Harriet Beecher Stowe: Premeditated Masterpiece, Luck, or....?

There has been much speculation as to the origins of "Uncle Tom's Cabin".
Academics have reconstructed her upbringing, her religious, moral, and philosophical influences. They have delved into her reading list, her correspondence, her intimate relationships. Her family have been exhaustively researched. Feminist have looked at her writings, and the themes within the novel from a feminist perspective. As she has been hailed as one of the greatest voices in the abolitionist movement, she never was a formal member of any of the hundreds of abolitionist societies. Some have asked about her absence from the front lines of the feminist movement.

The story first appeared in 1852 in the abolitionist newspaper National Era. Soon her account created great interest and lead to a large, faithful readership. in the days before radio, television and even in-home libraries, serialized accounts in newspapers, passed from person to person perhaps 30 or more times, were the nations primary cultural infusion.

By the time the novel came out it sold 300,000 copies the first year, and by 1865 had sold a million. today It's been translated into over 60 languages and remains the nations best selling book of all time save the bible. liberal thinkers and artistic writers hailed it as a masterpiece. traditional male writers derided her work for "sentimentality", it's romantic elements and for what they saw as the improper public airing of issues by a woman no less. Needless to say the South found endless faults with the novel.

African-Americans have both hailed the novel and taken great solace in it's message as a form of vindication and advocacy (the majority). Some African-Americans at the time took umbrage at her passages where the character George and Eliza repatriate themselves in Africa after sojourns in France and New England. The idea of colonization was controversial issue prior to emancipation. Some felt that Blacks had no place in America. Though they wanted an end to slavery, they did not see Blacks as equal. Other's saw colonization as a right. In their paternalistic view, it was best for freed slaves to be "free" in Africa, their homeland. (Frederick Douglass' only objection to the book was the section on colonization. He felt it was problematic and harmful to the notion that Blacks were U.S. citizens and should not be placed, as a political solution, in Africa.)

Today, most criticism of the novel is in reality a reflexive reaction to the time established stereotypes based upon the novel. The idea of an "Uncle Tom" perhaps the 2nd most caustic insult to an African-American following the n-word. There's Jim Crow, now associated with black codes and racist demogoguery. Many of the stage plays as well as art based on the world, is in the form of the romantic paternalistic myth as justification for the peculiar institution -indistinguishable- from racist advertisements for grits, watermelon, minstrel shows. Many stage adaptations of the play were authentic to it's nature, yet far more stripped the novel of it's abolitionist leanings and rhetoric and preserved, distorted and enhanced the stereotypes and stripped the intelligence and humanity from it's characters in a way that southern and racist northern audiences found benignly entertaining.

James Baldwin voiced perhaps the most famous criticism of the novel. Baldwin read the novel several times in his youth. Seemingly he was obsessed with it. Ultimately, after much consideration, he simply said it was a "very bad" novel. he accused it of not only being sentimental, but in it's depiction of George and Eliza, a slap at dark-skinned Blacks and playing into the harmful stereotype of light-skinned Black superiority. In the character of Uncle Tom, he saw a weak, feeble, god-fearing ignorant man. Unable to stand on his own. In fear of God, and subservient and servile to his master.

More pointedly, as a work of fiction, Baldwin holds Beecher Stowe fully accountable for the characters she created, seemingly with no credit or leeway given to her for the fact that virtually every situation she depicted, represented thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of Black lives in slavery. Baldwin's passion is heartfelt as it is heart-rending. Baldwin, well-aware of his "double-consciousness" as an African-American, yearns for a definition which seamlessly encompasses his Blackness, his Man-ness and his American-ness outside of the history of slavery and racism in America.

Baldwin's desire is admirable, and understandable, yet, in Beecher-Stowe's time, let alone Baldwin's, such a definition did not exist within popular culture, and certainly not within the psyche of those that publicly ached for more.

The scholarship and research that has gone into the novel and it's origins is perfectly understandable. Yet, as it is thorough and true. At times humans are wont to make more of something than is evident, supportable, or even comprehensible to the artists themselves.

In my reading of Beecher-Stowe, my research and reading, as well as understanding-intuition-, as well as experience and professional training, has brought me to a more simplified conclusion regarding her work.

