136. Pauline E. Hopkins — Of One Blood with Eurie Dahn and Brian Sweeney

KIM ASKEW: Welcome to Lost Ladies of Lit, the podcast dedicated to dusting off classics from forgotten women writers. I'm Kim Askew here with my co-host Amy Helmes.

AMY HELMES: Hi everyone. I feel like I should be wearing a leather jacket and dusty fedora a lá Indiana Jones for today's episode because the book we're discussing today feels a little Raiders of the Lost Ark. It features an expedition through the desert, a cryptic treasure map, secret chambers, and a run-in with an ancient sacred crocodile.You can practically hear the John Williams score in the background.

KIM: Yes, but this work of speculative fiction also feels very Black Panther, too, because it features an advanced civilization hidden away on the African continent that's reminiscent of Wakanda. There are also a lot of very cinematic twists and turns.

AMY: Pauline E. Hopkins Of One Blood: or The Hidden Self is a book we mentioned briefly several years ago. It was recommended to us by Melanie Anderson of the “Monster She Wrote” podcast, and we'll be honest, the plot of this book is a little bit bonkers.

KIM: Yes, but in a good way, right?

AMY: Bonkers is always a good thing. 

KIM: Yes, it's good. In addition to the adventure feel we just mentioned, it also has mesmerism, baby switching, bigamy, incest, ancient prophecies, and a haunted house for good measure. 

AMY: Bring it!

KIM: Yeah, exactly. But the book also brings up a lot of questions about race and power in the midst of all this thrilling storytelling, and Hopkins reclaims Black history in her appeal for racial justice.

AMY: There's a lot to dive into, and we've got a couple of guests who are going to help us with it all, so let's rate the stacks and get started!

[intro music plays] 

AMY: Our guests today, Eurie Dahn and Brian Sweeney, are colleagues in the English department at the College of St. Rose in Albany, New York.

KIM: Together, they edited a brand new edition of Of One Blood for Broadview Press, which was published earlier this year. As scholars, they have a special interest in African American literature of the 19th and early 20th centuries. They're also the directors of a project to digitize full issues of the Colored American magazine, which was a general interest magazine for Black Americans in print from 1900 until 1909. Pauline E. Hopkins served as editor of that magazine and also wrote extensively for it. Eurie and Brian, welcome to the show. We're so glad to have you. 

EURIE: Thank you for having us.

BRIAN: Thank you so much. So happy to be here.

AMY: So before we get into any more detail about this book, we wanted to find out first how each of you happened upon it and what your initial reaction was.

BRIAN: I first read Of One Blood in graduate school when I was, working on my dissertation, and what attracted me to the text was, primarily, the character of Reuel, who, as you know, is a white-passing Black man studying medicine at Harvard at a time when many in the medical community were putting up all sorts of official and unofficial barriers to entry into that profession for Black Americans. So I was really interested in how the text's depiction of alternative medical practices and medical spaces connects to the role racial exclusion played in professionalizing American medicine.

EURIE: And I first encountered this novel as an undergraduate, probably in a women's writing course. And, um, my response to it was totally unintellectual, unlike Brian's. I was more like, "What is happening? Did that just happen?" And you know, just my feelings of astonishment just snowballed as I went on. I mean, let's just be clear, the novel never gets ordinary. Like, shocking thing after shocking thing. And of course I was captivated. I had to think more about it.

AMY: Okay. I'm relieved to hear that because Brian's reaction was so highbrow, and my reaction was just like, "This book is bananas!"

KIM: Exactly. Same. Me too. Like this, “this is bonkers, but it's a rollercoaster of a ride.” It's really fun. Can you tell us a little more about Pauline Hopkins and her background?

