Constructing childhood: the Christian Recorder and literature for black children, 1854-1865.

African Americans have been producing and publishing literature for their children as early as 1854, (1) but much of it has been buried in the pages of black-owned periodicals and newspapers, such as the Christian Recorder. This previously lost literature embodies theories which provide insight into how, in response to the specific social conditions that Northern free blacks faced, they deliberately constructed model families, model children, and model behavior for an ethical or religious agenda and for political and social reconstruction. I offer, as examples of this conscious construction of childhood, a few discoveries gleaned from the pages of the Christian Recorder's publications between 1854, the year the Recorder began publishing children's literature, and 1865, the end of the Civil War. Agreeing with Abdul JanMohamed's admonition that "archival work is essential to the critical articulation of minority discourse" (5), I introduce this new material for those who are interested in periodical or serial publication history and in children's literature extending back from 1887, (2) and for those who seek to rediscover more about African American literary production and the roles African American churches played in it.

In order to get a more complex understanding of this new material, I do not, to borrow from Carla Peterson, "privilege any one literary form over others and reify early African American texts into a monolithic literary canon or tradition" (5). Instead, I refer to varied types of literary expression that capture the goals and intentions of the Recorder's editors and readership for their children. So in addition to referring to poems, short stories, and serialized novels, I also refer to letters written to be read to children, briefs about the works of children, and articles thought to be of significance to children. Furthermore, while not pretending to be speaking for all nineteenth-century black periodicals which may have published children's literature, I expect that my discussion of such literature produced in the Recorder will prove applicable to African American children's literary production generally during this time.

It is important to discuss specific historical situations blacks were facing between 1854 and 1865 in order to understand the social and political roles that the production of literature in the Christian Recorder was to serve and to understand how the times affected the themes and content of the children's literature produced there. The mid-nineteenth century was extremely precarious and disillusioning for blacks. With slavery still at its height in the South, laws were being passed to confound black life even more. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 made it more difficult for slaves to escape, providing for the return of escaped slaves to their masters and making it a federal crime for any person, white or black, to aid in the escape of slaves. The Compromise of 1850 added strength to the Fugitive Slave. Act by stipulating that federal officials were to return escaped slaves, and the officials' cooperation was made enticing by offering fees for apprehended slaves. Furthermore, in the Dred Scott v. Sanford case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that blacks were not citizens. The Court concluded that Scott could not sue for his freedom in a free state because of his status as property, for as property, he had "no rights a white man was bound to respect."

Free blacks in the North were also affected by the racist ideologies informing slavery and the laws surrounding it. Given the fees associated with capturing slaves, free blacks constantly faced the possibility of being kidnaped and sold into slavery. Antiblack laws restricting and degrading blacks were also enacted. As a result of these "black laws," or "black codes," blacks were not granted citizenship and had to live in the worst neighborhoods, sit in balconies or "black sections" of churches and theatres, and ride in the baggage sections or decks of trains and ships.

Such precarious conditions for blacks in the mid-nineteenth century created enough despondency about life in America that many blacks opted to emigrate to Africa, Canada, or the Carribean. Others, of course, elected to stay, and they actively set out to change their situations and fight for what they saw as their rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." During such difficult economic and social times, the need for a site of advocating collective values and ideas was imperative. The establishment of a press was the primary means of doing so, and several black newspapers were created, including the Christian Recorder.

Deemed the "official organ" of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Recorder was started as a result of efforts by Richard Allen and other church founders to provide a forum for black leadership and education. In 1817 the church established the Book Concern with the expressed intent of publishing and distributing books that were in line with the concerns, goals, and mission of the church, making it possibly the first African American publishing company. Through the Concern, the church produced hymnals, Sunday School materials, ledgers, and church histories. Operating under the belief that "books and newspapers are the educators of this century" ("Our Literature" 25 Apr. 1901), the A.M.E. church in 1848 purchased Martin Delany's Afrocentric and politically charged newspaper The Mystery (3) and renamed it the Christian Herald. In 1852 it became the Christian Recorder. Though founded and produced by the church, the Recorder confronted and engaged with political issues of the day. As Frankie Hutton notes, "The social morality and vindication of themes of the Christian Recorder parallel those of the secular papers, as for the propensity of this publication for giving the moral advice" (xvi). Frederick Detweiler also informs us that "this paper was looked upon by the slave holders of the South and the pro-slavery people of the North as a very dangerous document or sheet and was watched with a critical eye. It could not be circulated in the slave states" (43). (4)

