Interrogating the silences: Julia C. Collins, 19th-Century black readers and writers, and the Christian Recorder.

Kachun, Mitch

In the 1970s, when Tillie Olsen published Silences, her rumination on literary exclusions, she dedicated her book in part to "our silenced people, century after century of their beings consumed in the hard, everyday essential work of maintaining human life. Their art, which they still made--as their other contributions--anonymous; refused respect, recognition; lost" (Olsen n.p.). More recently, historical anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot, in his book Silencing the Past, has critiqued the way that cultural power has worked in the West to produce historical understandings that silence or trivialize certain peoples' words, deeds, and experiences. Since Olsen's work appeared, and even in the decade since Trouillot's, both historians and literary scholars have worked diligently to redress many of the silences in their respective fields, and to establish broader criteria for understanding the meaning and significance of varied forms of written expression and the people who produced them.

Much of this recent attention to previously silenced writers has been directed toward 19th-century African American women, as the work of this journal and its contributors confirms. Harriet E. Wilson's 1859 autobiographical novel Our Nig, whose republication in 1983 was hailed as a black literary landmark, and the much lauded 2002 edition of Hannah Crafts's The Bondwoman's Narrative, a previously unpublished 1850's manuscript putatively written by a female former slave, frame a wealth of scholarship that attests to the importance of the ongoing reconstruction of our understanding of early African American women and their writing. Scholars have focused our attention on the writings and the lives of Maria W. Stewart, Elizabeth Keckley, Charlotte Forten Grimke, Susie King Taylor, Harriet A. Jacobs, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and others. And now we can add the name of Julia C. Collins to the growing list of early black woman writers.

Until quite recently, of course, most people, including leading scholars in the field, had never heard of Julia C. Collins, let alone incorporated her work into our understanding of black literary traditions. Collins's writings are rarely mentioned in the existing secondary literature, and only now are being formally published for the first time. This inattention is especially striking because, given the largely autobiographical nature of both Our Nig and The Bondwoman's Narrative, Collins's The Curse of Caste; or The Slave Bride may well be considered the first genuine novel by a black American woman to have appeared in print. Collins's erstwhile invisibility may be due in part to her novel's never having been completed. But it is also related to the forum in which her work appeared: the Christian Recorder, a weekly newspaper published by the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church Book Concern. In this essay, I offer some thoughts about the significance of Collins's writings, with particular reference to the six nonfiction pieces that she published in the Recorder. But I would also like to call attention to the importance of the Christian Recorder itself as a valuable resource for understanding 19th-century African American traditions of reading and writing.

The origin of the AME Book Concern and Publications Department was virtually simultaneous with the founding of the denomination, and its perceived importance was demonstrated by Bishop Richard Allen's assumption of the duties of Book Steward. At first the Book Concern was little more than an agency through which the outside printings of Disciplines, Hymnals, licenses, and Love Feast tickets were contracted. But, as Bishop Daniel A. Payne observed in 1891, by the end of the century the Book Concern had evolved into "an institution, which ... has continued to grow in power and influence" (Payne 17, 18).

Before the 1840s the operations of the Book Concern remained those of a routing agency, and its influence in the denomination was negligible. It was also rather poorly and inefficiently run. The condition of the Book Concern in 1845 was described as "painful" and "in a deplorable state," and the General Book Steward warned that any attempt to publish an AME periodical would prove disastrous to the denomination "unless proper measures are entered into by this Conference" (Payne 189, 190). However, early AME leaders like Rev. M. M. Clark and Bishop Daniel A. Payne stressed the importance of denominational publications as a way to raise the general educational level of both the ministry and the members of the Church. Many Church members viewed the publishing operations at best as a financial drain, and at worst an opportunity for bureaucratic swindling. Clark, however, emphasized the great need not only for Disciplines and New Testaments, but also for biographies of Bishop Allen and other "fathers of our Church, whose lives and labors have perished from the eyes of the Church, but which ought to live on the enduring pages of history for the encouragement of the rising generations ...." He argued that the production and sale of books, as well as subscriptions to a denominational magazine, would make the Book Concern financially solvent and able to fulfill its potential to "prove abundantly useful to our race and Connection" (Payne 191). Thus, very early in the denomination's journalistic experiment, an explicit connection was made between Church publications and the development of a literary and historical consciousness among African Americans. But the widespread illiteracy among the potential readers of AME publications proved an obstacle for many years to come. Problems persisted throughout the century, and the Book Concern was not in a position to cover its own expenses until after 1878, despite being run by Book Stewards and Editors who represented "some of the best cultivated talents that could be found in our denomination" (Payne 192). Indeed, from the 1850s into the twentieth century, editorship and management of the Christian Recorder virtually amounted to a stepping stone toward the bishopric. (1)