BRIAN: Sure. Hopkins was born in Maine in 1859, but grew up in Boston, and she was born into a family that was pretty noted for its work in religious ministry. It was a very musical family. In high school, she entered an essay contest sponsored by the Black abolitionist, the novelist, William Wells Brown. And she won. She won $10, and I think probably also won a dawning sense of confidence in herself as a writer. As a teenager and into her twenties, she writes and performs for musical theater. She becomes to be known as Boston's "favorite colored soprano," quote unquote, and also begins to attract attention as a lecturer speaking on Haiti and Black history.But it's 1900, the year she turns 41, that's a really big breakout year for her. Um, that's the year her novel Contending Forces is published. This is the only one of her novels that was published in book form during her lifetime. And she is also hired to join the staff of The Colored American magazine. It was one of the first general magazines aimed at a Black readership. And its stated goal was, quote, "Unflinching demand for all that is right and just during the present evil days." So she works there at the Colored American from 1900 to 1904, first as editor of the women's department and eventually as editor-in-chief, all while contributing a huge amount of original writing to every issue under various bylines, at least three different names: one her own, and two pseudonyms. And these writings included short stories, editorials, biographies, and three entire novels that were published in parts, including Of One Blood, the third of the three, which was serialized in 1902 to 1903. As a writer and editor, Hopkins was a woman who spoke truth to power, and this made her some powerful enemies, both within and outside the Black community. In 1904, she ends up pushed out as editor. She continues to write and to lecture, but eventually moves back into private life caring for her elderly mother and working as a stenographer and proofreader. When she died in 1930 at the age of 71 (tragically of injuries she sustained in a fire), she had lived long enough to witness the flowering of the Harlem Renaissance and to see magazines like The Crisis carrying on the pioneering work she had done during her four years at The Colored American magazine.

AMY: Wow. So a woman of many talents, too. She kind of had a whole second act, really, like starting off as a musician or a singer, and…

BRIAN: Absolutely.

AMY: Yeah.

KIM: I love the picture of her at the beginning of the Broadview Press edition. Her personality shines through. It's not a boring author photo; it's really great. Um, So Of One Blood was published with this great subtitle, The Hidden Self. Do you wanna talk a little bit about her intended audience for this novel and what her aim was with it? 

EURIE: Yeah. So I think first it's essential to recognize Hopkins is writing during the Jim Crow era, which stretches from, roughly, the late 19th century to the mid 20th century. So this period was a time of legalized segregation, racial violence, lynchings and the like. So slavery's over, so you don't really need anti-slavery abolitionist art anymore. So how do Black authors and artists respond to these Jim Crow conditions? And so Hopkins is basically writing during this time of crisis, and her fiction is deeply political and activist. And as such, you know, she's aiming her work not just at Black Americans, but also white Americans, because her goal is to make a change to end racial injustices, and to work towards a better future.

KIM: Let's jump right into the book then. We're going to attempt to provide you listeners with a mostly spoiler-free setup of the book, which is not easy to do, and I wonder if we'll actually be able to get this in one take. Let's see. Amy, you, you start.

EURIE: Looking forward to it.

AMY: Yeah, there is so much going on and how do you say it without saying it, right? I definitely think that's part of the joy of reading the book, is stumbling onto these surprises for the first time, so we really wanna preserve those moments for anybody out there that's going to pick up a copy after listening to this episode.

And so to that end, at the novel's opening, we encounter Harvard Medical student Reuel Briggs, whom we find out early on is a light-skinned Black man who is passing as white. He is deeply interested in mesmerism and its potential benefits to society, but he's feeling bummed out because he knows the scientific community thinks it's basically a bunch of bs. So his best bud, Aubrey Livingston, shows up at his room one night and coaxes him out of his funk by inviting him to a concert featuring Black singers from Fisk University. And the star performer in this concert is a woman named Dianthe. Do you guys say Diantha or Dianthee?

EURIE: This is a complicated question.

KIM: We love those!

EURIE: We also have had debates about Reuel's name too. 

AMY: Okay. All right. So to each his own, you know. Okay. We'll just go with whatever. Okay. So the star performer in the show, Dianthe, her voice and beauty ensorcels both of these young men. And see. Kim, I'm still trying to make “ensorcel” a thing. 

