MIRAMA’S CHRISTMAS TEST

Timothy Thomas Fortune

Journalist, writer, and civil rights leader, T. Thomas Fortune was born to enslaved parents in Marianna, Florida, on October 3, 1856. After the Civil War, he briefly attended schools sponsored by the Freedmen’s Bureau. In 1876, he attended Howard University, in Washington, DC, but did not graduate. While in Washington, Fortune worked for the People’s Advocate, a black newspaper. He married Carrie C. Smiley, and they had five children, two of whom reached adulthood. In 1879, Fortune moved to New York, where he worked as a printer. Around 1880, he became part owner of a weekly tabloid, the Rumor, which in 1881 became the Globe, with Fortune as its editor. Following the failure of the Globe, he began publishing the New York Freeman, which in 1887 became the New York Age. For many years, the Age had a reputation as the leading black newspaper in America, primarily because of Fortune’s editorials, which condemned racial discrimination and demanded full equality for black citizens. Fortune’s militancy drew extensive criticism from the white press.

In spite of its successful outreach and reputation, the Age was not a financial success. Fortune supplemented his income by writing for other publications. In the 1890s, he wrote for the New York Sun and Boston Transcript, and he sold his freelance writing to a number of other newspapers. Fortune also published the book Black and White: Land and Politics in the South (1884), as well as articles and short stories that appeared in the Age and other black newspapers.

In 1896, the Indianapolis Freeman published “Mirama’s Christmas Test,” a story that reflects the concerns of educated black women who wished to marry men of equal stature. It is set in Jason, Florida, on Christmas Eve around 1895 in the home of Mirama Young, an upper-class, educated black schoolteacher. Mirama is the daughter and only child of a prosperous builder and contractor, who had been allowed to hire out his time before the Civil War. Like Frederick Douglass and a small number of “trusted” slaves, Mirama’s father had enjoyed a status between that of a slave and a free person. As a trusted slave, he moved freely, “acting as a free person,” contracting his time and giving his master an agreed upon percentage of his earnings. This experience provided him the background and knowledge necessary to establish his own business after the war.

Mirama is engaged to Alexander Simpson, a mathematician and “somewhat of an architect,” who is the principal at the school where Mirama teaches. Simpson’s father shared the views of many former slaves, including Booker T. Washington, who believed that one should acquire all the education he or she could, but that one should also have a practical skill. The owner of a successful carpentry business, Simpson taught his son the carpenter’s trade. His wish was that Alexander would acquire a college education and become a master carpenter and builder. His death before Alexander finished his college course, and the satisfaction of his business debts, left the family with minimal funds. Alexander could have saved the business and property, but he thought that, as an educated man, carpentry was beneath him. Essentially this was the issue that divided Mirama and Alexander and threatened to break up their engagement.

This story echoes a theme that becomes a much-debated issue in the African American community, and one that Carter G. Woodson immortalized in The Miseducation of the Negro (1933). Woodson argued that college-educated blacks had become immersed in a superficial reality, embracing empty values, and that instead of becoming educated, they were miseducated. Many college-educated blacks chose jobs in the professions, whether they were suited for them or not, because this gave them status and freed them from working with their hands. It did not matter that these jobs paid less and that they may not have offered opportunity for advancement. It is through the characters of Mirama Young and Alexander Simpson that Fortune conveys his concern about blacks who reflected these beliefs.

Fortune presents the reader with a positive model of an African American woman who has a well-defined race and gender consciousness. He characterizes Mirama as an intelligent, outspoken, independent female, “intensely devoted to her race and its best interests,” who is not willing to settle for a man who does not share her values. This indicates that there was a cadre of educated black women who held high expectations for themselves and their race and who were not willing to compromise and accept men who did not meet their standards.

At the same time, Fortune reinforces the idea of love between black women and black men, who are striving to better themselves and their race.

Mirama’s Christmas Test

It was Christmas Eve, and there was but little frost in the air, but it was frosty enough to make people move along briskly, as they stirred about Jason, in the land of sunshine and flowers, of mocking birds and alligators, getting together “Christmas things” for the little ones, and for the big ones, also; for it is very true, as the poet has said: “We are but children of a larger growth.” Some of the large ones are bigger children than the small ones.

This is just what Mirama Young thought, as she sat near Alexander Simpson, in the neat parlor of her own home, in the upper part of Jason, and watched the big logs in the fireplace blaze and hiss. Mirama Young was angry.

These two young people were up-to-date Afro-Americans, with positive views on most subjects and with good sized tempers with which to back them up. They both taught school. Mr. Simpson taught for a living, but had no sort of love for the work. It seemed to him more dignified to teach school than to follow the trade of a carpenter, the mastery of which he had acquired in his youth, and for which he had real aptitude. His supreme ambition was to be a lawyer, with political influence, and all that. He even dreamed that someday he might be commissioned by the President as Minister Resident and Consul General near the court of Faraway, a soft snap much sought after by ambitious men of his race.

Mirama taught school because she liked it, and because she was intensely devoted to her race and its best interests. She had a good home, and had graduated from a famous seminary at the head of her class. Her father was a builder and contractor, one of the old timers who hired his time before the war and had been hiring the time of other people ever since. He was a practical old gentleman, and thought there was nothing too good for Mirama, his only child.

