Biographical and Critical Essay
America and Other Poems
"America"
"How Long?"
"The Misanthropist"
Writings by the Author
Further Readings about the Author
About This Essay

WRITINGS BY THE AUTHOR:

Book

• America and Other Poems (Buffalo: James S. Leavitt, 1853).

Other

• Emancipation Oration by Dr. Ezra R. Johnson, and Poem, by James M. Whitfield, Delivered at Platt's Hall, January 1, 1867, In Honor of the Fourth Anniversary of President Lincoln's Proclamation of Emancipation (San Francisco: Elevator Office, 1867).

The poet was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, to free blacks whose names are unknown. It is believed that he was a descendant of Ann Paul, sister of Rev. Thomas Paul of Exeter. Whitfield's sister was Mrs. Elizabeth P. Allen, whose daughter Annie Pauline Lindell became a well-known singer. Whitfield attended his neighborhood elementary school, but whether he entered high school or not is uncertain.

While a young man, Whitfield left Exeter for a short stay in Boston, and later he settled in Buffalo, New York, which in the 1850s was the center of the abolition movement. Sometime thereafter he married a local woman who bore him two sons and a daughter.

He probably learned his barber's trade before he left Exeter or shortly after his arrival in Buffalo. He became skilled at this work and prosperous enough to open his own barbershop in 1858. Located at 30 East Seneca Street, it attracted the most sophisticated and refined black gentlemen of the city. The poet himself was of gentlemanly deportment, and his conversations stirred the interest of those who visited his shop. Possessed of strong racial pride, Whitfield was deeply interested in bringing an end to the institution of slavery.

He contributed poems to various newspapers and magazines, including such abolitionist publications as the Liberator, the North Star, and Frederick Douglass's Paper. From 1849 to 1852 his poems appeared regularly in the North Star and Frederick Douglass's Paper, and from 1867 to 1870 they appeared in the San Francisco Elevator.

In 1853 Whitfield negotiated with the James S. Leavitt Company in Buffalo to publish America and Other Poems, which he dedicated to his friend Martin R. Delany, a colonizationist who for a time was coeditor of Frederick Douglass's Paper. The anonymous writer of the introduction, perhaps Whitfield himself, appealed to the public for funds to help the poet receive "the aid of intellectual culture" so that he might "cultivate, improve, and fully develop the talent which God hath given him." The writer went on to say that "we do not claim that the poetry is of the highest order; but we do claim that it would be creditable to authors of greater pretensions than the humble colored man, who hath wrought it out amid the daily and incessant toil necessary for the maintenance of family, who are dependent upon the labor of his hands for support. There is in it the fire of a genius which, under more favored circumstances, would have soared high and obtained no mean place in the world's estimation." Although the volume was well received, it failed to earn Whitfield sufficient money to support his family and devote full time "to the cultivation of his mind, and to writing."

The book clearly displays Whitfield's talent and accomplishments, especially in his smooth handling of metrics and rhythm and in his powerful and precise use of classical imagery. Stylistically, America and Other Poems resembles in theme, diction, structure, and patterns the work of Byron, his model. Byron's sense of alienation, deprivation, and despair are unmistakably evident in poems such as "Self-Reliance," "Delusive Hope," and "The Misanthropist."

The strongest and most controversial works in the collection are the antislavery poems "America," John Quincy Adams and "How Long?" Displaying both Whitfield's intellect and poetic skills, the title poem was inspired by the abolitionist spirit that had gained strength after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850. "America" poignantly compares the struggle of Americans to be free and independent from Great Britain and the struggles of blacks to be free from slavery. In the opening lines of the poem Whitfield points out the actuality of America's racism in contrast to its stated principles: "America, it is to thee,/Thou boasted land of liberty,--/It is to thee I raise my song,/Thou land of blood, and crime, and wrong."

