thumbnail of From the Source; John Hope Franklin
Transcript
Hide -
If this transcript has significant errors that should be corrected, let us know, so we can add it to FIX IT+
Being able to bring to us today John Hope Franklin. And I welcome you. The university community. To this affair. And I want to also extend a special welcome. To the members of the Baptist church. At which institution George Washington Williams. Was a pastor and the author of the first history of the 12th that discharge. I introduce you to Chancellor Robert Cargan who will introduce our speaker. Thank you very much and thank you Ed and all of you who have played such a role in bringing this series to us and the particular word of welcome again to our guests from outside of the university and those who have not been here before. We indeed do wish to welcome you to Phillis Wheatley hall as most of you will recall Phillis Wheatley was the first black poet and the second woman
poet published in America and we have just recently. On February 1st of this year probably dedicated this building in her memory to the best of our knowledge the first building of a public higher educational institution in Massachusetts to be so dedicated. On that occasion on February 1st when we held that dedication. We had here a group of very very distinguished black scholars who labored to uncover the historical truth then elaborate the critical record on Phillis Wheatley. And that work that they did can only be described as impressive. I think many of you were here and knew that Mary Helen Washington from our English department shared a remarkable symposium on the topic. It was a fitting symposium to mark the dedication of this building. Our nation to be sure has been favored with a number of such black scholar intellectuals of
exceptional ability in a truly significant achievement. Among the foremost of these of course will be the boys who was born and educated in Massachusetts and whose papers reside at the Amherst campus of the University of Massachusetts. And of course George Washington Williams The first important black historian and the subject of today's talk I hope and indeed believe it will not embarrass our guests this afternoon if I insist that he belongs in that very same company. Back in 1900 and 47 almost 40 years ago the first edition of John Hope Franklin is from slavery to freedom was published. To be sure he published many other books and articles before and after that date. And I'll mention some of them in a moment. But that book in successive editions has become a classic the standard against which other work must and indeed is to be measured.
Generations of American students including myself. Have been introduced to black history through the pages of this hefty volume. This compendious survey showed us a world of slavery that we could barely imagine and describe the long and arduous journey to freedom. A journey that still goes forward as we black and white together continue to pursue a just and equitable society. John Hope Franklin has been our teacher. And we are most grateful for is to tillage. Professor Franklin himself was educated at Fisk University and received his master's and doctorate in history from Harvard University. That other university on the red line in addition to From Slavery to Freedom he is the author of the free negro in North Carolina. Reconstruction after the Civil War the Emancipation Proclamation and a southern Odyssey traveller's
an antebellum South. In 1976 he was invited to give the prestigious Jefferson Lecture for the National Endowment for the Humanities. And that lecture was subsequently published as racial equality in America. Press Franklin has been chairman of the history department at Brooklyn College and of the history department at the University of Chicago. And in 1969 he became the John Matthews manly distinguished service professor at the University of Chicago and gaine emeritus status there in 1982. He has been president of the American Studies Association the southern Historical Association the Organization of American historians and the American Historical Association. He has been hit professor of American history and institutions at Cambridge University in England. He has taught and represented the United States in the Soviet Union in Australia and in the People's Republic of China. He has held Rosenwald and Guggenheim fellowships and is a Fellow of the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences. A native of Oklahoma. Professor Franklin was elected to the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 1978. He has received honorary degrees from over 70 institutions including I'm very proud to say the University of Massachusetts at our Amherst campus. John Hope Franklin the James B do professor of history at Duke University comes to us this afternoon full of honors and great with the wisdom he honors us by being with us today. His talk drawing on his work in progress isn't titled stalking George Washington Williams. Please join me in welcoming Professor Franklin this afternoon. Thank you Chancellor Cargan.
I would come all the way to Boston to call my friend Bob Chancellor. It's. Quite fitting. Says. Dr. Strickland. Members of the University of Massachusetts Boston community and friends from Boston and environs. So often when I called upon the speak. People have wanted to want to be to talk about. The future of American life or some similar topic. And although. I have always insisted that its rather unbecoming. For a historian to become a seer in the future. People have insisted that this story and do that. That's when the subject is not imposed on me.