KIM: I mean, it's the perfect word. Uh, it's, it's like I'm totally on board because it's so useful.

AMY: We just discovered that word ensorcelled a few together, so now we wanna use it all the time.

EURIE: It's a good word. 

KIM: Yeah. So back to the story, this first part of the novel has a decidedly gothic feel. So after being dared to go visit the grounds of a supposedly haunted house, Reuel meets what he believes to be the spirit of Dianthe begging him for help. The next day, Dianthe ends up in the hospital where Reuel works. She's unconscious, having been in a train accident. He revives her using his special mesmerism techniques, but she then suffers amnesia, and as a result, doesn't know that she, too, is Black. They fall in love, but Reuel feels as though he doesn't have a sufficient income to give her the life she deserves. So his friend Aubrey comes up with a solution. He knows of this expedition heading to Africa to unearth the supposed treasure of a lost ancient civilization. He suggests Reuel join the expedition, earn his fortune, and then return to the States financially ready for a future with Dianthe. Reuel agrees to do this, but he's reluctant about it. He doesn't wanna leave her for this years' long journey, but he marries her on the eve of his departure, and then he asks his friend Aubrey to look after his young bride while he's away.

AMY: And so the next part of the book is an adventure tale. As part of the African expedition, Reuel stumbles upon the site of the supposed buried treasure of Meroe in the Ethiopian desert, and somehow enters a magic portal of sorts. Here we are introduced to a gleaming paradise filled with perfectly chiseled African hotties living in this advanced utopian civilization. They're all calling Reuel their returning king, which the prophecies have spoken of. So go ahead and cue from the musical Annie: [sings] "I think I'm gonna like it here!!!" He's pretty stoked about this kingdom that he stumbled upon.

KIM: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. But meanwhile, you know, back in Boston, Dianthe is in real trouble. She needs his help and he's continents away. We won't give away anything else other than to say that by the novel's conclusion, the reader comes to learn that Dianthe, Reuel, and Reuel's friend Aubrey all have more of a connection than anyone could have ever known.

AMY: Okay. Phew!

KIM: Yeah. 

AMY: Readers like, like that's really just the very basic setup. So we weren't really giving too much away there. All right. So Eurie, Brian, is there any other context that we need to know in order to understand the goings on in this book? Would readers have had any sort of familiarity with any of these elements that she's writing about that we kind of find completely bananas?

BRIAN: Uh, yeah, there's so much going on in this book and our addition does try to re-situate it in context that will render some of its more unusual attributes a little more familiar and accessible. First, is the genre of the Lost World Adventure novel, which was a relatively new genre in the 19th century. You can find some examples in the writings of Poe and of Jules Verne, but really it's the English novelist H. Rider Haggard in the second half of the 19th century who's generally credited with inventing this genre with, books like King Solomon's Mines. And this particular genre of writing has a very long afterlife, and we can still see it living on today in films like The Mummy or Disney's Jungle Cruise and the Indiana Jones films. Hopkins is definitely making use of this form, but interestingly, I think it subverts Eurocentric and imperialist logic in a number of ways. A second context is about medicine and unorthodox medicine, mesmerism, magnetic healing and so forth. Of One Blood was written during a time when American medicine was rapidly professionalizing by setting up barriers to keep what deemed quote “unqualified people” out of the trade. And Black Americans and white women were making significant inroads into the medical profession by 1900 for sure, but they encountered more barriers to entry than white men did. And so it stands to reason when we look back at this period, that women and Black Americans who felt a calling to such work might look outside of the professionalized institution of medicine and so unsurprisingly, you'll find a lot of overlap between unorthodox medicine and progressive politics, or even radical politics, particularly concerning gender and race. So the novel’s curiosity about magnetism and all of this stuff, I think, is linked to a suspicion of the institution of professional medicine. We talked about the novel's subtitle a moment ago, The Hidden Self. That's actually the title of an essay by the Harvard psychologist William James, brother of Henry James. And that essay argues that scientific medicine at this time was discovering that however outlandish some of the claims of magnetic physicians might be about invisible fluid and so forth, their methods often resulted in cures. And so Hopkins, I think, is asking us to think about the way in which the line between orthodox scientific and unorthodox popular healing practices, how that line is always being redrawn. The origins of mesmerism in this novel end up getting traced back to Africa, so it's being presented to us as a specifically African kind of tradition and practice.

