Category: African American

Categories
1920s African American Short Story

How Mr. Crocodile Got His Rough Back

How Mr. Crocodile Got His Rough Back

By Julian Elihu Bagley
Annotations by josh benjamin
George Shaw. Common Crocodile. Print, 1809, New York Public Library Digital Collections.

IT was a bleak November afternoon in New York City. To be more exact it was in Harlem. The snow was falling fast, and between the long row of high dwellings on 135th Street thousands of flakes were whirling, swirling about much the same as goose feathers would whirl if dumped from some high building into a rushing wind. The sun had long since hid his face, while the white fleecy clouds of the morning were fast changing into a cold, cold gray. It was too cold for the kiddies to go out. So in the high windows dozens of them could be seen watching the grown-ups hurrying along the street below. Occasionally some one tripped on the sidewalk. Then the youngsters could be seen tumbling back into their houses in an uproar of laughter.

Among these children was a little curly headed boy named Cless. But Cless had a different purpose from the other boys and girls. He was looking for the letter carrier. For every day Cless received some pretty post card from his father who was then working in a hotel at Palm Beach, Florida.

“What will it be today, and why doesn’t the mail man come on?” thought Cless. Finally the postman turned into 135th Street and made his way to the entrance of the building in which the little boy lived. Cless ran down to meet him. The postman handed him a card. On one side was Cless’ address, on the other a picture of a little colored boy riding a big crocodile. Cless was both disappointed and frightened.

Aubrey Pollard. 135th St near 5th Ave. Photograph, 1938, New York Public Library Digital Collections.
This photo shows part of the Harlem neighborhood.

“Oo-ee! what an ugly thing this is,” he shouted as he turned and walked into the elevator.

“Let me see?” asked the elevator boy.

Cless handed him the card.

“Sure is ugly! And that’s the thing that eats little colored boys. See all them rough bumps on his back? Well, they are the toes of little colored babies sticking up under his skin. That’s Mister Crocodile,” concluded the elevator boy. “He used to have a smooth back before he began to eat little colored babies, but now it’s rough.”

Little Cless was very much frightened, and as soon as the elevator reached his floor he dashed out and went running to his apartment crying: “Granny! Granny! oh Granny, look what daddy sent me today—a big ugly crocodile! And I hear he eats little colored babies. Granny, is it true? Is it true, Granny?”

“Why certainly not, Cless. Who in the world told Granny’s little man such a story?”

“Elevator boy, Granny-elevator boy,” answered little Cless between sobs. And a little later he stopped crying and told his grandmother the story just as the elevator boy had told him.

“It’s no such a thing, it’s no such a thing,” said Granny. “Why don’t you know frogs were the real cause of crocodiles having rough backs?”

“How’s that, Granny? Please tell me—tell me quick, Granny, please,” begged little Cless.

“All right, I’ll tell you,” promised Granny, “for I certainly don’t want my little man scared to pieces with such ugly stories.” Now little Cless felt relieved. He hopped into Granny’s lap, huddled up close to her side and listened to her story of how the crocodile got his rough back.

Miner Kilbourne Kellogg. Nile. Pencil on paper, n.d., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

“A long, long time ago,” she said, “in Africa, down on the River Nile there lived a fierce old crocodile. And this was the first crocodile in the world. Before him there were no others. Now this crocodile lived in a cluster of very thick brush, and, although there were many other animals in the swamp larger than he, he was king of them all. Every day some poor creature was seized and crushed to death between this cruel monster’s jaws. He was especially fond of frogs and used to crush dozens of them to death every day. Now the frogs could hop faster than the crocodile could run and he never caught them in a fair race. But he always got the best of them by hiding in the mud until some poor frog came paddling along and then he would nab him and crush him to death between his big saw-teeth. Of course this was easy, for at that time Mister Crocodile had a smooth, black back, and it was so much like the mud that the frogs could never tell where he was.

“But one day a happy thought struck Mister Bull Frog who was king of all the frogs in that swamp. He thought it would be a good idea to pile some lumps of mud on the crocodile’s back, and then the frogs could always tell where he was. This plan was gladly accepted by all the frogs in the swamp. So the next time the crocodile crawled into the mud to take his winter nap, Mister Bull Frog and all the other frogs went to the place where the monster lay and daubed a thousand little piles of mud on his back. And when they had finished they could see him from almost any part of the swamp. Now they knew they were safe. How happy they were! They all joined hands, formed a big circle around the sleeping crocodile, and while Mister Bull Frog beat time on his knee the others shouted this jingle so hard that their little throats puffed out like a rubber ball:
‘Ho, Mister Crocodile, king of the Nile,
We got you fixed for a long, long while.
Deedle dum, dum, dum, deedle dum day,
Makes no difference what you say!’

Original illustration by Laura Wheeler from The Brownies’ Book, p. 324.

“They shouted this jingle over and over again. And the last time they sang it Mister Bull Frog got so happy he stopped beating time, jumped up in the air, cut a step or two, then joined in the chorus with his big heavy voice:
‘Honkey-tonkey tunk, tunk, tink tunk tunk!
Honkey-tonkey, tunk, tunk, tink tunk tunk!’
And when all the singing and dancing were over the little frogs went home.

“But Mister Bull Frog chose to stay and watch the crocodile. All winter long the crocodile lay in the mud. Nevertheless the Bull Frog kept a close watch over him. Each day the lumps of mud that the frogs had stuck on his back were growing harder and harder.

“At last spring came. The sleepy creature awoke and immediately began to shake his back and flop his tail. But the more he did this the madder he became. Finally he was just whirling ’round and ’round in the mud, biting himself on the tail and groaning, ‘Honk! honk! honk!’ But the lumps of mud had done their work. They were there to stay. And finding it of no use to wiggle he crawled out on the bank of the river and began to look for something to eat. Nothing could be found on the shore, however, so he slipped back into the muddy water to see if he could catch some frogs. In this he failed, for no longer could he hide himself. No matter how much his skin looked like the mud, the little frogs could always tell where he lay by his rough back.

“So ever since that day little frogs have lived in perfect safety along the banks of the River Nile or any other place so far as crocodiles are concerned. And as for Mister Crocodile himself, he has gone on and on even down to this day with his rough scaly back. And this is how he got it Cless,” ended Granny, “and not by eating little colored babies.”

Dave Menke. Rana catesbeiana. Photograph, 1997,
Digital Public Library of America.

Little Cless had followed every word of Granny’s with eager interest. Now he smiled a smile of relief, thanked her for the story, jumped from her lap and skipped out to join the happy group of little children who were still peeping into the street from their windows. Here Cless showed his crocodile to as many children as were close enough to see it. And to those who were nearest he told the story over and over again of how the crocodile got his rough back.