Whitfield dwells at length on the irony of the American Revolution, explaining how black soldiers shared the pain of war and the joy of victory in the belief that after the war slavery would be abolished and the freedmen's natural rights granted to them. He attacks the cruelty of slavery--including the separation of families, sexual exploitation of black women and men, and floggings--and argues that the slave would be justified to overthrow slavery by buying his freedom with his life: "And with stout heart and weapon strong,/Pay back the tyrant wrong for wrong...." He touches on the religious discrepancies in America under the slave system and affirms that all men are made in God's image, even though white Christian ministers preach that the holding of another man in bondage had been sanctioned by God. After 133 lines full of pessimism and resentment, the poem ends in pure Garrisonian style, not with a challenge for the slaves to take up arms and fight for their freedom, as David Walker and Nat Turner had suggested, but with a twenty-seven-line prayer of hope that God will avenge the wrongs done the slaves and that America will recognize and act upon the discrepancies between its ideals and actualities.

One of the longest poems in the collection is "How Long?" Written in iambic tetrameter like "America" with varying rhyme schemes, the 238-line poem is full of vivid metaphors. In "How Long?" the poet questions God, as he does in other poems, about why, despite the slaves' prayers for deliverance, he allows them to be trampled and dehumanized by white slave holders who call themselves Christians: "How Long shall Afric' raise to thee/Her fettered hand, O Lord! in vain,/And plead in fearful agony/For vengeance for her children slain?" The oppressed are treated like criminals, the poet charges, while clergymen and politicians--calling right anything that brings them wealth, rank, and power--combine their forces to keep the blacks enslaved. The poet reminds slaveholding Christians that Christ died for all mankind, but, he asserts, they have shut their minds and hearts to this fact by sanctioning the institution of slavery and treating slaves as though they are less than human. Whitfield argues not only for the emancipation of American slaves but for universal freedom of all oppressed people and in favor of all natural God-given rights--"The right to speak, and think, and feel." Yet, although he acknowledges the existence of oppression in Africa and Europe, no other country, he charges, has "worse scenes of rapine, lust, and shame" as America, the land "which claims, par excellence, to be/The refuge of the brave and true,/The strongest bulwark of the free/The grand asylum for the poor/And trodden down of every land,/Where they may rest in peace, secure,/Nor fear the oppressor's iron hand...." As in "America" Whitfield summons the wrathful and vengeful God of the Old Testament to hasten and set "the trembling captive free."

Aside from racial protest poems, America and Other Poems includes occasional verses for Christmas and New Year's, several hymns and verses on church dedications, and four love poems. The rich allusions in these poems reveal Whitfield's wide reading in the classics, mythology, religion, and history. Other poems, such as "Self-Reliance," "Delusive Hope," "Yes, Strike Again That Sounding String," and "The Misanthropist," focus on themes of alienation, despair, fatalism, and death. The speaker in the poems is undoubtedly the poet, and according to Joan Sherman, the order of their composition may possibly be discerned from the speaker's progressively darker pessimism and despair. For example, "Self-Reliance," with its youthful speaker, seems to be a fairly early poem while "Delusive Hope," concentrating on life's miseries and hypocrisies, seems to have been written later. Despairing poems such as "Yes, Strike Again That Sounding String" and "The Misanthropist" probably also date from later in the poet's career.

"The Misanthropist," one of the earliest attempts by a black writer to portray the pathos of the black man's social isolation, describes the black poet's spirit as blighted by his position as a black and a poet in America--the double-consciousness which was later described in W. E. B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk (1903) and Countee Cullen's "Yet Do I Marvel" (1925). In "The Misanthropist" the poet presents himself as another Childe Harold filled with melancholy and gloom. Life is arid and barren; no ray of hopeful light pierces the poet's throbbing, burning, and seething brain. The poet finds no healing power in nature, literature, love, or religion, having learned from study that the history of religion is a chronicle of greed, warfare, and ultimately death. Thus his poetic inspiration has reached its nadir, and his every though "Is from its first conception fraught/With gloom and darkness, woe, and pain." In this abysmal state not even "Virtue's self can bring,/Unto my moody spirit, rest." The poet can sing only a dirge of despondency, estrangement, and futile aspiration.