Harriet Beecher Stowe grew up in one of America's greatest families, and in one of the most dynamic times and geographic areas at a crucial time in history. She was a witness to the birthplace of one of the most incredible and gripping movements in the United States and free world. Due to her father's, and then husbands active religious lifestyle. She live in and traveled to several different regions of the United States. Most notably Kentucky, Ohio, New York and Maine.

She had an incredible memory. At age 6 she had memorized 27 hymns and 2 chapters of the bible. In a sense it was not so much her memory, as natural ability to fully absorb that which she had been introduced. A skill that played into the creation of her novel. In terms of literature, philosophy and religious studies, she had a voracious appetite, and prescient existentialist perception. She was deeply religious and yearned to be closer to God. This desire played a role in her understanding of the fell nature of the peculiar institution.

In the Beecher house there was frequent debate, discussion and opinioning of the days events and major ideas and movements of the day. This passion for discussion and critical reasoning, is seen in the dialectical nature of her work. Characters frequently have discussion where moral, life experience and strategies and plans, as well as motivations are discussed and debated.

having lost her mother at age 6, and a dear friend (her future husband's wife), a black washer woman, and child as well as others, she understood the capricious nature of slave ownership. No slave was "safe" regardless of how petted they were by their master, for death or pecuniary crisis could suddenly lead to sale, perhaps "down south" and separation from all they knew, and often times their entire family. Other factors that played into Beecher Stowe's make-up was that she was prone to states of reverie, where she would appear blank to the world. not speak, and appear distant and absorbed. During these times there is evidence that she was integrating and synthesizing information that would later pour out of her in her writings, most notably, Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Beecher Stowe may have been manic-depressive. She once left for hydrotherapy for 18 months to treat an intransigent depression. She herself was prone to depression, and lead a hard life of hand to mouth existence and rapid increase in her family with serial childbirth (the average woman for her time had 5.1 children, not all of which survived childhood). As she worked, cooked, performed chores, often with her husband away on business, she also had to find time to engage in her passion of writing. snatching a few moments here and there to write -much in the same manner as former slave and author Harriet Jacobs, aka Linda Brent. Her depression, reverie, hard-scrabble life, appetite for knowledge and regional influences were all in addition to her flights of imaginative prowess -she insisted that she had not written Uncle Tom's Cabin, rather, as she had consecrated herself to God and confirmed her faith, he had used her to produce the novel.

Beecher Stowe's father was the President of Lane Seminary at the same time her husband was one of the advanced professors of old testament literature. In fact he was one of the world's leading scholars on the old testament.

the famous Lane debates on slavery, while Theodore Dwight Weld was a student, took place while she was in residence in Cincinnati. She remarked at the time that she felt after hearing about slavery that one must "do something" in response. her religious influences had taught her that all men, quite literally, were equal and sons and brothers before God. she also felt that one must work to find salvation after having been born into sin. She believed that faith without works, was hollow and meaningless. She also believed in the equality of women and men, and spoke proudly of how her and her husband would discourse on numerous subjects and reach important decisions on their family together.

No doubt the heavy Quaker influence in the abolitionist movement, no doubt informed her perspective on the equality of men and women, which placed her in direct conflict with the antebellum idea of a woman's dependence, pedestal like position, while also being forced to turn a blind eye to the philandering of her husband, and the multitude of mulatto children running about the plantation.

Her own sister married a wealthy planter, and upon her marriage she returned to his plantation, to find several mulatto children, whom he admitted that he was the father. He was simply increasing his stock. Stowe's sister soon returned to the family and left the husband. This event no doubt made a strong impression on Stowe. For a the same time southern ladies were put on a pedestal, and were thought should not engage in any menial work, their homes were torn apart from the inside by promiscuity, adultery, rape, unacknowledged step-children and violence in the form of whippings, floggings, beatings and verbal *assaults.

Stowe had lost one of her own children to cholera. it was a slow, agonizing, painful death and she felt helpless to soothe or help her child. This experience she admitted, allowed her the empathy and compassion to imagine the pain of a slaver mother violently separated from her child. A much loved black washer-woman died suddenly of cholera. This also, like all other mortal events, deeply affected Stowe.

