Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019

Newkirk teaches a course studying media portrayals of marginalized groups. She begins with Freedom’s Journal, America’s first Black-owned and operated newspaper.

The editors defined their mission as a desire to

plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken for us. Too long has the public been deceived by misrepresentations, in things which concern us dearly. Our vices and our degradation are ever arrayed against us, but our Virtues are passed by unnoticed (191).

The paper circulated as far away as Haiti and Canada.

Newkirk’s students typically find a pattern in media: Black men often appear in narratives of “crime, sports, and pathology” (192). They also find that, in media and in real life, African Americans are underrepresented in nearly all influential fields, with journalism being one glaring example. Newkirk wishes for Black people to continue pleading their own cause and resisting stereotypes in the same way that the editors of Freedom’s Journal did.

Belle describes Maria Stewart as “a foundational Black feminist and philosophical figure” who offers “what I have termed proto-intersectionality—an early Black feminist articulation of intersecting identities and oppressions along the lines of race, gender, and class” (195).

Stewart was the first woman to speak to an audience comprising men and women. She is also recognized as “the first Black woman political writer” (195). Belle gives examples of several of Stewart’s speeches, emphasizing her focus on Black, female intersectionality.

Scott asks, “What does it mean to be Black and free in the United States?” (198). He criticizes modern media for its indifference to the question, given that one of the media’s historical roles has been to interrogate uncomfortable racial issues.

In 1834, Black leaders, thinkers, clergymen, and business icons, along with many white allies, attended the National Negro Convention. They formed networks and held meetings designed to advance the cause of emancipation. The attendees also emphasized the need for continued gatherings in the future to keep everyone on course as Black Americans focused on new goals. Freedom was the ultimate goal, but after freedom from slavery there would be other challenges.

Hobbs discusses the usefulness of “tactical or strategic passing—passing temporarily with a particular purpose in mind” (201). Lighter-skinned Black people were often able to pass as white while fleeing the south, job-hunting, or enrolling in college.

She gives the example of George Latimer and his wife, who escaped from Norfolk. Latimer was able to pass as white, which made his escape easier. However, his owner, James Gray, found him in Boston and demanded his return. Once they heard of the case, hundreds of supporters gathered outside the courthouse to protest Latimer’s return. He was set free for $400.

The author wonders what Latimer and his wife talked about while stashed in the hold of the ship for the nine hours of their escape from Norfolk.

The James McCune Smith Learning Hub is at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. Smith is the school’s most famous alum. He was the first African American man with a medical degree.

In the 1840s, Smith fought against racial pseudoscience. The 1840 census showed, speciously, that enslaved Black people were mentally and physically healthier than free Black people. Smith showed that the numbers were fraudulent, but the census was not corrected. He worked tirelessly to debunk scientific claims purporting to prove the inferiority of Black people.

Today, Washington writes, “African American men make up 6 percent of the country’s population but less than 2 percent of medical students. And that number is falling: their peak year for medical school graduation was 1978” (207).

Growing up in Portland, most of Jackson’s block was Black. His neighborhood was called the NEP (Northeast Portland). He didn’t know that Portland was originally intended to be a white city.

Jacob Vanderpool was expelled from Portland in 1851. After opening a saloon,

Vanderpool was found in “violation of the territory’s exclusion law, passed in 1844” (210). The judge gave Vanderpool 30 days to leave.

Jackson describes several other attempted expulsions, then gives the history of the exclusion law. It was “the lone law of its kind passed by states admitted into the union” (212). By the early 2000s, the NEP was mostly white. Today, only 1.9 percent of Oregon’s population is Black.

Powell writes, “The most elemental questions of American citizenship, democracy, and identity were ill defined and surprisingly undermined by colonial, revolutionary, common law, and antebellum traditions” (214).

The idea of popular sovereignty was symbolized by the Dred Scott case. Popular sovereignty was a philosophy that meant a territory’s citizens could choose whether they would be free or slave states once joining the Union.

At the conclusion of Dred Scott, Chief Justice Taney ruled that Africans could never be United States citizens. Taney did not believe that anything in the Constitution addressed Black Americans as citizens or equals. He “not only inverted the states’ rights paradigm and nationalized the denial of citizenship to African descendants, stripping Northern Black citizens of their federal citizenship rights, but he also denied states the ability to do anything about it” (215).

Kelly’s poem investigates the nature of the word “compromise” with regard to Black freedom. She argues that the only real compromise is to “[t]ake down the statue, hooded and noosed, put into storage” (219). She also presents several situations in which compromise only results in terrible outcomes.