By These Hands: A Documentary History of African American Humanism

Title

This edition

"By These Hands: A Documentary History of African American Humanism". Ed. Anthony B. Pinn. New York: New York UP, 2001.

Online access

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Table of contents

● Anthony B. Pinn / Preface
● Anthony B. Pinn / Introduction: Humanism in the U.S. Context

Part I. Nineteenth-Century Humanism: Nineteenth-Century African American History

A. History, Culture, and Politics
● William R. Jones / Religious Humanism: Its Problems and Prospects in Black Religion and Culture
● Duchess Harris / Nineteenth-Century Black Feminist Writing and Organizing as a Humanist Act

B. Personal Accounts
● William Loren Katz (ed.) / The Story of James Hay
● Herbert Aptheker / An Unpublished Frederick Douglass Letter
● William L. Van Deburg / Frederick Douglass: Maryland Slave to Religious Liberal

C. Observations
● Sterling Brown / Negro Folk Expression: Spirituals, Seculars, Ballads, and Work Songs
● Daniel Payne / Daniel Payne's Protestation of Slavery

Part II. Twentieth-Century Humanism: Twentieth-Century African American History

A. History, Culture, and Politics
● Benjamin E. Mays / The Negro's God as Reflected in His Literature: Ideas of God Involving Frustration, Doubt, God's Impotence, and His Non-Existence
● Norm R. Allen, Jr. / Humanism in Political Action

B. Personal Accounts
● Hubert H. Harrison / On a Certain Conservatism in Negroes
● Zora Neale Hurston / Religion (from "Dust Tracks on a Road")
● Richard Wright / Black Boy: A Record of Childhood and Youth
● J. Saunders Redding / On Being Negro in America
● Lyle Saxon (ed.) / Experiences of a Chimney Sweeper
● William Edward Burghardt Du Bois / The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century
● James Baldwin / The Fire Next Time
● Amiri Imamu Baraka / The Legacy of Malcolm X and the Coming of the Black Nation
● Harry Haywood / Halley's Comet and My Religion
● James Forman / "Corrupt Black Preachers" and "God Is Dead: A Question of Power"
● Alice Walker / The Only Reason You Want to Go to Heaven Is That You Have Been Driven Out of Your Mind

C. Observations
● Huey P. Newton / On the Relevance of the Church: May 19, 1971
● African Americans for Humanism / An African-American Humanist Declaration

Acknowledgments
Index
About the Editor

About the anthology

● Pinn calls this work "a documentary history" but it is really a collection of modern essays and of documentary sources. For example, as Leonard Harris notes, in Part I, on the 19th century, "only Daniel Payne's 'Protestation of Slavery' is by an author actually from the 19th century. The anthology [in this part] consequently fails to be a 'documentary history' in any traditional sense" (Harris 2003: 64).

Publisher's description

"The Black church is often praised for its contribution to Black culture and politics. More recently Islam has been recognized as an important force in African American liberation. Anthony Pinn's new anthology By These Hands demonstrates the crucial, often overlooked role that Humanism has played in African American struggles for dignity, power and justice. Pinn collects the finest examples of African American Humanism and shows how its embrace by a variety of prominent figures in African American thought and letters has served as the basis for activism and resistance to American racism and sexism.
Pinn uncovers little known treasures of African American Literature such as The Slave Narrative of James Hay, where an abused slave decides to rely on himself, rather than God, for deliverance from the horrors of slavery, and a letter from Frederick Douglass which scandalized his religious friends by proclaiming that "One honest Abolitionist was a greater terror to slaveholders than whole acres of camp-meeting preachers shouting glory to God." Essays by Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright demonstrate the profound influence of Humanism in the Harlem Rennaisance, and pieces by James Farmer, Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones) and Huey Newton show Humanism's impact on the civil rights and Black Power movements.
Designed for classroom use, this radical reconsideration of African American history will be a must read for anyone interested in African American History, African American Religion and Philosophy, and American History.
Contributors: Norm Allen, Jr., Herbert Aptheker, James Baldwin, Amiri Imamu Baraka, J. Mason Brewer, Sterling Brown, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B.Du Bois, James Foreman, Duchess Harris, Hubert H. Harrison, Harry Haywood, Zora Neale Hurston, William R. Jones, William Loren Katz, Benjamin E. Mays, Huey P. Newton, Daniel Payne, J. Saunders Redding, William L. Van DeBurg, Alice Walker, and Richard Wright."

Reviews and notices of anthology

● Harris, Leonard. "Philosophia Africana" 6.1 (2003): 63-66.
"Pinn's 'By These Hands' is an anthology that foregrounds humanism as it emerged within African American religiosity. Pinn's selections are intended to establish that African Americans' substantive motivation to end oppression is a function of their belief in a common human character due social, political, and economic equity. As Pinn aptly notes, humanism can be parsed in terms of atheist and agnostic humanisms as well as freethinking, rationalist, and dialectical-materialist forms. Pinn focuses on religious humanism, particularly non-traditional, Christian associated humanists. The two most daunting tasks Pinn sets for himself are demonstrating that 'humanism has not resulted in nihilism or racial individualism; rather, it has served as the basis for action... [and secondly that] African American movement toward social transformation is attributable to the humanist leanings of major African American figures.' Pinn's earlier work, 'Why, Lord? Suffering and Evil in Black Theology', concerned the classical problem about how Christians justify the existence of a good God in the face of obvious evil. And Norm Allen, noted atheist, head of the African American Humanist, and editor of 'African American Humanism: An Anthology', differs from Pinn's more focussed interest in religiously associated voices because it provides short excerpts from a broad ranging sample of humanist voices" (63).
Pinn's interpretation of African American humanism as an outgrowth from Christian religiosity leads him to exclude "this century's two great African American humanists": "Martin L. King Jr., as a moral and absolute pacifist, seeking racial liberation through non-violent direct action, understood civil disobedience as a universalizable method for racial and economic uplift, influencing a world far beyond America. But his humanism was clearly attached to institutional Black religions and, consequently, he fails to fit neatly Pinn's definition of an African American humanism. Alain L. Locke, most closely affiliated with the B'hai faith and a philosopher, editor of 'The New Negro', and major contributor to the Harlem Renaissance, was far outside of institutional Christian affiliations and was not a political activist in the sense of organizing protest movements. He was a cultural activist and intellectual, influencing the world of lettrs and the arts. Harvard educated and deeply committed to racial uplift through re-valuations of our aesthetic sensibilities--making Black an ideal of the beautiful rather than emblematic of the exotic and minstrel self deprecation--Locke also fails to fit Pinn's defini//tion of an African American humanism because he is outside the Christian orbit; and although, at best, he expresses a general non-specific religiosity, his elitism (e.g., maintaining a distinction between high and low art) excludes him" (64-65).
Pinn views African American humanism as representative of and the product of "African American culture in general": but Harris argues, rather, that "It is the marginalized, the alienated, the disenfranchised, and the radically resistant voices from African American culture itself that shape the motivations for humanism; the established Christian churched African Americans culture is one enemy of those voices" (65). The dominant concern of "the liberation tradition in African American culture . . . is certainly a concern with racial liberation," while "it is certainly a defining feature of humanism to be concerned with the whole of humanity independent of race" (65).

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