I like to talk about. Doing history or writing history. My friend Jack ekster wrote of work some years ago called doing history. And Barbara Tuchman just a few years ago. Who wrote a book called practicing history. I thought I would share with you some of the toy creations and Joyce. That a historian experiences as he seeks to reconstruct. The past. And for the moment I leave the future to the sociologists and political scientists. It was almost 40 years ago. When I had the experience. But I remember it as distinctly as if it were yesterday. In the spring of 945 I was just beginning to work on a book
that was to be called From Slavery to Freedom A History of Negro Americans. A good way to begin. I thought I want to read the shelves in the lab or at a North Carolina college where I was teaching at the time. To see what if anything had been written aside from Cartagena Woodson's the Negro in our history which was published in like you know twenty two. To my astonishment my eyes fell on a two volume work called A History of the Negro race in America from 16 one thousand to eight hundred eighty negroes as slaves as soldiers and citizens. By George Washington Williams. Upon examination I discovered that the book had been published in 882 by the reputable publisher G.P. Putnam's Sons. Upon closer examination I found that the work was about a thousand pages in length and that beginning with African civilization it covered virtually every aspect of the Afro-American
experience in the new world down to eight hundred eight. I saw that it was carefully researched with plenty of footnotes and logically organized and well written. Upon examining the card catalogue I learned that Williams was the author of two other works. A history of the twelfth Baptist Church. And a history of the negro troops in the War of the rebellion published in the town of 87. By Harper and brothers. Although I had never had a course in Afro-American history. I reproached myself for not having heard of this man. I wonder then as I have a minute time's sense I have this historian of the Negro race dropped into complete obscurity. I knew enough about the period in which he lived to know that the obscurity was at least in part the result of the function of the social forces at work in this country. At the end of the 19th
century peace forces made it quite clear that Afro-Americans were not to be remembered for their constructive contributions to society for their involvement in the literary history of the country. Well for all their revelations such as Williams had made up the rape of Africa by Europeans and Americans. If he was unknown in the two generations that appear that separated me from him since his death in 891 I was determined that I would do what I could to repair the situation. The following is an account of my efforts to do so. Fortunately there was a sketch of George Washington Williams in the Dictionary of American Biography and I devoured that article immediately not knowing at the time that it was replete with factual errors. Shortly thereafter I was in Washington and called on Dr. Carter G Woodson the founder and executive director or so
sation for the Study of Negro life in history. I asked Dr. Woodson about George Washington Williams And to my pleasant surprise he said that he knew something of him although he was too young and was too young to have known Williams personally. He told me a few things about the man and said that if I wrote a paper on Williams he would invite me to read it at the autumn meeting. Obvious LCA sion. He even said that he believed that Mrs. Williams was still living and was there in Washington. Oh no. I could hardly accept the fact that anyone who husband had died in 1991. Could still be alive in 1945. Shortly after I returned to Dora I received word from Dr. Woodson that Mrs. Mrs. Williams was indeed living and he gave me her address. Whereupon I wrote her immediately. Within a few weeks I heard from him repeat slaughter. Who told me that I was Mrs. Williams
had just died at 92 years of age. And that he had what letters and materials of George Washington Williams that Mrs. Williams possessed. He indicated to me that he would be pleased to have me examine the materials whenever I wished to do so. Since I had accepted Dr. Woodson's invitation to write a paper on Williams. I did not have much time. As soon as I can could arrange it I went to Washington and was received graciously by Henry P. Slaughter who brought out the little bundle of letters less than a dozen and three notebooks containing the diary that Williams kept while in Africa making the night. Slaughter was himself a remarkable man. As a minor civil servant in the federal government. Has spent much of his spare time and most of his money collecting materials manuscripts books pamphlets newspapers and about Negroes. In 1045 his
collection was perhaps the finest of its kind still in private hands his three story townhouse had been converted into a library with book shelves running the length of the house on every floor. It was clouded by yon description. And at his advanced age in his late 70s. He had difficulty keeping things in order. The story goes that his wife had left him simply because there was no place in the house for her. Aside aside from Mr. Slaughter his three cats who apparently just did better than business SLAUGHTER Well the only living things there. Can they permitted me to read the letters from Williams to his wife from which I took notes. He showed me the diary and offered it to me to take back to North Carolina and use it. But I declined. The diary dealt with his trip to Africa and since I was
merely working on Williams at that point as an historian I did not needed. I merely wanted to concentrate on his career as an historian. In the autumn of 1945 I read a paper before the Association for the Study of Negro life in history. The paper was called George Washington Williams. Historian. In the following January it was published in The Journal of Negro History January 1946. Except for the brief sketch in the Dictionary of American Biography. This was the first piece on Williams that had appeared since his death on the 2nd of August in 91. It added something to what the author of the article in the Dictionary of American by rote. But when I read my own paper now I'm depressed by the number of factual errors that I made. And by the things I did not know then about Williams. Nevertheless I had been able to fill in a
sufficient number of details to give some idea of what manner of man Williams was. Will was born in Bedford Springs Pennsylvania on October the 16th in the fort and the son of a free negro father from Virginia and my mother was the offspring of Negro and Pennsylvania Dutch parents. WILLIAMS All had almost no formal education until he was an adult or as a child he drifted from one Pennsylvania town to another as his father looked for work. He was 14 years old when President Lincoln permitted blacks to enlist in the United States Army during the Civil War in 1863. Williams took an assumed name. Said his age forward. And volunteered in the United States Colored Troops. The examining physician. Knew that he wasn't 16 and told him so. But
Williams talked his way into the army. He was in the Army for making 63 to 65 during which time he saw action in numerous engagements in Virginia and at the end of the war he was transferred to a Border Patrol in Texas at Brownsville. He was mustered out in Brownsville but apparently desiring more action. He enlisted almost immediately in the revolutionary army of Mexico. That was attempting to overthrow the Emperor Maximilian who had been placed there by the powers in Europe having helped to accomplish the feat of overthrowing Maximilian 6:07. Williams and headed back to the United States where he enlisted in the 5th Cavalry. One of the four newly organized regular segregated military units in the regular army of the United States. More than a year for more than a year he was stationed at Fort Arbuckle in the Indian Territory.
