Black Michael

“ Scarcely a man was on his legs, the whole crew seemed to have been levelled with the deck, many dead, no doubt, and most wounded, while we could see numbers endeavouring to creep towards the hatches, while the black blood, in horrible streams, gushed and gurgled through her scuppers down her sides, and across the bright white streak that glanced in the moonlight. ”

“ The Spider tacked also, and stood after her—a gun!—another!—both replied to by the felucca; the musketry peppering away all the while from each vessel; the tiny white puffs instantly obliterated by the foam-drift—and now neither fired a shot.
The gale at this moment came down in thunder; all above as black as night, all below as white as wool. The Spider shortens sail just in time—the Midge not a pistol-shot ahead on the weatherbow. See, the squall strikes her—her tall lateen sail shines through the more than twilight darkness and the driving rain and spray, like a sea-bird's wing. ”

“ A column of dense black smoke, thickly starred with red sparks, now boiled up past the edge of the cliff under me—presently it became streaked with tongues of bright hissing flame, which ran up the rigging, diverging along every rope, as if it had been a galvanic wire, twisting, serpent-like, round the Mosca's masts and higher spars, and licking the wet furled sails like boa-constrictors fitting their prey to be devoured. See how the fire insinuates itself into the dry creases of the canvass, driving out the moisture from the massive folds in white steam ”

“ Michael challenged him thus: “Come now, my blitherin’ friend, tell us your trouble—why are you risin’? You don’t do this without cause—what’s the cause?”
The black man, naked except for a cloth about his loins, and with a small bag at his hip, slung from a cord over his shoulder, showed his teeth in a stark grimace.
“You’re a newcomer here, massa, or you’d know we’re treated bad,” he answered. “We’re robbed and trod on and there’s no word kept with us. We asked the governor for more land and he moved us off. ”

“ Sprawl was roused out, and in a few seconds we were in our own tiny skiff, and approaching the frigate. All continued dark and dismal, as we looked up at her black hull, dark sails, and tall spars. She was rolling heavily, the masts and yards groaning, the bulkheads creaking and screaming, and the topsails fluttering and grumbling, until the noise, every now and then, ended in a sounding thump, as if the old ship, in all her parts, were giving audible indications of her impatience of the tedious calm ”

“ All was silent, the sun shone clown upon us like the concentrated rays of a burning glass, and there was no breeze to dissipate the heavy dank mist that hovered over the surface of the unwholesome canal, nor was there any appearance of a living thing, save and except a few startled waterfowl, and some guanoes on the trees, and now and then an alligator, like a black log of charred wood, would roll off a slimy bank of brown mud, with a splash into the water. ”

“ As I expected, to any one looking at us from windward, we must have become invisible, against the heavy bank of black clouds down to leeward; and, in corroboration of this, the strange vessel gradually emerged from out the silvery dazzle, and glided majestically down the glorious flow of bright moonlight, standing right for us, evidently unaware of our vicinity. She was not steered so steadily, but that I could perceive she was a ship, sailing dead before it with all sail set to woo the faint breeze; royals, sky-sails, and studding-sails aloft and alow. ”

“ The cloud now obscuring the light on the screen is only such a cloud as you see when sitting in a train on a fine summer's day. You may observe that the vapour passing out of the funnel casts as deep a shadow on the ground as the black funnel; the very sun itself is extinguished by the steam from the funnel, so that it cannot give any light; and the sun itself, if set in the light-house, would not be able to penetrate such a vapour. ”

“ All hail to thee, dear and ever-blessed Mother, thou chosen one, thou well-beloved, thou Bride adorned, thou chaste, Immaculate Spouse, thou Universal Queen! all hail to thee! We honor thee, for God honors thee; we love thee, for God loves thee; we obey thee, for thou ever commandest the will of thy Lord. The passers-by may jeer thee; the servants of the prince of this world may call thee black; the daughters of the uncircumcised may beat thee; earth and hell may rise up in wrath against thee, and seek to despoil thee of thy rich ornaments and to sully thy fair name ”

“ About noon every thing was deadly still,—the cattle had betaken themselves to the small river, where they stood listlessly chewing their cuds, as if overpowered by the density of the air. Not a bird was hopping in the no longer vocal trees; the very lizards were still: the negroes employed in cleaning the coffee pieces worked in silence, in place of shouting and laughing, and gabbling to each other, as is their wont—and when the driver or black superintendent gave his orders, the few words he uttered sounded loud and hollow, echoing from hill to hill. ”

“ English females have little notion of the artistic effect of wearing, as many of the better class of the sex do in Lombardy, those very becoming black veils, which cover great part of the head, neck, and shoulders. ”

“ We soon found that, although white veils have the chief place in old ecclesiastical costumes, the rule was for each female to put on a black one. And since, by another rule, they all immediately fell on their knees, the process of adjusting the veils, had to be gone through in that position. The unfolding, pulling, squaring, &c., of the covering, the constant fidgeting of the wearer, and her evident critical anxiety about the success of others in gracefulness, all on the hard marble floor, seemed likely, in our view, to increase the difficulties of devotion under the circumstances ”

“ If one of them condescends to allow himself to be specially “noticed,” the others will soon manifest such tremendous signs of discontent, that the stranger having any private regard for the safety of his hands or throat, is apt rather to desist rapidly from the process of conciliation, than to run the risk of prolonging it. Castor, the pride of the present pack, is a perfect model of a large dog, of a dark tan, with coat rather long and curly, and little, if any, black about his muzzle. The others are lighter in colour, and straighter in the hair, but very tall, well-shaped animals. ”