AMY: And aside from all that, it lends itself really well to just telling an entertaining story!

KIM: Yeah, that's for sure. 

EURIE: Well, I think one of the most important things to know about Hopkins' novel is that it was serialized. in each issue of the magazine from November, 1902 to November, 1903, an installment of the novel was published and the readers had to basically wait until the next month to read the next installment. And this concept is so foreign to us in our days of, you know, watching White Lotus until 1:00 AM, binge watching it. (Not that I know anything about that.) Um, but so sensationalism is, in part, a marketing strategy for Hopkins. So she's weaving all these sensational events with substantive commentary about generational trauma and all these things related to gender, et cetera. So for me, the thing that I find really compelling about Hopkins is the way she uses the conventions of adventure tales, romances, supernatural stories, to further her political ends.I think that's such a tightrope to walk. And that she does it so well she's mixing in this entertainment along with this really deep, important social political message. And Hopkins' title Of One Blood comes from the Bible. It's, uh, Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament. And the phrase was frequently used by Christian abolitionists to argue for the end of slavery. So writers like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, they used it to condemn racial injustice; to basically say, “We're all of one blood, we're all human beings,” right? So it was deployed very strategically for political ends. And Hopkins uses this phrase in the Jim Crow setting to say that the sins of slavery, they have this long reach into the present day. They're not just in the past.

KIM: So yeah, the characters in the book do come to claim their Black heritage with pride, and Hopkins does in fact address the idea of colorism. There's the white character named Charlie on this African expedition when he meets up with the citizens of Telessar, a dignitary says to him, quote, “I've heard your people would count it as a disgrace to bear my color.” And Charlie answers basically, “Well, your complexion is light enough that you would just get labeled as Arab or Turk or Filipino.” You'd get by okay in America, in other words.

AMY: Right, but then the same dignitary points out a servant named Jim with obviously darker skin and says, okay, but what about him? And Hopkins writes this: “Charlie felt embarrassed in spite of his assurance. ‘Well, of course it has been the custom to count Africans as our servants, and they have fared as servants.’ And the dignitary answers: ‘And yet ye are all of one blood, descended from one common father. Is there ever a flock or herd without its black member? What's more beautiful than the satin gloss of the raven's wing? The soft glitter of eyes of blackest tint or the rich black fur of your own native animals. Fair-haired worshipers of Mammon, do you not know that you have been weighed in the balance and found wanting?’”

EURIE: This is such a great quotation, Amy. This is the tension with the novel's depiction of beauty standards, right? You have the satin gloss of the raven's wing, you know, it's being described as beautiful, but then the main characters in the novel basically look white. They can all pass as white. They all have light complexions, and often their beauty is described as specifically related to their fairness, um, particularly in the case of Dianthe. And so this debate also plays itself out in the pages of the Colored American magazine. So you have articles that are meant to evoke Black pride, but then, you also have side by side to these articles, advertisements that promote skin-lightening creams and hair straighteners, you know, so I don't really have an easy way to resolve this tension other to basically just point to the complicated politics of the era. And I think this novel really embodies those politics.

AMY: Yeah, you're right. I think it's complicated and, you know, in a certain sense the characters have to be light-skinned for the other messaging that she's trying to bring out. You know what I mean? So like, it's hard to make it all dovetail together. Um, but when Hopkins presents readers with this lost city of Telessar, it's an advanced civilization that predates ancient Egypt or anything in Europe, I found myself thinking, “Is this real?” Like what's real and what's not? Uh, admittedly my grasp on African history is limited. But I was trying to figure out what was real and what was not in what she was asserting. There is some basis in historical fact though, from what she's expounding upon, right? And why would that have been galvanizing for her readers to hear?

