Speaking as Jeremiah: Henry McNeal Turner's “I Claim the Rights of a Man”

Abstract

In 1868, recently elected African American legislators faced imminent expulsion from the Georgia state legislature because of race. Speaking last, 34-year-old Bishop Henry McNeal Turner delivered a scathing denunciation of his opponents. His speech, entitled “I Claim the Rights of a Man,” is analyzed as an example of a jeremiad that did not fully use the rhetorical forms typical of the genre. Extending on the work of W. J. Moses (1982) and D. Howard-Pitney (1990), the author argues that Turner used many jeremiadic elements, including the categorical denunciation of the audience for morally abandoning God and the speaker's use of the prophetic voice. Other elements of the jeremiad were strategically omitted, including an explicit identification of the audience as a chosen people and an expression of optimism for a better future. The author concludes that Turner used the jeremiadic form effectively to convey his moral outrage and condemnation, while avoiding those generic elements that ran counter to his rhetorical purpose.

KEYTERMS:

• Bishop Henry McNeal Turner
• genre
• jeremiad
• reconstruction

Earlier versions of this paper were delivered at the 2001 National Communication Association convention and the 2001 Carolinas Communication Association convention.

Notes

For example, Jenkin Lloyd Jones appears to condemn modern society for behaviors for which he does not assume responsibility; Robert Kennedy positioned himself as part of the problem. (See Johannesen, 1985, pp. 163–164, and Murphy, 1990, p. 408.)

As Darsey (1997) wrote, through the establishment of covenant and the people's breech of that covenant, “Yahweh binds His own conduct.…He is as much bound to punish His people when they have rejected the covenant as He is to reward them with His blessings when they have been faithful” (p. 27).

Robert Toombs (1810–1885) was an antebellum U.S. Senator and Confederate Secretary of State and Brigadier General. In the post-war era he was unreconstructed and unrepentant.

John Wycliffe (1330–1384) was a critic of the church and a forerunner of the Protestant Reformation. He encountered substantial personal difficulty as a result. Hugh Latimer (1485–1555) was a supporter of Henry VIII's break from the Catholic Church who pushed for larger theological reform. During the Restoration government of Mary Tudor, Latimer was tried as a heretic and burned at the stake. In his dying words he was recorded as saying, “we shall light such a candle, by God's grace, in England as I trust shall never be put out.”

It is interesting to compare Turner's use of the vision metaphor with Darsey's discussion of Old Testament prophets. There is, as Darsey noted, a heavy use of vision metaphors in the Old Testament: they have “eyes to see but [do] not see” (Ezekiel 12:2; Darsey, 1997, pp. 18–19).

Mark 6:11: “And whoever will not receive you nor hear you, when you depart from there, shake off the dust under your feet as a testimony against them.” Turner's departure is described in Dittmer (1988, p. 259) and Angell (1992, p. 88).

A point effectively made in Celeste Michelle Condit and John Louis Lucaites' (1993) Crafting Equality: America's Anglo-African Word. A condensational symbol is one containing significant ambiguity, such that it can support a wide range of political measures. (See Edelman, 1964, p. 6.)

In 1869, a Georgia state court case found for the expelled legislators, but by then the state had been placed under a second provisional government. In 1870 the legislature readmitted the expelled members as a condition for their readmission to the Union (Nathans, 1968, p. 153, pp. 167–170).

For a description of Turner's role as a back-to-Africa spokesman, see Redkey, 1969, pp. 24–26, pp. 170–14. For an example of his continued rejection of America, see Henry McNeal Turner (1902) “Will it be possible for the Negro to attain, in this country, unto the American type of civilization?”