For Frederick Douglass' Paper

FROM OUR NEW YORK CORRESPONDENT.

Went to hear Miss Greenfield last night,
reluctantly, it is true, for music, and spring,
and the beautiful awaken memories that
crown my soul with thorns.

There is one thing our people must learn,
and the victory is won: we must learn to
love, respect and glory in our negro nature!
Why are we clothed in black skins unless it
is to ennoble God Almighty's black man?
And how can we do this while we suffer the
atmosphere of prejudice to penetrate our
souls and shape our thoughts?

Since the world began, no nobler, fuller,
completer man has been thrown upon its
stage than tho negro? We are only begin
ning to contribute our share to the common
progress, and see with what tropical exuber
ance we fling it down. In the world of Art
we have Dumas, and Elizabeth Greenfield.
Dumas has not only written more that Wal
ter Scott, but he has written in the "Trois
Monsquetaires" and "Twenty Years after,"
the most perfect fiction, fullest of original
and perfect creations which has yet been
published. He is not merely a first class
original genius, but he is a genius of new
proportions, and unheard of fecundity of
imagination: his thoughts, creations and
ideas pour out like the floods of a clear, grand
inexhaustible river; he is perfectly exuber
ant, and as we shall show from an able criti
cism, in a leading London Scientific jour
nal, his grandest peculiarities, are purely
negroid; the rules of European criticism are
too small for the accurate measurement of
his proportions.

And here the bills announce that the
BLACK SWAN, "in a song written expressly
for her, by Stephen Glover of London,
reaches Thirty-one clear notes in the Scale—a greater compass of voice than any other mor
tal has ever reached." There we have negro
exuberance again! Tropical nature vindi
cated in this child of the sun, in her depart
ment of Art, in like manner as in Dumas in
his department of Art. I cannot analyze,
I can only describe the Swan and her genius.
A lady of fine musical taste and accomplish
ments, who sat near me, burst into tears
when the Swan had finished "Sweet Home."
And, on my afterward asking her how does
Miss Greenfield compare with Abby Hutch
inson, said, "infinitely superior." "How

with Jenny Lind?" She answered, "Her
sister! and with like culture she would far
excel." Moreover, there was Saturday night,
there were, at the same hour, the highest
musical attractions at Niblos' and the Acade
my of Music, and yet there were upwards of
two thousand persons in the Tabernacle, of
whom at least six hundred were colored ! --
Our people paid noble tribute to this their
sister Queen of Song.

True Art is a leveller, and thoroughly is
ocratic: never was the Tabernacle so thor
oughly speckled with mixed complexions;
blind gentlemen sat side by side with dark
ladies, and vice versa: my old friends Cos
mopolite, EthiopWilson, William Joseph ("Ethiop")

William Joseph Wilson (1818–?), a free black man from New Jersey, operated a bootmaking shop in New York City as early as the 1830s. In the 1840s he became a secondary school teacher and later a principal of a black school in Brooklyn. He was an activist on behalf of black education, encouraging access and attendance, and even opened his own library. Wilson also campaigned to secure the franchise for New York African Americans. He served as a member of the Committee of Thirteen, organized by New York black leaders to stop enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act. In the early 1850s Wilson’s letters appeared frequently in Frederick Douglass’ Paper, and Douglass referred to him as the newspaper’s “Brooklyn correspondent.” Wilson’s letters to the newspaper, published under the pseudonym “Ethiop,” were often part of an ongoing debate about the condition of blacks in New York and the United States. Wilson’s most frequent sparring partner in the war of letters was “Communipaw,” actually James McCune Smith, a prominent black physician in New York City. Carleton Mabee, Black Education in New York State: From Colonial to Modern Times (Syracuse, N.Y., 1979), 54, 63-67, 123, 129, 155, 158; Foner and Walker, Black State Conventions, 1:79-88; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 87, 212, 229; Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, 4:144-45n. and Observer, each had the
luck to sit like thorns between blushing
roses. Observer sat perfectly still: Cosmop
olite did ring out "bravo," at his Indian
friend; but, Ethiop was entirely carried away
by the Swan, and in the song of "Coming
thro' the Rye." at a particular note which
brought down the House, your Brooklyn
Correspondent (Ethiop, to wit:) snatched
an opera glass from the lady next him, raised
it to his lips and shouted "Hurra!"