Now Oklahoma. After receiving a gunshot wound through the left lung in 1868. Williams received honorable medical discharge and headed out of the Indian Territory towards home. He was then almost 19 years of age. Williams learned of a new university primarily for blacks told how the university that had been founded in Washington the previous year. Since his heart was burning. He spelled burning as he put it to receive an education to serve his fellow men. He wrote to General Howard and pleaded to be admitted. He was granted admission and enrolled there for a portion of the academic year 1969 70. By this time the Williams's mission was to become a Baptist clergyman and he left Howard and sought admission to the Newton theological institution
now called Andover Newton a leading seminary in Massachusetts for the training Baptist preaches. In September eighteen hundred seventy Williams appeared before the faculty of Newton theological institution and requested admission barely literate. He was clearly not prepared to meet the requirements of the theological Department which almost invariably at that time accepted only persons with bachelor's degrees. He was rejected as a student in the theological Department. But he was admitted to what they called the English course. That must have been a remedial program. Within two years. Williams had completed the English course and was then edited to the theological Department. And he there completed the four year theological course in two years. Now a very articulate well-spoken young theologian Williams was selected as one of the
speakers at his commencement exercises in 1874 and he chose as his subject. Christian missions in Africa. Upon graduation and ordination. Williams was invited to succeed Linda Grimes as pastor of the largest and most important black church in New England. The twelfth Baptist Church of Boston. He and his bride of a few months sayer of Chicago were entertained royally by a congregation that looked forward to a long period of ministry from Williams. It was though at this point after having written the history of the Negro history of the 12 Baptist Church in the first year of his pastorate. He then began to show that restlessness that would take him minute places within the next few years. Although he indicated at the time he was installed as minister that he would. There he would be there for a long time and he resigned the pastorate of the twelfth that this at the
end of that first year to go to Washington to establish a newspaper. The commoner. To stay in Washington was out short duration and within less than a year he had accepted the pastorate of the Union Baptist Church in Cincinnati. Soon Williams was engaged in a number of secular activities in that Midwestern city including writing a column for The Cincinnati commercial. Taking a leading part in civic affairs. Studying law in the office of Judge Alfonzo Taffy father the president and becoming politically active. In 1870 and Williams was elected to the state legislature the first black to be elected to that body. And taking a seat anything that 80. Anything 76 Williams had delivered a Sinton yellow ration on the American Negro. After which he became so interested in history. That he resolved to write a complete history of the Negro race. As soon as his
office was over in the legislature. Upon the publication of his history of the Negro race. Williams became well-known in the United States and in Europe. Never before had a black man written the work of such length and one displaying such erudition. The work was reviewed widely and on the whole favorably. He even gave up the ministry and maintained a low profile in politics devoting himself largely to the practice of law and to writing and lecturing. In 1885 president Chester appointed Williams United States Minister to Haiti. And the point that led to an unhappy period in his life since he was not permitted to serve. He then returned to the task of completing his book on the negro in the Civil War and the candidates began a serious study of Africa. Soon he was writing articles on the Congo and on one of his several trips to Europe he met Leopold the king of the Belgians whose personal control of the Congo was to be the subject of
considerable controversy in the future. When you proposed to the king that what was needed in the Congo was for we to take a group of well-trained black Americans there to perform some of the much needed tasks and to provide an example for the Congolese kind of late 19th century. Peace Corps program. Seemed quite impressed with the general proposal. But when Williams expressed an interest in making a survey of conditions in the Congo in order to be able to inform young black Americans of conditions there and to recruit them more successfully the king objected. After some extensive exchange heated words with Leopold. Williams left Brussels went to England and made his own plans to go to the Congo. At the end of January going to night him and barked for the Congo from Liverpool England he spent several months there travelling more than 3000 miles in the interior. Seeing just about everything there was to see.
Upon leaving the Congo he wrote a lengthy open letter to the king excoriating him for his nurse in this barbaric room. For the Man in which he took advantage of the people and their land and the cruelties to which he had subjected them. With his call on the civilized world to join him in condemning Leopold's rule. His call fell on deaf ears. Not until a full decade later was anyone willing to speak out on the conditions in the Congo which Williams described in 1890. Meanwhile Williams proceeded on his visit through Africa going to Angola South Africa. So are British British East Africa and Egypt from Egypt he sailed in the spring a weekend of 91 for England where he planned to write a definitive book on Leopold's rule in the Congo in July of 91. His health began to fail.