Other events, such a the Kansas-Nebraska act, the Missouri Compromise, the Dred Scott decision and finally, the Fugitive Slave act, had slowly, methodically and forcefully placed Stowe, irrevocably to take up her pen, and spill forth a tale, which was the culmination and perfection of the moral and ethical arguments, the personal narratives, her readings, religious upbringing, and literary artistic powers to meld and spin all of the above elements seamlessly through her humanity, her sentiment, and her goal to bring home, the full emotional and humane impact of the slave system upon the cultural institution of America.

The vital elements as well as the stars were in proper alignment. All that was needed, was a Harriet Beecher Stowe to bring it all together.

The work, was wholly intentional. Calculated, and yet, so beautifully intertwined, as to place doubt in the minds of many as to what exact role the author, and luck had to do with it -that is- if one believed the novel to be any good to begin with.

*[one book Stowe read thoroughly and used for background was American Slavery as it is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses by Theodore Dwight Weld, a former student of her husband. In it is recounted a scene where a slave woman is thought to have spooned out too much molasses to a slave owners son. She is beaten by the slave owner, first with his fists, forearms and elbows. When he tires of this and the slave reflexively raises her arms in defense, the slave owner is further enraged and has her arms held behind her by another slave and he proceeds to beat her with his shoe, until her face is unrecognizable and her ears are swollen to the size of a man's palm. All of this occurred in front of his young son and wife as well as a visitor from the north. To add to the indignity, when this slave woman was finally excused, she had to utter, "Thank You Massa"]

The Battle for Free Speech in Antebellum America

Free speech was under attack during the abolitionist movement. The south had effectively and legally blocked debate and free speech on the matter of slavery. It was illegal in all slave holding states to distribute literature of any sort which advocated any lessening of the system of slavery. Southern legislatures, not thinking that having their own laws on the books were enough, appealed to northern states to make it illegal to use the post office to distribute any such materials or to even publish them for distribution in the south.

Resolved, that the State of Virginia has a right to claim prompt and efficient legislation by her co-states to restrain... and to punish those of their citizens... who... assail her safety and tranquility, by forming associations for the abolition of slavery, or printing, publishing or circulating through the mail or otherwise, seditious and incendiary publications design, calculated or having a tendency to operate on her population.

Wendell Phillips speaking on behalf of abolitionist discoursed on the philosophy of the movement:

What is the denunciation with which we are charged? It is endeavoring, in our faltering human speech, to declare the enormity of the sin of making merchandise of men, of separating husband and wife, taking the infant from its mother, and selling the daughter to prostitution of a professedly Christian nation... the south is one great brothel, where half a million of women are flogged to prostitution, or, worse still, are degraded to believe it honorable.

Free blacks were a vital part of the abolitionist movement. And in time, as they became more vocal, there would be some divisions between black and white. first in philosophy, and then in a great divide where women's rights and feminism, began to become a greater issue of importance. This was seen by some as a distraction. Another fracture was based on the anti-political stance of Garrison. Wendell Phillips and others began to break off, throwing support to Lincoln for President, while Garrison eschewed politics. The result of this was in effect the forming two separate abolitionist movements, neither of which was as strong as the former.

Many free blacks resented the racism and paternalism of the whites an preferred to focus their efforts by holding all-black negro conventions. Frederick Douglass speaks of Garrison in effect wanting to gag his speeches for he seemed "too intelligent" and "unbelievable" they wanted him to stick to merely telling his story, which the White abolitionist would be the ones to editorialize and extemporize upon the moral and ethical issues of his tale.

Meanwhile, in Congress, the issue of slavery was barred from debate in the House of Representatives, thus effectively barring it's discussion in the upper house, due to the "gag rule" passed by southerners and Democrats, which was in effect from 1840-44. The gag rule stipulated as follows:

That upon presentation of any memorial or petition praying for the abolition of slavery or the slave trade in any District, Territory, or state of the Union an upon the representation of any resolution, or tother paper touching that subject, the reception of such memorial, petition, resolution or paper, shall be considered as objected to, and the question of it's reception shall be laid on the table, without debate, or further action thereon.
that no petition, memorial, resoution or other paper praying for the abolition of slaver in the district of Columbia, or any state or territory or the slave trade between the states or territories of the unied states in which it now exist, shall be receive y this house or entertained in any way whatever.

