The Uses of Memoir in Writing History: Or, What I Learned About Autobiography from John Hope Franklin and August Meier

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[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In 1989, I was a graduate student just beginning research on life of historian Rayford Logan. Perhaps best remembered for popularizing phrase the Nadir to describe trajectory of African Americans in period between end of Reconstruction and World War I, Logan (1897-1982) was a distinguished historian, Pan-Africanist, and civil rights innovator. A close associate of both Carter G. Woodson and W. E. B. DuBois, an early patron of Langston Hughes, and lifelong friends with, among others, great poet Sterling Brown and civil rights legal pioneer Charles Houston, Logan is better known to wider pub lie for editing 1944 collection of essays What Negro Wants and authoring his 1954 classic The Negro in American Life and Thought. But he was also a prominent diplomatic historian who wrote prolifically on Haiti, Caribbean, and Latin America, and on colonial Africa and anti-colonial struggle. And as a politically engaged professor in 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s at Virginia Union, Atlanta, and Howard Universities, he organized first citizenship schools designed to help disfranchised African Americans navigate considerable barriers to registering to vote. In 1920s he was a leading organizer of Pan-African Congress movement, and during wwn he was prominent in efforts to break down inequality in military and defense industries and was centrally involved in negotiations with President Roosevelt to issue Executive Order 8802. Yet as a light-complexioned African American, he was also influenced by intra-racial color prejudice that manifested itself in both pernicious and idiosyncratic ways. For example, when racial nomenclature began to change in 1960s, he was known to terminate conversations--and even longterm friendships--when people used word to describe Negroes. His visceral reaction to was often first thing people who knew him commented upon when I interviewed them. (1) In 1989, I had made my way to Durham, North Carolina, to interview John Hope Franklin, one of Logan's close associates. Franklin was extremely generous with his time and related choice stories and keen analysis of Logan's life and career. In this, my experience was not unique, as Franklin was unstinting with his time to all beginner scholars who requested it. At some point during lunch, Franklin asked me what else I would be doing while I was in area. I had had it in back of my head that I might visit Southern Historical Collection at University of North Carolina Libraries and look at correspondence concerning publication of Logan's controversial 1944 book What Negro Wants. (The book had created quite a storm in white South because contributors, all of whom were black and who together represented widest range of opinion, declared that what Negro wanted was end of segregation. The publisher was unc Press, and then-director W. T. Couch was scandalized; he tried to renege on publication contract, and relented only when Logan threatened him with a lawsuit.) I told Dr. Franklin with cocky assurance, I did not think that it would be necessary to visit archives, because I had already read about publication controversy in a couple of other books and I was sure that I had full story. Franklin shot me a look that exposed my foolishness: But, he intoned, those are not primary sources! Embarrassed, I mumbled something or other, and as soon as I could I dug into primary sources. Sure enough, I had not had full story. Logan had indeed eventually stood up to publishers, but until he reached that point, he was quite solicitous of Couch's point of view and tried to impose on his contributors to soften their opinions. Logan was willing to bend his integrity because publication by a prestigious press had professional value and, in an era of rigid segregation, would, he convinced himself, have salubrious effects for race. …