It was important, therefore, to the editors that literature functioned to meet their political goals. The editors encouraged all forms of literary submissions from poetry and essays to short stories and serialized novels. Rev. J. P. Campbell, in a July 13, 1854, editorial solicited multifaceted submissions that would represent a broad view of the perspectives that comprised black identity:

We know that there are many well educated, scientific, strong and powerful minds among us, that have need to only be discovered.... We look alone to those who have had all the advantages of a good and scholastic education.... We call upon the self-taught, the self-educated, to form a part, a material part of this glorious phalanx. (70)

They received literature from authors as diverse as Frances E. W. Harper, Frederick Douglass, Josephine Heard, Benjamin Tanner, Samuel Didimus, Morris Brown, Fanny Jackson Coppin, and Daniel Payne.

So, with its concerns for the political and social status of black lives in the present and the future, it is no surprise that the editors of the Recorder would not only be proponents of "good" literature for their children, but would also have that literature reflect their own negotiations with their conditions. They created an entire section of the paper that dealt strictly with children's issues. As the paper developed, the titles of the children's sections were to change from "Our Children" to "The Child's Cabinet" to the "Child's Portion." This segment of the newspaper consistently held material ranging from reports on activities of children to didactic and entertaining poems and stories, illustrations, letters, and articles and briefs about children. All of this material addressed themes as diverse as expected gender deportment, correct child behavior, proper parental training, moral and spiritual awareness, family and community values, and social and political responsibilities.

All in all, the children's section of the paper reflected the centrality of focusing on children's development to changing their social conditions. Editorial commentary begins to address this value, focusing specifically on the importance of education during this time. A March 9, 1855, editorial entitled "Wants of the Church--Education of Children," for example, emphasizes the importance of making sure that black children are educated. Couching views in Enlightenment and post-Lockean discourse in order to establish education as the basis of humanity and moral capacity, the author notes that, "in the absence of this cultivation by education, men have no just or true morals" (3), and he continues by stating that "men have capacities suited to the reception of an education. They are living, rational, intelligent beings. They live, think and reason." Such perceptions, according to the author, should also be applied to children, who "possess all of these capacities. They are living, active, rational, intelligent b eings" as well (4). In what are clearly post-Lockean notions of children being born into the world untainted by knowledge and with the propensity to be taught "proper" behaviors, the editor indicates that "the minds of children may be compared unto a clean, white sheet of paper, which is ready to receive and will show any impression made upon it" (5).

Framing views of black children in Enlightenment and post-Lockean discourse has clear socio-political ramifications. It deconstructs many nineteenth-century ideologies proclaiming black mental, intellectual, and spiritual inferiority. If their children's minds are blank with the capacity to be filled with "intelligible writing, containing great and good ideas," then notions that depict them as wild and uncontrollable pickaninnies are exposed as loathsome constructs that promote and frame black children as incapable of intellectual or spiritual action. Consider, for example, the depiction of black children in Uncle Tom 's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, which sold thousands of copies in five different languages. The big-eyed, wide-mouthed, and uncontrollable Topsy has perhaps become the most famous black child character from that period. Having no sense of family or identity, Topsy, when asked who made her, responds by saying," 'I spect I grow'd. Don't think nobody never made me'" (Stowe 240). Other black chil dren in Stowe's novel are depicted as lacking any sense of instruction and direction as well. At the very beginning of the novel, the reader meets the quadroon Harry, who has is singing "one of those wild, grotesque songs common among negroes, in a rich, clear voice, accompanying his singing with many comic evolutions of the hands, feet, and whole body" (3). Readers also meet Mose and Pete, Uncle Tom's children, who prefer eating their food "as they rolled about on the floor under the table" (15).

