Traumatic Communities and the Problem of the Past in the Utopian Narratives of Pauline Hopkins and Sutton E. Griggs

Abstract

Traumatic Communities and the Problem of the Past in the Utopian Narratives of Pauline Hopkins and Sutton E. Griggs Daniel Fladager (bio) In its first edition published in May 1900, The Colored American Magazine announced two goals: to advance a forum in which African American scholarly and academic institutions could develop their ideas, and to deepen a general understanding of African American history through the continued progress of this community of Black scholars. As Pauline Hopkins and the editors of the magazine saw it, the teaching and theories of African American leaders had "grown dormant," and their magazine could help focus these conversations while providing a forum for discussion and the development of a historical racial consciousness ("Announcement"). The project often centered around rehabilitating or publicizing the wartime contributions of African Americans in the US military. Indeed, one of the first pieces that this magazine published was a brief history of Company L, "the only colored company in the Massachusetts militia" during the Spanish-American War (Braxton 19). The history presented a group of gallant men who were disciplined, brave, and honored for their service. The next issue carried another such article, but this time with a more explicit reference to the political project of such editorial work. It advanced the same idea of the martial exploits of African and African American soldiers in the past, citing "the courage, endurance, and fiery valor of the black and tawny warriors of Egypt, Ethiopia, Numidia, and Carthage," but also lamented how African American participation in the Spanish-American War was downplayed or erased, reminding its readers that "there has never been a war of consequence in which Old Glory has been waved over massed battalions or reeling war-decks, in which the Afro-American has not proved himself a brave man" (Hall 94). As David Kramer has demonstrated, many in the African American community hoped that participation in the war would win them greater status within the [End Page 250] US, proving their racial equality through martial participation. As soon as the war was over, however, returning Black soldiers were often treated brutally or liable to attack from whites, despite being treated as war- and folk-heroes by their African American counterparts, thwarting Black attempts toward progress. This unacknowledged participation in the Spanish-American War can be a telling introduction to themes that surface in African American utopian fiction written at the beginning of the twentieth century, where this historical wound is repeated in the novels of Pauline Hopkins and Sutton E. Griggs, both authors who were heavily involved in the racial uplift projects of the end of the nineteenth century and two of the first practitioners of the utopian genre among African American novelists. Pauline Hopkins rose to literary fame as editor and regular contributor to the Colored American Magazine (CAM), in part because of her biographies of prominent historical Black figures, including collective units of African American companies during the Spanish-American War. Biographies of collective companies strategically counteracted the brutal treatment of returning Black soldiers. Indeed, biography became part of a strategy of racial uplift in CAM. In Pauline Hopkins's short biography of the leader of the Haitian Revolution, "Toussaint L'Overture," she makes it clear that these biographies are meant to draw a relationship between the individual hero and the collective group to which they belong: "races should be judged by the great men they produce, and by the average value of the masses" (11). According to C. K. Doreski, CAM's biographies emphasized not just the "great deeds" of individuals, but also "the potential of a larger collective force, the 'citizen' always moving toward that constituent whole of 'citizenry'" (79). This citizenry becomes an important focus not just for racial uplift activism at the turn of the century, but also in reframing the focus of the utopian novel to accommodate African American concerns at the same time.1 Sutton E. Griggs shares with Pauline Hopkins an interest in uplift through publication and in the preservation of collective identity beside individual greatness. He was editor of the Virginia Baptist from 1894–98, started his own publishing house, Orion, to market his novels directly to the African American...