain these collective struggles. When we consider the needs of employers and the dominance of the Protestant

work ethic in American culture, these events were resistive, though not consciously. Speaking of the African diaspora in general, and that in Britain in particular, cul- tural critic Paul Gilroy argues that black working people who spent time and pre- cious scarce money at the dance halls, blues clubs, and house parties "see waged work as itself a form of servitude. At best, it is viewed as a necessary evil and is sharply counterposed to the more authentic freedoms that can only be enjoyed in nonwork time. The black body is here celebrated as an instrument of pleasure rather than an instrument of labor. The nighttime becomes the right time, and the space

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86 The Journal of American History June 1993

allocated for recovery and recuperation is assertively and provocatively occupied by the pursuit of leisure and pleasure."24

In southern cities where working-class blacks set Friday and Saturday nights aside for the "pursuit of leisure and pleasure," some of the most intense skirmishes be- tween such blacks and authority erupted during and after weekend gatherings. During World War II in Birmingham, for example, racial conflicts on public trans- portation on Friday and Saturday nights were commonplace; many of the incidents involved black youths returning from dances and parties. The young men and women who rode public transportation in groups were energized by a sense of social solidarity rooted in a shared culture, common friends, and generational identity, not to mention naivete as to the possible consequences of "acting up" in white- dominated public space. Leaving social sites that had reinforced a sense of collec- tivity, sometimes feeling the effects of alcohol and reefer, many young black pas- sengers were emboldened. On the South Bessemer line, which passed some of the popular black dance halls, white passengers and operators dreaded the "un- bearable" presence of large numbers of African Americans who "pushed and shoved" white riders at will. As one conductor noted, "negroes are rough and boisterous when leaving down town dances at this time of night."25

The nighttime also afforded black working people the opportunity to become something other than workers. In a world where clothes signified identity and status, "dressing up" was a way of shedding the degradation of work and collapsing status distinctions between themselves and their oppressors. As one Atlanta domestic worker remembers, the black business district of Auburn Avenue was "where we dressed up, because we couldn't dress up during the day…. We'd dress up and put on our good clothes and go to the show on Auburn Avenue. And you were going places. It was like white folks' Peachtree."26 Seeing oneself and others "dressed up" was important to constructing a collective identity based on something other than wage work, presenting a public challenge to the dominant stereotypes of the black body, and shoring up a sense of dignity that was perpetually under assault. In these efforts to re-present the body through dress, African Americans wielded a double- edged sword, since the styles they adopted to combat racism all too frequently rein- forced, rather than challenged, bourgeois notions of respectability. Yet, by their dress as by their leisure, black people took back their bodies.

Clothing, as a badge of oppression or an act of transgression, is crucial to under- standing opposition by subordinate groups. Thus black veterans were beaten and lynched for insisting on wearing their military uniforms in public. A less-known but equally potent example is the zoot suit, which became popular during World War II. While the suit itself was not created and worn as a direct political statement,

24 Paul Gilroy, "One Nation under a Groove: The Cultural Politics of 'Race' and Racism in Britain," in Anatomy of Racism, ed. David Theo Goldberg (Minneapolis, 1990), 274.

25 "Report Involving Race Question," June 1943, p. 1, box 10, Green Papers. 26 Clifford M. Kuhn, Harlon E. Joye, and E. Bernard West, Living Atlanta: An Oral History of the City, 1914-

1948 (Atlanta, 1990), 39.

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Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South 87

the language and culture of zoot suiters emphasized ethnic identity and rejected subservience. Young black males created a fast-paced, improvisational language that sharply contrasted with the passive stereotype of the stuttering, tongue-tied Sambo, and whereas whites commonly addressed them as "boy," zoot suiters made a fetish of calling each other "man." The zoot suiters constructed an identity in which their gendered and racial meanings were inseparable; they opposed racist oppression through public displays of masculinity. Moreover, because fabric rationing regula- tions instituted by the War Productions Board forbade the sale and manufacturing of zoot suits, wearing the suit (which had to be purchased through informal net- works) was seen by white servicemen as a pernicious act of anti-Americanism – a view compounded by the fact that most zoot suiters were able-bodied men who re- fused to enlist or found ways to dodge the draft. A Harlem zoot suiter interviewed by black social psychologist Kenneth Clark declared to the scholarly audience for whom Clark's research was intended: "By [the] time you read this I will be fighting for Uncle Sam, the bitches, and I do not like it worth a dam. I'm not a spy or a saboteur, but I don't like goin' over there fightin' for the white man -so be it." It is not a coincidence that whites who assaulted black and Chicano zoot suiters across the country during the fateful summer of 1943 took great pains to strip the men or mutilate the suits.27

While no one, to my knowledge, has investigated zoot suiters in the South, they undoubtedly were a presence on the wartime urban landscape. As Howard Odum observed during the early 1940s, the mere image of these draped-shape-clad hipsters struck fear into the hearts of many white southerners. On Birmingham's already overcrowded buses and streetcars during World War II, some of these zooted "baaad niggers" put on outrageous public displays of resistance that left witnesses in awe, though their transgressive acts did not lead directly to improvements in conditions, nor were they intended to. Some boldly sat down next to white female passengers and challenged operators to move them, often with knife in hand. Others refused to pay their fares or simply picked fights with bus drivers or white passengers. Nevertheless, like the folk hero himself, the Stagolee-type rebel was not always ad- mired by other working-class black passengers. Some were embarrassed by his ac- tions; the more sympathetic feared for his life. Black passengers on the Pratt-Ensley streetcar in 1943, for example, told a rebellious young man who was about to chal- lenge the conductor to a fight "to hush before he got killed." Besides, black hipsters were hardly social bandits. Some were professional hustlers whose search for pleasure and avoidance of waged labor often meant exploiting the exploited. Black hustlers

27 Kenneth B. Clark and James Barker, "The Zoot Effect in Personality: A Race Riot Participant," Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 40 (April 1945), 145. See also Robin D. G. Kelley, "The Riddle of the Zoot: Malcolm Little and Black Cultural Politics during World War II," in Malcolm X In Our Own Image, ed. Joe Wood

(New York, 1992), 15 5-82; Stuart Cosgrove, "The Zoot-Suit and Style Warfare," History WorkshopJournal, 18 (Au- tumn 1984), 77-91; Mauricio Mazon, The Zoot-Suit Riots: The Psychology of Symbolic Annihilation (Austin, 1984); Eric Lott, "Double V, Double-Time: Bebop's Politics of Style," Callalloo, 11 (no. 3, 1988), 597-605; Kobena Mercer, "Black Hair / Style Politics," New Formations, 3 (Winter 1987), 49; Bruce M. Tyler, "BlackJive and White

Repression,' Journal of Ethnic Studies, 16 (no. 4, 1989), 31-66.

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88 The Journal of American History June 1993

took pride in their ability to establish parasitical relationships with women wage earners or sex workers, and those former hipsters who recorded memories in print wrote quite often of living off women, in many cases by outright pimping. The black male hipsters of the zoot suit generation remind us that the creation of an alterna- tive culture can simultaneously challenge and reinforce existing power relations.28 Lastly, I want to briefly leap from the "bad," lawless, secular world to the sacred –

a realm of practice to which historians have paid great attention. Despite the almost axiomatic way the church becomes central to black working-class culture and poli- tics, religion is almost always treated simply as culture, ideology, and organization. We need to recognize that the sacred and the spirit world were also often understood and invoked by African Americans as weapons to protect themselves or to attack others. How do historians make sense of, say, conjure as a strategy of resistance, retaliation, or defense in the daily lives of some working-class African Americans? How do we interpret divine intervention, especially when one's prayers are an- swered? How does the belief that God is by one's side affect one's willingness to fight with police, leave an abusive relationship, stand up to a foreman, participate in a strike, steal, or break tools? Can a sign from above, a conversation with a ghost,

a spell cast by an enemy, or talkin~g in tongues unveil the hidden transcript? If a worker turns to a root doctor or prayer rather than to a labor union to make an em- ployer less evil, is that "false consciousness"? These are not idle questions. Most of the oral narratives and memoirs of southern black workers speak of such events or moments as having enormous material consequences.29 Of course, reliance on the divine or on the netherworlds of conjure was rarely, if ever, the only resistance or defense strategy used by black working people, but in their minds, bodies, and so- cial relationships this was real power- power of which neither the CIo, the Populists, nor the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) could boast. With the exception of Vincent Harding, no historian that I know of since W. E. B. Du Bois has been bold enough to assert a connection between the spirit and spiritual world of African Americans and political struggle. Anticipating his critics, Du Bois in Black Reconstruction boldly considered freed people's narratives of divine intervention in their emancipation and, in doing so, gave future historians insight into an aspect of African-American life that cannot be reduced to "culture": "Foolish talk, all of this, you say, of course; and that is because no American now

28 Odum, Race and Rumors of Race, 77-79; "Incidents Reported," Sept. 1, 1941-Aug. 31, 1942, pp. 4, 8, box 10, Green Papers; "Report Involving Race Question," Feb. 1943, pp. 2, 3, ibid.; "Report Involving Race Question," Sept. 1943, p. 1, ibid On Stagolee folklore and the political implications of "baaad niggers" for African Americans, see Roberts, From Trickster to Badman, 171-215; Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness, 407-19. "Report Involving Race Question," March 1943, p. 3, box 10, Green Papers. See Julius Hudson, "The Hustling Ethic," in Rappin'andStylin' Out. Communication in Urban Black America, ed. Thomas Kochman (Urbana, 1972), 414-16; Kelley, "Riddle of the Zoot," 167-72. For postwar examples, see Elliot Liebow, Tally's Corner: A Study of Negro Streetcorner Men (Boston, 1967), 137-44; and Christina Milner and Richard Milner, Black Players: The Secret World of Black Pimps (New York, 1973).