Bishop Payne, in particular, engaged in a vigorous mission to create a more educated and literate pastorate and flock, partly by providing reading material worthy of a literate, if not highly literary, readership. In 1852, at the same General Conference in which Payne was elected Bishop, Church leaders conducted a thorough investigation of the Book Concern and established its operations in Philadelphia, where it was to remain into the twentieth century. At the same time, the Pittsburgh publication that had been known under Martin Delany's editorship as the Mystery, and later as the Christian Herald, changed its name to the Christian Recorder. Under that banner the paper became a vital corner stone of the denomination, the black press, and widespread African American communities, for generations to come.

Initially edited by M. M. Clark, the Recorder was published sporadically for two years. At the 1854 Conference in Baltimore, Clark recommended that the paper be suspended until sufficient working capital could be accumulated. "All confidence," he lamented, "is now lost." Others at the Conference, however, maintained hope and resolved to continue publication on a semi-monthly basis "as long as it could be sustained." Wealthy Philadelphia businessman and AME minister Stephen Smith pledged $200 if 100 men would give one dollar each toward the endeavor. But all that could be raised on the spot was $21. With this modest endowment the Recorder set out to fulfill its mission to "give respectability and credit ... to the Church and community" through the dissemination of religion, morality, science, and literature (Payne 315-19, 279).

Two years later, at the AME Church's eleventh General Conference, the Quadrennial Address of the Bishops reiterated the plea that something be done to improve the state of the Book Concern. Despite the book committee's "caution and judgment" in contracting debts, and the continued "tact and literary ability" of the editors, the Book Concern was still far from "accomplishing its design in the publication and diffusion of useful knowledge among our hapless people" (Payne 331). Rev. Jabez Pitt Campbell, who became the Recorder's Editor in 1854, proposed various administrative changes to allow the efficient operation of the Concern. During the remainder of Campbell's tenure, the Book Concern attained a modicum of stability, but the Recorder seems to have ceased publication until it reappeared under the editorship of Rev. Elisha Weaver in 1861 (Payne 333-34).

On the eve of the Civil War, the AME Church was almost without question the largest, most influential, and most successful black organization in the United States. When the Church acquired denominational status in 1816, it claimed about 400 members in the states of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland. By 1856, though effectively banned in most of the South, it could boast of about 20,000 communicants as far west as Missouri and as far south as Louisiana. The opening of the South during the war allowed its membership to jump to 73,000 in 1866, 300,000 a decade later, and over half a million by the end of the century (Walker 50; Wright 5-6).

The New York Annual Conference of 1863 was a landmark in the Church's southern missionary work. Encouraged by the Emancipation Proclamation and its provision for the enlistment and utilization of African American troops, the Conference "voted ... to send a minister to the Southland." By 1865, AME missionaries had established a presence in every state of the former Confederacy (Wright 319; Montgomery 60-95). A central component of the AME strategy in its southern mission during the Civil War era was the spreading of the word through the pages of the Christian Recorder. Under the direction of Elisha Weaver between 1860 and 1868, the Recorder maintained a far more regular publication schedule than previous editors had managed. The expansion of missionary work during the 1860s corresponded with a boom in the business of the Book Concern: between 1864 and 1868 the income of the Book Concern surpassed the total for the preceding 16 years combined (Wright 293-94, 302-03).

These related developments in publications and proselytization resulted directly from the Civil War. After a rather lukewarm response to the outbreak of hostilities in the spring of 1861, Weaver's paper gradually got behind the northern war effort. As black men began to appear in blue uniforms in 1862 and 1863, Union victory came to represent the end of slavery, and the Recorder grew increasingly vocal in its support for Union--and particularly African American--troops. Numerous letters appeared in each weekly issue from soldiers and AME missionaries in the southern field. The paper became "a silent, but most efficient missionary, operating in an enlarged field of usefulness" during the 1860s (Fields 124). Even in wartime, the Recorder was obviously reaching the black troops and the freed people in Union-held areas, where it was "received ... the same as bread is received by a hungry man." Whites associated with African American regiments also "read the Recorder with great interest" (Johnson). (2) A white Captain of the South Carolina Volunteers wrote to commend the editor for "the efforts you are making to spread Christianity among your people ... and elevate the character of the African-American" (Markly).