Since it was obviously a respiratory ailment. An English lady friend and her mother decided to take him to Blackpool where he could enjoy the sea air. He did well for a few weeks but suddenly he took a turn for the worse. And he died in Blackpool England on the 2nd of August. 891. At 41 years of age. There are accounts of his death in such papers as the London Times The New York Times the Cincinnati commercial Wentzville Gazette and the Indianapolis Freeman The Freeman a taken a poll of its readers and 90 asking them to name the 10 greatest negroes who ever lived. George Washington Williams was selected as one of the 10. Within a decade after his death. Almost no one knew who he was. Now much of what I have said up to this point was discovered in the course of my research. Virtually all of the details regarding his activities had to be driven by painstaking efforts to reconstruct his life. There were
no Williams papers except for the few letters and the African diary in the possession of Henry Pease slaughter. And after the initial examination of the letters I had the misfortune not to be able to look at any of them. Any of that material again. Each time I visited Washington this is before I moved to Washington in 1907. Each time I visit Washington I would call on the slaughter and ask to see the Williams diary. In addition to being a being a remarkable even cunning bibliophile I was something of a bone Vivaah. I'm one occasion when I asked to see the diary. He informed me that he had a very good bottle of cognac and he wanted to open it and share it with me. Well no William's diary was produced on that occasion. On another occasion when I asked to see the diary he told me of an absolutely wonderful
restaurant where he would want to take me for dinner. Again no William's diary on that. Finally on another visit. To shocked me by declaring that he was planning to do a biography of George Washington Williams himself. You see the materials again. Well I was not worried about competition from slaughter. I perhaps indiscreetly so for one is not like to begin a writing career at the age of seven. Good evening and welcome to from the source. Tonight on the first half hour from the source to the special presentation with John Hope Franklin. Hey James B Duke professor of history at Duke University who recently visited University of Massachusetts at Boston as part of the institution's
distinguished lectures in a series. Professor Franklin's lecture stalking George Washington Williams was reported on Thursday March 28. We hope you're enjoying this special presentation. We'll get back to it in just a short minute. So here's your china Jack The Best Is Yet To Come. Yeah the best time to get up in the morning the best Medicare you know Medicare pays for a lot but not for everything for and you're going to need a private insurance policy to pick up what Medicare doesn't cover. Now I just happen to have in my pocket the right sort of policy for you even if your best friend sells insurance. Shop around first for a free brochure on how to choose wisely. Right Medigap Department of Health and Human Services. Washington D.C. two to one. Hi I'm Joe for Africa each Sunday morning at 8:30 on jazz life. I'll be presenting the
jazz beat Berklee series of concerts featuring the very best of the talented students and faculty at the Berklee College of Music. So listen for the jazz beat from Berkeley on Sunday morning on listener supported public service radio in Boston. BFM. Everybody that. I know. Is. That. Almost everybody knows eating a rifle is healthy. Yeah. I just learned. To choose and some other Everybody Think you can. You can actually reduce your chances of. Think cancer. Cancers can be prevented. Find out more in a. Clip from the National Cancer Institute. I'm 800 for cancer for. Cancer prevention. That's one thing I'm going to want to see and see. I. Got a bit short. When you're on Medicare pays a doctor hospital bills he pays the rest. You do I guess what about
insurance. Some people drive insurance to pick up what Medicare doesn't pay. Right. But people need to shop carefully when they buy health insurance they get a free booklet from but again U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Washington D.C. to go to one. That's But again HHS Washington Post study the booklet. OK. Make omelets I was in their actions would shape our lives tonight began oil and on any given election day throughout the year vice chancellor for student affairs Charles Desmond will discuss a pivotal political issues and political actions that will decide your future and the future of our children. With a keen and predominant figures from the black community tune into black perspectives on WNBA family ninety one point nine every Wednesday evening at 9:30 for information discussion of issues and lifestyles of the black community. For more information please contact producer Danny piano we would know. Tune in soon there is none to none.