EURIE: So I think the whole “what's real and what's not” thing was one of the trickiest parts in editing the novel, um, and creating our footnotes where we provide contextual information. So in understanding Hopkins' relationship to history and historical fact, I think it's good to think of three things. So first it's important to understand that she's writing during a time when many scholars simply did not think that Africa had a history, right? It was just like this dark continent, a primitive land with no real accomplishments, unlike Europe, of course, right? And, uh, second, she is deeply, deeply invested in writing a history of Black Americans and Black people to counter all that. And she relies upon the work of Black historians like George Washington Williams, and builds upon their work. Like these are overlooked historians, obviously not accepted by the mainstream, but she uses their works and builds upon it for her novel and her magazine. The Colored American magazine also does similar things with history. And then third, her novel partakes in a school of thought called Ethiopianism, which is grounded in a passage in the Bible, which states “princes shall come out of Egypt. Ethiopia shall soon stretch her hands unto God.” And this passage was read as a kind of prophecy about the rise of the Black race. And Ethiopianism was very popular in the 19th century and beyond. Uh, Francis Harper, for example, has a well-known poem that's titled “Ethiopia.” This Ethiopianism is basically related to an account to the fad for all things ancient Egypt at the time, right? There's a big craze for Egypt at the time. And so it's a way of affirming the accomplishments of Black civilizations in Africa, and a way to argue for Ethiopia, not Egypt, as the cradle for learning. So Hopkins' history relies upon the work of Black historians and biblical histories even as she adapts white mainstream sources for her own ends. And so she basically remixes it all, and her focus on history in the past is always future oriented, you know, it's always about taking pride in Black accomplishments and about working to end racial injustices.

AMY: Well, she's very convincing. If a lot of that is fabricated, she really went into detail. I think that's part of why I was like, “Wait, is this true?” Like they invented trigonometry or whatever it is that she's asserting, you're just sort of like, huh? 

EURIE: And so the answer is “sort of.” It's sort of true.

KIM: Yeah.

AMY: Okay. okay. And so when she's describing this lost civilization, her descriptions of this place are like the best Trip Advisor reviews you've ever read. Um, it was like great world building, right? She makes it sound so deluxe. So I'll just read a little bit from when he sort of wakes up, I guess, and is starting to realize where he is. He's not so much being kept a prisoner anymore. They're starting to pamper him because he is their returning king that the prophecy has predicted.

Hopkins writes: Used as he was to the improvements in luxuries of life in the modern Athens, [which the modern Athens is like a nickname for Boston] he could, but acknowledge them as poor beside the combination of Oriental and ancient luxury that he now enjoyed. Was ever man more gorgeously housed than this? Overhead was the tinted glass through which the daylight fell in softened glow. In the air was the perfume and luster of precious incense, the flash of azure and gold, the mingling of deep and delicate hues. The gorgeousness of waving plants in blossom and tall trees, palms, dates, orange mingled with the gleaning statues that shone forth in brilliant contrast to the dark green foliage.The floor was paved with various mosaics and dotted here and there with the skins of wild. After the bath came a repast of fruit game and wine served him on curious golden dishes that resembled the specimens taken from ruined Pompeii. By the time he had eaten, night had fallen and he laid himself down on the silken cushions of his couch with a feeling of delicious languor and a desire for repose. His nerves were in a quiver of excitement and he doubted his ability to sleep. But in a few moments, even while he doubted, he fell into a deep sleep of utter exhaustion. When he arose in the morning, he found that his own clothing had been replaced by silken garments fashioned, as were Ai’s [this high priest guy] with the addition of golden clasps and belts. In place of his revolver was a jeweled dagger, literally encrusted with gems.

So just the level of description she provides of this place is wonderful.

