From the Margins to the Center: Callie House and the Ex-Slave Pension MovementMary Frances Berry, My Face Is Black Is True

Abstract

Mary Frances Berry's My Face Is Black Is True is best situated within two historiographical, autobiographical, and biographical traditions within African American intellectual history. The first tradition is what John Ernest has labeled Historiography; second is Black Women's Studies. In this comment on Berry's fascinating and illuminating study of Callie House and ex-slave reparation movement, I focus first on how her work continues and enriches Historiography. In second section, I examine Callie House's life, providing an attenuated chronology of her emergence as a leader of movement, her thoughts and deeds, and finally political forces that crushed her. I conclude by locating Berry's work in dynamic explosion of scholarship in Black Women's Studies, with specific attention to historians who have shattered silence and brought into greater visibility lives of heretofore overlooked, obscured, or ignored black women of late 19th and 20th centuries. PART I We owe Dr. Mary Frances Berry an enormous debt for reclaiming life and struggles of Callie House and for giving us this long memory of formative leader of modern black reparations movement. My Face Is Black Is True is a major achievement and an invaluable gift. Mary Frances Berry's historical scholarship continues a tradition established by black historians and writers during 19th century such as William C. Nell, George Washington Williams, and Williams Wells Brown. In Liberation Historiography: African American Writers and Challenge of History, 1794-1861, John Ernest, Professor of English at University of New Hampshire, argues that these early African American writers understood that conceptions of historical scholarship and methodology were deeply implicated in system of white supremacy that defined every other aspect of American life. (1) In 20th century practitioners of liberation history included Carter G. Woodson, W. E. B. Du Bois, Rayford Logan, John Hope Franklin, Earl E. Thorpe, Benjamin Quarles, Vincent Harding, Lerone Bennett, and others. Working in long and admirable tradition of liberation historiography has allowed Mary Frances Berry to make truly unique and powerful contributions to African American, and U.S. political and constitutional history, and especially to Black Women's Studies, none more impressive than pathbreaking My Face Is Black Is True: Callie House and Struggle for Ex-Slave Reparations. Berry has written a book that is a work of historical recovery, but also an historical intervention. It is a work that is metahistorical. In it Berry provides a brilliant argument for justice of reparations and restores to historical memory long-forgotten Callie House. Berry's history/biography provides current reparations movement its historical record and informs us of importance of indigenous black leadership in struggles for social justice. And in keeping with her style of historical practice, Berry details ugly resolve of white political figures to use terror and incarceration to silence ex-slaves' demands for justice, and to break Callie House. In 1841 William C. Nell turned to history in an effort to understand and expose the structures of sin, and to thereby compel this guilty nation to acknowledge debt she owes her oppressed sons and daughters. (2) Over a century later, Mary Frances Berry continues that work. For her, as for Nell, George Washington Williams, and William Wells Brown, narration of history is never politically neutral. Berry's ethical commitment to reparations, her determination to give voice to those silenced, and her accessible and captivating writing style make author and her subject, Callie House, inspiring models of personal and professional integrity. Berry organized her indispensable work into nine chapters that trace evolution of washerwoman and widowed mother of five children as she emerged into a leader and came to embody heart, soul, and spirit of National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association in 1890s and 20th century. …