By FAROOQ KPEROGI

Nicholas Said?s encounter with American racism

Isaac Jacob Rochussen, the patrician from the Netherlands who brought Nicholas Said to New York in January 1860, exposed him to his first baptism of American racism.

At an abolitionist church in New York, Rochussen was told that he couldn?t sit on the same row of seats with Said. Like all Black people in white-dominated churches, Said had to sit on the balcony of the church. Rochussen was so exasperated he and Said left the church in a huff.

After taking Said on a voyage to Haiti (where the mixed-race freemen in charge of the government there treated Said like a subhuman because of his pitch-dark complexion and Kanuri facial marks), Rochussen was broke and returned to New York.

It turned out that Rochussen was a scammer. He left Said at their expensive hotel in New York. After three months of waiting, the hotel management handed Said a bill equivalent to $40,500. Since he couldn?t pay it, his luggage was confiscated.

?I lost all my clothing, consisting of four Turkish costumes, three full suits of broadcloth, a dozen of linen and fine English flannel shirts, etc. etc. with more than $250 [worth $7,200 now],? Said wrote. ?I was almost penniless?. Having no trade, knowing no person to whom I could apply for help?I was truly in a pitiful situation. But God who never forsakes us came to my relief.?

That relief was a $10 loan he got from a reverend gentleman he became acquainted with while staying at the hotel. The reverend told him to go to Detroit in the state of Michigan ?where there were a great number of colored people.?

By the time he got to Detroit, Said had become disillusioned with religion, writing that both Islam and Christianity were ?against my feelings and common sense.? Nonetheless, his urge to go back to Borno was rekindled.

He suppressed his disenchantment with religion and, in March 1861, applied to the African Civilization Society, which was looking for educated Black people to go to Africa ?to instruct the natives in the arts and sciences? and to evangelize the gospel of Christianity.

In Said?s application, he promised that if he was considered for the job, he planned to go to Borno and ?spread the gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.? Dean Calbreath suggested that Said didn?t mean it since he had become frustrated with religion. ?But it shows how desperately he wanted to go home,? Calbreath writes.

Said got the job and would have returned to Borno but for the start of the American Civil War on April 13, 1861.

In light of the soul-destroying racism he had faced in the United States and Haiti, he had ?prayed earnestly to be enabled to do some good to my race? and vowed that he ?would willingly sacrifice my life, if need be, in realizing my dreams.?

The outbreak of the Civil War, which was triggered by the desire of Southern whites to enslave Black people in perpetuity, provided such an opportunity.

Nevertheless, when Said rushed to enlist in the US Army to fight in the Civil War, he was told that Black people could not serve in the army. To ensure that no person with even the slightest tincture of African bloodline served in the army, even white men had to have their genitalia inspected because ?the skin covering these organs is much darker in persons having a trace of negro blood?!

He took to teaching French to Black people in Detroit and ?became quite distinguished, especially among the colored people, for his erudition, his large experience of the world, and his promising talent,? Calbreath quoted a journalist to have written.

A little later during the war, there was a change of policy. The US Army decided to form all-black regiments to assist in the fight against Confederate forces determined to keep the institution of slavery. Recruiters from Boston in the state of Massachusetts came to Detroit.

Said, only three and a half years old in America at the time, enlisted. Within just two weeks of enlisting, he was promoted to a sergeant. The colonel who recommended his promotion said Said?s ?linguistic ability was very marked? and that he was the scion of ?the ruling class of his tribe.?

After his promotion to sergeant, there was a laudatory profile of him in the Boston Evening Transcript, one of Massachusetts? notable newspapers at the time. Although his last name was misspelled as ?Saib,? he was described as an ?intelligent looking negro, perfectly black, modest and gentlemanly in bearing? and that his ?acquisitions and behavior go far to dispel the ignorant and vulgar prejudice against the colored race.?

The profile turned him into a celebrity in his all-black regiment called the Fifty-Fifth.

Unfortunately, the racism that initially stopped the enlistment of Black people didn?t abate even during the war from even white people who were fighting to stop Black enslavement.

Black soldiers?whether private, corporal, or sergeant (they couldn?t rise above sergeants)?were paid no more than $7 per month. The lowliest white private, by contrast, received $13 per month. White corporals received $17, and white sergeants received $21. ?For Sergeant Said, who had been drawn to the United States because of its democratic ideals, this was only his latest disappointment,? Calbreath writes.

(In 1863, $7 had the same purchasing power as approximately $175.34 today.)

Black soldiers protested the scandalous pay disparity. But the white head of their brigade by the name of Col. James Montgomery not only chastised them for this but threatened to court-martial and execute them. ?You want to be placed on the same footing as white soldiers? [but] you are a race of slaves,? he said. ?A few years ago, your fathers worshipped snakes and crocodiles in Africa.?

But the Black soldiers were neither discouraged by the racist putdowns nor did they relent. Said used his gift of ?precise penmanship and the ?literary quality? of his writing? (1145) to write and edit anonymous newspaper columns to call attention to the racially motivated pay parity between Black and white soldiers.