That Stowe's novel sold thousands of copies, was reprinted in several languages, and was the center of heated debates in the white and black arenas speak to its role in shaping public views of blacks, and of children in this case. (5) Richard Yarborough speaks of the book's cultural power: "With its extraordinary synthesizing power, Uncle Tom's Ca bin presented AfroAmerican characters, however derivative and distorted, who leaped with incredible speed to the status of literary paradigms and even cultural archetypes with which subsequent writers--black and white--had to reckon" ("Strategies" 47). The Recorder "reckoned" with these archetypes by counteracting them with positive images of children that black readers and writers wanted to project. (6) The above-cited editor's post-Lockean views about black children indicate that writers for the Recorder were going to construct their own notions of "great and good ideas" and instill them in their children via literature.

Of these "great and good ideas," the idea of family was one that was strongly promoted, particularly parent-child relations. In the December 3, 1855, article "Schools at Home," the author (not named) encourages the parent to "make a companion of his child; converse with him familiarly; put to him questions; answer inquiries, communicate facts, the results of his reading or observation, to awaken his curiosity; explain difficulties; the meanings of things, and the reasons of things ..." (141). Advocating companionship and conversations with the child, this statement demonstrates the paper's concerted effort to produce strong and positive parent-child relationships. It not only shows parents caring about their children's intellectual growth and development, but it also places the parent at the center of this development.

"The Eye that Mocketh at Its Father" (23 Feb. 1861) speaks further to the parent-child relationship by reinforcing the need for parental guidance and child obedience. This story is about a little boy named Willie, who picks cherries to eat after his parents have instructed him not to do so. While his parents are away at church, Willie sneaks off to the tree. When startled by his babysitter, who catches him there, Willie falls from the tree, breaks his neck and dies. The story ends with the injunction: "Let the reader of these lines never forget God's command--children obey your parents" (28).

Even though this type of tragic ending was a staple of Sunday school literature of the day, which used such endings to teach children morals, there are two main ideas here particularly relevant to how antebellum black children are to see themselves. First, one must notice the subtext of configurations of family and family values being promoted. Not only does Willie have two parents who are present in his life, but his parents are also attending church together. Moreover, by having Willie's parents attend church and by ending the story with the reminder of not forgetting God's will, this piece also encourages the centrality of religion and morality in the construction of family.

At first glance it may appear as if the editors of the Christian Recorder are merely appropriating white, middle-class notions of the nuclear family as the only alternative for their children. Quite the contrary is true, especially when we consider the interesting fact that the Recorder also carried advertisements seeking information on family members who were dislocated and separated from other members as a result of slavery. Just pages from the children's section are advertisements like the following, from the October 28, 1865, edition of the Recorder.

The subscriber is desirous of obtaining information of his seven sisters and two brothers, viz: Maria Pryor, Nancy Copeland, May Ann Damson, Sarah Damson, Harriet J. Damson, Martha Damson, and Joseph W. and Christopher Damson. They were last heard from about sixteen years ago in Dunlap Creek, Allegheny Co., Va., and formerly belonged to a man named Damson. Any information will be kindly received by John Copeland or M. P. Riley. New Alexandria, PA.

The fact that the Recorder published stories that promote strong family ties just a few pages from these ads shows the complexities of black familial life in the antebellum period. Juxtaposing such stories against these ads provides a strong critique of how the institution of slavery fragmented the black family structure. While not giving up on the possibility of the nuclear family structure, the editors still critiqued its limitations as the only alternative for blacks, considering their social conditions.

Considering the context of oppression that antebellum blacks lived in, the author's caveat at the end of little Willie's story had political significance as well. Dianne Johnson's observation that twentieth-century black youth "live in a society and in a world in which the 'happy ending' does not constitute a realistic model" holds even more true for antebellum black youth (2). In a social context where black children were being depicted as wild and uncontrollable, where they constantly ran the risk of being kidnaped and enslaved, or even arrested for "unruly behavior," parents knew that there were many outside factors over which they had no control. Little Willie's death seems extreme, but it serves the purpose of emphasizing to children the dire things that could happen to them if they do not obey their parents. Black children simply could not take liberties with certain types of behaviors. If within the private space of their homes black families could create certain modes of discipline, then these lessons might carry over once children entered the public sphere.