By the late 1860s the publications wing of the church was bringing in unprecedented receipts. At the time of the AME Church's semi-centennial in 1866, the connection had "at last succeeded in purchasing a house and lot ... for our Book Concern and paper," and progress was being made toward the goal of establishing a fully self-sufficient and independent publishing department (Christian Recorder, 17 Mar. 1866). Thanks to its own success, and to the continuing support of the denomination, the Christian Recorder remained the most consistently published and widely distributed African American newspaper of the nineteenth century.

Historians have long recognized the Recorder's importance both as a major black institution and as a primary source for the modern researcher. It is widely available on microfilm, and has been used extensively by innumerable scholars. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that scores of scholars over the years, most of them historians, must have noticed, but chose to ignore, the writings of Julia C. Collins. Of course, scholars perusing the Recorder's pages published when The Curse of Caste appeared, between February and September 1865, would in all likelihood have been investigating the news of the Civil War, black soldiers in the field, emancipation, Reconstruction, and other weighty matters that dominated the newspaper then. Anyone who has spent time in the bowels of some library or archive, scrolling and scanning reel after reel of film, looking for keywords relating to one's own narrowly defined topic, can understand how easy it would be for Collins's work not to register as a significant item.

As a historian, claiming no particular expertise or interest in literary analysis, I can't say with certainty why I was drawn to Collins's writings when I first encountered them in 1995. I was, like the hypothetical researcher described above, scouring the Recorder and other newspapers for information on my own narrow topic--emancipation celebrations and other African American commemorations. But I did notice Collins's weekly installments, as well as a few nonfiction essays that appeared between April 1864 and January 1865. Very likely, I was aware of Frances Smith Foster's recent rediscovery of Frances E. W. Harper's serialized novels in the Recorder, and was curious as to whether scholars were doing similar work on Collins. In any event, I photocopied Collins's writings, ending up with an inch-thick file folder that remained in a drawer for most of the next several years. I made occasional and half-hearted attempts to learn more about Collins during that time, but it was only after 2002, when my book on emancipation celebrations was completed, that I began to devote more concentrated attention to the search for Julia C. Collins. In this endeavor I was aided by the appearance of the Accessible Archives searchable electronic database, Primary Resource Materials from 18th-and 19th-Century Periodicals. This remarkable tool made it much easier for me to locate references to Collins that I had missed in my scrolling and scanning. It also allowed me to assemble a readable (if slightly inaccurate) transcription of The Curse of Caste without enduring the tedium of deciphering and rewriting every word. (3)

The result was a nearly complete working text of The Curse of Caste and six nonfiction essays by Collins, which are included in the edition published by Oxford University Press (Collins, Curse). The novel of course, remains incomplete. The Recorder published 31 chapters, 27 of which can be found in microfilm copies of the newspaper, the other four appearing in issues that have not been preserved. (4) Unfortunately, the final printed chapter was not intended to be the novel's last, but Collins died of tuberculosis in November 1865, and The Curse of Caste, though it was clearly approaching its conclusion, ended abruptly and prematurely.

Despite the brevity of Collins's documented presence in the public sphere, we can learn a number of things from her work. Examining the text of her novel in its own right likely will occupy scholars for some time. In addition, Collins's writings provide an interesting reference point for understanding the work of her approximate contemporaries, perhaps especially that of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, the most highly regarded and best selling African American female writer of the nineteenth century. Best remembered for her 1892 novel Iola Leroy; or, Shadows Uplifted, Harper was a lecturer, poet, and essayist who claimed a public voice available to relatively few black women of her time. She had published poetry in the Christian Recorder at least as early as 1861, and between 1869 and 1888 the paper serialized several short novels by Harper, which were formally published for the first time in 1994 through the efforts of Frances Smith Foster. Significantly, the first of these serialized novels, Minnie's Sacrifice (1869), addresses the themes of hidden African ancestry and interracial sex that had appeared four years earlier in Collins's The Curse of Caste. Other authors from this period also addressed those themes, but I would suggest that it is easily conceivable that Harper had read The Curse of Caste. It is hard to imagine that Collins was not familiar with Harper, who was already well known among northern blacks as an author and speaker. Harper's writings and notices of her lectures appeared consistently in the Recorder during and after the war, and, in fact, the February 25, 1865, issue of the Recorder that featured the first chapter of The Curse of Caste also carried a brief notice that the "distinguished lecturess" Harper would be speaking in Philadelphia two weeks hence as part of a series to benefit injured soldiers and the freedpeople ("Mrs. F. E. Watkins Harper" n.p.). (5) It seems that, even if they never met, there may have been an interesting cross fertilization of ideas between these two African American women--one with a national reputation, the other virtually unknown.

