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About The Omaha guide. (Omaha, Neb.) 1927-19?? | View Entire Issue (Oct. 8, 1932)
I Coming Stories by The Finest Writers Edward Worthy .... Send Their Stories Edward Lawson First to the Illus n .. ... ny trated Feature Section w B "“.SuiS*Kn™rtnatfvVs Chi'aso ILLUSTRATED FEATURE SECTION—October 8, 1932 ribbon fiction^ foundTv^rt^eek ,n “REM IN IS C E N C E Sw Mary White Ovington Looks Backward 42 Years. Sits in the Gallery at Henry Ward Beecher’s Ghurch in Brooklyn to Hear Frederick Douglass Speak. Argues with Her Escort Over the Propriety of a White Woman's Mar rying Mr. Douglass. EARLY IMPRESSIONS (Copyright applied for) In one of his early essays, DuBois finds that the white man, under his polite talk, is always thinking the (question, “What does it mean to be a problem?” I have found since I have become known in radical Negro work that colored people, under their pkasant greetings, are thinking, “Why did you take up the Ne gro cause?” Indeed, as the question is in no way em barrassing to me, they sometimes ask it. I try to answer but it takes a long time to explain. One thing after an other occurs to me as a contributory reason. And in the effort to answer this question I find myself reviewing my many years of Negro work. So I have written this story that will take nearly half a year of the AFRO 'A MERIC AN’S weekly issues. It will deal with my work, with controversial mat ters, will talk frankly of colored people as well as of white. Before this I have had an eye on educating the white world. These reminiscences are not meant to educate anybody. They are what I think important bits out of a portion of my life of thought and action. The editor of the AFRO-AMERICAN believes they will in terest you. If the questions asked by people all over the country are a criterion, I believe he is r-Vbt. So my reminiscences begin. By MARY WHITE OVINGTON • CHAPTER I The time is 1890. Two ycung peo ple are walking down Fulton Street, Brooklyn. The girl, ir long winter coat, slips her hand into thi man’s arm. When night con s this is eti quette in a city inadequately light ed. The girl is conspicuously blonde, blue eyt A pink cheeks, golden hair; the man—well, if you want to know . what the man looked like, sej r.Tc Monnies's statue wf Nathan Ha1! in “HE LOOKS LlfcE AESOP’' Frederick Douglass—His father was white and his mother black, jo his first wife was Negro and his sec ond Nordic in order to pay his respects to both parents. the New York City Hall Park. He posed for -* ahd it’s a perfect like ness. ^ The couple turn down Orange Street to Plymouth Church. They are going to a : rture t. Frederick Douglass, wh« recently, against the advice of his oldest friends, married a white woman. He gave his ex planation to a mixed audience in Atlanta: “My father was white, my moT-ir was black. My first wife was black, by second wife ic white. I have paid my res. rts to both my parents.” The two young people are arguing excitedly on this mat ter.^ The girl is of New York and Yankee descent. The young man, she realizes for the first time, has roots in Baltimore. “How could she do it?” th^ young man says. “If she wanted to, she had a right to,” the girl ] rsists. “It was a per sonal matter.” But this is wh’t the man will not accept for a moment, and still ar guing, the one in defense of the dominant race, the other in defense of the individual, they enter the church. They sit in the gallery almost over the plaiform. The meeting-house heard of him since I could remem ber. He was coupled with Garri son in my e'-cited thoughts. In imagination I h.rl seen him, after his perilous journey by tram and boat, s L. foot on free soil in Phila d lphia, and I had folio wo-* him as he preached against slavery in the North and in England. He was one of the great group of men and v omen wh" had . isked all for free dom. Here I think was the great dif ference n:t only between my atti tude and that of m friend, but be tween my attitude and the attitude of all Southerners and most North erners. If they knew the Negro at all they knew him as a servant. I did not know the Negro in the flesh. Mj ‘mammy” was Irish and quite as devoted, I am sure, as any black woman. We had no Negr > servants. Once a year at Thanksgiving time, an old, blind Negro, led by an at tractive boy, came to our church and asked for money for t' How ard Orphan Asylum. I think we sent ~:m away pleased. Anyway, he always said so. He was the only Negro with whom I had any con tact. Otherwise, I knew the race by its heroic deeds. The Southerner feels that this that, under Feecher’s leadership, has heard many anti-slavery speeches, is filled with expectant people. The organ plays “John Brown’s Body’ and Douglass mounts the platform. He is a strong. ..owerfully built man, with a brown skin and a shock of bushy hair. His eyes gleam with that liveliness to things a out him r - common > the Negro. He stands £•- the reading desk, immtvable, un smiling looking at the rpplauding audience. The girl leans forward clapping excitedly. The man leans forward, too, and pays his tribute* “I don’t wonder she married him.” he says. “He looks like Aesop.” I had ne.er seen Frederick Doug lass before (I d a the hd per son not to resume it) and I was never to see him again, but that night was to me : great event. I had come face to face with one erf n y heroes. To my companion who had always t hough t*of the Negro as a servanfr this unknown •.•olored man wtu a levelation but I had “My Mammy was Irish” Mary White Ovington proves his lesis and that he, not I, knew the Negro. But 3 h- right? There are people and nations whom we know that we have never seen. We have not seen Leonidas at Thermopylae or listened to Spt.rta cus. But we know the Gre.k and the Roman better by reading their history Juan by confining ourselves to the acquaintanceship of the florists and fruit venders who come (to us from Greece and Italy. I read the story of the slave in his insur rections and his escapes from serf dom, in Harriet Tubman and Fred erick Douglass, in Box Brown and Anthony Burns and a host of others. This heroic side Of -lavery the South hated and feared and denied. So I maintained that I did know the Negro because I knew the pos Continued on Page Four Plymouth Congregational—Beecher's church in Brook* lyn today, and monument to Henry Ward Beecher, whose views on abolition of slavery were not strong enough to hold the Ovingtons. ' *■ » < t *