29 See Nell Irvin Painter, The Narrative of Hosea Hudson: His Life as a Negro Communist in the South (Cam- bridge, Mass., 1979), 347-51; Jane Maguire, On Shares: Ed Brown's Story (New York, 1975), 125-33; Theodore Rosengarten, All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw (New York, 1974), 189, 192, 238-40.

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Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South 89

believes in his religion. Its facts are mere symbolism; its revelation vague generali- ties; its ethics a matter of carefully balanced gain. But to most of the four million black folk emancipated by civil war, God was real. They knew Him. They had met Him personally in many a wild orgy of religious frenzy, or in the black stillness of the night."30

At the Point of Production

Nearly a quarter of a century ago, as Herbert Gutman was poised to lead a revolution in the study of labor in the United States, George Rawick published an obscure ar- ticle that warned against treating the history of working-class opposition as merely the history of trade unions or other formal labor organizations. If we are to locate working-class resistance, Rawick insisted, we need to know "how many man hours were lost to production because of strikes, the amount of equipment and material destroyed by industrial sabotage and deliberate negligence, the amount of time lost by absenteeism, the hours gained by workers through the slowdown, the limiting of the speed-up of the productive apparatus through the working class's own initia- tive." Unfortunately, few southern labor historians have followed Rawick's advice. Missing from most accounts of southern labor struggles are the ways unorganized working people resisted the conditions of work, tried to control the pace and amount of work, and carved out a modicum of dignity at the workplace.3'

Not surprisingly, studies that seriously consider the sloppy, undetermined, everyday nature of workplace resistance have focused on workers who face consider- able barriers to traditional trade union organization. Black domestic workers devised a whole array of creative strategies, including slowdowns, theft (or "pan-toting"), leaving work early, or quitting, in order to control the pace of work, increase wages, compensate for underpayment, reduce hours, and seize more personal autonomy. These individual acts often had a collective basis that remained hidden from their employers. Black women household workers in the urban South generally abided by a code of ethics or established a blacklist so they could collectively avoid em- ployers who had proved unscrupulous, abusive, or unfair. In the factories, such strategies as feigning illness to get a day off, slowdowns, sometimes even sabotage often required the collective support of co-workers. Studies of black North Carolina

30 See Vincent Harding, There Is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America (New York, 1981). W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay towarda History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880 (New York, 1935), 124.

31 George Rawick, "Working-Class Self-Activity," Radical America, 3 (March-April 1969), 145. For examples of the voluminous literature on black urban workers, organized labor, and working-class politics in the South, see Eric Arnesen, Waterfront Workers of New Orleans: Race, Class, and Politics, 1863-1923 (New York, 1991); Horace R. Cayton and George Mitchell, Black Workers andthe New Unions (Chapel Hill, 1939); Philip Foner, Organized Laborandthe Black Worker, 1619-1981 (New York, 1982); Honey, Southern LaborandBlack CivilRights; Korstad, "'Daybreak of Freedom"'; F. Ray Marshall, Labor in the South (Cambridge, Mass., 1967); Daniel Rosenberg, New Orleans Dockworkers: Race, Labor, and Unionism, 1892-1923 (Albany, 1988); Richard Straw, "'This Is Not a Strike, It Is Simply a Revolution': Birmingham Miners Struggle for Power, 1894-1908" (Ph.D. diss., University of Missouri, Columbia, 1980); Philip Taft, Organizing Dixie: Alabama Workers in the Industrial Era, ed. Gary Fink (Westport, 1981).

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90 The Journal of American History June 1993

tobacco workers by DoloresJaniewski and Robert Korstad reveal a wide range of clan- destine, yet collective strategies to control the pace of work or to strike out against employers. When black women stemmers had trouble keeping up with the pace,

black men responsible for supplying tobacco to them would pack the baskets more loosely than usual. Among black women who operated stemmer machines, when one worker was ill, other women would take up the slack rather than call attention

to her inability to handle her job, which could result in lost wages or dismissal.32 Theft at the workplace was a common form of working-class resistance, and yet

the relationship between pilfering -whether of commodities or of time – and working-class opposition has escaped the attention of most historians of the African- American working class, except in slavery studies and the growing literature on

domestic workers. 33Any attempt to understand the relationship between theft and working-class opposition must begin by interrogating the dominant view of "theft" as deviant, criminal behavior. From the vantage point of workers, as several criminol- ogists have pointed out, theft at the workplace is a strategy to recover unpaid wages or to compensate for low wages and mistreatment. Washerwomen in Atlanta and other southern cities, Hunter points out, occasionally kept their patrons' clothes "as a weapon against individual employers who perpetuated injustices or more ran- domly against an oppressive employing class." In the tobacco factories of North Carolina, black workers not only stole cigarettes and chewing tobacco (which they usually sold or bartered at the farmers' market) but, in Durham at least, also figured out a way to rig the clock in order to steal time. In the coal mines of Birmingham and Appalachia, miners pilfered large chunks of coke and coal for their home ovens. Black workers sometimes turned to theft as a means of contesting the power public utilities had over their lives. During the Great Depression, for example, jobless and underemployed working people whose essential utilities had been turned off for nonpayment stole fuel, water, and electricity: They appropriated coal, drew free electricity by tapping power lines with copper wires, illegally turned on water mains, and destroyed vacant homes for firewood.34

32 Hunter, "Household Workers in the Making," 76-82;Jones, Labor ofLove, Labor of Sorrow, 123-33; Dolores Janiewski, "Sisters under Their Skins: Southern Working Women, 1880-1950," in Sex, Race, andthe Role of Women in the South, ed. Joanne V. Hawks and Sheila L. Skemp (Jackson, 1983), 788; David Katzman, Seven Days a Week: Women and Domestic Service in Industrializing America (New York, 1978), 195-97; Korstad, "'Daybreak of Freedom,"' 101; Janiewski, Sisterhood Denied, 98.

33 On this form of resistance in the unfree working class, see especially Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 599-621; Kolchin, Unfree Labor, 241-44; Lichtenstein, "'That Disposition to Theft, with which they have been Branded,"' 413-40; Bauer and Bauer, "Day to Day Resistance to Slavery," 388-419, Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts, 141-49; and Edward L. Ayers, Vengeance andJustice: Crime andPunishment in the Nineteenth Century American South (New York, 1984). The most sophisticated work on crime and resistance at the workplace continues to come from sociologists, radical criminologists, and historians of Europe and Africa. See, for example, Peter Linebaugh, The London Hanged. Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1991); Hay et al., eds., Albion's Fatal Tree; JeffCrisp, The Story of an African Working Class: Ghanaian Miners' Struggles, 1870-1980 (London, 1984), 18, 26, 44-45, 68, 78; Bill Freund, "Theft and Social Protest among the Tin Miners of Northern Nigeria," RadicalHistory Review, 26 (Spring 1982), 68-86; Charles Van Onselen, Chibaro: African Mine Labour in Southern Rhodesia, 1900-1933 (London, 1976), 239-42; Charles Van Onselen, Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand, 1886-1914: New Nineveh (2 vols., New York, 1982), II, 171-95.

34 On workplace theft, see Alvin Ward Gouldner, Wildcat Strike (Yellow Springs, 1954). On British workers, see Steven Box, Recession, Crime, andPunishment (Totowa, 1987), 34. Jason Ditton, Part-Time Crime: An Ethnog-

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Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South 91

Unfortunately, we know very little about black workplace theft in the twentieth- century South and even less about its relationship to working-class opposition.

Historians might begin to explore, for example, what Michel de Certeau calls "wig- ging," employees' use of company time and materials for their own purposes (for example, repairing or making a toy for one's child or writing love letters). By using

part of the workday in this manner, workers not only take back precious hours from their employers but resist being totally subordinated to the needs of capital. The

worker takes some of that labor power and spends it on herself or her family. One

might imagine a domestic who seizes time from work to read books from her em- ployer's library. In a less creative, though more likely, scenario, washerwomen wash

and iron their families' clothes along with their employers'.'35 A less elusive form of resistance is sabotage. Although the literature is nearly si-

lent on industrial sabotage in the South, especially acts committed by black workers, it existed. Korstad's study of tobacco workers in Winston-Salem introduces us to

black labor organizer Robert Black, who admitted using sabotage to counter speedups:

These machines were more delicate, and all I had to do was feed them a little faster and overload it and the belts would break. When it split you had to run the tobacco in reverse to get it out, clean the whole machine out and then the mechanics would

have to come and take all the broken links out of the belt. The machine would

be down for two or three hours and I would end up running less tobacco than the old machines. We had to use all kind of techniques to protect ourselves and the other workers.

Historians provide ample evidence that domestic workers adopted sabotage tech- niques more frequently than industrial workers. There is evidence of household

workers scorching or spitting in food, damaging kitchen utensils, and breaking household appliances, but employers and white contemporaries generally dismissed

these acts as proof of black moral and intellectual inferiority. Testifying on the "ser- vant problem" in the South, a frustrated employer remarked: "the washerwomen … badly damaged clothes they work on, iron-rusting them, tearing them, breaking off buttons, and burning them brown; and as for starch! – Colored cooks, too, generally abuse stoves, suffering them to get clogged with soot, and to 'burn out' in half the time they ought to last."36

These examples are rare exceptions, however, for workplace theft and sabotage in the urban South has been all but ignored by labor historians. Given what we

raphy of Fiddling and Pilferage (London, 1977); Richard C. Hollinger and J. P. Clark, Theft by Employees (Lex- ington, Mass., 1983). On the informal economy and working-class opposition, see Cyril Robinson, "Exploring the

Informal Economy," Crime and SocialJustice, 15 (nos. 3 and 4, 1988), 3-16. Hunter, "Household Workers in the Making," 82-83; Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow, 132; Korstad, "'Daybreak of Freedom " 102; Janiewski, Sisterhood Denied, 124; Kelley, Hammer and Hoe, 20-21; Julia Kirk Blackwelder, "Quiet Suffering: Atlanta

Women in the 1930's," Georgia Historical Quarterly, 61 (Summer 1977), 119-20. 35 Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Rendall, 25-26. 36 Korstad, "'Daybreak of Freedom,"' 101; Hunter, "Household Workers in the Making" 85; Jones, Labor of

Love, Labor of Sorrow, 131; John Dollard, Caste and Class in a Southern Town (New York, 1957), 108.