Send in the one. In the collection when it arrived from Washington. I was crushed. For by this time. The desire to see the Williams diary had become almost an obsession. I began to wonder if I or anyone else could do it to fit Williams without seeing that diary. The one consolation I had came from my tentative conclusions about what had happened to William's manuscripts. So this house was as I've said in a state of complete disarray. At the time he was so forgetful and easily distracted. Around the walls of his home and even in the middle of the floor were piles and piles of newspapers from which heap for which he planned to clip newspaper clip to take clippings but never did. I suspect. Just suspect. That one day when some of the clutter was hauled away as
trace. Material went with it. Yes and I said Slaughter could not find it. And I believe that he had too much pride to tell me my conclusions have been confirmed by more than 35 years of fruitless searching for the diaries. If they do exist I do not need them now as will become clear. So I knew almost nothing of the early life of Williams until one day at Howard University I discovered a letter he wrote in March 1869 to General Howard that letter which I referred to earlier seeking admission to Howard University. It was a long letter barely literate to be sure. Telling the general about his early life he was drifting from one town to another with his parents. His service in the Army during the Civil War and his burning desire to secure an education and be of service to his people. This letter open up new leads to his life
with his parents and siblings at Bedford Springs. I learn more about Islamic career and I can pursue that now through the records of the United States Army and I learned a great deal about his training for the ministry which I could of course find out about later. As a fundraising project for his pastorate in Boston Williams wrote a history of a 12 Baptist Church. I was successful in securing a printed copy of the history and learned a great deal. Not only about the history and importance of that church but also about the Boston years as a student and Williams as a student and as a pastor. The history which I discovered by the way the Magnificat the Boston Public Library contained accounts of the services at which Williams was installed and of the reception attended Williams and his bride sayer. It was almost impossible to learn anything about the year that Williams spent in Washington after he had left Boston and 1875. It was an important year because Williams went there to found a
paper. The common area that would succeed the new National Era paper that had been published by Frederick Douglass and that it failed during the panic of 1900 of 1873. It was also an important time in Washington because this occurred in the midst of the Reconstruction era when the fate of Negro Americans was literally being decided in Washington at about that time. There was nothing about Williams in the Douglas papers and very little in the daily press. I searched everywhere for copies of the newspaper that Williams allegedly edited but there was there were none in the Library of Congress and the other likely places the comment or his paper was not even listed in the union list of newspapers. That period of time in his life remained a blank until one day my research assistant came and told me that he had seen a reference to a newspaper called the common air that was in the library of the American Antiquarian Society in Western Massachusetts. I would
not allow myself to believe that this was the commoner edited by Williams. I wrote the society almost casually but quite anxiously expressing an interest in the paper and inquired about the editor and its contents. I was surprised and delighted to receive a reply from the American an agrarian society saying that the paper in their collection was edited by a Reverend George Washington Williams. They had what they thought was a full run of the newspaper about six months and they would send it to me on microfilm if I cared to examine it. Well I did get to examine it and I sent for it. This was a veritable treasure trove of the writings that Williams for at that time during this editorship he was not only editor and publisher but he was a columnist reporter business manager. And just about everything else he did I learned much about his interests his value his views on numerous subjects from
religion to reconstruction and his relationship with others. Even in the comment of the one sensed that burning ambition as well as that restlessness that was so characteristic of him he was constantly on the go promoting the paper but also lecturing and politicking in a note to his readers just before Christmas in 1875 William said that. There would be no Christmas issue of the paper because he intended to spend the holidays in Chicago with his family. But that was the very last issue of the paper. And although it was the last issue there was no hint at all in the paper that this would be the last issue. Within a few weeks Williams had accepted the pastorate of the Union Baptist Church in Cincinnati and it seems that with every passing day he became more visible in Cincinnati and the material from these Ohio U's is happily quite abundant. Shortly before Williams's arrival in Cincinnati he became acquainted with. Mira house the editor of The Cincinnati commercial who invited
Williams upon his arrival in Cincinnati to write a column for that newspaper for several years. Williams was not too busy with his ministerial duties but to write a column under the pen name of Everest IDs. Many of his columns were autobiographical and through him one got to know more about him especially his years in the army and his service with the Republican revolutionary forces in Mexico. Nor was Williams too busy to engage in partisan political activities. He arrived in Ohio just before the beginning of the presidential sweepstakes of 1876 and he could not resist the opportunities afforded and a tickler able young man to wade into the political waters as a Republican he supported the local ticket. And as an Ohio he supported the candidacy candidacy of Rutherford B Hayes for president. Even after the election he supported the so called Hayes Southern Policy such and much to the consternation of some of the blacks who thought