Bagley, Julian elihu. “How Mr. crocodile got his rough back.” The brownies’ book 1, No. 11 (November 1920): 323-25.
Contexts

This issue of The Brownies’ Book was published the same month as the first U.S. presidential election following World War I, which was influenced by the postwar economic recession and reactions to the policies of Woodrow Wilson, who was not nominated for a third term despite requesting the Democratic candidacy. Bagley had served during the war in the U.S. Army, which still featured segregated units.

The mention of Palm Beach ties this story to Bagley’s home state (where he would set his later book of animal folktales, Candle-Lighting Time in Bodilalee), while the mention of Harlem (a district that makes up a large part of northern Manhattan, New York City) is also significant. The Harlem Renaissance was growing, with an influx of returning soldiers and people relocating from around the country, contributing to the new culture. Residences on 135th St. were prominent destinations due to their ownership by African-American realtors.

The story is in the tradition of African-American folktales, which sought to preserve the storytelling traditions that were an important piece of heritage for many Americans. As Henry Louis Gates, Jr. notes in his foreword to The Annotated American Folktales [1], “not only did the captured Africans bring their languages, their music, their gods, and many other salient features of their cultures along with them, they quickly learned to communicate with each other across language barriers not only on their own plantations and other sites of enslavement but across longer distances as well. And the telling and retelling of folktales from Africa, as well as those retold and, in the process, creatively reinvented from African and European sources, along with those invented on the spot, were crucial components of identity-formation and psychic survival under the harshest of circumstances, key aspects in the shaping of an ‘African American’ cultures, a culture built on both African and European Old World foundations, yet one original and new.”

In her introduction to the same book, Maria Tatar explains that “folk narratives, told in the fields and in cabins, are in many ways a significant part of an American vernacular tradition that preserved collective mother wit and wisdom in the form of story. Sometimes they were heard in snatches of conversation or in other bits and pieces of talk, and sometimes they were performed formally as a story—for young and old, rich and poor, men and women, black and white, slaves and masters.”

Resources for Further Study
Contemporary Connections

Visitors to 135th St. in Harlem can follow the walk of fame, a series of diamond-shaped plaques set in the sidewalk to commemorate the neighborhood’s famous and influential residents.

[1] Gates, Henry Louis, and Maria Tatar. The Annotated African American Folktales. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W. W. Norton & Company, 2018.

Categories
1920s African American Autobiography Birds Seasons Sketch

The Birds at My Door

The Birds at My Door

By Mary Effie Lee
Annotations by Catherine Bowlin
Lee, Mary Effie. “The Birds at My Door.” 1920. From the fourth volume of The Brownies’ Book, 105. W. E. B. Du Bois, ed., http://www.loc.gov/item/22001351/.

IF you live in the country, you can have many interesting experiences with birds. One morning, at about seven o’clock, last March, I discovered a fawn-colored screech owl perched disconsolately upon the upper sash of a window which had been left lowered from the top all night. [1] The owl, uttering faint croons, peered about as if trying to discover where he had spent the night. It was many minutes after my finding him, that he fluttered heavily away. My first cry of surprise seemed in no wise to have disturbed him. 

Once, at this same window, I found a chimney swift, clinging desperately to the screen. The bird had flown in at the top of the window and landed just inside, against the screen below. He was quivering with fear.

For countless springs, the swifts, or swallows, had taken up their abode in a south chimney of our house. We could hear them often at night, in the brick-walled home. They seemed always to be “cuddling down”, yet never to get quite “cuddled” to their satisfaction. The little bell-like twitterings would be sounding, I imagined, whenever I awoke.

At dusk, when the sky was lavender, the swallows would flutter in graceful groups, trilling, swirling high over our heads. [2] How well I can see them now!––grouping themselves, breaking ranks, then flitting together. But as to having come into close contact with our neighbors, the swifts, that pleasure had not been mine till I found the frightened bird on the window screen. [3]

“Ah, here you are at last, little lodger,” I thought, and my heart bounded as it had when I first discovered an oriole’s nest. “We have slept in the same house many nights,” I said gently. “You should not fear me now.” 

But the swallow said, with its every twitch, “Oh, please don’t touch me,––don’t touch me!” [4]

I watched it a minute, before setting it free. Swallows in motion, gnat-catching, are more pleasing to look upon than swallows in repose. When one is clinging to your screen, you think, “What a queer, little, long-winged bird; dark, with here and there touches of weather-beaten-shingle gray; tiny black beak and strange stubby tail, with extended spines that seem to hold it to the screen like black basting threads!”

Rather a mousy-looking little creature, somehow, it seemed to me. Its prominent black eyes appeared to add to the suggestion.

Lee, Mary Effie. “The Birds at My Door.” 1920. From the fourth volume of The Brownies’ Book, 106. W. E. B. Du Bois, ed., http://www.loc.gov/item/22001351/.

Speaking of bright dark eyes, reminds me of the humming-bird that was imprisoned one August day on my back porch. [5] She––for the little bird lacked the crimson throat that marks the male hummer––frantically imagined herself a captive, till she found that only the west end of the porch was incased in glass, and all the rest consisted of railing and lattice work. But while she was discovering this, I had an opportunity to watch her.

For a long time, I saw only a blinding grayish blur of perpetual motion. Then the hummingbird paused on the framework of the window, and I noticed the sheen on her splendid moss-green feathers, and marvelled at tiny black claws, minute enough to have been fashioned from wire hairpins. I heard a faint, “Chirp, chirp.” Yet, when I was a child, someone had told me that humming-birds made no sound aside from the buzzing produced by their wings in motion.

While writing of sounds, I think of a songbird, the brown thrasher, and a surprise that the thrashers once gave me. [6] On a sunny morning in spring, I came upon a pile of brush at the back of the orchard. Peeping at me through the mass of twigs, was a certain old Plymouth Rock hen, that I had always suspected of being a little daft. [7] Her ways were wild and strange. She delighted in hatching eggs in outlandish places. I went to discover upon what she was sitting. And what do you think I beheld just above Mrs. Plymouth Rock? I found a brown thrasher there, nesting complacently in what you might call the second story of the brush heap. Her glassy yellow eyes glared at me coldly, as if to say, “If it suits Mrs. Plymouth Rock and me–––” 

But who can account for the whims of birds? One summer day, a most amazing sight met my eyes. Flat on the ground in the back pasture, I found the nest of a mourning-dove! [8] Mother Dove fluttered off, with that gentle, high-keyed plaint that she uses in flight, and left me to gaze at the nest of faded rootlets and two woefully ugly fledglings with long gray breaks. Their shallow nest was on a particularly damp-looking spot of earth. After one recovered from the little shock of finding the brood on the ground, one’s heart was filled with pity. The sight was so cheerless. [9]

I thought of the oriole’s comely basket, high in the golden light, where it swung from the tip of a poplar branch. [10] I thought of a neat song-sparrow’s nest that I had just seen hidden under the “eaves” of a Norway spruce hedge, where the song-sparrows spend the winter.