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92 The journal of American History June 1993

African American stevedores in Houston Texas seizing a free moment for rest~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~&Berioz

and relaxation Photograph by Russell Lee~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ial

Courtesy Library of Congress~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~… …

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Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South 93

know of the pervasiveness of these strategies in other parts of the world and among slaves as well as rural African Americans in the postbellum period, the absence of accounts of similar clandestine activity by black industrial workers is surprising.37 Part of the reason, I think, lies in southern labor historians' noble quest to redeem the black working class from racist stereotypes. In addition, company personnel records, police reports, mainstream white newspaper accounts, and correspondence have left us with a somewhat serene portrait of black folks who only occasionally deviate from what I like to call the "cult of true Sambohood." The safety and ideo- logical security of the South required that pilfering, slowdowns, absenteeism, tool breaking, and other acts of black working-class resistance be turned into ineptitude, laziness, shiftlessness, and immorality. But rather than reinterpret these descriptions of black working-class behavior, sympathetic labor historians are often too quick to invert the images, remaking the black proletariat into the hardest working, thrift- iest, most efficient labor force around. Historians too readily naturalize the Protes- tant work ethic and project onto black working people as a whole the ideologies of middle-class and prominent working-class blacks. But if we regard most work as alienating, especially work done amid racist and sexist oppression, then a crucial aspect of black working-class struggle is to minimize labor with as little economic loss as possible. Let us recall one of Du Bois's many beautiful passages from Black Reconstruction: "All observers spoke of the fact that the slaves were slow and churlish; that they wasted material and malingered at their work. Of course they did. This was not racial but economic. It was the answer of any group of laborers forced down to the last ditch. They might be made to work continuously but no power could make them work well."38

Traditional documents, if used imaginatively, can be especially useful for recon- structing the ways in which workers exploited racial stereotypes to control the pace

37 European and African labor historians have been more inclined than Americanists to study industrial sabo- tage. See, for example, Pierre DuBois, Sabotage in Industry (New York, 1979); Tim Mason, "The Workers' Opposi- tion in Nazi Germany," History Workshop, 11 (Spring 1981), 127-30; and Donald Quartaert, "Machine Breaking and the Changing Carpet Industry of Western Anatolia, 1860-1908' Journal of Social History, 19 (Summer 1986), 473-89. On black members of the Industrial Workers of the World (Iww) and whether they practiced sabotage, see David Roediger, "Labor, Gender and the 'Smothering' of Race: Covington Hall and the Complexities of Class," 1992 (in Kelley's possession); andJames Green, Grass-Roots Socialism: Radical Movements in the Southwest, 1895- 1943 (Baton Rouge, 1978), 219. Scholars have made little effort to explore the question, partly because black workers have been treated by most iww historians more as objects to be debated over than as subjects engaged in "the class struggle." See especially Paul Brissenden, The 1WW: A Study of American Syndicalism (New York, 1920), 208; John S. Gambs, The Decline of the IWIW (New York, 1932), 135, 198; Selig Perlman and Philip Taft, History ofLaborin the United States (New York, 1935), 247; Bernard A. Cook, "Covington Hall and Radical Rural Unionization in Louisiana," Louisiana History, 18 (no. 2, 1977), 230, 235; Melvyn Dubofsky, We Shall Be All: A History of the IWIWV (New York, 1969), 8-9, 210, 213-16; Merl E. Reed, "Lumberjacks and Longshoremen: The IWW in Louisiana," Labor History, 13 (Winter 1972), 44-58; Philip Foner, "The IWW and the Black Worker," Journal ofNegro History, 55 (Jan. 1970), 45-64; and Sterling Spero and Abram L. Harris, The Black Worker: The Negro and the Labor Movement (New York, 1931), esp. 329-35.

38 My thinking is partly inspired by Sylvia Wynter, "Sambos and Minstrels," Social Text, 1 (Winter 1979), 149-56. On the dominant assumptions about black criminality and laziness in the postbellum South, see George Fredrickson, The Black Image in the White Mind. The Debate on Afro-American Character andDestiny, 1817-1914 (1971; Middletown, 1987), 251-52, 273-75, 287-88; Claude H. Nolen, The Negro's Image in the South: The Anatomy of White Supremacy (Lexington, Ky., 1967), 13-15, 25-27; and Ayers, Vengeance andJustice, 176-77. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction, 40.

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94 The Journal of American History June 1993

of work. Materials that describe "unreliable," "shiftless," or "ignorant" black workers should be read as more than vicious, racist commentary on African Americans; in many instances these descriptions are employers', foremen's, and managers' social reconstruction of the meaning of working-class self-activity, which they not only misunderstood but were never supposed to understand. Fortunately, many southern black workers understood the cult of true Sambohood all too well, and at times they used the contradictions of racist ideology to their advantage. In certain circum- stances, their inefficiency and penchant for not following directions created havoc and chaos for industrial production or the smooth running of a household. And all the while the appropriate grins, shuffles, and "yassums" served to mitigate poten- tial punishment.39

Among workers especially, the racial stereotypes associated with industrial dis- ruption were also gendered. As David Roediger has demonstrated in a penetrating essay, Covington Hall and the Brotherhood of Timber Workers (BTw) in Louisiana understood sabotage as a direct, militant confrontation with the lumber companies rather than an evasive strategy. As a native southern white leader of the working class, born of privilege, Hall sought to use appeals to "manhood" to build biracial unity. His highly gendered rhetoric, which insisted that there were no "Niggers" or "white trash" only MiEN – had the effect of turning clandestine tactics into direct confrontation. Roediger writes, "it is hard to believe the zeal with which [sabotage] was propagandized was not intensified by the tremendous emphasis on manhood, in part as a way to disarm race, in BTW thinking…. Hall's publications came to identify sabotage with the improbable image of the rattlesnake, not the black cat symbolizing the tactic elsewhere."40

Yet, despite Hall's efforts, employers and probably most workers continued to view what black male workers in the lumber industry were doing as less than manly -indeed, as proof of their inferiority at the workplace and evidence that they should be denied upward mobility and higher wages. Thus, for some black male industrial workers, efficiency and the work ethic were sometimes more effective as signifiers of manliness than sabotage and foot dragging. As Joe Trotter's powerful new book on African Americans in southern West Virginia reminds us, theft, sabo- tage, and slowdowns were two-edged weapons that, more often than not, reinforced the subordinate position of black coal miners in a racially determined occupational hierarchy. As he explains, "Job performance emerged as one of the black miners' most telling survival mechanisms. To secure their jobs, they resolved to provide cooperative, efficient, and productive labor." Their efficient labor was a logical re- sponse to a rather limited struggle for job security and advancement since their subordination to specific tasks and pay scales were based, at least ostensibly, on race

39 Kelley, Hamvmer and Hoe, 101-3; Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, 23-36. The mask of igno- rance did not always work as a strategy to mitigate punishment. Some rural African Americans accused of stealing livestock or burning barns were lynched. See clippings in Ralph Ginzburg, ed., 100 Years ofLynchings (New York, 1962), 92-93.

40 Roediger, "Labor, Gender, and the 'Smothering' of Race," 34.

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Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South 95

alone. More than a few black workers seemed to believe that a solid work record would eventually topple the racial ceiling on occupational mobility. Obviously, efficiency did not always lead to improved work conditions, nor did sabotage and foot dragging always go unnoticed or unpunished. What we need to know is why certain occupations seemed more conducive to particular strategies. Was efficiency more prevalent in industries where active, interracial trade unions at least occasion- ally challenged racially determined occupational ceilings (for example, coal mining)? Did extensive workplace surveillance deter sabotage and theft? Were black workers less inclined toward sabotage when disruptions made working conditions more difficult or dangerous for fellow employees? Were evasive strategies more common in service occupations? These questions need to be explored in greater detail. They suggest, as British labor historian Richard Price has maintained, that to understand strategies of resistance thoroughly we need to explore with greater specificity the character of subordination at the workplace.41

Nevertheless, the relative absence of resistance at the point of production does not mean that workers acquiesced or accommodated to the conditions of work. On the contrary, the most pervasive form of black protest was simply to leave. Central to black working-class infrapolitics was mobility, for it afforded workers relative freedom to escape oppressive living and working conditions and power to negotiate better working conditions. Of course, one could argue that in the competitive con- text of industrial capitalism – North and South – some companies clearly benefited from such migration since wages for blacks remained comparatively low no matter where black workers ended up. But the very magnitude of working-class mobility weakens any thesis that southern black working-class politics was characterized by accommodationist thinking. Besides, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that a significant portion of black migrants, especially black emigrants to Africa and the Caribbean, were motivated by a desire to vote, to provide a better education for their children, or to live in a setting in which Africans or African Americans exercised power. The ability to move represented a crucial step toward empowerment and self- determination; employers and landlords understood this, which explains why so much energy was expended limiting labor mobility and redefining migration as "shiftlessness," "indolence," or a childlike penchant to wander.42

41 Trotter, Coal, Class, and Color, 65, 108, 264-65; Richard Price, "The Labour Process and Labour History," Social History, 8 (Jan. 1983), 62-63.

42 See Trotter, Coal, Class, and Color, 68-85, 109; William Cohen, At Freedom's Edge: Black Mobility and the Southern Quest for Racial Control (Baton Rouge, 1991); Lewis, In Their Own Interests, 30-32, 168; James R. Grossman, LandbfHope: Chicago, Black Southerners, andthe Great Migration (Chicago, 1989); Nell Irvin Painter, Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas afterReconstruction (New York, 1976); Edwin S. Redkey, Black Exodus: Black Nationalist and Back-to-Africa Movements, 1890-1910 (New Haven, 1969); and Joe W. Trotter, ed., The Great Migration in Historical Perspective: New Dimensions of Race, Class, and Gender (Bloomington, 1991). For ex- amples of the ways in which black migration is redefined, seeJacquelineJones, The Dispossessed. America's Under- classes from the Civil WJar to the Present (New York, 1992), 104-26; Dollard, Caste and Class in a Southern Town, 115-19; and Nolen, Negro's Image in the South, 186-88.