One large difference between the two women and their work is that, because we know so much more about Harper's life and have a body of her writing that covers roughly half a century, her serialized novels can help us to understand her development over time as a writer, activist, and social commentator. We don't have that kind of context for Collins's works. So how do we go about evaluating the significance and value of her writings? As Carla Peterson has argued, if we are to appreciate the significance of early black women's writing, beyond merely aesthetic considerations, we need to ask particular kinds of questions, what I would consider historical questions: What motivated these women to speak and write? And what gave them the audacity to do so? How did intellectual background, home and family life, work experience, community, religion, political orientation, skin color, and other factors affect their works? What power relations are embedded in their discourse, and how do they negotiate those relations? What is the relationship between their literary production and social action? As a historian, I appreciate this approach because it emphasizes context and seeks to understand these writings--and these writers--in terms of the social world they occupied (Peterson 6).

Deploying this approach is not always easy, and I certainly cannot claim adequately to address these questions with regard to Collins. Even some of the best known black writers from the nineteenth century are sparsely documented in the historical record. Those, like Collins, who are less well known are so in part because so little of even the basic outlines of their lives has been recorded. As historian Nick Salvatore demonstrated with his 1996 cultural biography of 19th-century black community leader Amos Webber, there were thousands of African Americans working at the local or regional level whose names and activities were not widely recorded or recognized, and who remain unknown to us today. Examining their lives and experiences adds immensely to our understanding of the complexity and diversity within African American communities, as well as to the functioning of those communities. This area is yet another in which further study of Collins can enhance our understanding of African American history. Unfortunately, so little remains in print to document Collins's life that, in comparison, Salvatore's Amos Webber might as well be Frederick Douglass.

Everything we know about Collins dates from April 1864, when she was first mentioned in the Christian Recorder, to November 1865, when she died of tuberculosis. We know she lived for most of this period in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, but beyond that the most basic questions about her life remain unanswered. When and where was she born? Was she born free or enslaved, in the North or the South? Was she light-skinned or dark? Where and how did she receive her education? We do not even know under what name she was born, since Collins was her married name. We know that she was married and had children, but we know little about this family. Most of the material that concerns Julia Collins is represented by her own writings. In addition to The Curse of Caste, Collins published six nonfiction essays in the Recorder that give some sense of her life, experiences, values, and community, and suggest her interest in race uplift, self-improvement, women's role in society, education, and morality. A close reading of these essays offers clues about the life of an educated and articulate African American woman living in a small, predominantly white northern town during the Civil War era. The essays also illustrate that Collins shared with Frances Harper a similar advocacy of "a life in which the personal and the public were merged in an effort to realize the moral social and economic development of society" (Foster, Brighter Day 23). (6)

Collins's first nonfiction essay, titled "Mental Improvement," was dated April 10, 1864, the day before she was scheduled to begin teaching Williamsport's African American children. In this essay Collins identifies herself racially as she criticized the "faulty and indolent humility that makes some of our people sit still and learn nothing, because they cannot learn everything" (121). Blacks, she asserted, were "born with faculties and power" comparable with "the children of the white race," and both groups were "capable of almost anything" (121). Her duties in the classroom clearly on her mind, Collins optimistically wrote of the efforts that one must put forth to achieve "[n]ot only the improvement of the mind, but the cultivation and purity of taste and the acquisition of knowledge" (122). Should black scholars nurture those activities "for which we have a particular talent ... [then] we cannot hope too muck or dare too much" (122). (7)

