Martin Delany (1812-1885): To Be More Than Equal
By
Jim Surkamp
For
more information on Martin Delany go on the Internet to:
http://www.libraries.wvu.edu/delany/home.htm
Martin
Robison Delany had within him a great President - but had no followers because
he was too far ahead of his time, this brilliant, confident, take-charge,
jet-black man who rebuked a slave-smitten nation, armed with his African roots
and Methodist drive.
This
moral engine of a man had a motto: "Act in the living present - but act! Face thine accusers, scorn the rack and rod,
and if thou hath truth to utter, speak the truth, and leave the rest to God.”
Born
in Charles Town to a freed black family, Delany went on to become a
Harvard-educated doctor; author of four weighty books; leader of his own,
year-long scientific expedition to West Africa’s Niger River Valley; the first
black field officer in the U.S. Army; the co- editor of "The North Star" (which he shamed
Frederick Douglas into starting); inventor; father; husband; and, probably the
most important black man in South Carolina in the pivotal election of
1876.
He
rose before the world's most prestigious scientific body in 1860 in London,
faced the United States' ambassador, coolly pointing out after pleasantries to
the chair: "I am a Man" - fighting words that cleared the room and
headlined newspapers worldwide, behavior typical only for him.
No
wonder Abraham Lincoln, after basking in Delany's presence early one February
morning in 1865, exclaimed in a letter to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton:
"Do not fail to have an interview with this most extraordinary and
intelligent black man." Lincoln's
meeting a year before with the better-known leader of black Americans, Frederick
Douglas, was hardly so positive.
So
we all share W. E. B. DuBois' deep puzzlement expressed to a reporter from the
"Pittsburgh Courier" in 1936: "His was a magnificent life, yet
why is it we know so little of him?"
Delany
moved so quickly with the times, he never aligned himself with one institution,
that could have kept alive his memory. His letters were lost in a fire
destroying Wilberforce College’s library in Xenia, Ohio. Delany lambasted leaders of the white-run
abolitionist movement for keeping blacks out of leadership positions; while
Douglass demurred. The nearly perfect absence of any mention of Delany in the
five volumes of "Frederick
Douglass' Papers" had its reasons.
Delany
fought for radical reforms after the War wearing the uniform of a Union Major
in South Carolina, while Douglass accepted a post-mastership in the federal
government – a contrast in courage that cooled their relationship further.
Routinely
abandoned from behind and deceived in front, Delany always grabbed the next
risk and shook it, saying things that caused headlines and riots. He has the
unique distinction of having been pursued by an angry, white mob in Ohio for
saying one thing; and then, twenty-five years later, being pursued by an angry,
black mob in South Carolina for saying another. “Speak the truth and leave the
rest to God!”
Obnoxiously
opinionated and sure on his face he was, but while selflessly serving a
movingly pure and fiery guidance - always and constantly. You never find him
with a hand in the till or calling white black.
I
came to know this forgotten seer one letter and keystroke at a time, when I
typed by hand some four hundred pages of Delany's writings and what others
wrote about him. I got to know him,
layer-by-layer, as I built a web site about him. I came to almost hear, as my
hands scrambled in bursts for hours over the computer keyboard, his lion heart
beating Yoruba missives and Methodist hymns.
Martin
Delany was born May 8, 1812 in Charles Town, one of five children to Patty
Delany, a freed black, and Samuel, who would buy his own freedom.
He
grew up hearing stories of the founding fathers, because the town was created
by resident Charles Washington, George's brother. His grandmother, Graci Peace, owned their house and, like Patty,
was a seamstress and washerwoman. Nightly she taught Martin in story form his
Yoruba origins and instilled the family tradition to refuse the lash of any
man’s whip.
According
to his biography written in 1868 by Frank Rollin (a nom de plume of Frances
Rollin), Delany's paternal grandfather was killed for refusing to be whipped.
And his father, Samuel, who worked on a farm in Middleway adjacent to the first
sizeable land purchase of young George Washington, nearly got himself killed by
forcibly preventing his overseer, most likely one "Edward Violett,"
from whipping him.
One
day a traveling peddler, named Rankin, came through town selling pewter and
knick knacks, when he exchanged with Patty Delany a small book called "The
New York Primer for Spelling and Reading," a popular book for teaching
reading and writing. State law forbade persons of color to learn to read and
write.
Her
children taught each other to read under the arbor in their back yard. Soon,
crudely written travel passes began turning up in the hands of enslaved blacks
in town. About that same time, Samuel had faced off with his overseer and tore
Violett's clothes off (reportedly eight
times) as Violett tried to give him a whipping. Samuel was finally knocked
unconscious by a thrown rock and jailed.
As
the town constable inveigled Patty's children to admit to forging the travel
passes, town banker, Randal Brown, advised the respected Patty Delany to flee
to the North and arranged for the sale of Graci Peace's parcel. Ostensibly on a weekend trip to next of kin,
the Delanys, one day in 1823, slipped into Maryland near Williamsport and then
on to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania and lasting freedom. Samuel, raising money,
perhaps from the sale of Graci Peace's property, bought his freedom and joined
them.
The
family chose gifted Martin to achieve on the grander stage of life. When he was
nineteen, he set out on foot for Pittsburgh to become a barber and laborer. He
had already read of Africa and heard Grandma Graci's stories of his grand
father, Shango - her husband - who returned to Africa on the grounds of having
royal blood. And he resolved on that trek to Pittsburgh to someday visit
Africa.
Physicians
noticed his skills and trained him to be a cupper and leecher, adding to his
knowledge.
In
1839, he made a journey into the Deep South to New Orleans, Arkansas and parts
of Texas, accompanying one of these physicians. Delany later described an
unforgettable scene - which he pointedly foot-noted as actual in his later
novel "Blake: The Huts of America" - of a young boy trained by the
cue of his overseer's whip lash to entertain a crowd, alternately, by dancing,
barking, laughing, singing, praying, and cursing. Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin," which she
wrote with very little first-hand knowledge of the South, infuriated Delany
into writing "Blake" as a reply. This novel, about a traveling
insurrectionist, was the subject of a PhD dissertation in 1980 by Gloria
Horsley Meachem. She concluded that
"Blake" more accurately depicted the antebellum South than either of
two, much better known works: Herman Melville's "Benito Cerreno" and
Stowe's albeit stirring piece of propaganda.
His
vast life could not prepare Delany for the final act of his drama, which left
him a man with a faith only in a Sweet Hereafter, the final strut in his faith
in America, the land of the free, kicked away. That destiny played so cruelly
on all his dearest hopes is disquieting. We are left with a man so great,
fallen like massive stone, being swallowed by a tragic sunset whose fading
vision is stirred only by the faint murmuring of Ghanian drums. What was it?
Major
Delany threw considerable support and speaking efforts to Wade Hampton, the
Democratic candidate for Governor in South Carolina in 1876. Hampton won by the
slimmest margin. Governor-elect Hampton
then sat on a special commission that chose Rutherford Hayes as the winner in a
dead-heat election for the Presidency - in exchange for the removal of Federal
troops from South Carolina. In short, Delany inadvertently served his own worst
nightmare.
The
much lived, care-worn Delany turned for Ohio to be a doctor one last time and
put his children through school - with what little spirit was left in him.
In
1880, he stood on the Charleston dock as the ship, the "Azor" - full
of people - set sail for Africa, just like before, to build the Pilgrim
Kingdom. But only after they honored him as the one who inspired them with
hope. He waved until their ship of hope shrunk on the horizon. His heart went
with them.