They come out on every mild morning to sing a little, even when Cardinal is silent. You recall their sharp knife-like notes. Ever ready to make cheer, the song-sparrows would seem to live a life free from trouble. Yet they know what it is to have their hedge haunted by wily cats, on winter evenings, when the cold birds are fluttering to shelter; and at dusk, in spring, when Mother Sparrow is directing her awkward, freckled birdlings to some nook for safety. [11]

Oh, I cannot tell how indignant it made me once to discover in the nest of Mother Song-Sparrow, two cowbird eggs, flecked with cocoa-brown like hers, but a trifle larger. Unsuspecting little Song-Sparrow, would have five instead of three eggs to tend, while the cowbird went swaggering with her noisy comrades up and down the pasture, in the wake of the cows.

As I write, this pasture is white with snow. For it is a January day, and cold. Five crows have come up from the woods, to peck at the corn stubble in what was once a pasture and then a cornfield. They strut over the snowy surface and pull at the bits of stalk. But they never come to feast when I feed Titmouse, with his golden hoard under each wing, and Chickadee, wearing the jaunty black skullcap, and making small sounds like corks screwing in bottles. [12]

Hawkins, Marcellus. Front cover. 1920. From the fourth volume of The Brownies’ Book, 97. W. E. B. Du Bois, ed., The Brownies’ Book, www.loc.gov/item/22001351/.
Lee, Mary Effie. “The Birds at My Door.” The Brownies’ Book, ed. W. E. B. Du Bois, vol. 1, no. 4, New York, N.Y.: DuBois and Dill, April 1920. 105-106. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/22001351/>.
Contexts

This nonfiction text blends both animal welfare and natural history. Lee describes and animates many different types of birds, but important to note is Lee’s evocation of readers’ sympathy. The young author “anthropomorphizes and feminizes” the animals throughout the text as a way to teach moral lessons to her young readers (Kilcup 306, full citation below). Lee’s nonfiction demonstrates her ability to write informally and with a child-like tone, while also drawing important and mature connections about animal welfare.

Resources for Further Study
  • The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Birds of the World: All About Birds
  • Kilcup, Karen. Stronger, Truer, Bolder: American Children’s Writing, Nature, and the Environment. University of Georgia Press, 2021.

[1] Either a Western Screech-Owl or an Eastern Screech-Owl

[2] There are many kinds of Swallows, including Tree, Barn, Cave, Bank, Cliff, etc.

[3] Again, many types of Swifts, including Chimney, Vaux’s, Black, White-throated, Violet-green, etc.

[4] Lee anthropomorphizes the swallow here.

[5] Types of Humming-birds: Anna’s, Lucifer, Rufous, Rivoli’s, Costa’s, etc.

[6] The Brown Thrasher is difficult to see in brush as its coloring blends in.

[7] An American breed of a domestic chicken.

[8] The Mourning-Dove is a graceful and common bird in the US.

[9] Here, Lee evokes sympathy from her readers.

[10] Many types of Orioles, including Baltimore, Orchard, Hooded, Scott’s, Audubon’s, etc.

[11] Lee draws attention to the birds’ vulnerability during the winter season.

[12] Types of Titmouse: Tufted, Bridled, Juniper, etc. & types of Chickadee: Carolina, Mountain, Boreal, etc.

Categories
1920s African American Fairies Fairy Tale Short Story

The Fairies’ Flower Garden

The Fairies’ Flower Garden

By Grace White
Annotations by Catherine Bowlin
Wilkinson, Hilda. “The Fairies’ Flower Garden” 1920. From the fourth volume of The Brownies’ Book, 131. W. E. B. Du Bois, ed., http://www.loc.gov/item/22001351/.

GRANDMA CAREY, a little, old, white-haired lady of the village, had the most beautiful flower garden of all. No one had flowers to bloom as early as Grandma Carey and nobody’s lived as long; and no one, not even in the whole village, had flowers to match Grandma Carey’s in color. Her flowers had the richest hues, her rambling roses, the pinkest tint, and her pansies were almost dazzling in their bright color. When anyone was sick a flower from Grandma Carey’s garden was the first aid to recovery. 

When visitors asked Grandma Carey how she obtained such glorious colors, she would laugh and her little eyes would twinkle merrily as she said, “Land sakes, I don’t do nothin’; that garden belongs to the fairies!”

No wonder Grandma Carey had such a beautiful garden, the fairies lived there! 

But soon there came a morning when the flowers didn’t hold up their heads, but hung them in shame. What could have happened? All the children and even the grown-ups of the village came hurrying to Grandma Carey’s cottage. And this is how she explained it.

For a long, long time the fairies had been planning and preparing for the Queen’s annual dance. They collected all the sweet honey and nectar and all the bright golden pollen for miles and miles around. For this year at the Queen’s annual dance they were to entertain with great ceremony and pomp, the King of the Gnomes. Everything was ready, from the sweet food of the fairies to the beautiful fairy carriages which were driven by golden-winged beetles. And the King of the Gnomes didn’t arrive! Imagine the anger and disappointment of the fairies! So they neglected their homes, (which are the roses and pansies and nearly all the flowers), to meet at the fairy palace to talk and wonder about the King of the Gnomes.

“But,” said Grandma Carey, slowly, “I know why the King of the Gnomes didn’t arrive on time. While crossing a meadow he happened to notice a tiny, neglected field and in the center a tiny, neglected cottage standing all alone. And it looked so forlorn and forgotten that the King of the Gnomes expressed a desire to visit it. 

“‘But,’ said the Count of the Gnomes, ‘we are on our way to visit Her Majesty, The Queen of the Fairies!’

“‘I wish to visit that cottage,’ said the King, ‘and I shall do so.’

“And so the King of the Gnomes visited the forlorn looking cottage. If one would call the outside forlorn, one should see the inside, that was most forlorn! For on a cot in the corner of the room lay a little girl moaning and tossing in pain, crying always, incessantly for flowers, bright flowers.

Wilkinson, Hilda. “The Fairies’ Flower Garden” 1920. From the fourth volume of The Brownies’ Book, 132. W. E. B. Du Bois, ed., http://www.loc.gov/item/22001351/.

“‘We have work here,’ said the King softly. ‘Let us begin.’ So all the King’s men started to work and they worked harder and harder. Now when one works hard one accomplishes something; and the King’s men really did accomplish something. For the next morning the little field around the cottage was cleared of its rubbish and weeds and in their place grew beautiful, bright flowers! Imagine the surprise and joy of little Margaret Marnie when she saw her lovely garden! 

