Journal 11

"As the Lord Lives, He is One of Our Mother's Children" Pauline E. Hopkins &

Claude McKay assorted poems

The two readings for today were written by African-American authors, but they came from two very different backgrounds. Hopkins was raised by a civil war veteran in the North, whereas McKay was Jamaican. However, both of their writings center on a horrifying issue of the early 1900's, lynching. Racism at its worst, lynching was when whites took the law into their hands and killed blacks who they accused of committing a crime, or sometimes just because they were black. 

In the reading by Hopkins the speaker is a white clergyman who witnesses a lynching of one man and then comes across the man who escaped. The man who escaped, "Stone," or "Gentleman Jim" is a mulatto, but he appears so white that Rev. Stevens has to ask him later on, "are you a negro?" I can't help but wonder what kind of moral ground the lynchers stood on if they couldn't even tell that the man was negro when he became sexton of the church. Stone eventually leaves the parsonage and moves to a New England town, but he is forever haunted by the treatment he received once leaving Wilmington, where he had a family until his house was burned to the ground, his wife and children still inside. When Rev. Stevens and his son, Flip, come to visit their train is almost ran off the tracks by a fallen tree, but Stone manages to push the tree off the tracks, unfortunately however Stone is hit by the train in the process. After Stone's death it comes about that he didn't kill a man when he worked in the mines, and the community feels repentant. The Reverend speaks at Stones well attended funeral, and one hopes that at last Stone is at peace. This story ends in a death, and yet it still feels like a happy ending, like Uncle Tom's Cabin for Tom, it saddens me to think about how life in America was so horrible that death was preferable for African Americans. Race Relations aren't perfect today, but at least we have moved from lynchings in this past 100 years.

McKay addresses lynching as well, from his outsider perspective, McKay grew up in Jamaica which had its share of problems as well, but he remarked on being horrified at the "implacable hatred of my race" (704). In his poem, "The Lynching" he says, "hung pitifully o'er the swinging char" (708 line 8). As an American I have pride in my country, but when I look back to the past I find there is little to be proud of. These race riots that prompted McKay to write took place only 100 years ago, it seems like a long time, but its really not, 100 years can be one person's lifetime. In the grand scheme of things, such horrible things happening only 100 years ago is barely a blink of an eye. I was most struck by his poem, "America." when he writes, "And see her might and granite wonders there, Beneath the tough of Time's unerring hand, Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand." (708) and how the poem on the next page "Africa"seem to be in answer to one another.