John Quincy Adams, former President and defender of the Amistad captives, was the main opposition to the gag rule. he succeeded in overturning it, after being denied the ability to bring a bill to the floor to proposed that beginning on July 4, 1842, every child born on American soil would be free, and that no slave trading could occur in the District of Columbia after July 4, 1845. William Slade of of Vermont and Joshua Giddings of Ohio were also Adams' supporters.

The Republican party itself was formed as an opposition to slavery, directly and indirectly.

from Wikipedia:

The Republican Party was first organized in 1854, growing out of the "anti-Nebraska" coalition of old Whigs, free soil Democrats etc. who mobilized in opposition to Stephen Douglas's January 1854 introduction of the Kansas-Nebraska Act into Congress, a bill which repealed the 1820 Missouri compromise prohibition on slavery north of latitude 36° 30' in the old Louisiana purchase territories, and so was viewed as an aggressive expansionist pro-slavery maneuver by many. Besides opposition to slavery, the new party put forward a progressive vision of modernizing the United States—emphasizing higher education, banking, railroads, industry and cities, while promising free homesteads to farmers. They vigorously argued that free-market labor was superior to slavery and the very foundation of civic virtue and true American values—this is the "Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men" ideology

Charles Sumner was also key in the struggle. A Massachusetts Republican Senator challenged segregated schools in Boston. he hated racial discrimination and slavery, and fought to have slave owners compensated from the national treasury. After the 13th amendment, he went on to fight for full racial equality.

The Political Costs of the 3/5th Clause/Compromise

From Wikipedia:

The three-fifths ratio was not a new concept. It originated with a 1783 amendment proposed to the Articles of Confederation. The amendment was to have changed the basis for determining the wealth of each state, and hence its tax obligations, from real estate to population, as a measure of ability to produce wealth.

The proposed ratio was, however, a ready solution to the impasse that arose during the Constitutional Convention. In that situation, the alignment of the contending forces was the reverse of what had obtained under the Articles of Confederation. In amending the Articles, the North wanted slaves to count for more than the South did, because the objective was to determine taxes paid by the states to the federal government. In the Constitutional Convention, the more important issue was representation in Congress, so the South wanted slaves to count for more than the North did.

The three-fifths ratio, or "Federal ratio" had a major effect on pre-Civil War political affairs due to the disproportionate representation of slaveholding states. For example, in 1793 slave states would have been apportioned 33 seats in the House of Representatives had the seats been assigned based on the free population; instead they were apportioned 47. In 1812, slaveholding states had 76 instead of the 59 they would have had; in 1833, 98 instead of 73. As a result, southerners dominated the Presidency, the Speakership of the House, and the Supreme Court in the period prior to the Civil War.

Free and Slave Population of the Southern Confederacy
The first number is the year
then the white population
then the slave population

1790
1,240,454
654,121

1800
1,691,892
851,532

1810
2,118,144
1,103,700

1820
2,867,454
1,509,904

1830
3,614,600
1,983,860

1840
4,601,873
2,481,390

1850
6,184,477
3,200,364

1860
8,036,700
3,950,511

The Forces of Abolition and Feminism Unite to Redefine America

One of the interesting aspects of the abolition movement is how much information was shared between England and the United States, as well as the small, chummy cadre of leaders that all seemed to know/relate to/work with and coordinate their efforts with one another.

There was the great Quaker religion. The only religious body on American soil to institutionalize immediate abolition and equality of race as part of their doctrine. There was Anthony Benezet, William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore Dwight Weld, Wendell Phillips, Calvin Stowe, Mary Birkett Card, Frederick Douglass, Susan & Angelina Grimke, Arthur & Lewis Tappan, Lane Seminary (lead by Calvin Stowe), Oberlin College, Charles Grandison Finney, Charles Stuart, Benjamin Lundy, Thomas Clarkson, William Wilberforce and numerous other societies, institutions and political supporters, not to forget the age of Enlightenment and enlightenment philosophers,and noted British Scientist such as Chalres Darwin and Adam Smith.

Angelina & Susan Grimke, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Maria Weston Chapman, Lidia Maria Child, Lucy Stone, Catherine Beecher & Susan B. Anthony all began initially as outspoken women, who were active in their community, who had fought for their own education, and had found in Abolitionism a calling, which evolved into their realization that women, needed to fight for the same rights as the enslaved class following on the heels of emancipation.