Evelyn Higginbotham advances a dynamic she calls the "politics of respectability," which describes the political dimension of respectable behavior for turn-of-the-century black women. In Righteous Discontent, Higginbotham contends that acting "respectably" in public was a political gesture designed to dispute preconceived thoughts about blacks, particularly black women. She states that these women's "emphasis on respectable behavior contested the plethora of negative stereotypes by introducing alternative images of Black women" (191). This notion can be extended back to the antebellum period in order to demonstrate how similar concepts were at play in prescriptions of behavior for black children. Having children exhibit positive and "respectable" behavior at all times served a similar political function, as "acting right" would be a direct refutation to existing negative images of the children as wild, uncontrollable, and lacking spiritual and intellectual capabilities.

Literature continued to emphasize the political interconnectedness of "acting right" in private and in public. M. J. E. Crawford starts her poem "Kind Little Children" from the July 5, 1862 issue off this way:

 saw a pleasant sight one day,
Two little children left their play,
And ran with eager feet
To guide a blind man on his way
Along the village street....

That kind deed was not hard to do,
And, children, every one of you
May do some act as kind
In almost every hour you live
Although you can but seldom give
Help to the lame or blind. (108)

By having the children cease playing to help a blind man, Crawford is encouraging acts of kindness. Just as she is pleased to see the children perform such an act, "others," who have Topsyan views of black children, may also look very favorably upon this act. Such an act will show Christian inclinations, thus refuting ideologies that suggest otherwise.

Crawford goes further to note the importance of proper behavior at home:

f "mother" calls you from your play,
You can with cheerfulness obey,
And haste to do her will.
And if baby claims your care,
With willing heart and cheerful air,
You can your part fulfill.

It cheers a parent's heart to see
A child obeying cheerfully
with willing heart and mind!
And God himself doth graciously
Regard the child who tries to be
Obedient and kind. (108)

This principle of respectable behavior continues to be promoted in a submission adjacent to Crawford's poem. Addressing children directly, the unnamed author states: "I am afraid, many of you, my dear little children, have witnessed the sad and painful sight of boys fighting in the street." The author then goes on to state that she was so disappointed to observe this behavior that she pulled one of the boys aside to have a talk with him about his responsibility to himself and God not to carry out such acts. That this story would appear adjacent to a poem encouraging "kind acts" reinforces that antebellum blacks were intentionally constructing notions of childhood grounded in positive behavior--the need to "act right," especially in public.

The Recorder encouraged other such public acts of kindness to be extended to missionary work as well. Published in February 8, 1862, "A Child's Morning Thoughts" is, as its title suggests, a poem about the first thoughts on a child's mind upon waking. The first two stanzas show the child's gratefulness for having risen when others were less fortunate. The child is also thankful for having had a pleasant night's sleep, noting that, while others "toss on beds of pain, I rise to joy and health." In keeping with the paper's goal of encouraging religious values, the first two stanzas teach the lesson of praising God before beginning the day. Other stanzas reveal more:

n far off lands, on heathen shores,
This morn the child his offering pours
To goods of wood and stone; while I
Am taught to pray to God most high.

They never heard how Jesus gave
His life a dying world to save;
While God's own book to me is given,
That guides to happiness and heaven. (180)

While intending to make black children love and revere God and the Bible, this piece also shows how they are expected to sympathize with non-Christians and work toward converting them.

"The Missionary Child" continues this theme. Printed in the November 8, 1862, edition of the Recorder, this poem is about a "little maiden" who lived "beneath the eastern sunshine." She apparently had a good childhood there with a gentle mother and a loving father. Later, her father went off to war to fight and never returned. The victors of the war carried with them captives and, according to the poem,

  among them was the little maid
   From home and country driven
   And the only Friend she had not lost
   was her Father's God in heaven.

The poem continues:

   Still neath the eastern sunshine
   Though mid a stranger race

   The little captive served her God
   And sought His helpful grace;

   And in the heathen household
   Where 'was her lot to dwell
   To those around she told of Him
   Who doeth all things well. (180)

The poem goes on to tell the story of how "a naughty noble" wants evidence of the alleged omnipotence of the child's God, so he leaves at her house a "leper foul," who is healed as a result of the child's prayers. Upon witnessing this miracle, "the heart so proud now humbly bowed / Before Jehovah's name" (180). We see the conversion theme still being promoted. The protagonist is commended for her ability to convert infidels to her religion through her undying devotion to God, even after she has been separated from her family. Children are being taught always to spread God's word, regardless of the situation.