Collins's next essay appeared a few weeks later on May 7. Entitled "School Teaching," it suggests Collins's commitment to her charges and paints a rather idyllic portrait of the classroom under a teacher who exercises "tact and patience" and who is "kind and gentle in [her] rule" (123). For "Intelligent Women," published a month later, Collins turned back to the theme of self-improvement, criticizing girls whose "precious time, is frittered away in idleness and gayety" (125). She urged that "our Creator" intended "that we should improve and increase the talents He has given us, that we may become good and useful members of society" and "benefit our fellow-creatures" (125). Her very conventional advice to black women--from "one who is closely allied to you by caste and misfortune" (126)--was that "It is the woman's province to make home happy, to be man's companion, at once tried and true; to be the mother, and instructor of his children...." In short, to "render herself worthy to fulfill the sacred office of wife and mother" (125).

Some of the context for Collins's turn from the essay to the novel might have been hinted at in the three essays she submitted in the winter of 1864-65. Even in her earliest essay, published in April 1864, Collins had indicated the importance she placed on the individual's ability to develop a creative and unique understanding of the world, rather than relying on the ideas of others. She saw the "art of reading" as essential for mental improvement, but placed even greater emphasis on the very Emersonian concept of "self-reliance." "[W]hile we read, we must think. We must combine anew the items of knowledge. We must reflect upon them often, and draw from them fresh influences and new truths for ourselves. It is only by such processes that we become truly intelligent.... Never imitate. It is better to acquire a clear practical way of thinking for ourselves, than to load the brain with a dead weight of other men's brains" ("Mental Improvement" 122).

Collins returned to this theme in December 1864 in an essay entitled "Originality of Ideas." This time she applied the phrase "self-culture," which was widely associated with both Unitarianism and Transcendentalism, and had become something of a watchword among antebellum reformers who advocated the development of individual intellectual capacities and moral character in the interest of fostering a general moral uplift in society. Collins again criticized those who were "too willing to depend upon the brainwork of others," but also cautioned that "[t]oo much singularity of opinion savors of eccentricity, and that is not a desirable attribute" (128). She encouraged African American readers to "select our reading matter from the best authors," and to "dissect the thoughts and sentiments of the authors, trying to catch something of the writer's spirit. Let your mind run parallel with his" to stimulate one's own "originality of thought" (127-28). "We certainly have 'brain' or talent," she counseled, "why not use it?" (128).

It is toward this practical application of one's talents to address social needs that Collins turned in her next essay, "Life is Earnest," published on January 7, 1865. The turn of the New Year inspired Collins to exult, "Life is real!" and to exhort her readers to "begin life anew, and learn to live in earnest" (129). For the first time making an explicit, if generalized, reference to contemporary issues relating to the Civil War and emancipation, she noted that the "old year has been fraught with real and important changes and events--events that have far towered--changing the seemingly invincible destiny of our people, and building us up a nation.... There is vast work for us to do! We have not a moment to lose! We have gone through life dreaming too long! We must become aroused, shake off the dead lethargy of inaction, and go to work in earnest! And there is no time so fitting to begin as with the new year" (129). It was not enough to be satisfied with the necessities of life. Family, good friends, personal satisfaction, or even luxury, should not stifle people's "higher aspirations" (129). Seeming to speak as much to her own inner turmoil as to her readers, Collins wrote of

 an inward longing . . . a kind of
 remorseful dissatisfaction with ourselves:
 there is a void, and we feel it,
 and are vainly seeking and craving
 after some thing that is intangible. It is
 the craving for a better, the yearning of
 the soul after a truer, higher, and
 nobler existence! We want food for the
 soul, and healthy untiring employment
 for the mind! We will be no
 longer dreamers, but workers, in the
 field of life! We will build no more air
 castles, to see them crumble in ruins at
 our feet or vanish as the morning mists
 that mantle the gliding stream! Oh, no!
 we will live in earnest; we will be true
 to ourselves, our better natures and
 our God. (129)

The past year's events--especially, one assumes, the recent victories of Union armies, the courageous and expanding role of black Union soldiers, and the liberation of more and more slaves in the wake of military victories--gave Collins a glimpse of God's plan: "We have been spared another year, perhaps, to improve the time and talent God has given us, working out his divine will; for it is the will of God that we become a nation and a people; and He is bringing us out of the 'depths' to the dazzling heights of liberty, where the very air is resonant with freedom" (130). These events were clearly inspiring to Collins, who urged all, and perhaps most of all herself, to "live for some noble purpose, some object worthy of our efforts" (130).