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96 The Journal of American History June 1993

Gender, Race, Work, and the Politics of Location

Location plays a critical role in shaping workplace resistance, identity, and – broadly speaking- infrapolitics. By location I mean the racialized and gendered social spaces of work and community, as well as black workers' position in the hierarchy of power, the ensemble of social relations. Southern labor historians and race rela- tions scholars have established the degree to which occupations and, in some cases, work spaces were segregated by race. But only recently has scholarship begun to move beyond staid discussions of such labor market segmentation and inequality to an analysis of how spatial and occupational distinctions helped create an opposi- tional consciousness and collective action. Feminist scholarship on the South and some community histories have begun to examine how the social spaces in which people work (in addition to the world beyond work, which was also divided by race and, at times, sex) shaped the character of everyday resistance, collective action, and domination.43

Earl Lewis offers a poignant example of how the racialized social locations of work and community formed black working-class consciousness and oppositional strate- gies. During World War I, the all-black Transport Workers Association (TWA) of Nor- folk, Virginia, began organizing African-American waterfront workers irrespective of skill. Soon thereafter, its leaders turned their attention to the ambitious task of organizing all black workers, most notably cigar stemmers, oyster shuckers, and domestics. The TWA resembled what might have happened if Garveyites had taken control of an Industrial Workers of the World (iww) local: The ultimate goal seemed to be One Big Negro Union. What is important about the Norfolk story is the star- tling success of the TWA's efforts, particularly among workers who have been deemed unorganizable. Lewis is not satisfied with such simplistic explanations as the power of charismatic leadership or the primacy of race over class to account for the mass support for the TWA; rather, he makes it quite clear that the labor process, work spaces, intraclass power relations, communities and neighborhoods -indeed, class struggle itself-were all racialized. The result, therefore, was a "racialized" class con- sciousness. "In the world in which these workers lived," Lewis writes, "nearly

43 For rich descriptions of racially segregated work, one could go back as far as Charles Wesley, Negro Labor in the United States, 1850-1925 (New York, 1927); Carter G. Woodson and Lorenzo Greene, The Negro Wlage Earner (New York, 1930); and Spero and Harris, Black Worker For sophisticated recent studies of the racialized dimension of industrial work and work spaces, see Arnesen, Waterfront Workers of New Orleans; Trotter, Coal, Class, and Color, esp. 65-88, 102-11, 106. Feminist historians of southern labor have shown sensitivity to the rela- tionship between work and collective consciousness. See especially Hunter, "Household Workers in the Making"; Janiewski, Sisterhood Denied; Janiewski, "Sisters under Their Skins," 13-35; Janiewski, "Seeking 'a New Day and a New Way': Black Women and Unions in the Southern Tobacco Industry," in "To Toil the Livelong Da y"' American Women at Work, 1780-1980, ed. Carol Groneman and Mary Beth Norton (Ithaca, 1987), 161-78; Korstad, "'Day- break of Freedom"'; Julia Kirk Blackwelder, "Women in the Workforce: Atlanta, New Orleans, and San Antonio, 1930-1940," Journal of Urban History, 4 (May 1978), 331-58. My ideas about a "politics of location" are derived from Adrienne Rich, "Notes toward a Politics of Location," in Women, Feminist Identity, and Society in the 1980's, ed. Myriam Diaz-Diocaretz and Iris M. Zavala (Philadelphia, 1985), 7-22; and Nina Gregg, "Women Telling Stories about Reality: Subjectivity, the Generation of Meaning, and the Organizing of a Union at Yale" (Ph.D. diss., McGill University, 1991).

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Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South 97

everyone was black, except for a supervisor or employer. Even white workers who may have shared a similar class position enjoyed a superior social position because of their race. Thus, although it appears that some black workers manifested a sem- blance of worker consciousness, that consciousness was so imbedded in the perspec- tive of race that neither blacks nor whites saw themselves as equal partners in the same labor movement."44

A racialized class consciousness shaped black workers' relations with interracial trade unions as well. Black workers did not always resist segregated union locals (al- though black union leaders often did). Indeed, in some instances African-American workers preferred segregated locals-if they maintained control over their own finances and played a leading role in the larger decision-making process. To cite one example, black members of the Brotherhood of Timber Workers in Louisiana, an IWW affiliate, found the idea of separate locals quite acceptable. However, at the 1912 BTW convention black delegates complained that they could not "suppress a feeling of taxation without representation" since their dues were in the control of whites, and demanded a "coloured executive board, elected by black union members and designed to work 'in harmony with its white counterpart."'45

Although gender undoubtedly shaped the experiences, work spaces, and collec- tive consciousness of all southern black workers, historians of women have been the most forthright and consistent in employing gender as an analytical category. Recent work on black female tobacco workers, in particular, has opened up important lines of inquiry. Not only were the dirty and difficult tasks of sorting and stemming tobacco relegated to black women, but those women had to do the tasks in spaces that were unbearably hot, dry, dark, and poorly ventilated. The coughing and wheezing, the tragically common cases of workers succumbing to tuberculosis, the endless speculation as to the cause of miscarriages among co-workers, were constant reminders that these black women spent more than a third of the day toiling in a health hazard. If some compared their work space to a prison or a dungeon, then they could not help but notice that all of the inmates were black women like them- selves. Moreover, foremen referred to them only by their first names or changed their names to "girl" or something more profane and regarded their bodies as perpetual motion machines as well as sexual objects. Thus bonds of gender as well as race were reinforced by the common experience of sexual harassment. Recalled one Reynolds worker, "I've seen [foremen] just walk up and pat women on their fannies and they'd better not say anything." Women, unlike their black male co-workers, had to devise a whole range of strategies to resist or mitigate the daily physical and verbal abuse of their bodies, ranging from putting forth an "asexual" persona to posturing as a "crazy" person to simply quitting. Although these acts seem individualized and

44 Lewis, In Their Own Interests, 47-58, esp. 58. See also McCallum, "Songs of Work and Songs of Worship," 14. 45 James R. Green, "The Brotherhood of Timber Workers: 1910-1913: A Radical Response to Industrial

Capitalism in the Southern U.S.A.," Past and Present, 60 (Aug. 1973), 185. On the preference of black workers for segregated locals, see Bruce Nelson, "Class and Race in the Crescent City: The ILWU, from San Francisco to New Orleans," in The CIo's Left-led Unions, ed. Steven Rosswurm (New Brunswick, 1992), 19-45.

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98 The Journal of American History June 1993

isolated, the experience of, and opposition to, sexual exploitation probably rein- forced bonds of solidarity. In the tobacco factories, these confrontations usually took place in a collective setting, the advances of lecherous foremen were discussed among the women, and strategies to deal with sexual assault were observed, learned from other workplaces, or passed down. (Former domestics, for example, had ex- perience staving off the sexual advances of male employers.) Yet, to most male union leaders, such battles were private affairs that had no place among "important" col- lective bargaining issues. Unfortunately, most labor historians have accepted this view, unable to see resistance to sexual harassment as a primary struggle to transform everyday conditions at the workplace. Nevertheless, out of this common social space and experience of racism and sexual exploitation, black female tobacco workers con- structed "networks of solidarity." They referred to each other as "sisters," shared the same neighborhoods and community institutions, attended the same churches, and displayed a deep sense of mutuality by collecting money for co-workers during sick- ness and death and celebrating each other's birthdays. In fact, those networks of solidarity were indispensable for organizing tobacco plants in Winston-Salem and elsewhere.46

In rethinking workplace struggles, black women's work culture, and the politics of location, we must be careful not to assume that home and work were distinct. While much of this scholarship and the ideas I am proposing directly challenge the "separate spheres" formulation, there is an implicit assumption that working-class households are separate from spaces in which wage labor takes place. Recent studies of paid homework remind us that working women's homes were often extensions of the factory. For African-American women, in particular, Eileen Boris and Tera Hunter demonstrate that the decision to do piecework or to take in laundry grows out of a struggle for greater control over the labor process, out of a conscious effort to avoid workplace environments in which black women have historically confronted sexual harassment, and out of "the patriarchal desires of men to care for their women even when they barely could meet economic needs of their families or from women's own desires to care for their children under circumstances that demanded that they contribute to the family economy."47 The study of homework opens up numerous

46 Korstad, "'Daybreak of Freedom,"' 90-91, esp. 94; Janiewski, Sisterhood Denied, 97-109 passim; Janiewski, "Sisters under Their Skins," 27-28; Janiewski, "Seeking 'a New Day and a New Way,"' 166; Beverly W. Jones, "Race, Sex, and Class: Black Female Tobacco Workers in Durham, North Carolina, 1920-1940, and the Development of Female Consciousness," Feminist Studies, 10 (Fall 1984), 443-50; Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow, 137-38. On sexual exploitation of domestic workers, see Hunter, "Household Workers in the Making," 116-17; and Kuhn, Joye, and West, Living Atlanta, 115. Works of labor history that attend to harassment are Vicki Ruiz, Cannery Women, Cannery Lives: Mexican Women, Unionization, and the California Food Processing Industry, 1930-1950 (Albuquerque, 1987); and Mary Bularzik, "Sexual Harassment at the Workplace: Historical Notes," in Workers' Struggles, Past and Present: A "RadicalAmerica" Reader, ed. James Green (Philadelphia, 1983), 117-35. And see Elsa Barkley Brown, "'What Has Happened Here': The Politics of Difference in Women's History and Feminist Politics," Feminist Studies, 18 (Summer 1992), 302-7. Jones, "Race, Sex, and Class," 449; Korstad, "'Daybreak of Freedom."'