“And so today when the King left, Margaret Marnie was sitting on the steps softly talking and caressing her bright flowers. Margaret Marnie was well again. Now,” continued Grandma Carey, “the King of the Gnomes is on his way to visit the Queen of the Fairies and when he arrives the Queen will forget her temper. The King will apologize and all will be peace again. For the King of the Gnomes is going to ask for the Queen’s hand in marriage and I think she will accept. Their honeymoon will be spent visiting Margaret Marnie’s garden, then they will come back to live forever in my garden. When they do, then my flowers will become beautiful again.”

Thus Grandma Carey ended her story. Yes, even as she spoke the flowers raised their heads; their color returned, the King of the Gnomes had arrived.

Once more Grandma Carey had the most beautiful garden of all. And strange to say, Grandma Carey’s flowers never lost their bloom again, and so we conclude that the King of the Gnomes and the Queen of the Fairies are living very happily in their beautiful garden of flowers. 

White, Grace. “The Fairies’ Flower Garden.” The Brownies’ Book, ed. W. E. B. Du Bois, vol. 1, no. 5, New York, N.Y.: DuBois and Dill, May 1920. 131-133. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/22001351/>.
Contexts

Racial uplift is the ideology that educated Black people are responsible for the welfare of the majority of the race. This ideology describes a prominent response of Black middle-class leaders, spokespersons, and activists to the crisis marked by the assault on the civil and political rights of African Americans primarily in the U. S. South from roughly the 1880s to 1914.

Resources for Further Study
  • For an analysis of fairies in The Brownies’ Book, see Fern Kory’s article, “Once Upon a Time in Aframerica: The ‘Peculiar’ Significance of Fairies in the Brownies’ Book” in the 2001 volume of Children’s Literature. Full citation for this source: Kory, Fern. “Once upon a Time in Aframerica: The “Peculiar” Significance of Fairies in the Brownies’ Book.” Children’s Literature, vol. 29. (2001): 91-112. ProQuest, https://login.libproxy.uncg.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/195575070?accountid=14604.
  • See also the section “Fairies in The Brownies’ Book as Symbols of Assimilationism” from Amanda Ashley Jones’s history thesis, With a Sprinkle of Fairy Dust and a Splash of Color, in which the author discusses fairies as symbolic of assimilationism in the racial uplift movement.

Categories
1850s African American Poem

Bury Me in a Free Land

Bury Me in a Free Land

By Frances Ellen Watkins
Annotations by celia Hawley/JB
Childe Hassam. Colonial Graveyard at Lexington. Pastel drawing, 1891, Smithsonian American
Art Museum and its Renwick Gallery, Washington, D.C.
You may make my grave wherever you will,
   In a lowly vale or a lofty hill;
You may make it among the earth's humblest graves,
   But not in a land where men are slaves.

I could not sleep if around my grave
   I hear the steps of a trembling slave;
His shadow above my silent tomb
   Would make it a place of fearful gloom.

I could not rest if I heard the tread
   Of a coffle gang to the shambles led,
And the mother's shriek of wild despair
   Rise like a curse on the trembling air.

I could not rest if I heard the lash
   Drinking her blood at each fearful gash,
And I saw her babes torn from her breast
   Like trembling doves from their parent nest.
Artist unknown. A Slave Auction in Virginia. Print, 1861, New York Public Library Digital Collections.
I'd shudder and start if I heard the bay
   Of the bloodhounds seizing their human prey;
If I heard the captive plead in vain
   As they tightened afresh his galling chain.

If I saw young girls, from their mothers' arms
   Bartered and sold for their youthful charms
My eye would flash with a mournful flame,
   My death-paled cheek grow red with shame.

I would sleep, dear friends, where bloated might
   Can rob no man of his dearest right;
My rest shall be calm in any grave.
    Where none calls his brother a slave.

I ask no monument proud and high
   To arrest the gaze of passers by;
All that my spirit yearning craves,
   Is—bury me not in the land of slaves.—
Charles Nicolas Ransonnette. A Cemetery in a Village. Graphite, brush and wash, pen and ink on tissue
paper, c. 1840-1870, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, NY.
Watkins, Frances Ellen. “Bury me in a free land.” The Anti-Slavery Bugle 14, no. 13 (November 1858): 3.
Contexts

The burial of slaves and formerly enslaved people is another area of large-scale erasure and invisibility and is a concern for historians, researchers, and descendants. There are efforts in many locations to restore cemeteries and burial places, in Mount Vernon, near Clemson University, and Rhode Island, to mention just a few.

The Guardian’s poem of the week article from February 2017 breaks down the poem and touches on Harper’s background. The Archives of Maryland has a more extensive biography and additional resources.

Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:

coffle: A train of people or animals fastened together; spec. a gang of slaves chained and driven along together.

shambles: 2. In Old English, a table or counter for exposing goods for sale, counting money, etc. A table or stall for the sale of meat. 3. A place where meat is sold, a flesh- or meat-market. 4. The place where animals are killed for meat; a slaughterhouse. 5. A place of carnage or wholesale slaughter; a scene of blood. In more general use, a scene of disorder or devastation; a ruin; a mess.

Resources for Further Study
Contemporary Connections

An excerpt from Harper’s poem is inscribed on a wall of the Contemplative Court, a space for reflection in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. The excerpt reads: “I ask no monument, proud and high to arrest the gaze of the passers-by; all that my yearning spirit craves is bury me not in a land of slaves.”

Categories
African American Poem

Lines Addressed to a Wreath of Flowers, Designed as a Present for Mary Ann

Lines Addressed to a Wreath of Flowers, Designed as a Present for Mary Ann [1]

Selected By E. S. Webb [2]
Annotations by Celia Hawley
Wreath of Flowers by John La Farge, 1866, oil on canvas


Go, pretty little motley group of sweetness [3]
Present yourself to Mary, and with neatness
Commend my friendship—show your colors forth—

Cabinet card of a woman, photograph by William J. Kuebler, Jr., 1885-1892 Place captured: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, subject unidentified [4]


Breathe all your fragrance and disclose your worth,
And tell her, beauty’s fate, like flowers gay,
Is but to bloom a moment—then decay.
Go smile in the light of that hazel eye;
Rejoice in the shade of those raven tresses—[5]
And tell her, ere your beauties die,
They’re only blessed whom virtue blesses.