Miss Greenfield occupies a position of
marked significance. Bending not one whit
to the requirements of American Prejudice,
never shrinking for an instant under the
cover of an Indian or a Moorish descent, she
stands forth simple and pure a black woman.
This truthfulness is proof of the nobleness
of her nature, and fitness to become a Priest
ess in the Temple. Having selected as her
aim the divinest of Arts, that are requiring
the richest endowments of nature and the
most prolonged and arduous culture, it was
but a light thing for her to meet Prejudice
face to face and crush it. And now, when
she appears on the platform, before an American audience, and her pure and perfect
notes gush forth
— "Sweet as seraph's song,"
there trails beneath their ravishing melody
the irresistible "AM I NOT A WOMAN AND A
SISTER?"

We would urge our colored friends to go
and hear the Black Swan: apart from the
rich musical treat they will have an oppor
tunity of looking into their own hearts, and
seeing what they did not, perhaps, suspect
before: the first few utterances in her part
will cover them with surprise, and joy and
triumph. They will hear, in spite of the
convictions they have been educated into
in this caste cursed land, they will hear what

supernal good may come out of our own
Nazareth.

We have no adequate criticism of Miss
Greenfield, even in the liberal Tribune. Mr.
Fry who grew frantic over Jenny Lind, is
dumb in relation to the Black Swan. I do
not attribute this silence to prejudice: Art
must precede criticism: and a new revela
tion of Art must be comprehended before it
is chronicled in fitting terms.

Mr. Fry must grow up to the comprehen
sion of Miss Greenfield and then he may
criticise. Even Wendell Phillips, after
seventeen years' service in the ranks of Gar
risonism, could only "bless the pistol" which
took effect at Christiana: the great soul who
fired it off was beyond the reach of his intel
lection With prayers for your restoration
to health,

I am yours, dear Mr. Editor,
COMMUNIPAWSmith, James McCune

James McCune Smith (1813–65), a prominent black physician, abolitionist, and writer, was born in New York City to an enslaved father and a self-emancipated mother. He attended the New York African Free School, but was denied admission to Columbia University, Geneva Medical College, and the New York Academy of Medicine. He turned to the University of Glasgow in Scotland, where he received a B.A. (1835), M.A. (1836), and M.D. (1837). Upon returning to New York, he opened a pharmacy and medical practice that catered to both blacks and whites. He became involved in the abolitionist movement, serving as an associate editor of the Colored American in 1839, contributed regularly to the Anglo-African Magazine, and wrote correspondence for the North Star and Frederick Douglass’ Paper under the pseudonym “Communipaw.” Smith also wrote the introduction to Douglass’s second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855). In 1861, Smith helped finance the revival of the Weekly Anglo-African to oppose black colonization and emigration, and he was a prominent member of the New York City Young Men’s Association, the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, and the New York African Society for Mutual Relief. He was the sole attending physician of the Society for the Promotion of Education Among Colored Children, a member and vestryman of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, and a trustee of the New York Society for the Promotion of Education Among Colored Children. In 1863 Wilberforce College appointed Smith professor of anthropology, but illness kept him from assuming his post. Lib., 1 June 1838; FDP, 18 May 1855; Douglass Papers, ser. 2:7–19; Miller, Search for a Black Nationality, 243; Pease and Pease, They Who Would Be Free, 90–92, 103, 110; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 115, 134; Rhoda G. Freeman, “The Free Negro in New York City in the Era before the Civil War” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1966), 40–42, 177, 186, 195, 200, 247, 276, 286, 325, 353, 393; DAB, 27:288–89. .
NEW YORK, March, 1855.