47 Eileen Boris, "Black Women and Paid Labor in the Home: Industrial Homework in Chicago in the 1920's," in Homework: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Paid Labor at Home, ed. Eileen Boris and Cynthia R. Daniels (Urbana, 1989), 47; Hunter, "Household Workers in the Making," 151-86. See also Eileen Boris, In De- fense of Motherhood. The Politics of Industrial Homework in the United States (Cambridge, Eng., forthcoming).

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Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South 99

possibilities for rethinking black working-class opposition in the twentieth century. How do homeworkers resist unsatisfactory working conditions? How do they orga-

nize? Do community- and neighborhood-based organizations protect their interest

as laborers? How does the extension of capital-labor relations into the home affect the use and meaning of household space, labor patterns, and the physical and psy- chological well-being of the worker and her family? How does the presumably iso- lated character of their work shape their consciousness? How critical is female home- work as a survival strategy for households in which male wage earners are involved in strikes or other industrial conflicts? Thanks to the work of Boris and Hunter, many of these questions have been explored with regard to northern urban working women and southern laundry workers. But aside from washerwomen and occasional seamstresses, what do we really know about black homeworkers in the Jim Crow South?

For many African-American women homework was a way to avoid the indignities of household service, for as the experience of black tobacco workers suggests, much

workplace resistance centered around issues of dignity, respect, and autonomy. White employers often required black domestics to don uniforms, which reduced them to their identities as employees and ultimately signified ownership -black workers literally became the property of whoever owned the uniform. As Elizabeth Clark-Lewis points out, household workers in Washington, D.C., resisted wearing uniforms because they were symbols of live-in service. Their insistence on wearing their own clothes was linked to a broader struggle to change the terms of employ- ment from those of a "servant" (that is, a live-in maid) to those of a day worker. "As servants in uniform," Clark-Lewis writes, "the women felt, they took on the iden-

tity of the job -and the uniform seemed to assume a life of its own, separate from the person wearing it, beyond her control. As day workers, wearing their own clothes symbolized their new view of life as a series of personal choices rather than predeter- mined imperatives."48

But struggles for dignity and autonomy often pitted workers against other

workers. Black workers endured some of the most obnoxious verbal and physical in- sults from white workers, their supposed "natural allies." We are well aware of dra- matic moments of white working-class violence-the armed attacks on Georgia's

black railroad firemen in 1909, the lynching of a black strikebreaker in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1921, the racial pogroms in the shipyards of Mobile, Alabama, during

World War II, to mention only three -but these were merely explosive, large-scale manifestations of the verbal and physical violence black workers experienced on a daily basis. Without compunction, racist whites in many of the South's mines, mills, factories and docks referred to their darker co-workers as "boy," "girl," "uncle," "aunt," and more commonly, just plain "nigger." Memphis United Auto Workers (uAW) organizer Clarence Coe recalls, "I have seen the time when a young white boy came in and maybe I had been working at the plant longer than he had been

48 Elizabeth Clark-Lewis, "'This Work Had a End': African-American Domestic Workers in Washington, D.C., 1910-1940," in "To Toil the Livelong Day," ed. Groneman and Norton, 207.

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100 The Journal of American History June 1993

living, but if he was white I had to tell him 'yes sir' or 'no sir.' That was degrading

as hell [but] I had to live with it." Occasionally white workers kicked and slapped

black workers just for fun or out of frustration. Without institutional structures to censure white workers for racist and sexist attacks, black workers took whatever op-

portunity they could to contest white insults and reaffirm their dignity, their indig- nation often exploding into fisticuffs at the workplace or after work. Black tobacco

worker Charlie Decoda recalled working "with a cracker and they loved to put their

foot in your tail and laugh. I told him once, 'You put your foot in my tail again ever and I'll break your leg."' Even sabotage, a strategy usually employed against capital, was occasionally used in the most gruesome and reactionary intraclass conflicts. Michael Honey tells of George Holloway, a black UAW leader in Memphis, Tennessee, whose attempts to desegregate his local and make it more responsive to

black workers' needs prompted white union members to tamper with his punch press. According to Honey, the sabotage "could have killed him if he had not exam- ined his machine before turning it on." But as Honey also points out, personal indig- nities and individual acts of racist violence prompted black workers to take collective

action, sometimes with the support of antiracist white workers. Black auto workers in Memphis, for example, staged a wildcat strike after a plant guard punched a black woman in the mouth.49

Intraclass conflict was not merely a manifestation of false consciousness or a case

of companies' fostering an unwritten policy of divide and rule. Rather, white working-class consciousness was also racialized. The construction of a white working- class racial identity, as has been illustrated in the works of Alexander Saxton, David

Roediger, and Eric Lott, registered the peculiar nature of class conflict where wage labor under capitalism and chattel slavery existed side by side. That work is espe- cially important, for it maps the history of how Euro-American workers came to see themselves as white and to manifest that identity politically and culturally. What whiteness and blackness signified for antebellum white workers need not concern us here. We need to acknowledge, however, that while racism was not always in the interests of southern white workers, it was nonetheless a very "real" aspect of white working-class consciousness. Racist attacks by white workers did not need instigation from wily employers. Because they ultimately defined their own class interests in

racial terms, white workers employed racist terror and intimidation to help secure

a comparatively privileged position within the prevailing system of wage depen- dency, as well as what Du Bois and Roediger call a "psychological wage." A sense of superiority and security was gained by being white and not being black. White workers sometimes obtained very real material benefits by institutionalizing their

49 John Michael Matthews, "The Georgia Race Strike of 1909," Journal of Southern History, 40 (Nov. 1974), 613-30; Hugh Hammet, "Labor and Race: The Georgia Railroad Strike of 1909," Labor History, 16 (Fall 1975), 470-84; Foner, OrganizedLabor andthe Black Worker, 105-7; Ginzburg, ed., 100 Years ofLynching, 157-58; Wil- liam H. Harris, The Harder We Run: Black WJorkers since the Civil WJar (New York, 1982), 45-47; Shapiro, White Violence and Black Response, 338-39; Janiewski, Sisterhood Denied, 121; Michael Honey, "Black Workers Remember: Industrial Unionism in the Era of Jim Crow," paper presented to the Southern Labor History Confer- ence, Atlanta, Georgia, Oct. 9-12, 1991, pp. 13, 16, 18 (in Kelley's possession).

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Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South 101

strength through white-controlled unions that used their power to enforce ceilings on black mobility and wages. The limited privileges afforded white workers as whites meant a subordinate status for African-American workers. Hence even the division of labor was racialized – black workers had to perform "nigger work." And without the existence of "nigger work" and "nigger labor," whiteness to white workers would be meaningless.50

Determining the social and political character of "nigger work" is therefore essen- tial to understanding black working-class infrapolitics. First, by racializing the divi- sion of labor, it has the effect of turning dirty, physically difficult, and potentially dangerous work into humiliating work. To illustrate this point, we might examine how the meaning of tasks once relegated to black workers changed when they were done predominantly, if not exclusively, by whites. Among contemporary coal miners in Appalachia, where there are few black workers and racial ceilings have been largely (though not entirely) removed, difficult and dangerous tasks are charged with masculinity. Michael Yarrow found the miners believed that "being able to do hard work, to endure discomfort, and to brave danger" is an achievement of "manli- ness." While undeniably an important component of the miner's work culture, "the masculine meaning given to hard, dangerous work [obscures] its reality as class ex- ploitation." On the other hand, the black miners in Trotter's study were far more judicious, choosing to leave a job rather than place themselves in undue danger. Those black miners took pride in their work; they often challenged dominant cate- gories of skill and performed what had been designated as menial labor with the pride of skilled craftsmen. But once derogatory social meaning is inscribed upon the work (let alone the black bodies that perform the work), it undermines its potential dignity and worth-frequently rendering "nigger work" less manly.51

Finally, because black men and women toiled in work spaces in which both bosses and white workers demanded deference, freely hurled insults and epithets at them, and occasionally brutalized their bodies, issues of dignity informed much of black infrapolitics in the urban South. Interracial conflicts between workers were not simply diversions from some idealized definition of class struggle; white working- class racism was sometimes as much a barrier to black workers' struggle for dignity

50 David Roediger, The W'lges of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (London, 1991), 13-14; Alexander Saxton, The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (New York, 1990); Eric Lott, "'The Seeming Counterfeit': Racial Politics and Early Blackface Minstrelsy," American Quarterly, 43 (June 1991), 223-54; Arnesen, Waterfront Workers of New Orleans, 121-31; Herbert Hill, "Myth-Making as Labor History: Herbert Gutman and the United Mine Workers of America," InternationalJournal of Politics, Culture, Society, 2 (Winter 1988), 132-200; Robert J. Norrell, "Caste in Steel: Jim Crow Careers in Birmingham, Alabama," Journal of American History, 73 (Dec. 1986), 669-94; Horace Huntley, "Iron Ore Miners and Mine Mill in Alabama, 1933-1952" (Ph.D. diss., University of Pittsburgh, 1976), 110-69; Honey, "Black Workers Remember,' 15; Roediger, "Labor in the White Skin,' 287-308; Roediger, Wlages of Whiteness, 43-87 passim.

51 Michael Yarrow, "The Gender-Specific Class Consciousness of Appalachian Coal Miners: Structure and Change:' in Bringing Class Back In: Contemporary and Historical Perspectives, ed. Scott G. McNall, Rhonda F. Levine, and Rick Fantasia (Boulder, 1991), 302-3; Trotter, Coal, Class, and Color, 109; Paul Willis, Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working ClassJobs (New York, 1981), 133. See also Paul Willis, "Shop-Floor Culture, Masculinity, and the Wage Form:' in Working-Class Culture, ed. John Clarke, Charles Critcher, and Richard Johnson (New York, 1979), 185-98.

