double double-consciousness

throughout the month of february, i tried to read a selection from african american religious history: a documentary witness. reading the writings of african american men and women seemed one way to celebrate black history month. the confessions of nat turner. excerpts from the diary of jarena lee, a nineteenth-century female preacher in the african methodist tradition. martin luther king jr.'s "letter from a birmingham jail."
one of my readings, the 1818 farewell sermon of lemuel haynes, reminded me of a famous passage from w. e. b. du bois's the souls of black folks. "It is a peculiar sensation," wrote du bois, "this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of the world that looks on in amused contempt and pit. One ever feels his twoness,--an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder." lemuel haynes not only had a double consciousness, but as my friend, john saillant, demonstrates in black puritan, black republican: the life and thought of lemuel haynes, 1753-1833, haynes added a third and a fourth level of consciousness to the mix. a free black living in congregationalist new england his entire life, haynes did things that others in his situation only imagined. he fought in the continental army. he was the first african american ordained by any american denomination. he married elizabeth babbit, a white woman from massachusetts. he served as pastor of a white congregation in rutland, vermont. after thirty years, though, "race" issues in the new republic overwhelmed the congregation and they dismissed their pastor, deeming it improper to be taught any longer by a black man. he pioneered what became known as the abolitionist movement, relying in large part on his belief in new divinity calvinism and problack republicanism. lemuel haynes was "an American, a Negro" but he was also a puritan and a republican. this fourfold consciousness, however, did not protect him any more than du bois's double-consciousness. in the end, haynes lived behind the veil, plagued, as was du bois, by the problem of the color line.

lemuel haynes