Hayes was too soft on the south. Gibbs was himself a candidate for public office as a columnist and pastor. He was one of the best known blacks in the city of Cincinnati and he decided to capitalize on that fact by running for the legislature. He ran and lost in 1976 but he was successful in 1879 but not before had he had received the strictures of several of his rivals who accused him of conducting a campaign that did not meet the highest ethical standards. A local paper accused him of accepting money from the Democratic candidate for governor. I didn't have and I headed to the string of adjectives by which he was known still enough. That being a controversy you figure. Shortly after he took his seat in the legislature. He was denied service in a Columbus restaurant. And threatened to have the owner's license revoked. The daily press
criticized Williams Not the restaurant owner despite the fact that the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was on the statute books. The legislature have a passed a resolution censuring the restauranteur for racial discrimination. Later when the General Assembly voted to relocate a negro cemetery in Cincinnati blacks of the city accuse Williams of proposing the bill at the request of white businessmen who wanted the cemetery property for their own use. Despite the controversies in which he was involved Williams was an articulate respected member of the Ohio legislature in the first weeks in the Lower House. He was elected secretary of the Republican caucus. He served on several important committees of the house including the one on colleges and universities. Another on libraries of which he was chairman. And a special committee on railroad terminal facilities. Even so some of his constituents began to wonder. If he could be
reelected. Well it didn't matter to Williams for he had decided to devote full time to writing his history of the Negro race in America. Indeed he had already begun. Well he was a member of a state legislature. One of the benefits of. That one derives from working on a problem as long as I have been working on this one. Is that eventually most people get to know about it. And if they hear of anything that may be of value they tell me. So one day when I was at a meeting of the board of directors of the Chicago Public Library. One of the staff members who had done her doctoral work at Ohio State University and had worked on Ohio libraries asked me if I would like to have a list of the books that Williams borrowed when he was in the legislature and 80. I said that I didn't mind if I did. She had come across that list in the State Library in Columbus. Now the list is filled with
works on general history histories of the United States. Military histories and books out of which Williams could have pieced together some information about blacks in the Colonial and national periods. It was clear that Williams was a serious student of history. Since he indicated in the Preface to his history of his indebtedness to librarians I mean in parts of the country I decided to inquire of these libraries whether there was on record any. Indication that he had done research in those libraries. In each case such as the American Antiquarian Society the Boston Athenaeum the Massachusetts Historical side and so forth there were records of his having been to these libraries and having done research and having used manuscripts I had requested service from time to time. There were also records of his not his having not paid for all the copying a manuscript he engaged clerks at the library is to do for him. Once we
had gained considerable attention through the publication of his first major work he was not at all satisfied. He had left Cincinnati and had returned to Boston where he was admitted to the bar on the motion of a resident lawyer George roughen and began to practice law here. After a few months of this activity he was off to Washington presumably to begin his research on the history of reconstruction. But he had not cut cut his ties with politics altogether. And through the recommendation of Senator John Sherman I will hire you and Senator George F. or of Massachusetts President Chester appointed Williams United States Minister to Haiti. Although the Senate had confirmed him before the president left office on the 4th of March 1885 and the outgoing secretary of state had given him his commission. The new secretary of state would not permit Williams to take up his post at Port au Prince. I knew of Williams's appointment but I was unable to understand some of the reasons for holding up his taking
office until I discovered a full file on the matter in the Department of State papers in the National Archives. President appointed Williams to this high post on the day before he president left office marched on the March the 3rd 1885 then that night. In executive session. The Senate confirmed the appointment. He was sworn in the next morning. About an hour or two before the president left the White House. Well this created an unlikely prospect that the new Democratic administration would permit Williams to take up his duties as. The new secretary of state had ample reason besides a political one for not permitting Williams to go to Haiti. From the Black community came various protests regarding his appointment. Ambitious young black politicians. Working full time had hoped to secure
this political plum. For themselves. One of the very few available to blacks at all. They protested his appointment to him and. One said that he knew better than to believe when Williams said that he was down in Washington doing research on the reconstruction. They said he was doing research on the point that as United States Minister to Haiti. They were pushing petitions from Ohio. Moreover claiming that Williams was unfit to represent this country abroad. One of these petitions signed by a large number of citizens from one of those Ohio towns declared that Williams's conduct in their town had not been exemplary. In view of the fact that although a married man with a child he had wooed and won the hand I one of the fairest young maidens of the town. And leaving her there with the solemn promise that he would return as soon as he could arrange his business affairs and marry. He was not heard from again.
When the united in the secular State continued to bar him from becoming United States Minister to Haiti. Williams sued the United States government in the court of claims for suit salary and expenses. After a long period of litigation the court decided against Williams on the ground that he would have never qualified for office since he had not posted the required bond and since the secretary had not sent him to his station. Once more. He was a center of controversy and once more he had been. He had become the brunt of severe criticisms about his own people. Tell us a certain accounting. Certainly accounted for a part of the difficulty but indiscretion on the part of Williams was certainly a factor in the following year he sued for divorce on the grounds of desertion. But when Mrs. Williams filed a countersuit detailing the faithfulness of her estranged spouse. He withdrew his suit.
