Hopes and Expectations: The Origins of the Black Middle Class in Hartford by Barbara J. Beeching

Abstract

Reviewed by: Hopes and Expectations: The Origins of the Black Middle Class in Hartford by Barbara J. Beeching Clifton Watson Hopes and Expectations: The Origins of the Black Middle Class in Hartford. Barbara J. Beeching. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2017. ISBN 978-1-4384-6165-6. 296 pp., cloth, $90.00. Hopes and Expectations is a compelling microhistory of the black experience in America explored through the travails and triumphs of the Primus Family—descendants of Gad Asher, who was sold into slavery before reclaiming his freedom after serving in the American Revolutionary War. Barbara Beeching's monograph narrates the experiences of an emergent black middle class and the immediate family of Holdridge Primus—the grandson of Asher—who migrated from North Branford to Hartford, Connecticut, around 1830. Though just thirty miles separated the town and city, they were marked by significant differences in demographic composition and economic opportunity. The Primus family members were among few African Americans in the small developing town of North Branford, where economic fortunes were still largely contingent upon a family's farming success. "Soil exhaustion and the coming of industrialization," Beeching writes, were key factors in the exodus from towns like North Branford to cities across New England (12). The [End Page 226] city of Hartford, with its free black population of significant size and visibility and relative economic diversity, embodied the promise of better opportunities during the early to mid-nineteenth century. Holdridge Primus left for Hartford inspired by its possibilities and emboldened by his family's narrative of progress and investment in the development of the young republic. Scholars across disciplines—and across time—have explored the intersection of African American class aspirations and questions of identity. "The forced geographical displacement" of Africans, historian Michael Gomez argues, "result[ed] in an all-out search for a return to equilibrium . . . [where] wrongs are righted, wounds are healed, and dignity is restored" ("Of Dubois and Diaspora: The Challenge of African American Studies," Journal of Black Studies 35, no. 2 [Nov. 2004]: 178). Beeching's research is illustrative of the endurance of this pursuit. Beeching acknowledges the problematic notion of being black and middle-class in the historical context she offers—citing the arguments of historians Glenda Gilmore and Douglass Daniels to highlight its inherit contradictions (xvii). In lieu of fixed access to the resources that would facilitate upward mobility, the black middle class of Hartford, Beeching argues, embraced respectability, reform, and refinement. Although these values were ultimately imposed on African Americans, they were endorsed under the pretense that doing so would help debunk the mythology of black inferiority. Poignantly, the author notes the centrality of yet another value in this community: "active interest in community welfare" (xviii). Necessitated by sociopolitical and economic dynamics shaped by racism, this core principle of black life served to remind community members that "class" distinctions did not trump America's racial hierarchy. The Primus Papers—a collection of "more than two hundred personal letters" and ephemera from the 1860s—form the foundational source material for Hope and Expectations. This gem of a repository comprises the keepsakes and letters of "three interrelated individuals pursuing three different ambitions in three different locations," nonetheless bound by their roots in Hartford's black middle-class community (xv). Rebecca and Nelson Primus—offspring of Holdridge—contribute mightily to the collection. At the onset of the Civil War, the community within which the Primus family lived enjoyed an uptick in property ownership and literacy, along with a reinvigorated optimism. "However faint, however modest" was the progress of this community, the author reminds us, it stoked the hope of acceptance and substantive class mobility (xvii). Nelson and Rebecca Primus—two generations removed from slavery—are testaments of such. [End Page 227] Nelson, who left Hartford for Boston before moving to California, sought to make his living as an artist. Though a successful career never materialized, his correspondences reveal a steadfast belief in the virtue of respectability. Through economic depravity Nelson rarely contemplated abandoning his vocation and swore to honor his father's advice to "keep out of bad company" (95). Rebecca, in contrast, motivated by an "interest in community welfare," leveraged her middle...