Violets by Pauline Powell Burns, oil on cardboard
Lines addressed To a wreath of Flowers, designed as a present for Mary Ann Selected by e. S. webb

[1] From Mary Ann Dickerson Friendship Album, n.d. Library Company of
Philadelphia Digital Collection, 45. “Album belonging to Mary Anne Dickerson, a young middle-class African American Philadelphian, probably created as a pedagogical instrument to promote cultivated expression, with contributions dating from 1833 until 1882. Contains engraved plates depicting scenic views, and original and transcribed poems, prose, essays, and drawings on topics including friendship, motherhood, mortality, youth, death, flowers, female beauty, and refinement.” Digital Library Company

[2] We cannot be sure who authored these lines, and have only the name of the person who chose them for inclusion in Mary Anne’s album.

[3] Motley Incongruously varied in appearance; disparate or messy

[4] Cabinet card A style of photograph first introduced in London, 1863. A photographic print mounted on card stock suitable for display in cabinets, often visible in parlors.

[5] Raven Black or very dark

Contexts

Cassey & Dickerson Friendship Album Project, History & Materiality: More than tokens of female expressionism, women’s friendship albums are artistic gems rich for material culture studies. From the bindings to the beautiful calligraphy, such volumes are relics of artistic portrayals of feminine identity and thought. By shedding insight on the process by which friendship albums are created, the political and literary aspects of these materials can be understood in a wider context. Friendship albums (and complementary gift books) are prime specimens of the commodification of American print culture. Marketed with beautiful bindings, often black morocco leather, these volumes typically manufactured in England, were exported to America and sold by booksellers, as well as at fancy goods stores and auction houses. Promoted as luxury items, often toward women, the albums would be advertised with phrases such as “A variety of beautiful albums from one dollar to five, newly bound, and pages ornamented with flowered designs, or fine steel engravings” (Public Ledger, 1844).

Resources for Further Study
Pedagogy
  • Floriography: The language of flowers.
  • Oil Painting: Definition and Technique
  • Non-verbal forms of expression can be powerful tools. Discuss “floriography.” What other visual language forms can you think of? (American sign language and that of colors.)
  • Under what circumstances might encrypted or coded language be necessary or desired? When have they been used, historically?
Contemporary Connections

Cassey & Dickerson Friendship Album Project: The Amy Matilda Cassey and Martina and Mary Anne Dickerson albums have long been some of the Philadelphia Library Company’s most requested items in the Print Department. Visual and textual, as well as rare artifacts of 19th-century middle-class African American history, the friendship albums are rich for digital humanities scholarship. When the Library Company’s Curator of African American History Krystal Appiah was approached in summer 2013 by Swarthmore professor Lara Cohen about her class analyzing the albums and in turn possibly creating an online site, we thought this may be the time to think a bit outside of the box when it comes to digital humanities at the Library.

Professor Ellen Gruber Garvey’s Writing with Scissors: American Scrapbooks from the Civil War to the Harlem Renaissance, Illustrated, November 2, 2012. Described below on Amazon.com:

“Men and women 150 years ago grappled with information overload by making scrapbooks-the ancestors of Google and blogging. From Abraham Lincoln to Susan B. Anthony, African American janitors to farmwomen, abolitionists to Confederates, people cut out and pasted down their reading. Writing with Scissors opens a new window into the feelings and thoughts of ordinary and extraordinary Americans. Like us, nineteenth-century readers spoke back to the media, and treasured what mattered to them.

In this groundbreaking book, Ellen Gruber Garvey reveals a previously unexplored layer of American popular culture, where the proliferating cheap press touched the lives of activists and mourning parents, and all who yearned for a place in history. Scrapbook makers documented their feelings about momentous public events such as living through the Civil War, mediated through the newspapers. African Americans and women’s rights activists collected, concentrated, and critiqued accounts from a press that they did not control to create “unwritten histories” in books they wrote with scissors. Whether scrapbook makers pasted their clippings into blank books, sermon collections, or the pre-gummed scrapbook that Mark Twain invented, they claimed ownership of their reading. They created their own democratic archives.”

Current thematic fiction: The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh. The Victorian-era language of flowers and flower arranging is at the heart of this contemporary novel.

The Importance of Flowers in Our Lives

Categories
1920s African American Poem Wild animals

At the Zoo

Direct capture

At the Zoo

By Jessie Redmon Fauset
Annotations by Catherine Bowlin
Henry Ossawa Tanner. Lions in the Desert. Oil on canvas mounted on plywood, ca. 1897-1900, Smithsonian American Art Museum and its Renwick Gallery, Washington, D.C.[1]
MY mother said to me, “Now, mind,
To animals be always kind;
To every creature, bird or beast,
Show courtesy, to say the least!” 
And then she took me to the Zoo,
(She said she’d nothing else to do,)
And showed me beasts of many styles,
From prairie dogs to crocodiles. 
And take it from me, when I say
I didn’t feel like getting gay, 
Or doing them a bit of harm.
I wouldn’t touch them for a farm.
The elephant—they called him “Dunk,” 
Looked mild, but had a squirmy trunk. 
The panther and the wolf and bear,
Threw into me an awful scare.
(The bear looked pretty good, ‘tis true,
But s’pose he started hugging you!)
The foxes didn’t need their labels—
I’d read of them in Aesop’s Fables! 
And next I saw a cassowary, [3] 
Who looked to me a bit contrary.
“Of bird and beast, I’ve had my fill,” 
I said, “Please take me home, I’m ill.
I promise to take your advice,
You’ll never have to tell me twice.”
But after I was home, in bed,
I pulled the covers ’round my head,
And saw those creatures at the Zoo,
And thought, “No wonder that they’re blue,
And look so cross and mean and mad,
They have enough to make them sad.
If I were locked up in a cage,
I’d just be in an awful rage. 
All original illustrations by Hilda Wilkinson from The Brownies’ Book p. 85-86. 
The lion was the first I saw,
I just looked at his awful paw
And thought, “I’ll never trouble you.” 
I thought that of the tiger, too;
He was a striped all black and real bright yellow. 
But I could never play with him,
His look just made my poor head swim.
The hippopotamus and his friend, 
Rhinoceros, stood my hair on end. 
The python and the anaconda,
Just made me grow of kindness, fonder. 
I might have liked the dromedary–– [2] 
But oh, his manner was so airy!
And, too, I danced the giraffe,
His long neck really made me laugh.
My mother said, “Come see the birds, 
They’re just too nice and sweet for words.” 
She showed me, first, a horned owl––
That really is an awful fowl! 
He blinked at me, as though to say,
“I’ll bite your fingers. Get away!” 
And then I say a pelican, 
With long, sharp duck-bill. Well, he can
Be sure I’ll never trouble him,
And where he swims, I’ll never swim. 