And they nominally remained married until his death in 1891. In many ways the African phase of Williams career is the most interesting and it was by far the most difficult for me to reconstruct. There was almost nothing to go on. I knew that he went to the Congo early on 18 or 19 and in due course I was able to locate the so-called open letter that he wrote to the king of the Belgians in 1890. I found two other important documents to a report to the president of the United States which Benjamin Harrison the president requested from him before he left an eighteen hundred eighty nine. And a report on the problem of building a railroad through the Congo. Now these three documents told me much but not nearly enough. I wanted to know how did Williams get to the Congo. He was certainly not a man of wealth despite his sartorial splendor and his pretensions of affluence when living in the best hotels and dining in the best restaurants. Whom do you see in Africa and what did they think of his
venture. Did anyone from Europe know him and have any connection with his African venture. These and many other questions plagued me for years. And I wondered more and more what about that diary. Gradually I began to acquire information that led me to the answers of some of these questions. I worked in the lab or as a Belgium and secured considerable information about the role of the king and of those who made offhand remarks about the imposter and the blackmailer Washington-Williams after Williams had openly attacked the king in England I worked the Public Record Office and other libraries and learned a great deal about Williams there. For example the Baptist Missionary Society of Britain maintain missions in the Congo in the early 80s and the missionaries sent for reports back to their London office about problems they encountered. On Leopold's policies that affected the missionaries as well as the Congolese and
even about visitors who dropped in to see them. Now one of these visitors was George Washington Williams who spent a great deal of time with the missionaries on the Congo River as he stopped at the various mission stations. And before he wrote his open letter to the king of the Belgians the Baptist Missionary Society in London already knew what Williams thought of the king and his policies through the reports that the missionaries were sending back home. The society also knew that the views of Williams coincided with those of the missionaries. Over the missionaries wouldn't dare speak out. Against the king. The criticisms of King Leopold by Williams were the first ever. First they were leveled against the Belgian monarch. The open letter created quite a stir in Brussels and a special session of the Belgian parliament was called for the purpose of praising Leopold's policies and by
indirection criticising Williams for his temerity his nerve. In speaking ill. Of the king of the Belgians. In the course of studying this aspect of William's life I discovered that the best vantage point from which to watch developments in Brussels was not in the Belgian capital not in Washington for the United States Minister to Brussels took almost no notice of the matter but in London. The British minister of the Belgian Mort Vivienne watched events very closely attended those meetings in Parliament when they were discussing Williams each day said reports almost daily to the Foreign Office in London. And I read all of those reports. Lord Vivian sent in one report for example in which she gave a very lengthy account of the proceedings in parliament. He concluded by saying. Williams is denounced as an imposter and blackmailer and I do not. I do not know if
the accusations are accurate but when Williams denounces the king for he is inhuman and cruel policies in the Congo. I would say that Williams is right. I still do not know how William's got to the Congo in the first place. Who finance the trip. What is day to day experiences where and why he wrote a report on the Congo railway. For years I fretted over these questions and reproached myself for not having taken that diary to North Carolina. When it was offered to me back in 1945. Then one day I had flipped through that diary that day and that day in 1945. And then one day many years later I recall I don't know how I did it I recall the sentence from that diary that was in the Saudi collection and the Senates went something like this. Today I wrote Mr. Huntington. That's all I could remember.
Perhaps this was he Mr. Huntington Collis P. Huntington. President of the Southern Pacific Railroad who just might possibly have an interest. In the railroad in the Congo. I knew that he was a trustee that the Huntington was a trustee of Hampton Institute and expressed an interest in Africa. I inquired of every place where they were likely to be any having the papers. At the Huntington Library in San Marino California Stanford University the museum the museum the Huntington museum at North Hall and Syracuse University. There was no encouragement for any of these places but Syracuse discouragement was a kind of encouragement. The people in Syracuse simply said that the collection there was so large that they did not know what they had and what it would be years before they could get around to organizing and cataloguing the manuscripts. Well.
I left that way but a few years later I was in the vicinity of Syracuse and decided to visit the errant research library there which was the repository for the putting of the librarians were cordial. Welcome me. And then they reminded me that they had written to me about the. Papers if that's what I was there for and I said I was there for that. They said well the situation's still the same. We just don't know. I said Look. Do you have the letters to Huntington. I arranged by year. They said yes. I said you have them arranged by month. They said yes. I said well just give me a few boxes of letters beginning with January 890. Well they said you were in for something because they asked
literally several hundred boxes just for January. And they brought me away a lot of these boxes and some of them were just letters from with saying I'm reluctant to write to you. But knowing that you were a Christian gentleman I thought you would like to know that. I have 10 children my wife my husband did and I wish you could help me out a bit. Just hundreds of those letters. There are also literally hundreds perhaps thousands of letters from ministers. Requesting. This is January 1890 requesting a renewal of their pass. On the. Some of us have you written in those days in those days all preachers got passes on the railroad and they all ask for passes. Now these are incoming let us. All go. That was the case.
I came across an outgoing letter. Written by Huntington. It was out of place. Should have been. On January the seventh eighteen hundred ninety. Two Mr. George Washington Williams in Brussels. In two or three sentences that letter told me all that I wanted to know. It read something like this I'm quoting here. There was a William. I enclose here with my check on my London and Westminster Bank for £100. That was five hundred dollars in 1890. It would be. Several thousand dollars. In. 1982. He continued I hope all will go well with you in your new field of work. And shall await with interest your first letter giving me impressions of the Congo country.
