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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780960229444 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Wesleyan University Press |
| Publication date: | 04/01/1985 |
| Series: | Black Heritage Library Collection |
| Edition description: | REVISED |
| Pages: | 132 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.00(h) x (d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
FROM "SUPERMAN" TO MAN
FIRST DAY
"A moral, sensible and well-bred man Will not affront me; and no other can."
— Cowper.
The limited was speeding on to California over the snow-blanketed prairies of Iowa. On car "Bulwer" the passengers had all gone to bed, and Dixon, the porter, his duties finished sought the more comfortable warmth of the smoker, a book — Finot's "Race Prejudice"— under his arm.
Settling himself in a corner of the long leather couch, he opened the book in search of the place he had been reading last. It was where the author spoke of the Germans and their doctrine of the racial inferiority of the remainder of the white race.
Finding it, he began to read, "The notion of superior and inferior peoples spread like wild-fire through Germany. German literature, philosophy, and politics were profoundly influenced by it. ..." Then he looked up. A passenger, fully dressed, had rushed into the room.
"Is this Boone we are coming into, porter?" he demanded excitedly in a foreign accent, at the same time peering anxiously out of the window at the twinkling lights of the town toward which the train was rushing.
"No, sir," reassured Dixon, "we'll not be in Boone for twenty minutes yet. This is Ames."
"Thank you," said the passenger, relieved, "the porter on my car has gone to bed, and I feared I would be carried by." He started to leave but turned when half-way and asked. "May I ride here with you and get off when we get there?"
"Certainly, sir," welcomed Dixon, cordially, "make yourself at home. Where are your grips?" and dropping his book on the seat, Dixon went for his bags.
Returning with them, he placed them in a corner. The passenger was reading the book.
"Thank you," said the passenger. Holding out the book, he said, "I took the liberty to look at this, and I find it's an old favorite of mine."
"Ah, is it? exclaimed Dixon with heightened cordiality.
"This is the first English translation I have seen," continued the passenger, "and I think it pretty good."
"Yes, sir, very good. But I prefer it in the original."
"In the original! Vous parlez francais, alors?" "Mais oui, Monsieur."
"Where did you learn French, — in New Orleans?"
"I began it in college and learnt it in France," replied Dixon, in the same language.
"You have been in France! What part?"
"Bordeaux."
"Bordeaux? How long?"
"Two years and a half."
"Studying?"
"No, sir. I was Spanish correspondent for Simon and Co., wine merchants."
"You speak Spanish, too, eh? What are you, Cuban?"
"No, American, but I have been to Cuba. I learned Spanish in the Philippines."
"You travelled a great deal.
"Yes. It's just my luck. I returned from the Philippines in time to get a job as valet to a gentleman about to tour South South America, becoming six months later his private secretary. Together we visited the principal countries of the world. Mr. Simpson died while we were in Bordeaux. That accounts for my stay there."
"Didn't you like it in France?"
"Oh, I liked it better than anywhere on earth, but along came the world war and I joined up with the American forces. After the war, with my job gone, I came back with the boys to America. And here I am."
"I think with your knowledge of French and Spanish you ought to be able to get a better job than this."
"Well, I have never been able to. And when one has a family he must get the wherewithal to live some way."
"But have you tried to get something better?"
"I am trying continually. On my return from Europe I advertised for a job as French and Spanish correspondent. I received many replies, but when the employers saw me, they made various excuses. One, declaring he was broadminded, would have but me, but his offer was so small that I refused it on principle."
"Too bad. You said you went to college? Do you mind coming a little closer. I can't hear for the noise."
Dixon came nearer. "I spent a semester and a half at Yale," he said. "Then came the chance to travel that I spoke of."
The conversation drifted to railroad life. The passenger told Dixon about a clash between the porter on his car and a fussy passenger that afternoon. "Do you often meet people like that," he asked.
