Mark Twain on the Colored Man | The Writings of Mark Twain (beta)

Explanatory Notes Ⓔ

Apparatus Notes Ⓐ

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[begin page 246]

115. Mark Twain on the Colored Man
7–19 July 1865

This account of the black marchers in San Francisco's Fourth of July celebration is only a portion of Clemens' letter describing the day's festivities for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. The original letter has been lost. The text of this sketch is preserved in the San Francisco Golden Era for 23 July 1865. If Clemens wrote his account immediately after the event, it could have been published as early as July 7. But there is a possibility that he delayed somewhat: at least as late as July 6 he was also working hard on the longest of his “Answers to Correspondents” (no. 110). Moreover, the Golden Era did not reprint the present item until Sunday, July 23. On the other hand, the Enterprise must have published the letter no later than July 19 in order for that paper to reach San Francisco in time for Sunday's issue of the Era.

In Sacramento, Stockton, Sonora, and indeed throughout California, blacks had been officially invited for the first time to march in the traditional Fourth of July parades. But in most of the cities the invitation caused resentment and open displays of bigotry. In Sacramento the fire companies refused to take part if blacks joined in—and separate parades were therefore held. Blacks in Placerville and Stockton eventually declined the invitation in order to keep the peace. But in San Francisco they accepted and did not back down.

The order of march placed blacks in the ninth and last division of the parade. Despite this symbolic segregation, many whites objected to their inclusion. On June 30 a meeting of some two hundred persons, mostly Irishmen and butchers according to one reporter, was held to protest even this slight recognition.1 The city press, however, was nearly unanimous [begin page 247] in condemning this protest. Bret Harte's Californian said that the surly whites were saying, in effect, “No . . . you may fight with us, serve as a shield for white men, ward off the deadly bullets which would else reach [our] hearts. You may mourn with us but you shall have no part in our rejoicings.” And the Evening Bulletin scathingly advised all objecting whites to stay home—advice which hundreds followed. But the blacks turned out in full force, elaborately dressed. The newspapers reported that onlookers gave them a lion's share of the applause along the parade route, and that when they alone of all the marching groups doffed their hats to the portraits of Lincoln and Washington on the Triumphal Arch they received an ovation.2

Given this background, it should be clear that Clemens' somewhat gruff handling of the subject—his use of the word “niggers” and the phrase “them damned niggers”—did not imply his agreement with the white protesters, but just the reverse. Clemens' admiration for Sam Pride, and his open friendship with the black editor of the San Francisco Elevator, as well as this sketch, show that his attitude toward blacks was not that of a typical southerner or even a typical San Franciscan.3

Editorial Notes

1 “Prejudice,” San Francisco News Letter and Pacific Mining Journal 15 (1 July 1865): 9.

2 Californian 3 (8 July 1865): 1; “Feeble Demonstration of Expiring Prejudice,” San Francisco Evening Bulletin, 1 July 1865, p. 2; “Independence Day,” ibid., 5 July 1865, p. 5.

3 For a different view of Clemens' attitude toward blacks, see Arthur G. Pettit, Mark Twain & the South (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1974), p. 34. “Mark Twain on the Colored Man” was not known to Pettit.

[begin page 248]

Mark Twain on the Colored Man

And Ⓐemendation at the fag-end of the processionⒶemendation was a long double file of the proudest, happiest scoundrels I saw yesterday—niggers. Or perhaps I should say “them damned niggers,” which is the other name they go by now. They did all it was in their power to do, poor devils, to modify the prominence of the contrast between black and white faces which seems so hateful to their white fellow-creatures, by putting their lightest colored darkies in the front rank, then glooming down by some unaggravating and nicely graduated shades of darkness to the fell and dismal blackness of undefiled and unalloyed niggerdom in the remote extremity of the procession. It was a fine stroke of strategy—the day was dusty and no man could tell where the white folks left off and the niggers began. The “damned naygurs”—this is another descriptive title which has been conferred upon them by a class of our fellow-citizensⒶemendation who persist, in the most short-sightedⒶemendation manner, in being on bad terms with them in the face of the fact that they have got to sing with them in heaven or scorch with them in hell some day in the most familiar and sociable way, and on a footing of most perfect equality—the “damned naygurs,” I say, smiled one broad, extravagant, powerful smile of grateful thankfulness and profound and perfect happiness from the beginning of the march to the end; and through this vast, black, drifting cloud of smiles their white teeth glimmered fitfully like heat-lightning on a summer's night. If a white man honored them with a smile in [begin page 249] return, they were utterly overcome, and fell to bowing like Oriental devotees, and attempting the most extravagant and impossible smiles, reckless of lock-jaw. They might as well have left their hats at home, for they never put them on. I was rather irritated at the idea of letting these fellows march in the procession myself, at first, but I would have scorned to harbor so small a thought if I had known the privilege was going to do them so much good. There seemed to be a religious-benevolent society among them with a bannerⒺexplanatory note—the only one in the colored ranks,Ⓐemendation I believe—and all hands seemed to take boundless pride in it. The banner had a picture on it, but I could not exactly get the hang of its significance. It presented a very black and uncommonly sick-looking nigger, in bed, attended by two other niggers—one reading the Bible to him and the other one handing him a plate of oysters; but what the very mischief this blending of contraband dissolution, raw oysters and Christian consolation, could possibly be symbolical of, was more than I could make out.Ⓐemendation

Editorial Emendations Mark Twain on the Colored Man

Ⓐ And (I-C) ● “And

Ⓐ procession (I-C) ● procession of the procession

Ⓐ fellow-citizens (I-C) ● fellow [-]citizens

Ⓐ short-sighted (I-C) ● short- | sighted

Ⓐ ranks, (I-C) ● ranks,[.]

Ⓐ out. (I-C) ● out.”

Explanatory Notes Mark Twain on the Colored Man

Ⓔ banner] The Negro contingent “bore the elegant banner of the ‘Young Men's Benevolent Society’ ” (“Celebration of the Ninetieth Anniversary of Our National Independence,” San Francisco Alta California, 6 July 1865, p. 1).

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