KIM: Season 3 of White Lotus!

AMY: Oh, yeah. That’s perfect. 

EURIE: Oh, that would be great.

AMY: And I was also intrigued, later on she describes this room that has all of these preserved dead bodies of women that were encased in some sort of see through crystal chambers, and, I don't know, I thought we were gonna come back to that later in the book and there would be more of a purpose for it, and it just kind of was just there. 

KIM: Like Superman or something. There was something so intriguing about that. I was trying to picture what that would be like.

AMY: Was there a point to those bodies encased in glass coffins or was that just more of her trying to make the place sound cool? 

BRIAN: I share your wish that it had been developed at the level of plot for sure. It's not uncommon in Lost World narratives to have some kind of a scene where a main character enters a crypt, sometimes just full of skeletal remains, but sometimes well preserved bodies. There's a scene, similar to that in Haggard's She, for example. Perhaps these preserved bodies are supposed to make this a kind of liminal space that sort of connects past and present and future. But one thing I suppose I take from this in Hopkins' treatment would be to gesture back to what we were talking about a moment ago with the goal of really emphasizing Ethiopian greatness and priority. So, you know, when we think of the achievements of Egypt, one of the first things we think of is mummification. And you know, in the white historical imagination of this period, Egypt is sort of the one exception, the one great civilization, right? And all neighboring African peoples would have been seen merely as supplying slave labor to Egypt. But here, we have Ethiopia being depicted as greater than Egypt, more technologically sophisticated than Egypt, with these more advanced techniques for the preservation of bodies. That's something that I can find here in this scene.

KIM: Yeah. “We're gonna one up the Egyptian mummies with our glass crystal chambers.” 

BRIAN: Right.

KIM: So that's just another example of why academics probably love analyzing this work because there's so many scholarly rabbit holes you could just go down. Everything feels rife with multiple meetings. So can you talk about some other important themes that run through this work? I feel like there are too many to touch on them all, but what are some that you find the most important or intriguing that you'd like to mention?

EURIE: I think one big theme is Afrofuturism, you know, a term that was not a theme during Hopkins' day. It was coined later, in 1993, to refer basically in part to like speculative fiction, science fiction, fantasy, et cetera, that focuses on Black culture and concerns in the context of the future. So for example, like Black Panther with its depiction of Wakanda. It's a place of very old traditions, but also a place that has incredibly futuristic advanced technology that the Western world knows nothing about. And so Afrofuturist art basically works to connect the past with possible futures for Black people. And so Of One Blood is a work of speculative fiction, and it aims to make that connection between the past and the future, right? So both the glorious past of Ethiopia, but also the past of slavery, to a future that is full of Black accomplishment, to a future that is better than the one that they're living in right now, you know, to a future that's free of racial injustices. And a second thing I think that is important to Hopkins is Hopkins' connections to networks of feminist activism. On the surface, this novel may appear to be grounded in conventional depictions of gender, right, you know, especially with the figure of Dianthe, who throughout is a really passive sort of figure. However, as the plot unfolds, it becomes clear that Hopkins's critique in the novel is grounded in the assertion that issues related to race can't be discussed in isolation to issues related to gender. So Black women are at the heart of her focus on racial justice. And so I think those are some major themes within the novel that I think are quite important. Obviously there are many, many, many more, but um, I guess we could just end with those two.

AMY: That makes me think of, we've done a previous episode on Utopian literature and how feminists use that, like Charlotte Perkins Gilman with Herland, and we did Miriam Michaelson's The Superwoman where a guy ends up on an island full of women, basically. Is this something different or can we compare this book to some of that? I mean, I know she's dealing with race more than gender dynamics, but are those two separate things like the Lost Adventure tale as different from a Utopian kind of novel?