From a contemporary perspective, especially after Edward Said has impressed upon us ways in which the construction of the "other" has influenced our own constructions of ourselves, we might be inclined to criticize these poems for their imperialistic tendencies. (7) Phrases from these poems like "stranger race" and "heathen household" are designed to elevate the protagonists, who are commended for their ability to convert "others" to their religion. At the same time, such terms devalue the image of the other. While such criticism is understandable, I assert that it is important historically to contextualize the act of missionary work in the nineteenth century and to grasp its political role in blacks' social and religious lives. Writers for the Christian Recorder avidly promoted missionary work because they thought that, by encouraging such values in their children, they were constructing future Christian leaders. Furthermore, promoting through literature the idea that their children could be Christians with the ability to convert others to their religion offered yet another refutation of the notion of blacks' spiritual incapacity.

In addition to encouraging notions of family and promoting proper behavior, children's literature also functioned to prescribe gender deportment for black children. Stories and poems demonstrate the complicated act of juxtaposing mainstream ideologies of gender against the writers' own ideas. Some stories replicate mainstream ideas of gender roles, while others reveal free blacks renegotiating prevalent white values of masculinity and femininity, which did not seem to allow the kind of fluidity that their current situation as oppressed people required.

"Kitty's Verse," for example, promotes the common nineteenth-century notion that girls are spiritually superior to boys. Written by a woman who calls herself "Cousin Zilpha," (8) this short story from the September 9, 1862, issue opens with a little girl named Kitty reading her favorite biblical verse: "Charity suffereth long and is kind." Kitty then experiences a series of events in which she has to apply this verse. First, her brother David, accidentally breaks her "cherished transparent slate." Though upset about its loss, Kitty recalls the verse and forgives him. Later that same day, the "Carter children," who "were not very well bred," come by to visit. As a result of their "careless handling of play things and rude practical jokes," several of Kitty's other toys are broken. Finally, while collecting her broken toys and her thoughts after their departure, her brother places ice down her back. She jumps, knocks over a table, and "demolishes a little statuette of parian marble, the pride and delight of Kit ty." She screams at her brother, cries over the loss of her prized possessions, and resolves never to speak to him again. At this, her mother both chastises and comforts Kitty by reminding her that Jesus suffered long and hard and still begged God to forgive the wrongdoings of his enemies. She impresses upon Kitty to exercise this Christ-like behavior. After a "burst of passionate sobbing," Kitty kisses her brother and forgives him. David is deeply moved, and later that night "he whispered Kitty's prayer, Dear Lord, forgive my sins." story ends with a question from Cousin Zilpha: "I think our Father heard him--do not you?" (179).

Antebellum black newspapers like the Christian Recorder constantly reminded black women that "they were the gentler sex, naturally more moral, more loving, more caring than men" (Horton 103). "Kitty's Verse" subscribes to this idea by emphasizing Kitty's ability to suppress her anger and forgive her brother and the Carter children, despite her obvious disappointment at losing her cherish items. Her "natural," moral superiority over her brother is further demonstrated when we consider the story's point that Dick "had three years the start of his little sister in life's race" (179). That she is younger and is still able to maintain the moral fortitude she does over him further emphasizes girls' high moral sensibilities. The newspapers also sent the message to black women that "they must provide a subtle guidance for their husbands and all Black men (Horton 103). Kitty is certainly being trained in this direction. In forgiving her brother's prankish ways, in spite of her displeasure with him, Kitty serves as an example for him. And Dick is guided to repentance.

Although stories like "Kitty's Verse" complied with the prevailing gender construct of girls' natural spiritual abilities, I contend, first, that it was hard to escape accepting and complying to some of the prevailing views of the day and, second, that Blacks didn't accept such views uncritically. The realities of black life dictated that their literature provide alternatives for their children. "Schools at Home," "Apologizing," and "Fathers Pray with Your Children" exemplify complex ways gender was being navigated.

In the "Schools at Home" piece mentioned earlier, the author designates specific types of lessons that can be conveyed to boys and girls while they are at home. The author notes that boys should be "required to give the principles of raising water by the pump," and they should know "the work is performed easier when the team is near the load than when father removed" and "how dew is deposited in the evening hours." Girls should be taught lessons "when around the fireside." They should be taught "the principle upon which the smoke ascends the chimney, and why the air is warmest at the top of the room. At another time, why the pitcher sweats in the hot noon, or the dough rises in the pan" (37).