“ The unreasoning and illogical color prejudice of most of the people with whom he was forced to associate, infuriated him. He often laughed cynically when some coarse, ignorant white man voiced his opinion concerning the inferior mentality and morality of the Negroes. He was moving in white society now and he could compare it with the society he had known as a Negro in Atlanta and Harlem. What a let-down it was from the good breeding, sophistication, refinement and gentle cynicism to which he had become accustomed as a popular young man about town in New York's Black Belt. ”

“ It got into the Negro blood. Music, of all things, always has [Pg 55] effect. Before they were aware of it, they were cake-walkin' and doin' the grizzly bear, and it has also been whispered confidentially, that two preachers, high and mighty in the order, "balled the jack." The music stopped for a spell. Through the crowd—the black crowd—came a cry, "Arrah! Arrah! for the Negro, the greatest race since the coming of Christ!" ”

“ So long as we ourselves acquiesce in the selection of leaders on the ground of their unlikeness to our racial type, just so long will we be met by the invincible argument that white blood is necessary to make a Negro worth while. Every Negro who has respect for himself and for his race will feel, when contemplating such examples as Toussaint Louverture, Phyllis Wheatley, Paul Laurence Dunbar and Samuel Ringgold Ward, the thrill of pride that differs in quality and intensity from the feeling which he experiences when contemplating other examples of great Negroes who are not entirely black. ”

“ Whoever may doubt the superiority of the white race, it is not he; and it is a racial, not merely a social or economic superiority to which he does instinctive homage. It does not enter his head to champion his own racial ideal, to set up an African Venus in rivalry to the Hellenic, and claim a new Judgment of Paris between them. If wishing could change the Ethiopian’s skin there would be never a negro in America. [63] The black 224race, out of its poverty, spends thousands of dollars annually on “anti-kink” lotions, vainly supposed to straighten the African wool. ”

“ Therefore he is unable to cope with the trend of conditions and has become so condensed in the idea that he has no opportunity, that he is disinteresting to the public. One of the greatest tasks of my life has been to convince a certain class of my racial acquaintances that a colored man can be anything.
Now on the entire Little Crow reservation, less than eight hundred miles from Chicago, I was the only colored man engaged in agriculture, and moreover, from Megory to Omaha, a distance of three hundred miles. There was only one other negro family engaged in the same industry. ”

“ He laughed long. She now observed him with something akin to admiration. "Then the people of your community—the black people—don't consider feeding the mind an essential to moral welfare," he suggested mirthfully.
"Naw, Lord," she replied flatly. "These Negroes in Effingham are nigga's proper. They think nothing about reading and trying to learn something, they only care for dressing up and having a good time."
He was silent and resigned for a time. They now sat together in a swing that hung suspended from the porch. ”

“ They are struggling for identical things. They fight along different lines simply because they are not as class-conscious and intelligent as the ruling classes they are fighting. Both need to be awakened. When a Negro is proscribed on account of his color, when the lynching fever seizes the South and begins to break out even in the North, the black race feels and thinks as a unit. ”

“ The locality of the shooting is in the mountains of western North Carolina, and not far from the Flat Rock mica mine, the scene of the brutal midnight murder, Feb. 17, of Burleson, Miller, and Horton by Rae and Anderson, two revenue officers, who took this means to gain possession of the mica mine."
My knowledge of such affairs in the South is, that the black and the white have an altercation over some trivial thing, and the white to end the argument shoots the black man down. The negro is always a "powerful fellow" and the white man a "weak sickly man." ”

“ Lived a man—the history of the American Negro shows—who had been the foremost member of his race. He had acquitted himself of many honorable deeds for more than a score of years, in the interest of his race. He had filled a federal office but at the zenith of his career had brought disappointment to his race and criticism from the white people who had honored him, by marrying a white woman, a stenographer in his office. ”

“ Should anyone in the twentieth century wish to see the old-fashioned prime negro at his best, let him take a Mississippi steamboat and watch the roustabouts at work—those chaffing and chattering, singing and swinging, lusty and willing freight handlers, whom a river captain plying out of New Orleans has called the noblest black men that God ever made. ”

“ Does not the color of a negro's skin, even in your free states, render him an object of suspicion and hatred? What chance is there for a man like me?"
"Little—very true!" said Penn, sadly, contemplating the form of the powerful and intelligent black, and thinking with indignation and shame of the prejudice which excludes men of his race from the privileges of free men, even in the free north.
"These crags," said the African, "do not look scornfully upon me because of the color of my skin. ”

“ Why not be the first Negro to try it out? Sure, it was taking a chance, but think of getting white in three days! No more jim crow. No more insults. As a white man he could go anywhere, be anything he wanted to be, do most anything he wanted to do, be a free man at last ... and probably be able to meet the girl from Atlanta. What a vision!
He rose hurriedly, paid for his breakfast, rushed out of the door, almost ran into an aged white man carrying a sign advertising a Negro fraternity dance, and strode, almost ran, to the Phyllis Wheatley Hotel. ”

“ Among them in this country a pure-blooded negro will, with biting sarcasm, taunt the mulatto with the fact that the blood of another race is in his veins.
This feeling, which must have been noticed by any one whose observation has been extensive or intelligent enough to collect the facts, leads the race to remain by itself; and when left to its natural course, such is the result. The statistics of this country show that the free black does not and cannot mingle with the white race. No elevation or freedom can produce such an intermixture. ”

“ The idea is prevalent among this class that all white people should be rich, and regardless of how ideal the success has been, I learned that no white person could be accepted as an example for this class to follow.
By reading nothing but discussions concerning the race, by all but refusing to accept the success of the white race as an example and by welcoming any racial disturbance as a conclusion that the entire white race is bent in one great effort to hold him—the negro, down, he can not very well feel the thrill of modern progress and is ignorant as to public opinion. ”