BRIAN: Um, that's definitely a parallel, for sure. One thing I think is maybe missing is, when I think of Herland or other sort of 19th century utopias, looking backward, we don't get as much detail in Of One Blood about sort of how this society functions. That kind of understanding, issues like government and social arrangements and things like that that I expect to find in Utopian fiction. Certainly would classify this as at least Utopian-fiction-adjacent, though I think as a feminist utopian text, it fails to satisfy a little bit, you know? But it's so interesting because in life Hopkins' struggle in terms of racial justice justice always is intersecting with gender. It's white men and Black men who are continually trying to tell her what she can and cannot say, uh, what kind of tone is acceptable and so forth. And so I do find an interesting disjunction between the way women are depicted in this text and what we know of Hopkins' politics.

KIM: Yeah, because, uh, Telessar, correct me if I'm wrong, but it almost comes across as a little bit like a harem. Am I… did I take that wrong? 

AMY: Yeah. yeah. 

KIM: They're like, these priesthood girls are women, but one of them is meant to become Reuel's queen.

AMY: Yeah, I think when I make the comparison, I don't make it in terms of the feminist point, but just like she's using this perfect world that has everything figured out on some sort of like spiritually elevated blame.

BRIAN: Mm-hmm.

AMY: Um, I don't know. It just kind of reminded me of this perfect society where it's like “We're looking at the way you do things and are baffled because we would never do things like that here. We're so much more enlightened." 

EURIE: Right.

AMY: It was just sort of that, um, yeah, that persuasive technique, I guess. 

EURIE: I would be interested in the sequel to Of One Blood, right, where they delve into like the governmental structure, and they talk about taxation, and then suddenly we see the utopia unraveling, right?

KIM: Yeah, totally. 

AMY: Yeah. Yeah. Um, but okay. So you say in the introduction to this book that Of One Blood is now probably the most taught Black American novel that dates prior to the Harlem Renaissance. How was Hopkins and this novel rediscovered in the 20th century?

BRIAN: Um, yeah, I would say certainly postbellum, pre-Harlem for sure. It might have some competition from some antebellum Black author texts like Our Nig, for example. But yes, its popularity now as a teaching text couldn't be more different from its reputation, um, such as it was 50, 60 years ago. Hopkins herself died in relative obscurity. In fact, in the Seventies, uh, an essay written by Ann Shockley about Hopkins when really nobody was writing about Hopkins was subtitled. "A Biographical Excursion Into Obscurity," which gives some sense of how she was perceived even by someone interested in writing about her and recovering her. It was really in the Eighties and Nineties that scholars began to really get to work in earnest in reconstructing a tradition of Black American writing and especially Black American women's writing that had been really ignored and neglected. Oxford University Press brought out the Schaumburg Library of 19th Century Black women writers in that time, which did so much to advance that project. And they included two Hopkins volumes. And a really big event in bringing Hopkins back as an important literary figure was in 2009 when the Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins Society was founded. Once you have an academic society dedicated to you, then you're truly a field and, um, that society has done so much to continue to encourage new work on Hopkins, especially junior scholars. I know as a younger scholar, I felt very incredibly well-supported by this society when I was starting out. And one thing I want to point out about the Pauline Hopkins Society, by the way, which I just love, is that they sponsor a high school essay contest, recalling the role that a high school essay contest played in Hopkins' own development as a writer.

KIM: I love that. Oh, that's wonderful. That's so cool. Um, we talked a little bit earlier about how you're digitizing issues of the Colored American magazine, which is helping make a lot more of Hopkins and others' writing available to interested readers. How's that going? What's the process of that like?

BRIAN: Sure. So both, uh, Eurie and I, we both teach in the same institution, and Hopkins and the Colored American magazine is really pertinent to both of our teaching. And we would constantly complain to one another and to our students about the lack of really good digitized Black print to use in our classes. And so eventually we tired of complaining about it and decided, like, let's see if we can do something about it. So, um, our search led to a lot of dead ends. But finally we found a very large collection of issues at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript library at Yale. And they generously agreed to photograph every issue for us, and since then we've discovered additional individual issues at Emory, at UNC Chapel Hill, and those two have been digitized, put on the site. One hundred and eight issues of the magazine were ever produced, and our site now hosts 41, with six in the works. And our hope is that eventually all of them will be found. But given the precarious conditions under which Black print was produced in the early 1900s, and 20th century practices of preservation that didn't always care a lot about preserving Black print really well, it's possible that there will be some unstripped issues that just are completely lost.

