Chapter 3b: Intersectional Themes, 1910-1919
Here, we’ll look at some poems that bring together different social movements and identities that were in the mix with the broad investment in racial justice. One major theme is course feminism, though feminism for many of the poets in this Reader looked a little different from the predominantly white Suffrage movement. Second, we’ll look at a poem that engages in gender play – what we might call rhetorical drag. And finally, we’ll return to Olivia Ward Bush-Banks, a woman of mixed Native American and African American heritage.
Let’s start with a poem that deals with a particular type of Black feminism that was important at this time period – the women’s “clubs” that were active in many towns and cities around the countries, often with activist and charitable aims. The most important of these might have been the National Association for Colored Women, which in 1904 became the National Association for Colored Women’s Clubs (NACWC), to reflect the important “club” component.
The NACWC local clubs were a way for women who might otherwise not have been welcome in public life to engage in activist mobilization. The clubs were often led by prominent and well-off married women, and many were closely associated with Black Church life.
Here is Clifford’s poem encouraging women to participate in this type of activism.
Carrie Williams Clifford, “Duty’s Call” (1911)
Come, all ye women, come!
Help 'till the work is done.
Help to uplift!
We must sin's blight remove,
By deeds of kindness prove
The wondrous power of love.
God's greatest gift.
We must remove the ban
Placed on our fellow-man,
Thro' Satan's power;
Let us as one unite.
Darkness and wrong to fight.
Then will the glorious light
Break in God's hour.
'Tis now, we must begin;
If we our cause would win;
The foe is strong;
But we can make him quake.
His forces swerve and break
When we old earth shall shake
With victory's song.
Here we see that the poet is directly addressing women (and we can safely assume she means, primarily, Black women). Notice the use of the word “uplift” – we can certainly think of this as an uplift poem alongside it being a feminist poem.
The main question to consider might be: what is the main goal for the kind of Black women’s activism encouraged in the first stanza of the poem? The answer seems to come in the second stanza, where the poet writes, “We must remove the ban / Placed on our fellow-man.” The “ban” she is referring to is most likely racial discrimination and segregation.
Next, let’s look at a fun poem – one that explores relationships between men and women (a serious issue) with an element of comedy:
Maggie Pogue Johnson, “I Wish I Was A Grown Up Man” (1910)
I wish I was a grown up man,
And then I'd get a chance,
To wear those great high collars,
Stiff shirts, and nice long pants.
I wish I was a grown up man,
Not too big and fat,
But just the size to look nice
In a beaver hat.
I'd wear the nicest vest and gloves,
And patent leather shoes,
And all the girls would fall in love,
And I'd flirt with whom I choose.
I wish I was a grown up man,
I'd try the girls to please,
I'd wear a long jimswinger coat,
Just below my knees.
I'd wear eye-glasses, too,
And wouldn't I look good?
I'd be the swellest dude
In this neighborhood.
Some day I'll be a man,
And have everything I say,
And give my heart to some nice girl,
And then I'd go away.
The majority of the imagery in the poem are comic caricatures of the performance of masculinity. Some of the language is surprisingly current; “I’d be the swellest dude / In this neighborhood” sounds like it could be 21st century. Other aspects of the fashion are clearly of their time (“a long jimswinger coat” [a “jim-swinger coat” is a long-tailed coat).
The reason this poem might be ‘intersectional’ is the way the speaker (presumed female) tries to inhabit the embodied experience of young men. It’s a type of rhetorical drag, one might say. At the end, she makes a somewhat serious point: part of the performance of masculinity is a kind of callousness and indifference to the feelings of women: “I’d give my heart to some nice girl / And then I’d go away.”
Let’s end with a poem by the mixed-race poet Olivia Ward Bush-Banks. Bush-Banks is of mixed African American and Native American (Montauk or Montauket) ancestry; earlier, we had considered her poems “Crispus Attucks” and “Honor’s Appeal to Justice.” In her earlier poetry from the 1890s, Bush-Banks had by and large not explored her Native American ancestry. In this poem, dated 1916, Bush-Banks does just that:
Olivia Ward Bush-Banks, On the Long Island Indian (1916)
How relentless, how impartial,
Is the fleeting hand of time,
By its stroke, great empires vanish
Nations fall in swift decline.
Once resounding through these forests,
Rang the warwhoop shrill and clear,
Once here lived a race of Red Men,
Savage, crude, but knew no fear.
Here they fought their fiercest battles,
Here they caused their wars to cease,
Sitting round their blazing camp fires,
Here they smoked the Pipe of Peace.
Tall and haughty were the warriors,
Of this fierce and warlike race.
Strong and hardy were their women,
Full of beauteous, healthy grace.
Up and down these woods they hunted,
Shot their arrows far and near.
Then in triumph to their wigwams,
Bore the slain and wounded deer.
Thus they dwelt in perfect freedom,
Dearly loved their native shores,
Wisely chose their Chiefs or Sachems,
Made their own peculiar laws.
But there came a paler nation
Noted for their skill and might.
They aroused the Red Man's hatred,
Robbed him of his native right.
Now remains a scattered remnant
On these shores they find no home,
Here and there in weary exile,
They are forced through life to roam.
Just as Time with all its changes
Sinks beneath Oblivion's Wave,
So today a mighty people
Sleep within the silent grave.
This poem describes the experience of displacement and dispossession of Native American communities in painful detail. The utopian past was disrupted by the arrival of the “paler nation” that “robbed” Native Americans of their “native right.” The sense of despair and mourning here is acute, though perhaps not surprising, given that Bush-Banks’ own community, the Montauk or Montaukett community on Long Island, was by 1910 a largely dispossessed and landless community – their tribal land had been steadily encroached upon through a series of treaties and unfortunate deals through the 19th century. By 1879, they had no remaining tribal lands in their possession. While the seeds of that decline had been planted three hundred years earlier, the actual end of their traditional way of life happened within the author’s own lifetime.