It is quite possible that, when this essay was written, Collins had already begun writing her novel. Given what she must have seen as one of her own special talents and gifts, her own work in the field of life, writing The Curse of Caste may well be seen as Collins's "noble purpose," her particular talent applied to the "working out" of the divine plan to make a nation and a people. This passionate essay--from the pen of one who had consistently demonstrated a social consciousness, but in more subdued tones--gives us a glimpse into the thinking behind The Curse of Caste. Precisely what message, what cultural work, she felt she was inscribing in the pages of the novel is open to our interpretations--interpretations made all the more difficult because we do not know how Collins intended to conclude the novel. But this New Year's essay leaves little doubt that The Curse of Caste represents this one thoughtful and articulate woman's contribution to the social, cultural, and political rebirth of the African American people and of the American nation.

Collins's final essay, "Memory and Imagination," dated January 20, 1865, just a month before The Curse of Caste began to appear in the Recorder, is considerably less impassioned, but no less suggestive of her thoughts, as the novel was taking shape in her mind and, more likely by this time, on the page as well. Collins wrote here of the ways in which memory leads one "in quaint review down the shadowy vistas of the past," recalling on the one hand "sweet scenes of our childhood" or "the lights and loves of the far away time," but on the other "unlocking the ghost-haunted chambers of the brain, and bringing out the skeleton we have hidden, and fain would forget" (131). Imagination, for its part, has the power variously to temper or to exaggerate memories of either sort. These reflections seem clearly to relate to Collins's creative process, and raise the question regarding the extent to which her own personal recollections contributed to The Curse of Caste. She must have been excavating her own memories and imagination as she developed her story. Which of Collins's own experiences were incorporated into this tale? How much had been based on her own life, or on friends' or family members' lives? To what degree had imagination distanced her tale from the particulars of her own life? It is difficult to imagine that Collins's life was a close model for the melodramatic events experienced by Claire Neville or Lina Tracy, the female protagonists of The Curse of Caste. Perhaps further research will provide some sense of the extent to which Collins's own hidden skeletons and sweet childhood scenes worked their way into the novel.

As the search for more information on Collins continues, and discussions of the literary and historical implications of her writings begins, it also behooves us to recognize the varied functions that a newspaper like the Christian Recorder served for African Americans--and not just African Methodists--during the Civil War era and beyond. Aside from its strictly denominational functions, the Recorder remained one of the few published sources for news and information relating to black communities and black issues during the 1860s. Most 19th-century African American newspapers struggled with severe financial constraints that made it difficult for them to survive very long. While the Recorder also struggled, and at times operated at a deficit, the backing of the Church allowed it to appear and be distributed very consistently. This support made it an extremely valuable institution well beyond the AME Church, both for blacks seeking knowledge about race issues, and also for aspiring writers seeking an outlet for their letters, essays, poems, and stories.

Of course, others have made this point before and have made excellent use of the Recorder and other period newspapers. Scholars such as Foster and Elizabeth McHenry have made compelling arguments about the centrality of "the Afro-Protestant press" to the creation and dissemination of African American literature in the mid-nineteenth century. Their collective research has convincingly demonstrated that "the Afro-Protestant press must be reconsidered as a major source of literature by and for African Americans" (McHenry 137). Foster warns that, if we fail to recognize the vital role of periodicals such as the Christian Recorder in the founding of African American literature, our understanding of African American literary history will remain a historical and incomplete ("Introduction" passim). Chanta M. Haywood has advanced similar arguments regarding the Recorder as a venue specifically for children's literature. A steady stream of stories, essays, verse, and advice for children and parents appeared in the Recorder during the 1850s and 1860s, most of it written by women. (8) The certainty of these black women engaging in the very public act of writing for publication demonstrates that Collins was far from unique in her use of the public world of readers and writers to work for the enrichment of the race. Haywood argues that, like Collins and Frances Harper, these writers sought the moral and intellectual development of African American readers, and consciously used their writing to fulfill valuable social and political functions for the race.