Said?s anonymous columns got the Massachusetts governor of the time by the name of John Andrew to not only lobby the federal government to increase the pay for Black soldiers but to actually instruct the state?s paymaster general to take physical cash to the war front to pay the Black soldiers. But the Black soldiers rejected the state?s money, saying they wanted the federal government on whose behalf they were fighting to pay them the same amount that they were paying their white peers.

Said and his colleagues fought for more than a year without pay but continued to protest at the cost of the lives of some of them, until August 1, 1864, when the federal government decided that Black soldiers would receive equal pay as their white counterparts ?and that the pay would retroactive, covering all the money they were owed since enlisting? (177).

For a long time, Black soldiers were not allowed to fight. They merely did back-breaking menial jobs such as shoveling, bagging, chopping, and hauling instead of fighting the Confederate rebels. During his free time, Said taught Black soldiers.

It was only on July 1, 1864, that Said and members of his platoon had a chance to fight the Rebels in a battle. Even so, they ?had given them aging rifles that were so faulty they were subsequently sent to the scrap heap,? (174) according to Calbreath.

In spite of their disadvantage, Said (who ?must have felt that finally he was living up to the destiny his father had left for him, or the dream he had envisioned for himself as a boy, playing war games at the gates of Kukawa,? as Calbreath put it,) and his comrades overpowered the Rebel forces, forced them to beat a retreat and seized their weapons, even though they also suffered casualties.

A white major and second in command of Said?s regiment, who was later promoted to a lieutenant colonel, by the name of Charles Fox wrote to his wife that he had met Said on September 26, 1863.

It was unusual for a higher-up in the military hierarchy like Fox to have private meetings with low-ranked officers like Said. But he was drawn to Said because his hometown newspaper, which his father bought, read and kept at home, had written a profile on Said. He was fascinated by Said?s growing up in Borno and his travels through Europe and Asia. He called Said ?faithful and brave? and said he encouraged him to write his autobiography.

Said was soon enervated by the racism in the army. One of his comrades was executed publicly for opposing a tyrannical white boss. And, in spite of addressing the pay parity between Black and white soldiers, educated Black soldiers like Said couldn?t be commissioned to the rank of lieutenant solely because of their race.

Perhaps the final straw that broke Nicholas Said?s back and drove him to leave combat duties during the Civil War was the imposition of an inexperienced 18-year-old white boy named Lieutenant Robertson James?described as ?one of the least qualified officers in the regiment??as the leader of his platoon.

On the day Said finally received his long-denied back pay of $200, he voluntarily resigned his sergeantship, demoted himself to private, laid down his arms, and requested a secretarial assignment. He later left that role to work at the army hospital.

Dr. Burt Green Wilder, a physician at the hospital, sought an assistant who neither smoked, drank excessively, nor ate pork (and who could write well), criteria that Said, a linguistically gifted ex-Muslimand teacher, met easily. He secured the job as a ?hospital assistant.?

Soon after, most of his Black comrades in the Civil War were killed or severely wounded in battle. The wounded were brought to the hospital where Said worked. He experienced what Dean Calbreath called his ?baptism in blood, which soaked his clothing and clung to his flesh.?

Dr. Wilder, impressed by Said?s intellect, described him as ?very philosophical in his mind and interested in unusual things, religious problems, etc.?

On May 13, 1865, about a month after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered and the Civil War ended, Said married in South Carolina. The marriage lasted only two years. There?s no evidence it produced any children.

Dr. Wilder, who later became a leading professor of anatomy at Cornell University, refuted the findings of a racist post-war commission that claimed Black people were innately inferior by singling out Said, a ?multilingual intellectual from the very interior of Africa,? as a direct contradiction.

Instead of returning to the North from where he enlisted in the U.S. Army or to Borno, Said stayed in South Carolina, devoting himself to teaching Black people to read and write for free while farming on the side.

His work caught the attention of General Robert K. Scott of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, who praised Said as ?a thoroughly educated man and a distinguished linguist, who converses fluently in ten languages and who is equally conversant in both the Greek Testament and the Koran.?

Southern newspapers, incredulous at the idea of such an African, mocked the claim.

Despite the racism he faced in the military, Said found warmth and respect from many white individuals, including Southerners, precisely because of his sharp intellect and unusual multilingual aptitude. That?s why he once remarked, according to Calbreath, that ?the kindest people with whom he had ever met and domiciled [with] are the Southern whites.?

He also became one of America?s first Black people to devote their time to getting scores of Black people registered to vote. His accomplishments were so noteworthy that the New York Times? William Swinton, himself a polyglot, profiled him extensively on August 13, 1867, in an article titled ?The Negro Pundit.?

?He has certainly made himself a remarkable philologist. Remarkable it would be in even the most cultured of Caucasians, but still more so in one who bears on his black visage the symbols of his savage race [i.e., Said?s Kanuri facial marks],? Swinton wrote. ?For he knows, in addition to English and his native tongue, Arabic, Turkish, Russian, Hebrew, Greek, German, French, and Italian?. Nor is it merely a parrot-like faculty of imitation, for he has a deep penetration of their genius and affinities and, in some instances, a fair, and in others, a profound acquaintance with their literature? (208).

