JAMES McCUNE SMITH, "OUR LEADERS"

JAMES McCUNE SMITH: "Our Leaders," September 21, 1855. Published in "Frederick Douglass' Paper." THE WORKS OF JAMES McCUNE SMITH: BLACK INTELLECTUAL & ABOLITIONIST, edited by John Stauffer (2007), pp. 123-127. Many salient points were made last night, during my first reading of an 1855 essay in "Frederick Douglass' Paper," by noted abolitionist Dr. James McCune Smith, its brilliant New York correspondent. After receiving his thorough, classical education at the African Free School in New York City, where other iconic greats were also taught by its outstanding English school master, Charles Andrews, Smith obtained a medical degree in 1837 in Glasgow, Scotland. Dr. James McCune Smith was fluid in Latin, Greek, French, mathematics, science, chess, in classic literature and poetry, and was the foremost black intellectual of 19th century in black America. After his death in 1865, in Brooklyn, New York, his grave went unmarked, and he went unheralded, as his fair-skinned family scampered across the color-line into common "white" safety, privileges, and conveniences. Only in the early 2000s with his grave recovered and marked, were his now thoroughly, blithely "white" lineal descendants made aware of their magnificent African ancestry, which had been covered-up very dutifully by their prior generations! DR. SMITH'S ASSEVERATIONS : "I deny, absolutely, that the colored people of the United States now have, or ever had, 'leaders.' An essential to the idea of 'leader' in relation to the idea of people, is the assumption that said people can be led.... I speak of the masses, who must move, or be removed , or we cannot rise. This attraction to the whites and repulsion from each other, is but an instance of a general law... "The Anti-Colonization movement , and the embracing of Methodism, the two great facts in the history of our people, were spontaneous movements of the masses without leadership by anyone. The history of these events affords a curious study of a people otherwise scattered and divided, yet moved by a common impulse 'pro hac vice.'... "But if we have no 'leaders,' by what terms are we to distinguish the colored men who assemble in conventions, write addresses, pass first rate resolutions, &c, for the elevation of 'our people?'... They have never had the masses to support them, or even to give an approving cheer of God's speed to their well meant efforts. So far from being leaders of the people, they are 'like unto children, sitting in the markets, and calling unto their fellows and saying, We have piped unto you, and you have not danced; we have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented.'... "There is no need that we shall hate the white man in order to love one another : but come when or whence it may, the remedy will first be slow, very slow, in action. There is so much to be overcome : myriad molecular affinities to be substituted for myriad molecular repulsions. Let us be patient, therefore ; the revolution is almost too great to be done in one generation . To the generous few who are laboring with true hearts, and walk by faith rather than sight, let us say, 'let us pump as long as we can work our arms.'" [In re-reading these words, it was well for me to recall that they were written before the 'Dred Scott' decision (1857); before John Brown's cataclysmic Harper's Ferry raid (1859); and before the liberating Civil War (1861-1865)--all of which led to the freedom of the 'masses' of blacks of whom Dr. James McCune Smith wrote. As for his claim of "spontaneous movements" of blacks without leaders in the Anti-Colonization efforts and Methodism, it is well to recall that in New York, Baltimore , Boston, Philadelphia, other places, such efforts seemingly sprang up, independently under various local leaders, reacting to then-prevailing conditions. Certainly, more than one struggling generation was required from 1855, to our present place of struggle, in 2016, in which to "overcome." That said, I would note, further, that since his death in 1865, we have had numerous great 'leaders' with "mass"--though not unanimous --support, among them are : Booker T. Washington , Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King, Jr., Rev. Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, and President Barack Hussein Obama.]