Elisha Weaver, editor of the Recorder in 1865, indisputably recognized value in Collins's work, for upon introducing the novel in the February 25, 1865, issue, he informed his readers that "[T]he story is one of great depth and thrilling interest--bespeaking a rare genius and powerful intellect in the happy writer. We are sure it will meet with much approbation, and cause an increased demand for our paper" (31). While the Recorder did experience an increased circulation during the mid-1860s, it is far from clear that Collins contributed much to Weaver's circulation figures. And I suspect that some modern readers might want to attenuate the praise the editor heaped on the author. But there is little doubt that Collins's fiction and nonfiction works merit literary and historical attention.

In a field where "firsts" still matter, The Curse of Caste represents what may be the earliest novel written by a black American woman. A thorough exploration of the life and writings of Julia C. Collins is important for offering a glimpse into the complex and only dimly visible world of 19th-century African American women. Given the gender and racialized restrictions of the era, very few black women left any writings, and the lives of even the best known have been difficult to reconstruct. By following and building upon existing clues about Collins's personal life, we might more fully reconstruct her role within her family, her church, and her community, and thereby make some small progress in ending one silence, and reincorporating one lost voice into our understandings of African American history and culture. It is crucial that we focus attention on the life of this eloquent and opinionated black woman, not only as an individual, but also in the context of the broader world in which she lived and wrote. Collins's choice to submit her writings to the Christian Recorder might in retrospect seem obvious, but we must keep in mind that "obvious" choices should not merely be accepted, but should be scrutinized and questioned. Assessing the periodical outlets for her writing will add to our understanding of early African American literature, illuminate the lives of unsung black community leaders, and expand our appreciation of the multiple roles played by the black press. Only by fully considering the range of options available to Collins and her contemporaries can we hope to understand what it meant to be an African American reader and writer in the nineteenth century.

I will end this essay with one case in point: a poem published in the Christian Recorder on December 12, 1863, by another "unknown" female author, Ellen Malvin. (9) I find immense social and historical value in the poem, and have used it to good effect in the classroom. But my preliminary searches have provided no biographical information or other writings by the author. I leave it to the readers of this journal to consider the poem, the poet, and the importance of the black press as an outlet for the creative work of African American writers.

Works Cited

Accessible Archives, Inc.: Primary Resource Materials from 18th-and 19th-Century Periodicals. Electronic subscription database. <http://www.accessible.com/default.htm>.

Andrews, William L., and Mitch Kachun, eds. The Curse of Caste; or The Slave Bride: A Rediscovered African American Novel by Julia C. Collins. New York: Oxford UP, 2006.

--. "Editors' Introduction: The Emergence of Julia C. Collins." Andrews and Kachun xi-liii. Boyd, Melba Joyce. Discarded Legacy: Politics and Poetics in the Life of Frances E. W. Harper, 1825-1911. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1994.

Christian Recorder 17 Mar. 1866: n.p.

Collins, Julia C. The Curse of Caste; or the Slave Bride. 1865. Andrews and Kachun 3-111.

--. "Intelligent Women." 4 June 1864. Andrews and Kachun 124-26.

--. "A Letter from Oswego: Originality of Ideas." 10 Dec. 1864. Andrews and Kachun 127-28.

--. "Life is Earnest." 7 Jan. 1865. Andrews and Kachun 129-30.

--. "Memory and Imagination." 28 Jan. 1865. Andrews and Kachun 131-32.

--. "Mental Improvement." 16 Apr. 1864. Andrews and Kachun 121-22.

--. "School Teaching." 7 May 1864. Andrews and Kachun 123-24. Crafts, Hannah. The Bondwoman's Narrative: A Novel Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York: Warner Books, 2002.

Fields, Abram. "The AME Church Book Concern." The Semi-Centenary and the Retrospection of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. By Daniel A. Payne. Baltimore: Sherwood, 1866.

Foster, Frances Smith, ed. A Brighter Day Coming: A Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Reader. New York: Feminist P, 1990.

--. Introduction. Minnie's Sacrifice; Sowing and Reaping; Trial and Triumph: Three Rediscovered Novels by Frances E. W. Harper. Boston: Beacon P, 1994. xi-xxxviii.

Gardner, Eric. "African American Women's Poetry in the Christian Recorder, 1855-1865: A Bio-Bibliography with Sample Poems." African American Review 40 (2006): 813-31.

Gilchrist, Enoch. "For the Christian Recorder." Letter. Christian Recorder 16 Apr. 1864: n.p.