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102 The Journal of American History June 1993

and autonomy at the workplace as the racial division of labor imposed by employers. Thus episodes of interracial solidarity among working people and the fairly consis- tent opposition by most black labor leaders to Jim Crow locals are all the more remarkable. More important, for our purposes at least, the normative character of interracial conflict opens up another way to think about the function of public and hidden transcripts for white workers. For southern white workers openly to express solidarity with African Americans was a direct challenge to the public transcript of racial difference and domination. Indeed, throughout this period, leaders of southern biracial unions, with the exception of some left-wing organizers, tended to apologize for their actions, insisting that the union was driven by economic neces- sity or assuring the public of their opposition to "social equality" or "intermixing." Thus, even the hint of intimate, close relations between workers across the color line had consequences that cut both ways. Except for radicals and other bold individuals willing to accept ostracism, ridicule, and even violence, expressions of friendship and respect for African Americans had to remain part of the "hidden transcript" of white workers. White workers had to disguise and choke back acts and gestures of antiracism; when white workers were exposed as "nigger lovers" or when they took public stands on behalf of African Americans, the consequences could be fatal.52

On Buses, Streetcars, and City Streets

African-American workers' struggle for dignity did not end at the workplace. For most white workers public space – after intense class struggle – eventually became a "democratic space," where people of different class backgrounds shared city theaters, public conveyances, streets, and parks. For black people, white-dominated public space was vigilantly undemocratic and potentially dangerous. Jim Crow signs, filthy and inoperable public toilets, white police officers, dark bodies standing in the aisles of half-empty buses, black pedestrians stepping off the sidewalk or walking with their eyes turned down or away, and other acts of interracial social "etiquette" all reminded black people every day of their second-class citizenship. The sights, sounds, and experiences of African Americans in white-dominated public spaces challenge the notion that southern black working-class politics can be understood by merely examining labor organization, workplace resistance, culture, and the family.

While historians of the civil rights movement have exhaustively documented the organized movement to desegregate the South, the study of unorganized, day-to- day resistance to segregated public space remains undeveloped. We know very little

52 Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, 113. On biracial unions in the South, a subject that deserves greater examination, see Eric Arnesen, "Following the Color Line of Labor: Black Workers and the Labor Movement before 1930," Radical History Review, 5 5 (Winter 1993), 5 3-87. See also Arnesen, Waterfront Workers of New Orleans; and Honey, Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights. Numerous white radicals and sympathizers in Ala- bama were severely beaten (and one lynched) for taking unpopular stands on African-American rights. That they crossed the color line was far more important than that they were Communists; Communists in north Alabama, where the party was completely white and included ex-Klan members, faced virtually no violence until they began

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Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South 103

about the everyday posing, discursive conflicts, and small-scale skirmishes that not only created the conditions for the success of organized, collective movements but

also shaped segregation policies, policing, and punishment.53 By broadening our focus to include the daily confrontations and blatant acts of resistance – in other

words, the realm of infrapolitics-we will find that black passengers, particularly working people, were concerned with much more than legalized segregation. A cur-

sory examination of black working-class resistance on Birmingham buses and streetcars during World War II reveals that in most incidents the racial compartmen-

talization of existing space was not the primary issue. Rather, the most intense battles were fought over the deliberate humiliation of African Americans by oper-

ators and other passengers; shortchanging; the power of drivers to allocate or limit space for black passengers; and the practice of forcing blacks to pay at the front door

and enter through the center doors. For example, half-empty buses or streetcars often passed up African Americans on the pretext of preserving space for potential white riders. It was not unusual for a black passenger who had paid at the front of the bus to be left standing while she or he attempted to board at the center door.

The design and function of buses and streetcars rendered them unique sites of contest. An especially useful metaphor for understanding the character of domina-

tion and resistance on public transportation might be to view the interior spaces as "moving theaters." Here I am using the word theater in two ways: as a site of per- formance and a site of military conflict. First, plays of conflict, repression, and resis- tance are performed in which passengers witness, or participate in, "skirmishes" that shape the collective memory of the passengers, illustrate the limits as well as the possibilities of resistance to domination, and draw more passengers into the "perfor- mance." The design of streetcars and buses -enclosed spaces with seats facing for- ward or toward the center aisle – gave everyday discursive and physical confronta- tions a dramaturgical quality. Second, theater as a military metaphor is particularly appropriate because all bus drivers and streetcar conductors in Birmingham carried guns and blackjacks and used them pretty regularly to maintain (the social) order. In August 1943, for example, when a black woman riding the South East Lake- Ensley line complained to the conductor that he had passed her stop, he followed her out of the streetcar and, in the words of the official report, "knocked her down with handle of gun. No further trouble." Violence was not a completely effective

organizing black sharecroppers in the black belt counties. See Kelley, HammerandHoe, 47, 67-74, 130-31, 159-75 passim.

53 On early organized struggles againstJim Crow public transportation, see August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, "The Boycott Movement againstJim Crow Streetcars in the South, 1900-1906," in Along the ColorLine: Explora- tions in the Black Experience, ed. August Meier and Elliot Rudwick (Urbana, 1976), 267-89; and Roger A. Fischer, "A Pioneer Protest: The New Orleans Street-Car Controversy of 1867," Journal of Negro History, 53 (July 1968), 219-33. A few scholars briefly mention isolated incidents of day-to-day conflict on public transportation in the South. See Pete Daniel, "Going among Strangers: Southern Reactions to World War 11, Journal ofAmerican His- tory, 77 (Dec. 1990), 906; Dittmer, Black Georgia in the Progressive Era, 16-19; Janiewski, Sisterhood Denied, 141; James A. Burran, "Urban Racial Violence in the South during World War II: A Comparative Overview," in From the Old South to the New: Essays on the Transitional South, ed. WalterJ. Fraser, Jr., and Winfred B. Moore, Jr. (Westport, 1981), 171; Kuhn, Joye, and West, Living Atlanta, 77-82.

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104 The Journal of American History June 1993

deterrent, however. In the twelve months beginning September 1941, there were at least 88 cases of blacks occupying "white" space on public transportation, 55 of which were open acts of defiance in which African-American passengers either re- fused to give up their seats or sat in the white section. But this is only part of the story; reported incidents and complaints of racial conflict totaled 176. These cases included at least 18 interracial fights among passengers, 22 fights between black pas- sengers and operators, and 13 incidents in which black passengers engaged in verbal or physical confrontations over being shortchanged.54

Public transportation, unlike any other form of public space (for example, a waiting room or a water fountain), was an extension of the marketplace. Because transportation companies depend on profit, any action that might limit potential fares was economically detrimental. This explains why divisions between black and white space had to be relatively fluid and flexible. With no fixed dividing line, black and white riders continually contested readjustments that affected them. The fluidity of the color line meant that their protestations often fell within the pro- scribed boundaries of segregationist law, thus rendering public transportation espe- cially vulnerable to everyday acts of resistance. Furthermore, for African Americans, public transportation -as an extension of the marketplace -was also a source of eco- nomic conflict. One source of frustration was the all too common cheating or short- changing of black passengers. Unlike the workplace, where workers entered as dis- empowered producers dependent on wages for survival and beholden, ostensibly at least, to their superiors, public transportation gave passengers a sense of consumer entitlement. The notion that blacks and whites should pay the same for "separate but equal" facilities fell within the legal constraints ofJim Crow, although for black passengers to argue publicly with whites, especially those in positions of authority, fell outside the limits of acceptable behavior. When a College Hills line passenger thought she had been shortchanged, she initially approached the driver in a very civil manner but was quickly brushed off and told to take her seat. In the words of the official report, "She came up later and began cursing and could not be stopped and a white passenger came and knocked her down. Officer was called and made her show him the money which was .25 short, then asked her where the rest of the money was. She looked in her purse and produced the other quarter. She was taken to jail." The incident served as compelling theater, a performance that revealed the hidden transcript, the power of Jim Crow to crush public declarations swiftly and decisively, the role of white passengers as defenders of segregation, the degree to which white men – not even law enforcement officers – could assault black

54 "Report Involving Race Question," Aug. 1943, p. 1, box 10, Green Papers. For other examples, see "Race Complaints for Last Twelve Months:' ibid.; and "Incidents Reported:' Sept. 1, 1941, to Aug. 31, 1942, ibid.; and James Armstrong interview by Cliff Kuhn, July 16, 1984, p. 9, Working Lives Oral History Collection (University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa). "Race Complaints for Last Twelve Months:' Sept. 1, 1941, to Aug. 31, 1942, box 10, Green Papers; "Incidents Reported," Sept. 1, 1941, to Aug. 31, 1942, ibid.; "Analysis of Complaints and Incidents Con- cerning Race Problems on Birmingham Electric Company's Transportation System, 12 Months Ending August 31, 1942:' ibid.

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Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South 105

women without compunction. The play closes with the woman utterly humiliated, for all along, the report claims, she had miscounted her change.55

Although the available records are incomplete, it seems that black women out- numbered black men in incidents of resistance on buses and streetcars. In 1941- 1942, nearly twice as many black women were arrested as black men, most of them

charged with either sitting in the white section or cursing. Indeed, there is a long

tradition of militant opposition toJim Crow public transportation by black women, a tradition that includes such celebrated figures as Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells- Barnett and, of course, Rosa Parks.56 More significantly, however, black working

women in Birmingham generally rode public transportation more often than men. Male industrial workers tended to live in industrial suburbs within walking distance

of their places of employment, while most black working women were domestics who had to travel to relatively wealthy and middle-class white neighborhoods on

the other side of town.

Unlike the popular image of Parks's quiet resistance, most black women's opposi-

tion tended to be profane and militant. There were literally dozens of episodes of black women sitting in the white section, arguing with drivers or conductors, and fighting with white passengers. The "drama" usually ended with the woman being ejected, receiving a refund for her fare and leaving on her own accord, moving to the back of the vehicle, or being hauled off to jail. Indeed, throughout the war, dozens of black women were arrested for merely cursing at the operator or a white passenger. In October of 1943, for example, a teenager named Pauline Carth at- tempted to board the College Hills line around 8:00 P.M. When she was informed that there was no more room for colored passengers, she forced her way into the

bus, threw her money at the driver, and cursed and spit on him. The driver responded by knocking her out of the bus, throwing her to the ground, and holding her down until police arrived. Fights between black women and white passengers were also fairly common. In March of 1943, a black woman and a white man

boarding the East Lake-West End line apparently got into a shoving match, which angered the black woman to the point where she "cursed him all the way to Wood- lawn." When they reached Woodlawn she was arrested, sentenced to thirty days in

jail, and fined fifty dollars.57 Although black women's actions were as violent or profane as men's, gender

differences in power relations and occupation did shape black women's resistance. Household workers were in a unique position to contest racist practices on public

transportation without significantly transgressingJim Crow laws or social etiquette.