"No, sir. Nearly everyone I meet on the road is very pleasant. I am sure that if that wise old Greek who said, "Most men are bad!" had gained his knowledge of human nature on a sleeping car his verdict would have been altogether different. I never knew before that there were so many kind, agreeable persons until I had this position. One meets a grouchy person at such rare intervals that he can afford to be liberal then. I can recall an incident similar to the one you have just told me. Would you care to hear it?"
"Certainly."
"One day while waiting on a drawing-room passenger I made a mistake. This man, who had got on the train with a grouch, having previously wrangled with the train- and the sleeping-car conductors, at once began to abuse me vociferously in spite of my earnest apology. I took it all calmly, at the same time racking my mind for some polite, but effective retort. As I noted the ludicrousness of his ruffled features an inspiration came to me, whereby I could bring his conduct effectively to his notice. In the room was a full-length mirror, made into the state-room door. Swinging this door around I brought it right in front of him, where he could get a full view of his distorted features, at the same time saying with good nature, 'See, sir, the mirror does you a strange injustice today.' The ridicule was too much for him. He stopped immediately, then started to explode again, and, apparently at a loss for words, sat down. He later proved to be one of the finest passengers I have ever served."
The subject of the book came up again, "I remember the great stir it created when it appeared," said the passenger. "Finot has rendered a great service to humanity. He well deserves the honor conferred on him — Officer of the Legion of Honor." "Yes. He has been rightly called one of the makers of modern France," said Dixon. "Is it true that he is Polish, sir?"
"Yes. He was born in Poland."
Outside were the twinkling lights of a town. "Ah, here we are coming into Boone now," said Dixon.
"Good-by," said the passenger, genuine regret in his voice, "I'm sorry our acquaintance is so short. I'm stopping here only for the night and will go on to Los Angeles tomorrow. I'd like to have had you all the way."
"I'm sure you'll have a pleasant porter tomorrow," said Dixon, cheerily, grasping the other's proffered hand.
Dixon turned to receive the new-coming passengers. He helped them inside, saw them to bed, and returned to the smoker to read his book. But too tired to concentrate his thoughts on the scientific matter, he closed the volume, placed it behind him in the hollow formed by his back and the angle of the seat and began to reflect on the last passage he had read: —
"The doctrine of inequality is emphatically a science of white peoples. It is they who have invented it."
The Germans of 1854, he reflected, built up a theory of the inferiority of the other peoples of the white race. Some of these so-called inferior whites have, in turn, built up a similar theory about the darker peoples. This recalled to him some of the many falsities current about his own people. He thought of how in nearly all the large libraries of the United States, which he had been permitted to enter, he had found books advancing all sorts of theories to prove that they were inferior. He thought of the discussions he had heard on the cars and other places from time to time, and of what he called "the heirloom ideas" that many persons had concerning the different varieties of the human race. These discussions, he recalled, had done him good. They had been the means of his acquiring a fund of knowledge on the subject of race, as they had caused him to look up those opinions he had thought incorrect in the works of the standard scientists. Moved by these thoughts he took a morocco-bound notebook from his vest pocket and wrote: — "This doctrine of racial superiority apparently incited the other white peoples, most of whom were enemies to one another, to unite against the Germans in 1914. Will the doctrine of white superiority over the darker races produce a similar result to white empire?"
Suddenly the curtains parted and someone entered the room. Dixon looked up. It was a man in pajamas, slippered feet, and overcoat.
At sight of him Dixon had an unpleasant sensation. During the afternoon, this man, who, from what Dixon could gather, was a United States senator from Oklahoma, was discussing the race question with another in the smoker. Dixon had heard him say, vehemently. "The 'nigger' is a menace to our civilization and should be kept down. I am opposed to educating him, for the educated 'nigger' is a misfit in the white man's civilization. He is a caricature and no good can result from his 'butting in' on our affairs. Would to God that none of the breed had ever set foot on the shores of our country. That's the proper place for a 'nigger'," he had said quite loud, on seeing Dixon engaged in wiping out the wash bowls.