Perhaps they’ve children far away,
Or friends who watch for them each day;
Perhaps they dream at night, they’re free
In forests green and shadowy;
And then they wake to dull despair,—
And little boys who poke and stare.
Right then and there, I charged my mind,
To be to all God’s creatures kind.
And kind to them I’ll surely be
If only they’ll be kind to me! 

Fauset, Jessie. “At the Zoo.” The Brownies’ Book 1, no. 3 (March 1920): 85-86.

[2] An Arabian one-humped camel, especially one of the light and swift breed trained for riding or racing

[3] A huge flightless bird related to the emu, with a bare head and neck, a tall horny crest, and one or two colored wattles. It is native mainly to the forests of New Guinea.

Contexts

The goal of this poem’s child narrator is two-fold: to entertain and to teach “a moral lesson that animals have individual sensibilities and merit respect” (Kilcup 302, see full citation below). In the 1920s, American zoos were full of “exotic” species, and “Fauset’s poem both reflects Americans’ interest and questions how they treat nondomestic animals” (Kilcup 302).

Important to note also are the themes of captivity and freedom in this poem. Fauset comments on both the caged animals featured in the poem and the institution of slavery within the context of The Brownies’ Book.

Resources for Further Study
[1] From the Smithsonian Luce Center label: “Henry Ossawa Tanner grew up in a religious home and his family took special pride in the history of the biblical Hamatic races of African origin (Mosby, Dewey F., et al. Henry Ossawa Tanner. Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1991). It is possible that he regarded the lion as a symbol of his African heritage. Tanner learned to draw lions from trips to the zoo in Philadelphia, where he grew up and attended art school. While in Paris in 1891, he sketched them at the Jardin des Plantes and took an animal anatomy course at the natural history museum. Tanner painted Lions in the Desert during one of his visits to the Middle East, which he described as a barren landscape. He did not see actual lions there, but later added them to the painting in his studio.”

Categories
1920s African American Folktale Short Story Wild animals

The Hare and the Elephant

The Hare and the Elephant

By Sir Harry Johnston
Annotations by Abby Army
Hilda Wilkinson. Original illustration from The Brownies’ Book, p. 46.

FOLK TALES

The only thing that is nicer than telling a story is to listen to it. Did you ever stop to think that just as you sit very still in the twilight and listen to Father or Mother telling stories, just so children are listening, all over the world,—in Sweden, in India, in Georgia, and in Uganda? I think you probably know where the first three countries are, but maybe it would be best for me to tell you that Uganda is in beautiful, far-off, mysterious Africa.

Some people are specially fond of telling stories about animals. About twenty-five hundred years ago a poor Greek slave, Aesop, told many and amusing tales about the fox and the wolf and all the rest of them. And you High School boys and girls probably have already read the clever animal stories told by Jean de la Fontaine [1] in the seventeenth century.

Now here is a story about animals which African Fathers and Mothers tell to their little sons and daughters. The story is very old and has come down from father to son for many generations and has probably met with almost no changes. Such a story is called a folk tale. There are many folk tales to be gathered in Africa, and Mr. Monroe N. Work, of Tuskegee, has collected very many of them from various sources. This one, “The Hare and the Elephant,” has been selected by Mr. Work from Sir Harry Johnston’s book called “The Uganda Protectorate.”

Folk tales, folk songs, and folk dances can give us—even better than history sometimes—an idea of primitive people’s beliefs and customs.

The Hare and the Elephant

ONCE upon a time the hare and the elephant went to a dance. The hare stood still and watched the elephant dance. When the dance was over, the hare said,

“Mr. Elephant, I can’t say that I admire your dancing. There seems to be too much of you. Your flesh goes flop, flop, flop. Let me cut off a few slices and you will then, I think, dance as well as I.”

The hare cut off some huge slices and went home. The elephant also went home; but he was in agony. At length he called the buffalo and said,

“Go to the hare and ask him to return my slices.”

The buffalo went to the hare and asked for the slices.

“Were they not eaten on the road?” asked the hare.

“I heard they were,” replied the buffalo.

Then the hare cooked some meat,—it was a slice of the elephant, and gave it to the buffalo. The buffalo found it very tender and asked him where he got it.

Laura Wheeler. Original illustration from The Brownies’ Book, p. 48.

“I got it at a hill not far from here, where I go occasionally to hunt. Come hunting with me today.” So they went to the hill and set up some snares. The hare then said to the buffalo, “You wait here and I will go into the grass. If you hear something come buzzing ‘Zoo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo,’ hang down your head.”

The buffalo waited. Presently he heard, “Zoo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo—”. He hung down his head. The hare threw a big rock, hit the buffalo’s head and killed him. The hare then skinned him and carried home the meat. When the buffalo did not return, the elephant sent an antelope to ask the hare to return his slices. But the hare disposed of him in the same manner as he had the buffalo and carried home his meat. The elephant sent a succession of messengers for the slices, but none of them returned. At last the elephant called the leopard and said, “Go to the hare and ask him to return my slices.”

The leopard found the hare at home. After they had dined, the hare invited the leopard to go hunting on the hill. When they arrived and had set up their snares, the hare said,

“Now you wait here and I will go into the grass. If you hear something come buzzing, ‘Zoo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo’, hang down your head.”

The hare then went into the grass and presently the leopard heard a buzzing, ‘Zoo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo’, but instead of hanging down his head, he held it up and a big stone just missed him. Then he hung down his head, fell over and pretended that he was dead. He laughed to himself, 

“Ha! ha! Mr. Hare, so you meant to kill me with that stone. I see now what has happened to the other messengers. The wretch killed them all with his ‘Zoo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-o’, Nevermind, Mr. Hare, just wait.”

Laura Wheeler. Original illustration from The Brownies’ Book, p. 47.

The hare came out of the grass and when he saw the leopard lying stretched out, he laughed and jumped and scraped the ground. “There goes another messenger,” he said. “The elephant wants his slices back. Well, let him want them.”

Having said this, the hare hoisted the leopard on his head and walked off with him. The leopard enjoyed riding on the hare’s head. After the hare had carried him a little way, the leopard put forth his paw and gave the hare a deep scratch. He then drew in his paw and lay quite still. The hare at once understood how matters lay and put down the bundle. He did not, however, pretend that he knew, but said,

“Oh, there seems to be a thorn in the bundle.”

He then roped the bundle very firmly, taking care to tie the paws securely. He then placed the bundle on his head and went along to a stretch of forest. Here he placed the leopard in the woods and went off to get his knife.

As soon as the hare had gone, the leopard tore open the bundle and sat up to wait for the hare’s return. “I’ll show him how to hunt and to say, ‘Zoo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo, hang down your head’! I’ll show him how to cut slices off my friend, the elephant.” The leopard looked up and saw the hare returning with his knife.