" "Reports Involving Race Question," March 1943, pp. 4-5, box 10, Green Papers; "Reports Involving Race Question," Nov. 1943. p. 2, ibid.

36 "Race Complaints for Last Twelve Months," Sept. 1, 1941, to Aug. 31, 1942, ibid; Willi Coleman, "Black Women and Segregated Public Transportation: Ninety Years of Resistance," in Black Women in United States His- tory, ed. Darlene Cook Hine (16 vols., Brooklyn, 1989), V, 295-301; Mary Ryan, Women in Public: Between Banners and Ballots, 1825-1880 (Baltimore, 1990), 93-94.

57 "Race Complaints for Last Twelve Months," Sept. 1, 1941, to Aug. 31, 1942, p. 1, box 10, Green Papers; "Reports Involving Race Question," Oct. 1943, p. 4, ibid.; Birmingham World, Oct. 29, 1943; "Reports Involving Race Question," March 1943, p. 4, box 10, Green Papers.

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106 The Journal of American History June 1993

African-American household workers waiting for a streetcar in downtown Atlanta, Georgia, 1939. Photograph by Marion Post Wolcott.

Courtesy Library of Congress.

First, transit company rules permitted domestics traveling with their white em- ployers' children to sit in the section designated for whites. The idea, of course, VWa to spare white children from having to endure the Negro section. Although this was the official policy of the Birmingham Electric Company (owner of the city transit system), drivers and conductors did not always follow it. The rule enabled black women to challenge the indignity of being forced to move or stand while seats were available because their retaining or taking seats was sometimes permissible under Jim Crow. Second, employers intervened on behalf of their domestics, which had the effect of redirecting black protest into legitimate, "tacceptable" avenues. Soon after a white employer complained that the Mountain Terrace bus regularly passed "icolored maids and cooks" and therefore made them late to work, the company took action. According to the report, "Operators on this line [were] cautioned.""8 Among the majority of black domestics who had to travel alone at night ,the fear

of being passed or forced to wait for the next vehicle created a sense of danger.

5 For employees' complaints about the South Bessemer line, Aug. 2, 1942, and the West End line, June 3. 1942, see "Race Complaints for Last Twelve Months:' Sept. 1, 1941, to Aug. 31, 1942, box 10, Green Papers. "Reporu Involving Race Question:' Dec. 1943, p. 2, ibid.; "Reports Involving the Race Question," Sept. 1943, p. 2, iiii See also "Reports Involving Race Question,' May 1944, p. 2, ibid.

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Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South 107

Standing at a poorly lit, relatively isolated bus stop left them prey to sexual and physical assault by white and black men. As the sociologist Carol Brooks Gardner reminds us, in many neighborhoods the streets, particularly at night, are perceived as belonging to men, and women without escorts are perceived as available or vul- nerable. In the South, that perception applied mostly (though not exclusively) to black women, since the ideology of chivalry obligated white men to come to the defense of white women -though not always working-class white women. To argue that black women's open resistance on the buses is incompatible with their fear when on the streets misses the crucial point that buses and streetcars, though sites of vicious repression, were occupied, lighted public spaces where potential allies and witnesses might be found.59

Such black resistance on Birmingham's public transit system conveyed a sense of dramatic opposition to Jim Crow before an audience. But discursive strategies, which may seem more evasive, also carry tremendous dramatic appeal. No matter how effective drivers, conductors, and signs were at keeping bodies separated, black voices flowed easily into the section designated for whites, constantly reminding riders that racially divided public space was contested terrain. Black passengers were routinely ejected and occasionally arrested for making too much noise, often by directing harsh words at a conductor or passenger or launching a monologue about racism in general. Such monologues or verbal attacks on racism make for excellent theater. Unlike passersby who can hurry by a lecturing street corner preacher, pas- sengers were trapped until they reached their destination, the space silenced by the anonymity of the riders. The reports reveal a hypersensitivity to black voices rising from the back of the bus. Indeed, verbal protests or complaints registered by black passengers were frequently described as "loud" an adjective almost never used to describe the way white passengers articulated their grievances. One morning in Au- gust 1943, during the peak hours, a black man boarded an Acipco line bus and im- mediately began "complaining about discrimination against negroes in a very loud voice."60 Black voices, especially the loud and profane, literally penetrated and oc- cupied white spaces.

Cursing, a related discursive strategy, was among the crimes for which black pas- sengers were most commonly arrested. Moreover, only black passengers were arrested for cursing. The act elicited police intervention, not because the state maintained strict moral standards and would not tolerate profanity, but because it represented a serious transgression of racial boundaries. While scholars might belittle the power of resistive, profane noise as opposition, Birmingham's policing structure did not.

59 Carol Brooks Gardner, "Analyzing Gender in Public Places: Rethinking Goffman's Vision of Everyday Life:' American Sociologist, 20 (Spring 1989), 42-56.

60 "Reports Involving Race Question:' May 1944, pp. 2-3, box 10, Green Papers; "Reports Involving Race Ques- tion," Aug. 1943, p. 1, ibid. "Loud-talking," according to linguistic anthropologist Claudia Mitchell-Kernan, is an age-old discursive strategy among African Americans which "by virtue of its volume permits hearers other than the addressee, and is objectionable because of this. Loud-talking requires an audience and can only occur in a situa- tion where there are potential hearers other than the interlocutors." Moreover, loud-talking assumes "an an- tagonistic posture toward the addressee." Claudia Mitchell-Kernan, "Signifying, Loud-talking, and Marking," in Rappin' and Stylin' Out, ed. Kochman, 329, 331.

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108 The Journal of American History June 1993

On the South Bessemer line in 1942, one black man was sentenced to six months in jail for cursing. In most instances, however, cursing was punishable by a ten-dollar fine and court costs, and jail sentences averaged about thirty days.61

Some might argue that the hundreds of everyday acts of resistance in public spaces – from the most evasive to the blatantly confrontational – amount to very little since they were individualized, isolated events that almost always ended in de- feat. Such an argument misses the unique, dramaturgical quality of these actions within the interior spaces of public conveyances; whenever passengers were present no act of defiance was isolated. Nor were acts of defiance isolating experiences. Be- cause African-American passengers shared a collective memory of how they were treated on a daily basis, both within and without the "moving theaters," an act of resistance or repression sometimes drew other passengers into the fray. An in- teresting report from an Avenue F line bus driver in October 1943 illustrates such a moment of collective resistance: "Operator went to adjust the color boards, and negro woman sat down quickly just in front of board that operator was putting in place. She objected to moving and was not exactly disorderly but all the negroes took it up and none of [the] whites would sit in seat because they were afraid to, and negroes would not sit in vacant seats in rear of bus."62

Most occupants sitting in the rear who witnessed or took part in the daily skir- mishes learned that punishment was inevitable. The arrests, beatings, and ejections were intended as much for all the black passengers on board as for the individual transgressor. The authorities' fear of an incident escalating into collective opposition often meant that individuals who intervened in conflicts instigated by others re- ceived the harshest punishment. On the South Bessemer line one early evening in 1943, a young black man was arrested and fined twenty-five dollars for coming to the defense of a black woman who was told to move behind the color dividers. His crime was that he "complained and talked back to the officer." The fear of arrest or ejection could persuade individuals who had initially joined collective acts of re- sistance to retreat. Even when a single, dramatic act captured the imaginations of other black passengers and spurred them to take action, there was no guarantee that it would lead to sustained, collective opposition. To take one example, a black woman and man boarded the South East Lake-Ensley line one evening in 1943 and removed the color dividers, prompting all of the black passengers already on board and boarding to occupy the white section. When the conductor demanded that they move to their assigned area, all grudgingly complied except the couple who had initiated the rebellion. They were subsequently arrested.63

Spontaneous, collective protest did not always fizzle out at the site of contestation. Occasionally the passengers approached formal civil rights organizations asking them to intercede or to lead a campaign against city transit. Following the arrest

6i "Incidents Reported," Sept. 1, 1941, to Aug. 31, 1942, pp. 4-6, box 10, Green Papers. On public cursing as a powerful symbolic act of resistance, see Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, 215.