That the boys' lessons are about the barn, teaming, and ploughing, and even about the grass implicitly situates boys outside the home, in the public space. Boys are being taught lessons that reemphasize nineteenth-century notions of the male's place being outside, away from the hearth. Girls, on the other hand, are being taught that their space is within the domestic sphere, or, as the author notes, "around the fireside." Emphasizing that they learn about the sweat on the pitcher, and the principles of rising dough, positions them as cooks and caretakers of the home, notions that show girls growing up into the Western notion of the true woman spelled out by Barbara Welter. (9) But although this piece consigns specific spheres for women, it is also simultaneously subverting the idea of "true womanhood" and critiquing the inapplicability of such standards for many black girls.

A large number of Northern black women in the nineteenth century were domestic workers, and many of them had to work to bring in extra income to sustain their families. Teaching young girls such lessons "around the fireside" reveals clear pre-Washingtonian ideas of combining self-help skills with science and labor. (10) The story also reveals the contradictions inherent in gender expectations for black girls, who on the one hand were being taught that they should grow up to be morally superior, pure, domestic, and nurturing, but who knew that they would function in a society that expected them to do domestic work, that would take them out of the home, with the result that they would be away from their families for extended periods of time.

The subversion of Western notions of femininity may also be seen in the interesting fact that a large number of the contributors to the children's section of the Christian Recorder were women. (11) The act of women writing for the Recorder sent a dual message to girls. On the one hand, much of the writing that women produced was didactic and intended to instruct, so it was used as a tool to continue the "womanly" endeavor of nurturing and caring for the children. At the same time, however, writing for publication was a very public act, and it was not traditional for women to engage in public activity. A diverse audience subscribed to this paper, which engaged and addressed the political and social issues affecting blacks. Girls and boys reading these stories written by women were therefore receiving the message that, despite the fact that many of the stories encouraged private expectations of girls, they could not avoid public work intended for the betterment of the race.

Notions of masculinity were being expanded in children's literature as well. Richard Yarborough has recently noted that, just as one can see how Western notions of womanhood created obstacles for black women, there existed what he calls a "mythology of masculinity" that posed similar barriers for men. Yarborough further states that this mythology contained the following characteristics: "nobility, intelligence, strength, articulateness, loyalty, virtue, rationality, courage, sell-control, courtliness, honesty, and physical attractiveness" ("Race" 168)

Stories such as Gail Hamilton's "Apologizing" encouraged such traits in boys. In "Apologizing," four boys, who are attending a local academy, poke fun at Farmer Renells, an old man who passes them riding a dilapidated carriage being pulled by a dusty white horse. Upon hearing about their unruly behavior, the head teacher chides them and makes them apologize. This chastisement, of course, comes with a minilecture: "such an apology as shall restore a gentlemen's self respect when he has unwittingly been guilty of a gross breach of propriety" (16 Sept. 1865: 148). The boys apologize, and the forgiving farmer rewards them with a ride in the carriage.

The teacher's emphasis on the restoration of self-worth from the apology reinforces the ideas of virtue, dignity, self-control, and respect. (12) By publishing this story, which is intended to instill these important traits in black boys, the Record is advancing a counter-argument to the common depiction of black men as brutes or animals. Hamilton's "Apologizing" serves the similar function of inscribing the sense of humanity that black boys have.

Children's literature also amended the very notion of masculinity. The brief submission "Fathers Pray with Your Children" (9 Mar. 1861) recounts the story of a man who remembers his father "taking him into a room alone, and kneeling down and praying with him." Although he cannot recall the specifics of the prayers, he notes that the act "made an indelible impression on his mind." The author of the piece makes a plea to fathers to pray with their children "not in the family merely, but pray with and for them alone" (36). In addition to re-emphasizing the Christian value of praying, this piece speaks not just to the presence of the father figure in the family, but more profoundly to the very active role that he is taking in nurturing and shaping the mind and morality of the child. Many nineteenth-century gender ideologies situated the mother, sister, or other female family member as the primary nurturer of children. "Fathers Pray with Your Children" demystifies and reconfigures the "mythology of masculinity" by showing a man interacting with his child in caring, nurturing, spiritual ways generally associated with women.