When the hare saw the leopard sitting up, he ran into a hole in the ground.

“Come out,” said the leopard, sniffing vainly at the hole.

“Come in,” said the hare.

The leopard saw that it was useless to try to coax the hare to come out, so he said to a crow that sat on a branch just above the hole, “Mr. Crow, will you watch this hole while I run for some fire to burn out the hare?”

“Yes,” replied the crow, “but don’t be long away, because I will have to go to my nest soon.”

The leopard went for the fire. After a while the hare said,

“I am certain, Mr. Crow, that you are very hungry.”

“Yes, very,” replied the crow.

“Are you fond of ants? If you are, I have a lot of them down here.”

“Throw me up some, please.”

“Come near the hole and I will.”

The crow came near. “Now open your eyes and mouth wide.”

The crow opened his mouth and eyes as wide as he could. Just then the hare flung a lot of dust into them, and while the crow was trying to remove the dust, the hare ran away.

“What shall I do now?” said the crow, as he finished taking the dust out of his eyes. “The leopard will be angry when he finds the hare gone. I am sure to catch it. Ha! Ha! I have it. I will gather some ntengos (poison apples), and put them in the hole. As soon as the leopard applies the fire to the hole. the ntengos will explode and the leopard will think that the hare has burst and died.”

The crow accordingly placed several ntengos in the hole. After some time, the leopard came back with the fire.

Artist Unknown. Four Studies of Leopard Heads. Etching or engraving on paper, c. 1750-1850. Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, N.Y.

“Have you still got him inside?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Has he been saying anything?”

“Not a word.”

“Now then, hare,” said the leopard, “when you hear ‘Zoo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo’, hold down your head. Do you hear?” No reply. “You killed all of the elephant’s messengers just as you tried to kill me; but it is all finished now with you. When I say, ‘Zoo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-o’, hang down your head. Ha! ha!”

Then the leopard put the fire in the hole. There was a loud explosion. The leopard thought that the hare had burst and died. But instead, the hare was at home making a hearty meal of the last of the elephant’s steaks. None of the other animals ever bothered the hare after that. They remembered what happened to the elephant’s messengers.

Johnston, Harry. “The Hare and the Elephant.” The Brownies’ Book 1, no. 2 (February 1920): 46-48.

[1] Jean de la Fontaine (1621-1695) was a French poet whose fables rank among the highest masterpieces of French literature. You can see some of Fontaine’s fables here.

Contexts

Laura Wheeler (1887-1948) was an American painter and educator who is known for her paintings featuring African American subjects. To supplement her income as a teacher, she took up painting. One year after she died, the Howard University Gallery of Art held an exhibit highlighting her works. See some of Wheeler’s paintings here. Hilda Wilkinson (1894-1981) was an artist and teacher from Washington, D.C. She is known for her paintings and her work as the main illustrator for The Brownies’ Book. You can see some of Wilkinson’s works here. 

Categories
1920s African American Education Short Story

A Girl’s Will

A Girl’s Will

By Ella T. Madden
Annotations by Catherine Bowlin/JB
Illustration from the second edition of The Brownies' Book. Two girls walking near the water. The caption reads, "Helen and I Were Walking Along the Water's Edge."
Original illustration by Hilda Wilkinson from The Brownies’ Book p.55.

ALONG the edge of a southern forest, flows a stream called the Isle of Hope River. Void of the rush and hurry of youth, slowly, silently it flows, with an air of quiet serenity and infinite calm; along the edge of the wood, past the villages of Isle of Hope and Thunderbolt, it flows, until it is lost in the waters of the Atlantic, eighteen miles away.

In one of the weatherbeaten fisherman’s huts, which nestle under the branches of the great, gnarled, twisted, live oaks which grow along the river’s bank, lived Helen La Rose. As the keynote of the stream’s personality was repose, the most striking thing about Helen’s character was its deep unrest and consuming ambition, coupled with a high-minded, lofty idea of the infinite power of the human will.

It was the week of our graduation from Beach Institute. Helen and I were walking along the water’s edge, discussing our future with all the enthusiasm of sixteen. I could talk of nothing but the wonderful career I expected to have in college the next year, for my parents were “well-to-do,” and I was the only child. Suddenly, in the midst of gay chatter, I stopped and looked at Helen.

“Oh, I’m so sorry you can’t go, too, Helen; what fun we would have together,” I burst out sorrowfully, for pretty, ambitious, Helen La Rose was very poor. Her father had all he could do to support his wife and seven children. Helen had paid her tuition at Beach by helping Mrs. Randolph before and after school and on Saturdays.

“But I am going to college,” said Helen, in her quiet voice. “I am going to college and I am going to become the greatest teacher that ever was, if I live long enough. Booker T. Washington worked his way through Hampton and Robert Dent is working his way and so did Mr. Ross. He told me so himself.”

“Yes, but they were all boys,” I said with emphasis. 

“And I’m a girl,” replied Helen, “and as smart as any boy. Dad said so. Besides,” and her eyes grew large and deep and her voice tense, “I can do anything I want to, if I want to hard enough.”

The next week was commencement. Helen was “val,” and looked sweet and girlish in her cotton voile dress, fashioned by her own little brown, work-roughened fingers. For her eager face, lit up by the great eyes and a happy,––though rather tremulous––smile, did not require a fine toilette to make it attractive.

The weeks passed and I did not see Helen again until the middle of July. We were sitting in my room and I had been showing some dresses I had bought.

“I am going to begin making my things next week,” said Helen, happily. “Daddy has let me keep all the money I have earned this summer and I have put it all in the savings bank. Just think, I have been working only nine weeks and I’ve saved forty dollars. I’ll make forty more between now and October and that will be enough for railroad fare and my first quarter’s tuition. Mrs. Randolph is going to give me a letter of recommendation to a friend of hers in Chicago and I know I’ll get work. Oh, I am so happy! And everybody is so good to me!” Helen danced around the room, hugging herself for every joy.

Early in August, Mrs. La Rose contracted malaria and died after a short illness. Mr. La Rose was heartbroken. There were six small children, ranging in age from three and a half to thirteen years. Quietly, unobtrusively, Helen took her mother’s place in the household. She did not allow even her father to realize what the sacrifice of her plans meant to her. She cooked and scrubbed and washed and ironed and cared for her swiftly aging father and little brothers and sisters with loving devotion. The little house was spick and span, the children happy and contented; and Mr. La Rose, grown suddenly old, became as calm and placid as the river that flowed past his door.

Isle of Hope, Near Savannah, Ga. Historic Postcard Collection, courtesy of the Georgia Archives.