I'm going to not have to wait until Williams arrives at the Congo to begin receiving reports. Williams began writing Huntington from the Canary Islands. The first mail stop of the ship on which he was travelling and from that point on until William's sail from Egypt for England almost a year later. William Williams's letters to Huntington constitute a true diary. He shared with Huntington. His benefactor all of the experiences he did. It was at this point that I began to feel that I no longer needed that Barrett in the slaughter collection. Since Williams that outside the United States without any relatives at his bedside. I regard this as his as his last great favor to posterity. That is because the United States consul from Liverpool went up
to Blackpool on the order of the United States Minister to London Robert Todd Lincoln by the way President Lincoln's son and the minister went up there and took charge of everything. He made an inventory of. All of his personal effects. That inventory is in. The State Department in Washington here. This this council arranged for the funeral of Williams and for the internment. He also made daily reports to the secretary of state and it was in these reports. That I learned that Williams was engaged. Miracles do happen he is married in Washington to an English lady by the name of Alice fry. It had been rumored that he met Miss Fryer on route from Egypt to England in the spring weekend of 91. I was unable to confirm this.
Someone just saying in a letter that the Consul got that he'd met Miss Fry was by this time prostrate with grief in Blackpool that someone said that they met on a ship coming back to England. At that point I fretted about how I could really prove this. And then I wrote the Public Record Office and asked if they had. In the Republican office a list of passengers who came into England in 1891 and they said the fortune of the Board of Trade of England of London had required that every ship coming into London after 890 had to deposit with the Board of Trade. A list of its passengers. And the. I had to do. Q. Where the public office is now located just a that's less than two years ago. And requested a
list of the ships coming into England in May and June night 91 of SAR and I finally got to a ship that looked like it ought to be getting going when just about the time Williams got. The ship. Was owned by the. British and British and your navigation steamship company. Exhaustion in the South Shore FM Boston. This is bad writing to million Americans suffer from asthma and incurable run disease that robs them of their breath of life but health is the kind of information as I'm writing to say my chronic bronchitis tuberculosis and run disease is
available from National Jewish Hospital national as my Center a nonprofit nonsectarian Medical Center in Colorado. Car toll free 1 800 pound 1 800. Talk to. My wife and I was visiting you and decided to go to Blackpool to see what we could learn about the last days and hours of Williams. My first morning there I went to the Blackpool town hall there and encountered the director of the Blackpool tourist bureau. Since I had no one else to tell my story to. I told him about Williams and how he came to die in Blackpool. The director of the tourist bureau expressed great interest in the story but was not charmed by the fact that William's dad in Blackpool since Blackpool was a kind of Atlantic City.
Series
From the Source
Episode
John Hope Franklin
Contributing Organization
WUMB (Boston, Massachusetts)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/345-92g79nwt
If you have more information about this item than what is given here, or if you have concerns about this record, we want to know! Contact us, indicating the AAPB ID (cpb-aacip/345-92g79nwt).
Description
Episode Description
Special presentation of "Stalking George Washington Williams," a lecture by John Hope Franklin, the James B. Duke Professor of History at Duke University. Part of UMass Boston's Lecturer and Artist Series, Franklin's lecture, delivered on March 28, 1983, details Williams' life as a Civil War soldier/veteran, minister, lawyer, journalist, politician, including references to several periods of time spent in Boston. Franklin also discusses Williams' pioneering work as a historian of the African American experience and Franklin's own meticulous efforts to chronicle Williams' life and work. UMass Chancellor Robert A. Corrigan introduces Franklin.
Series Description
"From the Source is a talk show featuring in depth conversations on local public affairs, as well as having listeners call-in to ask questions."
Created Date
1983-06-01
Asset type
Episode
Genres
Talk Show
Call-in
Topics
History
Race and Ethnicity
Public Affairs
Rights
No copyright statement in the content.
Media type
Sound
Duration
01:02:01
Embed Code
Copy and paste this HTML to include AAPB content on your blog or webpage.
Credits
Copyright Holder: WUMB-FM
Guest: Franklin, John Hope
AAPB Contributor Holdings
WUMB-FM
Identifier: FTS66-06-1983 (WUMB)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
Generation: Original
Duration: 01:00:00?
If you have a copy of this asset and would like us to add it to our catalog, please contact us.
Citations
Chicago: “From the Source; John Hope Franklin,” 1983-06-01, WUMB, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 28, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-345-92g79nwt.
MLA: “From the Source; John Hope Franklin.” 1983-06-01. WUMB, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 28, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-345-92g79nwt>.
APA: From the Source; John Hope Franklin. Boston, MA: WUMB, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-345-92g79nwt