and resistant Black manhood. Black (1997) asserts there were many Black men who looked upon their masters with resentment and envied their power. However, many Black men rejected their captors and resisted them in unrelenting fashion. History has highlighted the former and cast a shadow on the latter.
The traditional view of enslaved Black males was that they were passive beings, completely controlled by their masters (White & Cones, 1999). It was not until the 1960s that a significant number of scholars began to describe Black men during slavery as resisting the effects of slavery in unique cultural and political ways. Lussana (2016) challenges the emasculated Black male thesis by documenting the ways that Black males continued to be providers, nurturers, and protectors during slavery. He investigates Black males’ homosocial worlds, including the rituals and rites of manhood that they created among themselves, and their overall sense of brotherhood. He also explores the forms of day-to-day resistance they used to challenge their subjugation, support their families and struggle for freedom. Lastly, Lussana (2016) engages Black males’ organization and participation in overt and collective politics of resistance.
Mainstream American views of Black men are one-sided. Scholars such as Elkins (1968) explain how Whites had total control over the lives of Black people for the duration of their lives. This position proclaims that Black males were stripped of their roles as protectors and providers of their families and communities (Neal, 2005). White men and women could break up Black families at will and arbitrarily sexually assault Black men (and more so Black women) at any time. These accounts of slavery present Black men as believing in their own inferiority and attempting to emulate their oppressors. This model of enslaved Black men denies that they carried with them any psycho-cultural thoughts and behavioral patterns from native cultures in Africa (White & Cones, 1999). But the truth of these realities cannot be denied, although as Booker (2000) explains, there was a range of responses to enslavement—from servility and acquiescence to rebellion, lethal retaliation and all points in-between.
It was during this post-transplantation antebellum period that Black men were subjected to White supremacy and White male patriarchy. According to Staples (2006), due to Black males being called and treated as boys for centuries, masculinity is very important to their collective identity. White men considered adult Black males to be like children. During slavery, there was a constant effort to instill within them traits such as weakness, docility, and ignorance (Dancy, 2012). During the Civil War, a White abolitionist, Thomas Wentworth Higgins, was appointed the commander of a regiment of Black ←59 | 60→male soldiers. Wentworth commented on why he liked the Black men in his regiment saying, “I think it is partly from my own notorious love for children that I like these people so well” (Litwack, 1979, p. 69). In racist Eurocentric ideology, Black men were often not considered human, thus manhood for them, was impossible (Franklin, 1994a). In the Eurocentric mind, the Black male gender role was seen as the following dimensions: the Black male as property (to be owned, bought, and sold); the Black male as submissive (fearful and compliant); the Black male as non-protective (no ability to protect the lives of his family); the Black male as powerless (little voice in determining his destiny); and the Black male as stud supreme (expected to be a strong and hard worker, and breeder) (Franklin, 1994a). Black males were forbidden from assuming so-called traditional masculine gender roles (owners, providers, leaders, and thinkers) by Whites (Hoston, 2014). Although social scientists like Hoston (2014) and Dancy (2012) assert that Black manhood and masculinity were prevented, it is important to understand how Black males resisted attempts to negate their manhood and masculinity (Clarke-Hine & Jenkins, 1999).
The Eurocentric ideology about the meaning of Black manhood was a myth. Perhaps too many scholars have bought the notion that Black males had no gender role or could not exercise manhood during slavery. The route to manhood was decidedly more supported for White males, whose competition was limited by suppressing Black manhood and masculinity. Yet, Black men learned to employ skill, intelligence, flexibility, malleability, humility, and determination to maintain their manhood, humanity, and to achieve goals (Booker, 2000). Black men risked life and limb to continue and adapt African conceptions of manhood in creative ways, in the American context. The manhood values of collective effort, resistance, and pride, carried forth from the ancestors, put Black males at severe risk during slavery (Franklin, 2004). These values and efforts conflicted with White expectations. Whites saw Black masculinity as a threat and continuously made conscious efforts to suppress it (Black, 1997). For example, Whites generally denied leadership and authority to Black males unless it served White interests. They destroyed families and brotherhood by creating divisions among the enslaved based on things such as skin color and labor. Actions were taken to violate and limit men’s ability to protect their families, such as dividing families and raping Black women. Whites created stereotypical images of Black men as buffoonish, docile, and loyal Sambos, or strong, aggressive, yet stupid brutes, to justify suppression of Black manhood.
Black manhood and masculinities, during this period, were shaped largely in response to enslavement and struggles against oppression (Booker, 2000), and pre-colonial African cultural understandings of manhood and masculinity. Free Blacks during this period were forced to integrate themselves, socially and culturally, into a society shaped largely by White Euro-American culture. This included gender roles. Whites, and many Black social institutions (Free Black societies, newspapers, churches) as well, held Black men to the expectation of earning enough money to support their families so their wives did not have to enter the workforce (Booker, 2000).
Blacks were expected by Free Black communities to adhere to moral-ethical codes that would not reinforce White stereotypes about them. They were encouraged to dress conservatively, use specific etiquette, and not engage in public displays of sexuality (Booker, 2000). It was expected that these behaviors would allow Black women, for example, to be “true ladies” (Booker, 2000, p. 58). Booker (2000) asserts that many Black men and women accepted the notion that Black men should take leadership roles, while women were encouraged to take more passive supportive roles. However, there was stiff resistance to these gender role expectations among Blacks; some ignored them and others openly resisted them. Black organizations had begun accepting female leadership during this period, far more than did their White counterparts (Booker, 2000). The Black Nationalist and abolitionist Alexander Crummell stated that no Black movement could achieve success without Black women (Crummell, 1883). Frederick Douglass advocated openly for sexual equality and leadership roles for ←60 | 61→Black women along with other Black male leaders. At the 1848 Colored National Convention, Black women openly challenged being denied positions of leadership and demanded more voice. Anna Julia Cooper and other Black women leaders challenged race-gender discrimination against Black women in education and politics, before and after the Civil War. Toward the end of this period, there was a shift in gender role consciousness among Black men. With the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, assaults on free Blacks, and the approaching Civil War, Black males began to assume an even more assertive, bold, and direct kind of masculinity. This increased racial tension because most White Americans, including abolitionists, expected Black men to assume a submissive posture when seeking freedom and equality—an expectation that people like Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth routinely violated (Estes, 2005). Black leaders like William Watkins, Henry Highland Garnet and others began to call for Black men to reject submissive masculinity and engage in direct, physical, and intellectual resistance to White oppression. This was a precursor of gender role definitions and challenges that would emerge after slavery.
The third and fourth periods are The Civil War and Reconstruction Eras. During these periods, Black men engaged in resistant masculinity (Clarke-Hine & Jenkins, 1999) in many forms, from revolt to official legal procedures (bringing an issue to the court vs. protest or sabotage or filing lawsuit) of protest. Some Black men exercised resistance in the form of military service. For many Black men, military service, particularly in the Civil War, was seen as a route to freedom and independence, a way of protecting their families, an expression of pride, a way of exercising civic voice, and a way of challenging slavery and stereotypes. The Civil War allowed Black men to express aspects of manhood that slavery demanded they suppress, such as intellect, hostility, aggression, etc. (Cullen, 1999). However, it must be noted that it was certain kinds of aggression—aggression toward Whites
