V.Kinsey
Eng 540, Response --Romano
February 11, 2009
Humblest
With Pen & Voice
Speakers: Maria W. Stewart, Ida B. Wells
Maria W. Stewart -- Lecture Delivered at the Franklin Hall
The opening lines of this speech are powerful indeed. Stewart begins with a question: “Why ye sit here and die?” and closes the introduction with an observation, again alluding to death: “If they [whites] save us alive, we shall live - and if they kill us, we shall but die” (6). The initial question condemns the audience for failing to act to end slavery. With every moment that passes, the members of the audience are growing older and growing closer to death. In short, the audience is wasting time.
Death in the second part of the opening takes on a different meaning. For the redeemed Christian, death is not punishment, but salvation and therefore cannot be a deterrent for action. If one acts according to God’s will (and in this context, right action is to fight - possibly to the death - to end slavery), death is nothing to fear. For a deeply Christian woman speaking to a Christian audience, the implications of the lines are clear and reinforced in the “but die” phrasing; there is little to fear in death.
Bacon situates much of Stewart’s rhetoric within the self-help topos (although she does not cite the above passage). Stewart begins this speech with a direct challenge to the complacency of the audience in a way reminiscent of several African American men abolitionists (including Whipper and Walker). She employs a “rhetoric of agitation” to encourage commitment and solidarity among (primarily) African Americans. By the end of the first paragraph, Stewart switches gears slightly, reminding her African American audience (again, it seems in the introduction her speech is geared largely toward this faction) that if they are true Christian people, they cannot be cowed by fear of repercussions from whites.
In this passage, too, I gather that the “but death” serves to remind the audience that slaves risk their lives in the fight for freedom, and that northern free men and women should be willing to honor these risks and meet them. Moreover, in linking together African-Americans, both the slaves and the freemen and freewomen, to a commitment to abolition, Stewart is demonstrating a commitment to a Christian ideal (Christ’s “ultimate” sacrifice) and arguing, in a sense, that she and her African American audience are more Christian and/or more fully embody and live Christian ideals than those who are not willing to die for the cause.
In the next part of the speech a shift takes place and Stewart appears to address the whole audience. She justifies her position as a woman rhetor, and, after touching upon slavery, addresses prejudice. In this section of the speech, she seems to speak to the white audience members, pointing out that many do not hire African American women because it is against “custom.” One reason this rhetorical move is effective is because the stakes are set at the beginning of the speech: slavery (and prejudice) is - or should be - a matter of life and death to all Americans. The white audience who does not wish to be inconvenienced for hiring/ publicly helping African Americans is shown to be preoccupied with petty and inconsequential matters. This move is call attention to the luxury white audience members have to determine their own level of involvement in abolition. It is, in a sense, a public shaming: Christ, she seems to be saying (and now by extension those willing to fight and die for the slaves), gave so much and so many Anglos give so little: what kind of Christians are you? she seems to ask.
There is, of course, much more to be said about this amazing address. In many ways I would characterize this speech as one of the most overtly challenging in the compilation, and I am frankly not surprised that Stewart’s career as a rhetor was short lived. It seems remarkable that she was given such access to a public forum to begin, based on the time (1832). Her word choices - for example, invoking death in the opening - are provocative. I gather that she may have offended many Anglo listeners by so belaboring their hypocrisies (and in this way, she may have miscalculated and failed to interpret the kairos). I wonder, also, if some of the African American men were better situated to develop and deliver these arguments (as men)?
Ida B. Wells - Lynch Law in All its Phases (1893)
Like many of other female rhetors, Wells denies that she has a personal desire to speak, but that she has an obligation to do so. This obligation arises out of an interest for those who are “ignorant” of the mob rule in certain parts of the country and the ongoing practice of lynching of black citizens. Wells believes that she educates her audience to protect not the lives of individuals, interestingly, but to protect ideals -- “life, liberty and happiness,” and the sanctity of the “institutions” which must be preserved. She disavows “sentiment.” Placing the good of the audience before her personal feelings is a rhetorical move aimed to deflect criticisms of self-interest. Although she does not in this opening draw attention to the fact of her gender (and hence evoke either arguments of mystery or hierarchy), she does propose that women are educators, and in this sense, her strategy may fall into the category of what Bacon calls the “outsiders within” argument that challenges “True Womanhood.” Wells is not afforded the opportunity to watch passively; she is obligated to step into the public sphere and educate her ignorant audience.
In the following quotation, Wells makes an interesting move where she states as fact that the issues she raises cannot be ignored. It is not her fault that she must speak on this topic (lynchings), nor is it her decision to raise these issues; rather, she is telling the audience how things are, thus limiting the audience’s ability to object to both the presence and urgency of the situation she is speaking of: “The race problem or negro question, as it has been called, has been omnipresent and all-pervading since long before the Afro-American was raised from the degradation of the slave to the dignity of the citizen….It is the Banquo’s ghost of politics, religion, and sociology which will not down at the bidding of those who are tormented with its ubiquitous appearance on every occasion” (80). While I certainly agree with her statement, in all likelihood, some members of her audience did not preoccupy themselves with “the negro question” (especially given their above-stated ignorance of and/or indifference to the lynchings), yet she “assumes” that they do and they must for it is “omnipresent and all-pervading.” She is in some sense leading her audience to identify with the importance and urgency she feels.
The majority of the speech is a narrative account of the lynching of three young men from Memphis. At every turn, she identifies the African American participants’ efforts to work within the system and to exemplify the “self help” ideals she herself (and her audience) espouses. However, because these citizens are thwarted at every turn, the “institutions” themselves (the law, the press, etc) are under attack. This is the presumed topic of her speech: the sanctity of American institutions is at risk.