Four years passed and I received the degree of A. B. and soon after was appointed teacher of English in the high school. I lost no time in looking up my old school chum and telling her of my good fortune. She met me with a glad cry of welcome and rejoiced in her old, frank, exuberant way over my success. But after the first few moments of greeting, I could not help noticing the change in her appearance. 

Her figure had grown thin and old-maidish; and the brown cheeks had lost their soft roundness. The eyes, that had held such a marvelous vision of achievement and such undaunted hope in the future, were as deep and dark as ever; but in their depth brooded a wistfulness and a poignant unrest that made me catch my breath, for there came to me a vague realization of the story those eyes told. Bitter must have been the battles waged between ambition and duty. Not a hint of this, however, was in her demeanor. There was not a trace of self-pity or jealousy in her manner as we talked of the past and the present and drew bright pictures of the future.

Then Mary, Helen’s eighteen-year-old sister, finished high school. Mary was not studious and had no desire to go to college.

“Now,” I said to myself, “Mary will take charge of the house and the younger children and Helen can have her chance. It is no more than right.” But I reckoned without my host. Six months after Mary’s graduation, she was engaged to be married.

The years flew by, swift as a bird on the wing, and Helen’s young charges grew to young manhood and womanhood. Mr. La Rose was dead. The baby was in his senior year at Howard University. Tom was in the mail service and Rose was the happy mistress of her own home. Helen, at thirty-five, was free to live her own life. I went to see her one bright sunny morning in June and found her sitting under her favorite oak tree, her hands lying idly in her lap, her eyes looking off across the water. She greeted me with a happy smile and a humorous glance of her fine eyes.

“Elise, do you remember our old saying, ‘You can do anything you want to, if you want to hard enough?’ I am going to college in the autumn!”

Madden, Ella T. “A Girl’s Will.” The Brownies’ Book 1, no. 2 (February 1920): 54-56.
Contexts

This story demonstrates the need for intersectional environmentalism. The connection between Helen (a poor Black woman) and the natural world should not be overlooked if teaching this story. Helen’s attachment to nature suggests that nothing should exclude people of color from traditional (white) natural spaces. People of color may also find solace in nature despite things out of their control. This story encourages young Black readers to persevere through the things they cannot control (home environment, class, race, gender, ability, etc.) and to seek comfort in nature.

Racial uplift is the ideology that educated Black people are responsible for the welfare of most or all other Black people. This ideology describes a prominent response of Black middle-class leaders, spokespersons, and activists to the crisis marked by the assault on African Americans’ civil and political rights primarily in the U. S. South from roughly the 1880s to 1914.

Resources for Further Study
  • As mentioned in the first paragraph, the Isle of Hope was originally established as a retreat in the 19th century for the elite of Savannah, Georgia. A small African American settlement in the historic district began after the Civil War when formerly enslaved people from Wormsloe Plantation settled there.
  • The first official school for African American children, The Beach Institute (mentioned in the story’s third paragraph), was founded in 1867 when Alfred Ely Beach donated $13,000 to The Freedmen’s Bureau.
  • Education is central to this story, as evidenced by the mention of Booker T. Washington, who founded and was the first president of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (which later became Tuskegee University), and the choice of Howard University, one of the U.S. network of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).
  • W. E. B. Du Bois, the editor of The Brownies’ Book, and Booker T. Washington, while they shared a vision for ending racial prejudice, disagreed on how to proceed in the wake of slavery. Their differing views included how technology could be incorporated.

Categories
1920s African American Fairies Fairy Tale Short Story

Gyp: A Fairy Story

Gyp: A Fairy Story

By A. T. Kilpatrick
Annotations by Catherine Bowlin
Cover of the first volume of The Brownies' Book. Photograph of a little African American girl in white costume, crown, and ballet shoes.
Battey. Untitled Cover of The Brownies’ Book. 1920. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/22001351/>.

ONCE there was a little fairy named Gyp. The king of fairies gave all of the little fairies work to do. And Gyp’s work for that day was to paint apples. 

Early that morning Gyp went to the forest to work. He carried all his paints, but more of red and brown because he had a lot of apples to paint red and also the leaves to tint brown.

He soon came to the trees, and leaving the other paints on the ground, he carried the red up to paint apples.

The little children who lived in the forest thought it about time to find ripe apples, and some of them went out that same morning to get some. 

After roaming a bit they came to the tree where Gyp was painting and found all his paints on the ground. 

They began to amuse themselves by playing with the paints, until the wind blew some apples down.

But they soon tired and fell asleep. Gyp had noticed them meddling with his paints and saw that they liked red and brown best.

When he came down and found all asleep, he wondered what joke to play on them that would be pleasing. So after deciding on many things and changing, he determined to paint their faces, knowing they would be delighted.

So he painted their faces,––some red like the apples, and the others brown like the leaves. When they woke and looked at each other, they were startled and amazed. They went home never knowing why their faces changed colors.

Now their descendants still live. Those children who were at home remained white, but the little red children still love to roam about in the forest and on the plains.

The little brown children can be found most everywhere, carrying happiness and sunshine to all they see.

So when you read of the work of the little brownies, don’t forget the good fairy Gyp.

Brunner, Arnold William. Forest. 1891, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, CC0. https://www.si.edu/unit/cooper-hewitt.
Kilpatrick, A. T. “Gyp: A Fairy Story.” The Brownies’ Book, ed. W. E. B. Du Bois, vol. 1, no. 1. (1920): 31. www.loc.gov/item/22001351/.
Resources for Further Study
  • In the introduction to the 2019 volume of The Lion and The Unicorn, a contemporary journal that studies children’s literature, Katharine Capshaw and Michelle Martin draw parallels between The Brownies’ Book and the Black Lives Matter movement. Full citation for this source: Capshaw, Katharine, and Michelle H. Martin. “Introduction: From The Brownies’ Book to Black Lives Matter: One Hundred Years of African American Children’s Literature.” The Lion and the Unicorn, vol. 43, no. 2. (2019): v-vii. ProQuest, https://login.libproxy.uncg.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/2330797298?accountid=14604, doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/uni.2019.0015.
  • For an analysis of fairies in The Brownies’ Book, see Fern Kory’s article, “Once Upon a Time in Aframerica: The ‘Peculiar’ Significance of Fairies in the Brownies’ Book” in the 2001 volume of Children’s Literature. Full citation for this source: Kory, Fern. “Once upon a Time in Aframerica: The “Peculiar” Significance of Fairies in the Brownies’ Book.” Children’s Literature, vol. 29. (2001): 91-112. ProQuest, https://login.libproxy.uncg.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/195575070?accountid=14604.
Pedagogy

Possible discussion questions:

  • How does the positive diction in this story foreshadow its purpose?
  • Can this text be considered an origin story? Why or why not?
  • What does this story suggest about racial difference?

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