62 "Reports Involving Race Question," Oct. 1943, p. 3, box 10, Green Papers. 63 "Reports Involving Race Question," March 1943, p. 1, ibid.; "Reports Involving Race Question," Oct. 1943,

p. 2, ibid

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Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South 109

of Pauline Carth in 1943, a group of witnesses brought the case to the attention of the Birmingham branch of the NAACP, but aside from a perfunctory investigation

and an article in the black-owned Birmingham World, no action was taken. The

Southern Negro Youth Congress (SNYC), a left-wing organization based in Bir- mingham, attempted a direct-action campaign on the Fairfield bus line after re- ceiving numerous complaints from black youth about conditions on public trans- portation. Mildred McAdory and three other SNYC activists attempted to move the color boards on a Fairfield bus in 1942, for which she was beaten and arrested by Fairfield police. As a result of the incident, the SNYC formed a short-lived organiza- tion, the Citizens Committee for Equal Accommodations on Common Carriers. However, the treatment of African Americans on public transportation was not a high-priority issue for Birmingham's black protest organizations during the war, and very few middle-class blacks rode public transportation. Thus working people whose livelihood depended on city transit had to fend for themselves.64

The critical point here is that the actions of black passengers forced mainstream black political organizations to pay some attention to conditions onJim Crow buses and streetcars. Unorganized, seemingly powerless black working people brought these issues to the forefront by their resistance, which was shaped by relations of domination as well as the many confrontations they witnessed on the stage of the moving theater. Their very acts of insubordination challenged the system of segrega- tion, whether they were intended to or not, and their defiance in most cases elicited a swift and decisive response. Even before the war ended, everyday acts of resistance on buses and streetcars declined for two reasons. First, resistance compelled the tran- sit company to "re-instruct" the most blatantly discourteous drivers and conductors, who cost the company precious profits by passing up black passengers or initiating unwarranted violence. Second, and more important, the acts of defiance led to an increase in punitive measures and more vigorous enforcement of segregation laws. An internal study by the Birmingham Transportation Department concluded, "con- tinued re-instruction of train men and bus operators, as well as additional vigilance on the part of our private police, has resulted in some improvement."65

The bitter struggles waged by black working people on public transportation, though obviously exacerbated by wartime social, political, and economic transfor- mations, should force labor historians to rethink the meaning of public space as a terrain of class, race, and gender conflict. The workplace and struggles to improve working conditions are fundamental to the study of labor history. For southern black workers, however, the most embattled sites of opposition were frequently public spaces, partly because policing proved far more difficult in public spaces than in places of work. Not only were employees constantly under the watchful eye of

"Birmingham World, Oct. 29, 1943; "Southern Negro Youth Congress-Forum," Feb. 6, 1984, untranscribed tape, Oral History of the American Left (Tamiment Library, New York University, New York, N.Y.); FBI Report, "Southern Negro Youth Congress, Birmingham, Alabama," June 14, 1943, p. 5, Headquarters File 100-82,

Southern Negro Youth Congress Files (J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building, Washington, D.C.); James Jackson, "For Common Courtesy on Common Carriers," Worker June 4, 1963.

65 N. H. Hawkins, Jr., Birmingham Electric Company Transportation Department, n.d., box 10, Green Papers.

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110 The Journal of American History June 1993

foremen, managers, and employers, but workers could also be dismissed, sus- pended, or have their pay docked on a whim. In the public spaces of the city, how- ever, the anonymity and sheer numbers of the crowd, whose movement was not directed by the discipline of work (and was therefore unpredictable), meant a more vigilant and violent system of maintaining social order. Arrests and beatings were always a possibility, but so was escape. Thus, for black workers public spaces both embodied the most repressive, violent aspects of race and gender oppression and, paradoxically, afforded more opportunities to engage in acts of resistance than the workplace itself.

Black Working-Class Infrapolitics and the Revision of Southern Political History

Shifting our focus from formal, organized politics to infrapolitics enables us to re- cover the oppositional practices of black working people who, until recently, have been presumed to be silent or inarticulate. Contrary to the image of an active black elite and a passive working class one generally finds in race relations scholarship, members of the most oppressed section of the black community always resisted, but often in a manner intended to cover their tracks. Given the incredibly violent and repressive forms of domination in the South, workers' dependence on wages, the benefits white workers derived from Jim Crow, the limited influence black working people exercised over white-dominated trade unions, and the complex and con- tradictory nature of human agency, evasive, clandestine forms of resistance should be expected. When thinking about the Jim Crow South, we need always to keep in mind that African Americans, the working class in particular, did not experience a liberal democracy. They lived and struggled in a world that resembled, at least from their vantage point, a fascist or, more appropriately, a colonial situation.

Whether or not battles were won or lost, everyday forms of opposition and the mere threat of open resistance elicited responses from the powerful that, in turn, shaped the nature of struggle. Opposition and containment, repression and resis- tance are inextricably linked. A pioneering study, Herbert Aptheker's American Negro Slave Revolts, illustrates the dynamic. The opening chapters, "The Fear of Rebellion" and "The Machinery of Control," show how slave actions and gestures and mere discussions of rebellion created social and political tensions for the master class and compelled southern rulers to erect a complex and expensive structure to maintain order. Furthermore, Aptheker shows us how resistance and the threat of resistance were inscribed in the law itself; thus, even when black opposition ap- peared invisible or was censored by the press, it still significantly shaped southern political and legal structures. The opening chapters of Aptheker's book (the chapters most of his harshest critics ignored) demonstrate what Stuart Hall means when he says "hegemonizing is hard work."66

66 Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts, 18-78, 140-61 passim. For Stuart Hall's statement, see George Lipsitz, "The Struggle for Hegemony,"JournalofAmerican History, 75 (June 1988), 148. On the dialectic between

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Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South 111

Hegemonizing was indeed hard work, in part because African-American resis- tance did make a difference. We know that southern rulers during this era devoted enormous financial and ideological resources to maintaining order. Police depart- ments, vagrancy laws, extralegal terrorist organizations, the spectacle of mutilated black bodies- all were part of the landscape of domination surrounding African Americans. Widely publicized accounts of police homicides, beatings, and lynch- ings as well as of black protest against such acts of racist violence abound in the liter- ature on theJim Crow South.67 Yet, dramatic acts of racial violence and resistance represent only the tip of a gigantic iceberg. The attitudes of most working-class blacks toward the police were informed by an accumulation of daily indignities, whether experienced or witnessed. African Americans often endured illegal searches

and seizures, detainment without charge, billy clubs, nightsticks, public humilia- tion, lewd remarks, loaded guns against their skulls. African-American women en- dured sexual innuendo, molestation during body searches, and outright rape. Al- though such incidents were repeated in public spaces on a daily basis, they are rarely a matter of public record. Nevertheless, everyday confrontations between African Americans and police not only were important sites of contestation but also help explain why the more dramatic cases carry such resonance in black communities.68

We need to recognize that infrapolitics and organized resistance are not two dis-

tinct realms of opposition to be studied separately and then compared; they are two sides of the same coin that make up the history of working-class self-activity. As I have tried to illustrate, the historical relationships between the hidden transcript and organized political movements during the age of Jim Crow suggest that some trade unions and political organizations succeeded in mobilizing segments of the black working class because they at least partially articulated the grievances, aspira- tions, and dreams that remained hidden from public view. Yet we must not assume that all action that flowed from organized resistance was merely an articulation of a preexisting oppositional consciousness, thus underestimating collective struggle as a shaper of working-class consciousness.69 The relationship between black working-class infrapolitics and collective, open engagement with power is dialec- tical, not a teleological transformation from unconscious accommodation to con-

scious resistance. Hence, efforts by grass-roots unions to mobilize southern black workers, from the Knights of Labor and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters to the Communist party and the Cio, shaped or even transformed the hidden tran- script. Successful struggles that depend on mutual support among working people

southern black working-class self-activity and the response of employers, bureaucrats, social reformers, and the state, see Hunter, "Household Workers in the Making," 187-291 passim.

67 The literature on the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries alone is extensive. The best overview is Shapiro, White Violence and Black Response.

68 Kelley, "Black Poor and the Politics of Opposition," 309, 311-12, 318-23, 327-29, 331-33, Kuhn, Joye, and West, Living Atlanta, 337-41; Wright, Life Behind a Veil, 254-57.

69 Du Bois, Black Reconstruction; Michael Schwartz, Radical Protest and Social Structure: The Southern Tenant Farmers'Alliance and Cotton Tenancy, 1880-1890 (Chicago, 1976); Rick Fantasia, Cultures of Solidarity: Conscious- ness, Action, and Contemporary American Workers (Berkeley, 1988); Lipsitz, Rainbow at Midnight.

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112 The Journal of American History June 1993

and a clear knowledge of the "enemy" not only strengthen bonds of class (or race or gender) solidarity but also reveal to workers the vulnerability of the powerful and

the potential strength of the weak. Furthermore, at the workplace as in public spaces, the daily humiliations of racism, sexism, and waged work embolden subor-

dinate groups to take risks when opportunities arise. And their failures are as impor- tant as their victories, for they drive home the point that each act of transgression has its price. Black workers, like most aggrieved populations, do not decide to chal-

lenge dominant groups simply because of the lessons they have learned; rather, the very power relations that force them to resist covertly also make clear the terrible consequences of failed struggles.

In the end, whether or not African Americans chose to join working-class organi-

zations, their daily experiences, articulated mainly in unmonitored social spaces, constituted the ideological and cultural foundations for constructing a collective identity. Their actions, thoughts, conversations, and reflections were not always, or

even primarily, concerned with work, nor did they abide well with formal working- class institutions, no matter how well these institutions articulated aspects of the hidden transcript. In other words, we cannot presume that trade unions and similar

labor institutions were the "real" standard bearers of black working-class politics; even for organized black workers they were probably only a small part of an array of formal and informal strategies by which people struggled to improve or transform

daily life. Thus for a worker to accept reformist trade union strategies while stealing from work, to fight streetcar conductors while voting down strike action in the local, to leave work early in order to participate in religious revival meetings or rendezvous with a lover, to attend a dance rather than a CIO mass meeting was not to manifest an "immature" class consciousness. Such actions reflect the multiple ways black working people live, experience, and interpret the world around them. To assume that politics is something separate from all these events and decisions is to balkanize people's lives and thus completely miss how struggles over power, autonomy, and pleasure take place in the daily lives of working people. People do not organize their lives around our disciplinary boundaries or analytical categories; they are, as Elsa Barkley Brown so aptly puts it, "polyrhythmic."70

Although the approach outlined above is still schematic and tentative (there is so much I have left out, including a crucial discussion of periodization), I am con-

vinced that the realm of infrapolitics -from everyday resistance at work and in public spaces to the elusive hidden transcripts recorded in working-class discourses and cultures -holds rich insights into twentieth-century black political struggle. As recent scholarship in black working-class and community history has begun to dem-

onstrate, to understand the political significance of these hidden transcripts and everyday oppositional strategies, we must think differently about politics and reject the artificial divisions between political history and social history. A "remapping" of the sites of opposition should bring us closer to "knowing" the people Richard Wright correctly insists are not what they seem.

70 Brown, "'What Has Happened Here,"' 295-312.

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