The Price of Culture is a Lie

The Color Line as W.E.B Du Bois defined it struck a distinct duality between black and white, dominance and subservience, north and south, truth and lie. In the context of 1914 America, which had been rapidly industrialized and urbanized after the Reconstruction, African Americans were seen as not only inferior, but un-American. They were free men, yes, but at what cost? In the Dred Scott v. Sanford Case of Missouri, Dred Scott resided in Illinois, a free state, from 1833 to 1843. After returning to Missouri, Scott filed for his freedom in Missouri Court, claiming that “his residence in free territory made him a free man.” But he lost. In 1853, the majority held that “a negro, whose ancestors were imported into [the U.S], and sold as slaves,” whether free or enslaved, could never be deemed an American citizen. It was therefore determined that Dred Scott did not even have the standing to sue in Federal court. Because the Court lacked jurisdiction, the case was dismissed on procedural grounds. African Americans still weren’t treated as real people; they were seen as other; the white men of society were constantly one step ahead of them.

According to Du Bois, “in all walks of life the Negro is liable to meet some objection to his presence or some discourteous treatment; and the ties of friendship or memory seldom are strong enough to hold across the color line.” The line that separated black and white, in Du Bois’ opinion, always came first. It didn’t matter how intellectual or kind or hard-working the individual was, because the boundary that divided these two groups of people was visible. And yet there were people, like Du Bois himself, who launched themselves over the line in pursuit of equality:

I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil. Is this the life you grudge us, O knightly America?

Representative of this call for action was The Crisis, a newspaper founded by W.E.B. Du Bois. According to him, its purpose was to “set forth those facts and arguments which show the danger of race prejudice, particularly as manifested today toward colored people” (Du Bois). This idea was highlighted in a May 1919 editorial, when Du Bois and others witnessed the horrific treatment of black soldiers returning from Europe to the United states, including the lynchings of several while still wearing the uniform of the U.S. Army.

Du Bois was outraged, writing, “We stand again to look America squarely in the face and call a spade a spade. We sing: This country of ours, despite all its better souls have done and dreamed, is yet a shameful land.” This newspaper was an important medium for young black writers during the Harlem Renaissance, and it fostered a sense of community for African Americans who desperately wanted to make change. For example, though not as well known as Du Bois, Jessie Redmon Fauset was known as one of the “midwives of the Harlem Renaissance,” and had several of her poems published in The Crisis, such as “Rondeau” and “Stars in Alabama.”

However, during this time period, scattered individuals weren’t enough. The line that divided black and white latched on to divide north and south, as well. It’s clear that in the years leading up to the Civil War these two spheres of America were incommensurable. Where the south wanted to protect states’ rights, the north thought a strong centralized government was necessary. Where the South maintained an agrarian economy, the North was increasingly urbanizing. Where, in the words of David Potter, the south maintained a gemeinschaft culture, with its “its emphasis of tradition, rural life, close kinship ties, a hierarchical social structure… and masculine codes of honor and chivalry,” the north was becoming gesellschaft, “with its impersonal, bureaucratic, meritocratic, urbanizing, commercial, industrializing, mobile, and rootless characteristics”. And most significantly, where the South had slaves, the North didn’t.

But the end of the Civil War didn’t suddenly bring them together. President Abraham Lincoln issued the Proclamation of Amnesty in 1863, which granted states the ability to re-enter the union if ten percent of the states swore an oath of allegiance. He took a conciliatory approach, because more than anything, he wanted America to become a unified country again. However, much of the north didn’t share the same view. They wished to crucify the south for the damage they inflicted on American soil, and the Reconstruction began. Military forces occupied the south, and tensions rose rapidly. Just as it seemed like the color line was fading between Black and White Americans, the line between the north and south was a bold red.

Du Bois seemed to express a similar viewpoint. In his The Souls of Black Folk, he claims, “To-Day the two groups of Negros, the one in the North, the other in the South, represent… divergent ethical tendencies.” Black people weren’t just treated differently from white people—they were treated differently among each other. According to Du Bois,

... the young Negro of the South who would succeed cannot be frank and outspoken, honest and self-assertive, but rather he is daily tempted to be silent and wary, politic and sly; he must flatter and be pleasant, endure petty insults with a smile, shut his eyes to wrong; in too many cases he sees positive personal advantage in deception and lying. His real thoughts, his real aspirations, must be guarded in whispers; he must not criticise, he must not complain. Patience, humility, and adroitness must, in these growing black youth, replace impulse, manliness, and courage. With this sacrifice there is an economic opening, and perhaps peace and some prosperity. Without this there is riot, migration, or crime.

Du Bois said it more succinctly when he claimed that “the price of culture is a Lie.” At least in the South, that is. For in the North,

The soul, long pent up and dwarfed, suddenly expands in new-found freedom. What wonder that every tendency is to excess,—radical complaint, radical remedies, bitter denunciation or angry silence. Some sink, some rise. The criminal and the sensualist leave the church for the gambling-hell and the brothel, and fill the slums of Chicago and Baltimore; the better classes segregate themselves from the group-life of both white and black, and form an aristocracy, cultured but pessimistic, whose bitter criticism stings while it points out no way of escape. They despise the submission and subserviency of the Southern Negroes, but offer no other means by which a poor and oppressed minority can exist side by side with its masters.

How were black Americans supposed to live and coexist with so many different expectations put on them? They were told to act one way in the south, another in the north, all the while facing “...a peculiar wrenching of the soul.” In Du Bois’ words, “...back of this still broods silently the deep religious feeling of the real Negro heart, the stirring, unguided might of powerful human souls who have lost the guiding star of the past.” African Americans were no longer slaves, but they weren’t free, either.

The Color Line does not merely discuss the separation of Black and White people in 20th century America—it is the separation of America itself, and it’s a line that has been blurred and bolded continuously throughout the course of American history.