Whitfield never published another collection of verse and apparently wrote fewer poems after 1854, when he became actively involved in the American Colonization Society. One of his later poems is the 400-line "Poem" which he read at Platt's Hall in San Francisco on 1 January 1867, in celebration of the fourth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. An account of 200 years of American history, it employs an extended farm metaphor of planting, growing, harvesting, and blighting.

Whitfield's interest in the black colonization movement reaches back to an address he prepared, when he was only sixteen years old, for a Cleveland convention, which convened for the purpose of planning the immigration of blacks to the borders of California. In the 1850s he joined Martin R. Delany and Rev. James Theodore Holly as one of the major advocates and organizers of the emigration movement. He supported the proposal for a National Emigration Convention in August 1854, at which proponents of emigration could devise the best means for carrying out the colonizing of free blacks in the West Indies and Central and South America.

The appeal met with staunch opposition from many black leaders, who had no sympathy for emigrationists' positions. In the North Star for 25 July 1853 Frederick Douglass wrote that whites would interpret this meeting as "a cause of rejoicing....and discover in this movement a division of opinion amongst us upon a vital point." This statement prompted an exchange of letters in the paper among Whitfield, Douglass, and William J. Watkins.

In response to Douglass's criticism, Whitfield wrote letters that were published in the North Star on 25 September, 15 November, and 30 December 1853. He vigorously defended emigrationist goals on the grounds that blacks must establish themselves politically, socially, economically, and educationally. Emigration was to be restricted to those blacks who refused to "lick the dirt from the foot that kicks" them or to work for the economic and political advancement of whites. They must become self-reliant, he wrote, and chart their own destiny; they must help shape "the policy of the American Continent," and secure a "proper field for the full development of their power and resources." He believed it was the "destiny of the Negro, to develop a higher order of civilization and Christianity than the world has yet seen" and "to possess all the tropical regions of this continent." By establishing politically powerful black nations as models, they could demonstrate the race's "physical, moral, and mental" superiority. Such nations would proclaim the doctrines of Pan-Africanism and would eventually demand the freedom of all oppressed black people around the globe. The letters clearly revealed Whitfield's impatience with America and his loss of faith in God's divine justice.

At the Cleveland Convention, Whitfield and others urged the founding of a quarterly newspaper to publicize the emigration cause as well as "all questions" connected with the "welfare, progress and development of the Negro race." The first issue of the Afric-American Repository, with Whitfield as editor, was due to appear in Buffalo in July 1858, but there is no evidence that it was ever published. Whitfield's activities during 1859-1861 are likewise uncertain, but it is thought that he may have been traveling in the "tropical regions" of the Americas in search of land for a black nation.

Sometime in 1861, he arrived in San Francisco, still an advocate of separation. His anger at America had mellowed since 1853. Writing to the Pacific Appeal, 9 August 1862, Whitfield urged Americans "of the loyal states" to stop the rebellion, for the American government must make "an alliance with ... the people of color." The government, he wrote, must "abrogate or nullify the odious Dred Scott decision, which takes from every colored man his rights as a man and a citizen."

After 1862 he did not speak out publicly for emigration. He worked as a barber and wrote poetry when he had time. From June 1863 until some time in 1865 he lived and worked as a barber in Portland, Oregon, and in Placerville and Centerville, Idaho. Apparently he returned to San Francisco in 1865 and opened a barbershop at 916 Kearny Street. In May 1869 he moved to Elko, Nevada, where he became a member of the Elko Republican Club and participated in political activities. Sometime after July 1870 the poet returned to San Francisco, and on 23 April 1871 he died of heart disease and was buried in the Masonic Cemetery.

Whitfield's last poem was probably "Poem by J. M. Whitfield," which he read in April 1870 in Virginia City, Nevada, and which was published in the San Francisco Elevator on 22 April 1870. Its 152 lines, addressed to "order, law and liberty," have an antislavery message, but the poem praises America, calling it the world's leader in the arts, wealth, commerce, and freedom for all.

James Monroe Whitfield was not a prolific writer; yet his contributions to American letters demonstrated his natural poetic talent. His poems and his prose portray a sensitive soul keenly aware of and wrestling with the inhumanity of man in the quest for power and personal gratification.

FURTHER READINGS ABOUT THE AUTHOR