The New York Times profile was republished in over two dozen newspapers. The Nation, a liberal newspaper, even suggested that Said ?was so talented he might make a good candidate for vice president someday, or at least a cabinet secretary or maybe an ambassador to Russia.?

Two months after the New York Times profile, Said wrote about himself in the Atlantic Monthly, one of America?s most iconic magazines. His article, titled ?A Native of Bornoo,? caused his profile to soar in South Carolina and got him a more prestigious teaching job at a private school where he taught English and French.

After actively participating in Charleston?s politics, where many Black officials were elected?triggering violent white backlash?Said left the city. He became a peripatetic teacher in rural South Carolina before moving to Georgia.

To gain acceptance in the South, he concealed his Union Army service, even falsely claiming he arrived in the U.S. post-war. His autobiography completely blacked out his participation in the Civil War.

In Georgia, he encountered Lucius Bryan, a virulently racist aristocrat who had written that Africans had ?never built a city, never bridged a river, never made the smallest discovery having any tendency to widen the little space that separates him from the gorilla.? But after meeting Said, Bryan softened his stance. He grudgingly acknowledged that Said?s intelligence and learning equaled that of any white man.

So, he encouraged Said to tour Southern states to demonstrate ?the possibility of elevating the colored race to a standard of equality with Europeans.?

Said agreed, arguing that Africa ?has been, through prejudice and ignorance, so sadly misrepresented that anything like intelligence, industry, etc., is believed not to exist among its natives.?

Beginning his lecture tour in March 1870, he electrified audiences. Though often introverted in one-on-one dialogic engagements, he transformed to a spine-tingling orator on stage. ?On the stump, he seemed as one inspired. His sentences were short, clear-cut, and logical. When gesticulating with his arms, the eye could almost see sparks dripping from his fingertips,? Calbreath quoted one observer to have noted.

Attendance at his lectures initially cost 25 cents (about $5 today), later increasing to 50 cents for adults and 25 cents for children. Subscribers also paid similar amounts for his forthcoming autobiography.

During a visit to The Atlanta Constitution (the flagship newspaper in Georgia now called the Atlanta-Journal Constitution) on July 22, 1870, the editors described him as ?a very intelligent son of Africa? [who] talks intelligently on almost every subject.?

Said let the editors read a rough draft of his autobiography. They wrote that they were ?astonished to find it well written?. The contents are novel, and, as far as we read them, very interesting.?

Other Southern newspapers dubbed him the ?wandering African celebrity? or the ?learned African.? In Florida, a star-struck bank clerk inscribed on Said?s account application: ?This is the wonderful Nickolas [sic] Said, doubtless.?

As his fame grew, so did lecture fees, rising to 75 cents. Fame also made him a magnet for girls. A teenage Georgia girl named Annie from a small town called Bainbridge (which now has a little over 14,000 people) threw herself at him. Their short affair led to a pregnancy, which Said wasn?t aware of.

Annie gave birth to a girl whom she named Nancy Said. No one knows whether her descendants are alive. Short of getting DNA samples from Said?s relatives in Kukawa and comparing them to the probable descendants of Nancy Said in Bainbridge, Georgia, we have no way of knowing.

Despite warnings, he moved to Alabama, a perilous state for educated Black men. Yet, he found surprising warmth there, even impressing a former slaveowner and Confederate soldier, Mitchell Smith, who recommended him to local politicians in another Alabama town Said moved to, saying, ?Nicholas Said? is, by far, the most intelligent and best-educated man of the African race with whom I have ever conversed.?

Settling in Bladon Springs, Alabama, for four years?the longest he had stayed in one place since his forced displacement from Kukawa?he earned ?the highest esteem of the white citizens,? as James S. Evans Jr. (whose son would later destroy Said?s reputation) wrote. ?He had a dash about him that was fascinating?. He knew something of political economy, had studied the principles of law, possessed a smattering of knowledge of physics, and had read much on religious topics.?

There, he taught, completed his manuscript, and married again on September 24, 1874, to Rachel Thornton, a 24-year-old single mother with a six-year-old son. There is no information that he had a child with the woman.

In 1877, he left Bladon Springs without his wife and resumed his lecture circuits in Mississippi and Tennessee, carrying his autobiography. This time, he began calling himself Mohammed Ali ben Said, though he later reverted to Nicholas after settling in Haywood County, Tennessee.

In Haywood County, Tennessee, Nicholas Said mysteriously vanished from public view. It seems he fell into depression becauseof a series of injuriously libelous falsehoods written about him by James Evans Jr., a popular but notoriously mendacious, drunken, and unapologetically racist Alabama journalist whose father respected Said a great deal. These fabrications were republished in multiple newspapers.

Evans conjured stories about Said entirely from his imagination, claiming he was a South African criminal, a linguistically gifted forger and thief serving time in prison. There is no record of Said fighting back to reclaim his reputation.

Some believe he died in Haywood County in 1882, but no official record of his death exists in the United States. Or, as Dean Calbreath speculates, did he return to Borno unnoticed? No one knows for sure.

? Being the final installment of the Nicholas Said series by Farooq Kperogi, a US-based Nigerian scholar and syndicated columnist.

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