Initially, one may be inclined to dismiss this literature for children because of its strong concerns with morality and spirituality. However, as the stories covered here reveal, antebellum black children's literature in the Christian Recorder has strong social and political ramifications. That many of the stories replicate and emphasize moral growth and development served as a direct refutation of the claims that blacks were morally and spiritually inferior to whites. Finally, that antebellum blacks produced literature, and that they produced the literature specifically for their children, shows further the social function literary production played in shaping and promoting their own identity and definitions. Unlike Stowe's Topsy, the black children for whom these stories in the Christian Record er were intended were not "grow'd," but consciously constructed.

Notes

(1.) I say that African American children's literature existed at least as early as 1854, because as an archivist of African American literature I hesitate to make definitive statements about "beginning" dates. Henry Louis Gates's discovery of Harriet Wilson's novel Our Nig replaced William Wells Brown's Clotel (published in London in 1853 and reprinted in revised book forms in America in 1864 and 1867) as the earliest extant novel written by an African American in the United States. Furthermore, Frances Smith Foster's 1994 release of three novels by prominent nineteenth-century writer Frances E. W. Harper provides another example of how the efforts of archival research result in new material that challenges or expands current scholarship. Until Foster's publication, these texts were buried in the mid-1800 editions of the Christian Recorder newspaper (see Harper).

(2.) Many discussions of early black children's literature tend to focus on the work of writers and editors at the turn of the century such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Augustus Granville, and Jesse Redmon Fauset, all of whom published in the Brownies' Book, an early periodical for African American children. Langston Hughes and Ama Bontemps in the mid-twentieth century published short stories and novels, and others have written stories that address issues of growing up in urban settings. Some critics have looked into ways in which mainstream children's literature from the nineteenth century presented the image of black child characters in literature. See, e.g., Rahn for a discussion of the changing language of Black characters in the works of black and white authors.

For a discussion of images of the children in the literature or on what is revealed about the black experience in literature written for children, white or black, see Broderick; Evans; Rollack.

Also see Dianne Johnson's groundbreaking book Telling Tales, which moves away from the tendency to focus on stereotypes or misrepresentations of blacks in literature for black children and focuses specifically on ways in which African Americans create self-portraits of themselves.

(3.) The Mystery was a struggling paper owned by Martin R. Delany, a vocal leader known for his Afrocentric views and his promotion of emigration to Africa. Delany was also co-editor with Frederick Douglass of the North Star, an abolitionist newspaper. He completed his M.D. from Harvard in 1852 and published The Condition, Elevation, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, Politically Considered. In 1859 Delany also published a serialized novel, Blake; Or the Huts of America.

(4.) Detweiler's and Hutton's comments indicate that the Recorder really did not distinguish itself from other secular newspapers. The issues it addressed were just as politically charged, explaining its close observance by slaveholders. That this religious newspaper was also secular in its politics calls for the deconstruction of the secular-religious binary that exists in African American literary studies. Within the discipline, there has been a tendency to privilege secular material over the religious, dismissing the religious as assimilationist, retrograde, or less serious. What has resulted is what I'd like to call an institutionalized absence of religious literature. The Recorder contains a preponderance of literature by nineteenth-century blacks. If such literature is dismissed because of its location and religious themes, then we may have overlooked a key aspect of African American literary expression which explores the interchangeability of the secular and the religious. The children's literature pre sented here provides further evidence of the fact that the boundary between the two "spheres" is not easily drawn, as we see blacks using themes such as morality and spirituality to better position their children politically and socially.

(5.) For more information on how blacks responded to Uncle Tom's Cabin, see Banks; Levine.

(6.) For a thorough discussion of how Stowe's narrative perpetuated negative, stereotypical images of blacks, see Yarborough, "Strategies."

(7.) See Said, esp. 1-28.

(8.) The children's section held several stories written by Cousin Zilpha. Although we do not know her full name or if this is a pseudonym, there is a possibility that the author could be Zilpha Elaw, a woman minister who was very popular at this time. If this is the case, it provides insight into the female evangelical tradition that used writing literature as another form of proselytizing. This can open up further possibilities for exploring African American literary tradition.