At another time he had said, "You may say what you please, but I would never eat with a 'nigger.' I couldn't stomach it God has placed an insuperable barrier between black and white that will ever prevent them from living on the same social plane, at least so far as the Anglo-Saxon is concerned. I have no hatred for the black man — in fact, I could have none, but he must stay in his place."
"That's nothing else but racial antipathy," his opponent had objected.
"You don't have to take my word for it," said the other, snappily. "Didn't Abraham Lincoln say: 'There is a physical difference between the white and black races which, I believe, will forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality?" Call it what you will, but there is an indefinable something within me that tells me that I am infinitely better than the best 'nigger' that ever lived. The feeling is instinctive and I am not going to violate nature."
On hearing this, Dixon had said to himself, "My good man, how easily I could define that 'indefinable feeling' of which you speak. I notice from your positive manner, and impatience of contradiction that you experience that indefinable feeling of superiority not only towards Negroes, but toward your white associates as well and that feeling you, yourself, would call in any one else conceit.' "
Dixon had happened to be present at the close of the discussion, which had been brought to an end by the announcement of dinner. The anti-Negro passenger had had the last word. He had said:
"You, too, had slavery in the North, but it didn't pay and you gave it up. Wasn't your pedantic and self-righteous Massachusetts the first to legalize slavery? You, Northerners, forced slavery on us, and when you couldn't make any more money on it, because England had stopped the slave trade, you made war on us to make us give it up. A matter of climate, that's all. Climes reversed, it would have been the South that wanted abolition. It was a matter of business with you, not sentiment. You Northerners, who had an interest in slavery, were bitterly opposed to abolition. It is all very well for you to talk, but if you Yankees had the same percentage of niggers' that we have, you would sing a different tune. The bitterest people against the 'nigger' are you Northerners who have come South. You, too, have race riots, lynching and segregation. The only difference between South and North is, that one is frank and the other hypocritical," and he added with vehement sincerity, "I hate hypocrisy."
In spite of this avowed enmity toward his people, Dixon had felt no animosity toward the man. Here, he had thought, was a conscience, honest but uneducated.
Shortly afterwards another man who had been in the smoker had met Dixon in the aisle. With a laugh and a few terrible but good-natured oaths, he had said "That fellow is obsessed by the race problem. I met him yesterday at the hotel, and he has talked of hardly anything else since. This morning we were in the elevator, when a well-dressed Negro, who looked like a professional man, came in, and at once he began to tell me so that all could hear him something about 'nigger' doctors in Oklahoma. If he could only see how ridiculous he is he'd shut up."
"I feel myself as good as he," he went on, "and I have associated with colored people. We have a colored porter in our office — Joe — and we think the world of him. He doesn't like niggers,' eh?" With a knowing wink, and nudging Dixon in the ribs, he added, "I wager his instinctive dislike, as he calls it, doesn't include both sexes of your race. I know his kind well."
Dixon had felt like saying, "We must be patient with the self-deluded," but he didn't. He had simply thanked the other for his sentiments.
All of this ran through Dixon's mind when he saw the pajama-clad passenger appear in the doorway. The latter walked up to the mirror, looked at himself quizzically a moment, then selected a chair and adjusting it to his fancy made himself comfortable in it. Then he took a plain and well-worn gold cigarette case from his pocket, selected a cigarette, and began rummaging his pockets for a match, all in apparent oblivion of Dixon at the far end of the long seat. But Dixon, who had been quietly observing him, deftly presented a lighted match, saying at the time in a respectful and solicitous tone:
"Can't sleep, sir?"
"No, George," was the reply, amiable but condescending. "I was awakened at the last stop and can't go back to sleep. I never do very well the first night out, anyway. He went on to speak about Oklahoma, and was soon talking freely. Presently he began to tell about the Negroes in his state, using words as "darkies," "niggers," and "coons."