The major blow to slavery in England, was felled in the most major way through an ordinance clerk named Granville Sharp who took it upon himself to determine that slavery was illegal on British soil.

he studied the law and presented his case to Baron Mansfield, the Lord Chief Justice. The case involved a slave by the name of James Somerset, who was a slave in Virginia brought to England by his master and who ran away rather than to be sold back into slavery in Jamaica. His master had caught him. The issue was, Since there was no slavery in Britain, could he be held as a slave and considered a slave? Sharpe felt the conclusion was unavoidably "no". with no statutes on the books, there could be no debate between the rights of personal property and the rights of individual freedom.

At this time there were 20,000 slaves worth a considerable amount of money (700 pounds sterling). As stated in 'Uncle Tom's Cabin and Mid-Nineteenth Century United States'by Moira Davison Reynolds (p72), "Mansfield hesitated for months; as Abraham Lincoln would be later..."

he rendered his decision:

Is so odious that nothing can be suffered to support it but positive law. Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from this decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by he law of England. And therefore the black must be discharged.

The second and final death knell for British Slavery was struck by William Wilberforce up until 1825 and continued by Thomas Fowell Buxon. In 1833 a law was passed to free all slaves in the British colonies after a five- to seven-year period of apprenticeship, with "compensation" to their masters. Wilberforce died 2 days before the vote.

Charles Darwin had written, "It makes one's blood boil ... that we Englishmen and our American descendants with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty."

Theodore Dwight Weld was founded by Charles Stuart and emboldened by Finney, and financed by the Tappans. The famous Lane Seminary debates took place while Calvin Stowe (Harriet's husband) was head of divinity and her father (Lynam Beecher) was the President. The Tappans financed Lane and later Oberlin. Theodore Weld married Susan Grimke. The Grimke sisters wrote for the Liberator with Garrison, and were trained by Weld. It was a small fraternity and leadership cadre of committed revolutionaries, -White revolutionaries.

These folks guided by their conscience and their religious understanding, fought against the system of slavery and the nation that backed it, eventually pushing the nation into an unavoidable war to settle the matter.

In the past, I had naively thought that these abolitionist, being White, had stuck their necks out "when they didn't have to". But after reading about them, their influences, their passions, their actions, I can see that their actions were as immediate, vital and essential to their persons as breathing, or loving their own children. for them, there certainly was no option to turn a blind eye to the system of slavery which brought so much fell doom to this nation.

What abolitionist did, as well as feminist was to no less than fundamentally redefine America, what an American was, and to redefine the role and status of women and the African American.

The civil war, despite the propaganda of the north to "preserve the union" was the union splitting in two. What if the south had won? They would have been allowed to become a separate and distinct nation. Slavery would have thrived for many more years, possibly decades. If and when emancipation occurred, imagine the impact of a southern confederacy upon the development and rights of the African-American? To this day, the voting rights act of 1964 is needed to ensure federal oversight of the African-American right to vote in several notorious southern states.

Would free blacks have been allowed to stay in the south? what would the jail and prison population of the south look like? Without the vast infusion of Northerner money to spur the development of southern historically black colleges and universities, what would the state of black education look like?

And had the south won the war, would any anti-slavery southerners have remained? or would they have fled north? once again, making the condition of black slaves and free blacks all the more bleak and dire.

The abolitionist played a key role in redefining America as well as playing a vital role in creating the moral grounds for the urgent need to not only fight the south, but to take it over and to transform it into a land of the free, while also purging the north from their remnants of racism and discrimination.

Another aspect of the abolitionist/feminist struggle concerned colonization. The vast majority of blacks were against the establishment of an African homeland for repatriated slaves. They believed, as did many whites that Blacks, having been born on American soil, were true Americans. Others articulated a moral and ethical responsibility to provide for the education and integration of Blacks as just and right. Harriet Beecher Stowe raises the issue of reparations in her, 'A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin'. Some whites and blacks were in favor of a black homeland in the interest of independence,and the right to build a republic unfettered by the chains of slavery past and the encumbrances of being a minority within this nation.

The vast majority of abolitionist who favored colonization, soon changed their tune. The battle cry for "immediate" emancipation did not allow for a protracted resettlement. African-Americans were just that, African, and American.