In addition to there being stories by Cousin Zilpha, there are also letters containing moral lessons written to children from "Uncle Jeremy." That there are letters and stories in this section, signed by authors using the familial titles "cousin" and "uncle," speaks further to the ways in which free blacks were promoting notions of family. The "cousin" and "uncle" titles are prevalent in black families, and using these titles to address children personalizes the lessons being taught. Being that these letters and stories are in a newspaper that enjoyed widespread circulation in the black community, they also connect the readers to a larger community as an extended family.

(9.) See Welter.

(10.) Booker T. Washington, in his autobiography Up From Slavery, outlines the principles upon which blacks should position themselves to advance economically during Reconstruction. Washington's philosophy encouraged a work ethic based on agricultural, scientific, and industrial training which encouraged blacks to utilize the skills attained during slavery and upon which the society was economically dependent as means to elevate themselves.

(11.) Matta Mythe, for example, was a frequent contributor to the paper. She published such stories as "The First Temptation" (18 May 1861), "A Story of the Almshouse" (11 May 1861), and "Bertie Lester's Temptation" (1 June 1861). This has great significance to African American literature. While the Recorder allowed submissions from amateurs who may not have gotten published elsewhere, Mythe's contributions Indicate that there are other "undiscovered" writers who contributed significantly to the African American reading public in the antebellum period.

(12.) Such ideas are also being appropriated in Frederick Douglass's novella The Heroic Slave. For a more in-depth discussion, see Yarborough, "Race."

Works Cited

Banks, Marva. "Uncle Tom's Cabin and Antebellum Black Response." Readers in History: Nineteenth Century American Literature and the Context of Response. Ed. James Machor. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1993. 209-27.

Broderick, Dorothy. The Image of the Black in Children's Fiction. New York: Bowker, 1973.

Evans, Eva. "The Negro in Children's Fiction." Publishers' Weekly 140 (18 Oct. 1941): 650.

Detweiler, Frederick G. The Negro Press in the United States. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1922.

Harper, Frances E. W. Minnie's Sacrifice, Sowing and Reaping, Trial and Triumph: Three Rediscovered Novels by Frances E. W. Harper. Ed. Frances Smith Foster. Boston: Beacon P, 1994.

Higginbotham, Evelyn. Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1994.

Horton, James Oliver. "Freedom's Yoke: Gender Conventions among Antebellum Free Blacks." Feminist Studies 12.1 (1986): 51-76.

Hutton, Frankie. The Early Black Press in America, 1827-1860. Westport: Greenwood P, 1993.

JanMohamed, Abdul. "The Nature and Context of Minority Discourse." 1987. Ed. JanMohamed and David Lloyd. New York: Oxford UP, 1990. 5-12.

Johnson, Dianne. Telling Tales: The Pedagogy and Promise of African American Literature for Youth. Westport: Greenwood P, 1990.

Levine, Robert. "Uncle Tom's Cabin in Frederick Douglass' Paper: An Analysis of Reception." American Literature 64.1 (1992): 71-93.

Peterson, Carla. Doers of the Word: African American Women Speakers and Writers, 1830-1880. New York: Oxford UP, 1995.

Rahn, Suzanne. "The Changing Language of Black Child Characters in American Children's Books." Infant Tongues: The Voice of the Child in Literature. Ed. Elizabeth Goodenough, Mark Heberle, and Naomi Sokoloff. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1994. 225-58.

Rollack, Barbara. The Black Experience in Children's Books. New York: New York Public Library, 1984.

Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Random, 1978.

Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom's Cabin. 1853. New York: Norton, 1994.

Welter, Barbara. "The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860." American Quarterly 18 (spring 1986): 151-74.

Yarborough, Richard. "Race Violence and Manhood: The Masculine Ideal in Frederick Douglass's The Heroic Slave." Frederick Douglass: New Literary and Historical Essays. Ed. Eric J. Sundquist. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991. 166-88.

--. "Strategies of Black Characterization in Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Early Afro-American Novel." New Essays on Uncle Tom's Cabin. Ed. Eric J. Sundquist. New York: Oxford UP, 1986. 45-84.

Chanta M. Haywood is Associate Professor of African American Literature and Assistant Dean of Graduate Studies and Research at Florida A & M University in Tallahassee, Florida. This article was made possible through funds from the Council on Research and Creativity and the Committee on Black Faculty Support at Florida State University.