Then he grew entertaining and began telling jokes about chicken-stealing, razor-fights, and watermelon feasts among Negroes. Of such jokes he evidently had an abundant stock, but nearly all of which Dixon had heard over and over.
One joke which he seemed especially to enjoy telling was about a Negro head-waiter in a Northern hotel. When asked by a Southern guest whether he was the "head-nigger," the head-waiter grew indignant. "Oh," said the guest, "I only wanted to know because I have a large tip for the "head-nigger." At that the head-waiter promptly got off his horse. "Yessah. boss." he said, "I'se de head-niggah, an' if yu' don' b'leeve me ast all dem othah niggahs deh,' he said, pointing to the waiters.
The senator was laughing immoderately, and Dixon laughed heartily, too. Had the senator been a mind reader, however, he would hardly have been flattered at what he considered his prowess as a jokesmith. Dixon was saying to himself, "The idea of some folks at being courteous and setting other people at their ease is so crude that it enters the realm of high comedy."
While the senator was still laughing, the train began to slow down, and Dixon, asking to be excused, slid to the other end of the seat to look out, thus leaving the book he had placed behind him, exposed. The senator saw the book, and his laughter soon changed to curiosity.
The volume stood end up on the seat and he could discern from its size and binding that it might contain serious thought. Did it? He had somehow felt that this Negro was above the ordinary and the sight of the book confirmed the feeling.
A certain forced quality in the timbre of Dixon's laughter, as also the merry twinkle in his eye, had made him feel at times just a bit uncomfortable. His curiosity getting the better of him, he reached over to take the volume, but at the same instant Dixon's slipping back to his former seat caused him to hesitate. Yet he determined to find out. He demanded flippantly, pointing to the book, —"Reading the Bible, George?"
"No, sir."
"What then?"
"Oh, only a scientific work," said the other, carelessly, not wishing to broach the subject of racial differences that the title of the book suggested.
Dixon's evident desire to evade a direct answer sharpened his curiosity. He suggested off-handedly, but with ill-concealed eagerness: "Pretty deep stuff, eh? Who's the author?"
Dixon saw the persistent curiosity in his eye. Knowing too well the type of the man before him, he did not wish to give him the book, but unable to find further pretext for withholding it, he took it from the seat, turned it right side up, and handed it over. The senator took it with feigned indifference. Moistening his forefinger, he turned over the leaves, then settled down to read the marked passages. Now and then he would mutter: "Nonsense! Ridiculous!" Suddenly in a burst of impatience he turned to the frontispiece, and exclaimed in open disgust: "Just as I thought. Written by a Frenchman." Then, before he could recollect to whom he was talking — so full was he of what he regarded as the absurdity of Finot's view — he demanded — "Do you believe all this rot about the equality of the races?"
Dixon's policy was to avoid any topic that was likely to produce a difference of opinion with a passenger, provided it did not entail any sacrifice of his self-respect. He regarded his questioner as one to be humored, rather than vexed. He remembered a remark, made by this legislator that afternoon:
"The Jew, the Frenchman, the Dago and the Spaniards are all 'niggers' to a greater or less extent. The only white people are the Anglo-Saxon, Teutons and Scandinavians." This, Dixon surmised, accounted for the remark he had made about Finot's adopted nationality, and it amused him.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "From "Superman" to Man"
by .
Copyright © 1968 HELGA M. ROGERS.
Excerpted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
FIRST DAY,
SECOND DAY,
THIRD DAY,
LAST DAY,
INDEX,
What People are Saying About This
“A genuine treasure. I still insist that From ‘Superman’ to Man is the greatest book ever written in English on the Negro by a Negro and I am glad to know that increasing thousands of black and white readers re-echo the high opinion of it which I had expressed some years ago.”
"A genuine treasure. I still insist that From 'Superman' to Man is the greatest book ever written in English on the Negro by a Negro and I am glad to know that increasing thousands of black and white readers re-echo the high opinion of it which I had expressed some years ago."—Hubert Henry Harrison