The revolutionary spirit of abolitionist should not be diminished. their role in the struggle, can not be seen as peripheral. They molded and shaped the parameters of the conflict, and in their writings and speeches, articulated some of the most revolutionary and humanist ideas. The redefined freedom, equality, the labor movement. The civil rights movement of the 1865 has a direct line of lineage to women's suffrage, the civil rights movement of 1965, to finish unfinished business, and the movement for Asian, native American and gay rights.

Prior to the intercession of the abolitionist, the words, "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal" only applied to 11 million of the 30 million people who were in America. for half were women, who were not included in the term, "All men" for they had limited rights to property (all of their posessions and inheritance would pass to their husbands if they were married, or upon marriage) and had no right to suffrage. 4 million were slaves, who, as slaves were not considered Americans, and barely considered human, and had no rights to property, suffrage, or to testify or bring suit in a court of law. Other free blacks in the south, were not allowed to vote. many blacks in the north were also not allowed to vote. Their property and persons subject to the rule of the mob.

The U.S. constitution allowed the international slave trade for 20 years past 1776, and allowed it to flourish within the borders of the United States ad infinitum. Slaves, although not allowed to vote, were allowed to be counted as 3/5th their total to determine congressional representation, forever giving the south an additional, inflated political power because they were slave holders. The 3/5th clause alone in 1850 free white population was 6,184,477. The Slave population was
3,200,364 or gave the south the power of an additional 25% of their population. As an example of the gained political strength of the south, in 1833, they had 98 representatives in Congress, vs. the 73 they would have had, if slaves were not counted.

[In 1860, South Carolina 57% of the population was slave; Mississippi 55%; Louisiana 47%; Alabama 45%; Florida & Georgia 43%; North Carolina 33%; Texas & Virginia 30%, with nearly a half-million slaves in Virginia, Georgia and South Carolina]

It is particularly disturbing, that despite the fact that the south lost the war, that in American History classes, children are routinely taught about the United States Constitution and the Declaration of independence, in all it's glorious hypocrisy, without ever mentioning the fact that slavery, torture, sale and murder of human beings were all encompassed and allowed under these wonderful documents of confederation.

Black history, is American history. American history, without the nexus of Black history, is fiction, and as such, the forgotten, and overlooked chapter of Abolitionism, is one of the most important stories and movements in the history of the United States. It redefined a nation, broke it apart and put it back together again.

Melville J. Herskovits

Melville Jean Herskovits
Honestly, I don't know anything about this guy, but I read a few things and thought his life was notable, and his work, laudable, so I'm going to take the opportunity to draw some broad strokes, which may be completely off base in his praise. It may be the case that he was an accidental racist. he may have damaged the cause of Blacks. He may have harbored horrible opinions, but I don't think so. From what I have gathered in my cursory summary and investigation, the net effect of Herkovits was positive.

The fact that he was a White man and he was the first professor to head an African Studies department, could be viewed with skepticism and deridement. However, this may not be the most prudent course. it seems to me that he was earnestly and responsibly interested in African as well as African-American culture as well as fascinated by the African Diaspora. It is based upon these threads and beliefs that i will engage in some discussion, and speculation about the contributions and ideas of Melville Herskovits.

A truly great and pioneering individual. He achieved a great amount of work in his life and helped to humanize all peoples through the recognition of their common humanity, which further defined and refined one another through their shared understanding.

In reading about him, I found that several years back, I'd reached the same conclusion that he'd reached concerning the American 'Negro', which is, The American Negro need not look to Africa for direction, or definition of self. For in America, their culture had become amazingly relevant and specific to their needs. In their shaping, in what was kept, in what persisted, in what had been lost, they had formed a culture uniquely American, and appropriate to their situation. The "Myth of the Negro Past" as explored by Herskovits, whose thesis is that the negro does have a past, illustrates that the past can inform, and provide vital clues to the current state of Black culture. This may sound contradictory, yet the difference between what Herskovits and Dubois and Carter G. Woodson believed, was that Dubois and Woodson held a much more romantic view towards black history. they were concerned with the uplift of the Black population. They believed that the Black American could achieve and learn from European Culture, but ultimately, that the Negro was wholly separate.