KIM: It’s wonderful that you're doing that. 

AMY: Yeah. It's so important to save that kind of stuff. Um, and can you talk a little bit about when and why Hopkins’ tenure at the magazine came to an end? Because it's kind of a frustrating story to learn about.

BRIAN: Yeah. So briefly, the magazine had always been financially insecure and it was experiencing a lot of pressure. As I mentioned before, Hopkins was someone who spoke truth to power and some did not like that Booker T. Washington and his allies felt that her focus as both an editor and writer on topics such as lynching, racial intermarriage, Jim Crow, and other topics that were, say, triggering to Southern readers were counterproductive and hurtful to the cause of Black uplift. They wanted to see the magazine focus more on positive depictions of Black business success and avoid racial justice agitation. Um, in 1904, a white ally of Washington, his name was John Christian Freund, he began giving money to the Colored American magazine to help keep it solvent. But in exchange he increasingly started to insert himself into the day-to-day operations of the magazine and tried to control the direction and politics of the publication. At first Hopkins doesn't recognize quite what's happening, um, but once she does, friction and conflict ensue between her and Freund. And basically, the upshot is that the magazine winds up being bought out and put under the control of another Washington ally, a man named Fred Moore, and moved to New York. Hopkins was originally promised that she'd be kept on, but with a demotion. But then she's forced to resign in September. And the magazine reports that her departure was due to "health reasons." Hopkins continued to write and lecture and even began her own short-lived magazine, The New Era, which only lasted two issues and contains the only chapters of her uncompleted final novel, Topsy Templeton. But Hopkins' firing from the Colored American magazine essentially was the beginning of the end of her career as an editor and novelist.

AMY: It seems like a familiar story, like, the investor comes in and decides they're gonna have input.

KIM: And ruins everything.

EURIE: Mm-hmm. 

AMY: So I feel like that still happens.

KIM: Yeah, for sure. Um, so do you have any other favorite pieces from Hopkins? Maybe there's something else she wrote for the magazine that you found, or something else that you think listeners should um, head to next.

EURIE: This is a terrible question to ask to Hopkins scholars… we'll basically be like "everything!" Um, but the go-to answer is, of course, Hopkins' short story "Talma Gordon," which is published in the October, 1900 issue of the Colored American magazine. It's available on our site. It's described as the first African-American mystery story, and it's a murder mystery that deals with racial passings, and it's very good. Um, and I'm also particularly fond of her first novel, Contending Forces. So Contending Forces has a romance plot that's interwoven with topics related to the trans-Atlantic slave trade and assaults on Black women. And it also features a main character who makes a living as a stenographer, just as Hopkins herself did at various points in her life. But I also think it would be great to read some of her nonfiction, like magazine pieces. But I don't think you can go wrong with anything you read by Hopkins.

KIM: I just wish I had a little more time. That all sounds amazing. I mean, already I'm liking the murder mystery. I can't wait to read that. 

AMY: So listeners, go to coloredamerican.org is the website at which you can find all the issues that Eurie and Brian have put together. You'll find that murder mystery tale. 

KIM: Yeah. Eurie and Brian, this has been a real pleasure having you on getting to learn more about Pauline Hopkins, talking about this incredible book. Thank you so much.

BRIAN: This was really, really great fun. Thank you.

EURIE: It was.

KIM: For more information on this episode, you can visit our website, lostladiesoflit.com for show notes and our newsletter.

AMY: And join us over on our Lost Ladies of Lit Facebook forum if you want to talk more about this episode or just interact with other listeners. It's a lot of fun. Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone, and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Kim Askew and Amy Helmes