Haywood, Chanta M. "Constructing Childhood: The Christian Recorder and Literature for Black Children, 1854-1865." African American Review 36 (2002): 417-28.

Johnson, William. B. D. (4th regiment, USCT, Jacksonville, Florida). Christian Recorder 23 July 1864: n.p.

Malvin, Ellen. "Mistress and Slave." Christian Recorder 12 Dec. 1863: n.p.

Markly, L. H. (2nd regiment, SC Volunteers, Morris Island, SC). Letter. Christian Recorder 12 Dec. 1863: n.p.

McHenry, Elizabeth. Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary Societies. Durham: Duke UP.

Montgomery, William E. Under Their Own Vine and Fig Tree: The African-American Church in the South, 1865-1900. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1992.

"Mrs. F. E. Watkins Harper." Christian Recorder 25 Feb. 1865: n.p.

Olsen, Tillie. Silences. New York: Laurel, 1978.

Payne, Daniel A. History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Nashville: Publishing House of the AME Sunday School Union, 1891.

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

Redkey, Edwin S., ed. A Grand Army of Black Men: Letters from African-American Soldiers in the Union Army, 1861-1865. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992.

Salvatore, Nick. We All Got History: The Memory Books of Amos Webber. New York: Times Books, 1996.

Smith, Katherine Capshaw. "Childhood, the Body, and Race Performance: Early 20th-Century Etiquette Books for Black Children." African American Review 40 (2006): 795-811.

Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston: Beacon P, 1995.

Walker, Clarence. Rock in a Weary Land: the African Methodist Episcopal Church during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1982.

Weaver, Elisha. "Notice." Christian Recorder 25 Feb. 1865: 31.

Wilson, Harriet. Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York: Random House, 1983.

Wright, Richard R., Jr., ed. Centennial Encyclopedia of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Philadelphia: Book Concern of the AME Church, 1916.

Notes

(1.) Bishops Jabez P. Campbell, Benjamin T. Tanner, Henry McNeal Turner, J. C. Embry, Benjamin F. Lee, and Richard R. Wright, Jr., all were affiliated with the Book Concern and the Recorder before ascending to the episcopacy. Several other Bishops, including Daniel Payne, served on the Book Committee.

(2.) See also Redkey.

(3.) Those who work with the Accessible Archives database should be aware that its transcriptions represent a close approximation of the source text, but errors do exist. The database is an invaluable tool for locating and assessing the content of sources, but scholarly integrity and accuracy still requires that the original source be consulted. For the Oxford edition of Collins's writings, the task of proofing the text was admirably performed by Anne Bruder.

(4.) The missing issues are Christian Recorder 11 March, 13 May, 17 June, and 16 Sept. 1865, representing chapters 3, 12, 17, and 30, respectively. While the text of The Curse of Caste flows well across these gaps, the recovery of the missing issues would be an important contribution toward a full appreciation of Collins's work.

(5.) During the 1860s, at least two poems by Harper appeared in the Christian Recorder 9 March 1861 (no title) and 9 Nov. 1867 ("The Other Side"). Examples of notices of Harpers public appearances can be found in Christian Recorder 21 May, 15 Oct. 1864; 7 Jan. 11 Feb. 1865; 7 April, 21 July, 28 July 1866; 26 Jan., 5 Oct. 1867. Her essay, "ON THE WAR AND THE PRESIDENT'S COLONIZATION SCHEME," appeared on 27 Sept. 1862. See also Foster, ed., Minnie's Sacrifice; and Boyd.

(6.) My efforts to reconstruct Collins's life in Williamsport are represented in the Introduction to the Oxford edition of her writings (Andrews and Kachun xix-xxx)

(7.) Collins's position as schoolteacher is mentioned in a letter from Williamsport resident Enoch Gilchrist, Christian Recorder, April 16, 1864.

(8.) Cf. Capshaw Smith.

(9.) Please see Gardner 819-20.

Mitch Kachun is Associate Professor of History at Western Michigan University, where he specializes in African American History and public commemorations. He is co-editor, with William L. Andrews, of The Curse of Caste; or The Slave Bride: A Rediscovered African American Novel (Oxford UP, 2006), and author of Festivals of Freedom: Memory and Meaning in African American Emancipation Celebrations, 1808-1915 (Massachusetts UP, 2003).