The subtlety once again as eludicated by Herkovits, is that he saw the interchange and and adoption of Eurocentric values, as a natural process of cultural assimilation... a process which had been going on throughout the world and throughout cultures.

Herskovits believed that cultures are defined by the stress and strain through a process of change, or huge culturally impacting event, such as the African Diaspora. And finally, Herskovits believed that Cultures are as much influenced and fluid in how they change, as much as how they remain the same, and that all areas of culture, from music, religion, economics, family structure, langage, traditions.. are important in the overall as well as specific analysis.

As Herkovits delved into Black culture, he gradually began to look more like Dubois and Woodson in his beliefs. He also believed that the uplift of the people and culture, vs. academic understanding, was a major influence and motivation in his studies.

In any event, the addition of Herkovits, a trained anthropologist into the discussion of black culture, was a welcome counterpoint to the prevailing opinions of the day. As is often the case, W.E.B. DuBois, Carter G. Woodson, John Hope Franklin Herkovits and others helped to refine and define one another through their dialogue and debate.

If these ideas seem obvious and shared today, it is only due to the pioneering work and preaching of the anthropological gospel of Dubois, Woodson, Frazier and Herskovits.

I hope to read more about him, and thoroughly review his works in further blogs in the future.

what follows is a compilation of several online sources, a biography, 'Melville J. Herkovits and the racial politics of knowledge' and the following sources:


1. 'A Biographical Memoir' by Joseph C. Greenberg
2. Encyclopedia Brittanica online
3. Wikipedia - Melville J. Herskovits

born Sept. 10, 1895, Bellefontaine, Ohio, U.S.
died Feb. 25, 1963, Evanston, Ill.
American anthropologist noted for having opened up the study of the “New World Negro” as a new field of research. Herskovits was also known for his humanistic and relativistic writings on culture.

Herskovits took his Ph.B. at the University of Chicago (1920) and his M.A. (1921) and Ph.D. (1923) at Columbia University, where he came under the influence of Franz Boas. Herskovits was a lecturer in anthropology at Columbia and Howard University before moving in 1927 to Northwestern University, where he remained until his death. In 1951 he was named there to the first professorial chair of African studies in the United States.

From his initial studies of the African American as a physical type, Herskovits was led to an interest in their social problems and to their cultural roots in Africa. He systematically attacked some widely held myths in The Myth of the Negro Past (1941) and also opposed the assumption that Africa must follow the Western model and remain under the continuous direction of Europeans.

In 1948, he founded the first major interdisciplinary American program in African studies at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois with a three-year, $30,000 grant from the Carnegie Foundation, followed by a five-year, $100,000 grant from the Ford Foundation in 1951. The Program of African Studies was the first of its kind at an American academic institution. [1] The goals of the program were to “produce scholars of competence in their respective subjects, who will focus the resources of their special fields on the study of aspects of African life relevant to their disciplines.”

The Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwestern University, established in 1954, is the largest separate Africana collection in the world. To date, it contains more than 260,000 bound volumes, including 5,000 rare books, more than 3,000 periodicals, journals and newspapers, archival and manuscript collections, 15,000 books in 300 different African languages, extensive collections of maps, posters, videos and photographs, as well as electronic resources. [3] In 1957, Herskovits founded the African Studies Association and was the organization's first president.

Herskovits's controversial classic The Myth of the Negro Past is about African cultural influences on American blacks. He rejected the notion that African Americans lost all traces of their past when they were taken from Africa and enslaved in America. Herskovits emphasized race as a sociological concept, not a biological one. He also helped forge the concept of cultural relativism, particularly in his book Man and His Works.

Melville Herskovits's position formed one half of the debate with Franklin Frazier on the nature of cultural contact in the Western Hemisphere, specifically with reference to Africans, Europeans, and their descendants.

After World War II, Herskovits publicly advocated African independence and also attacked American politicians for viewing Africa as an object of Cold War strategy.

Herskovits also had interests in economics (especially in relation to anthropology) and African folk art and music. His major works include The Economic Life of Primitive Peoples (1940; 2nd ed. published as Economic Anthropology, 1952); Man and His Works (1948; rev. and abridged as Cultural Anthropology, 1955); Franz (1953); and The Human Factor in Changing Africa (1962).