Mirama was engaged to be married to Alexander Simpson. They had reached an agreement on that point, but there were others necessary to the fulfillment of their mutual pledges upon which they were still as far apart as the North and the South. They were argumentative and dogmatic, were Mirama and Alexander, in their discussions. There was nothing of the spoilt child about Mirama, but for so small a woman, she had enough will force for three women. When she put her small foot down, Alexander Simpson could not make her take it up, although he weighed almost twice as much as she did. This was very painful to Mr. Alexander Simpson, who was entirely devoted to Mirama and twice as sentimental as she, and not half as studious in burning the midnight oil. Indeed, Mr. Alexander Simpson did not possess a literary head, although he thought that he did. Mirama had come out of school at the head of her class. Alexander had come out at the foot of his, and during the year that she had taught under him in the city school she had upheld the discipline and the dignity of the work at the school.

Mr. Alexander Simpson was a fine mathematician and somewhat of an architect. He had learned the carpenter’s trade in his youth, and his father hoped that with a college education, he would become a master carpenter and builder. His father died just before Alexander finished his college course, and as he had a great many irons in the fire at the time of his death, there wasn’t much left for Alexander and his mother when all the creditors were satisfied.

Now if Alexander had been a wise young man, he would have taken up his father’s business where his father left off. If he had done so he could have saved much of his father’s business and property. But Alexander Simpson was not going to bother with the carpentering business, not if Alexander knew himself. He did not think it a proper sort of business for a young man with a college education. Any sort of a common man could be a carpenter, he thought, but any sort of a common man could not be a lawyer.

And just here it was that Mirama Young and Alexander Simpson differed, and so radically that Mirama had put her little foot down and Mr. Alexander Simpson could not budge it. They had been fighting it over for the hundredth time, this Christmas Eve, and had reached a point where silence had fallen upon them like a wet blanket. Mirama was immovable; Alexander was stubborn.

“I have reached the conclusion that we had better break off our engagement, Mr. Simpson,” said Mirama, gloomingly, staring into the fire.

“But you can’t back out now, Mirama. You have gone too far for that.”

“Oh, yes I can!” snapped Mirama. “It is never too late to back out when you find that you have made a mistake.”

“But have you made a mistake?”

“Certainly. That is the reason I think it best to break the engagement.”

“What is the mistake?” asked Alexander, meekly.

“What is it? Why you are as stubborn as I am, and that I give away to you as much as you do to me.”

“Now, Mirama, be reasonable. You know that you are as stubborn as I am, and that I give away to you as much as you do to me.”

“That is just it,” exclaimed Mirama. “Neither of us ever gives away. One of us must give away. You don’t expect me to do it, do you?”

Alexander did not know how to answer this question, so evaded it by asking another: “You don’t love me a bit, do you, now?”

“You know I do,” [Mirama said] reproachfully; “but you are so stubborn.”

“Now, what am I most stubborn in?” asked Alexander, soothingly.

“Everything!” said Mirama, with a sweep of her arm. “Everything! You would provoke a saint.” [Taking a] long pause [she said], “Now, take this law scheme of yours.”

“Don’t!” said Alexander. “We can’t agree on that.”

“If we can’t agree on that, we shall not be able to agree on anything, and we had better not get married, and I won’t marry you. So there!” Mirama had put her little foot down. Alexander argued and coaxed, but he made no headway. He was in despair. Things had never reached this stage before, and a compromise of some sort must be reached.

“What do you want me to do?” asked the strong man, desperately.

“What do I want you to do?” asked Mirama indignantly. “I’ve told you a hundred times, I want you to give up the idea of reading law, and I want you to stop teaching school, and I want you to go with my father in the carpenter business. You will never succeed in the law, and you don’t like school teaching, and you know all about carpentering. My father wants you to help him. He’s getting old, and can’t attend to all his business. And I am not going to marry you unless you do what I want you to do in this matter.”

Alexander had studied the question from a thousand points of view and he had reached the conclusion that the law was the business in life he wanted to follow and that the carpentering business was not up to his idea of dignity. What did he get a college education for; just to be a carpenter? Not much. “You needn’t say another word,” said Mirama. “I will not budge an inch. The business that was good enough for your father and that is good enough for mine is good enough for you. You couldn’t make enough money as a lawyer to support me, and you know it.”

“O, I don’t think I know anything of the sort,” exclaimed Alexander.

“Perhaps you don’t,” [Mirama said] dryly; “but I do, and I am not going to try the experiment. We don’t need to argue the question anymore.”

Mr. Alexander Simpson did not argue the question any more. He put on his thinking cap and kept it on, in dead silence, for ten minutes. Then a big spasm of pain passed over his face, and Mr. Alexander Simpson, for the first time in their courtship, surrendered.

“I have been trying to get you to fix the marriage day for a year, now, if I do what you want will you fix the date?”

“Certainly,” said Mirama. “I will fix the day any time you say after you write your resignation to the school board.”

“That is your Christmas test,” said Mirama Young.

Alexander took his fountain pen and securing a sheet of paper wrote his resignation to the school board, to take effect at the end of the holidays, and handed it to Mirama. She read it through carefully and said:

“We’ll fix the date of the wedding.”

“To-morrow, at 3 o’clock,” said Alexander.

“O, that is a Christmas test!” exclaimed Mirama.

“Yes; Mirama’s Christmas test,” said Alexander Simpson.