On this date in 1892, the Fargo society column of the Wisconsin Afro-American wrote, “The AFRO-AMERICAN man is always wide awake and never neglects anything that will benefit the colored people of Fargo. Every colored citizen should subscribe for this paper.”
Black people in Fargo of 1892 could buy the Wisconsin Afro-American at the barber shop of Nathan Norris, at 63½ Broadway.
Today, we might wonder what “wide awake” meant in the context this historical document. In 1892, it was a term laden with meaning. It conjured up visions of grim abolitionist crusaders marching in torchlight parades in black capes. A few decades earlier, in 1860, the Wide Awakes were the enthusiastic paramilitary youth wing of the Republican Party – the party of Abraham Lincoln.
It was also the party of Hans Christian Heg, an immigrant Norwegian American commander of a local Wisconsin militia that defended fugitive neighbors against slave catchers. He could be found drilling Wide Awakes in the streets of Fox Lake, Wisconsin. He was a fiercely abolitionist colonel of the Fifteenth Regiment Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry who died at the Battle of Chickamauga during his personal crusade against slavery.
In the hot weather and hot politics of the 1860 presidential election, the boots of the Wide Awakes thundered across the streets of northern cities. They thundered even more loudly in the imaginations of southern slave owners.
The very mention of “wide awake” threw Texan mobs into a frenzy. They scapegoated abolitionists for summer fires that broke out in the hot sun of 1860. Their false accusations of abolitionist arson would get repeated by John C. Breckenridge, Vice President in the James Buchannan administration who was now the presidential nominee of the southern Democrats, after they split with northern Democrats and walked out of the national convention. Texan mobs tortured hundreds of slaves to extract confessions, and lynched dozens of people suspected of northern sympathies.
Black people of that period understood what it meant when, in 1890, the Torchlight Appeal of Fort Worth Texas, an African-American publication, called itself “a wide awake weekly newspaper for the people.”
Black people in Fargo of 1892 knew what the phrase “wide awake” meant. It had a history. It had an iconography. It had a clear meaning – a meaning long forgotten in popular memory.
Dakota Datebook by Andrew Alexis Varvel
References:
- “Fargo, N. D., News”, 20 August 1892, Wisconsin Afro-American, page 1, column 3, Miscellaneous Negro Newspapers.
- “WIDE-AWAKE CONTEST CONTEST STARTED BY THE UNIVERSITY OFFICIALS”, 18 December 1912, The Student (Grand Forks), page 1, columns 3-4.
- “WIDE-AWAKE CONTESTS WILL BE CLOSED ON SIXTEENTH OF MONTH”, 9 January 1913, The Student (Grand Forks), page 3, columns 3-4.
- “WIDE AWAKE CONTEST”, 30 January 1913, The Student (Grand Forks), page 1, column 2.
- Camille Mann, “Katy Perry punches Prince Charming in 'Wide Awake' music video”, CBS News, 20 June 2012.
- https://www.cbsnews.com/news/katy-perry-punches-prince-charming-in-wide-awake-music-video/
- From 3:26 to 3:38, there is a scene in Katy Perry's “Wide Awake” music video showing her punching Prince Charming in front of a child.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0BWlvnBmIE
- Jon Grinspan, “'Young Men for War': The Wide Awakes and Lincoln's 1860's Presidential Campaign”, The Journal of American History (Oxford: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Organization of American Historians, September 2009), volume 96, number 2, pp. 357, 361, 363, 366, 373-375, 378.
- “From the Campaign”, 27 September 1860, The Appleton Motor (Appleton, WI), page 2, column 3.
- Theodore C. Blegen, “COLONEL HANS CHRISTIAN HEG”, The Wisconsin Magazine of History (Madison, WI: Wisconsin Historical Society, December 1920), volume 4, number 2, p. 156.
- Waldemar Ager, Della Kittleson Catuna and Clarence A. Clausen (translators), “Colonel Heg and His Boys: A Norwegian Regiment in the American Civil War” (Northfield, MN: The Norwegian-American Historical Association, 2000), pp. 59-61.
- “To Gunild, May 5, 1862”, from Theodore C. Blegen (editor), “The Civil War Letters of Colonel Hans Christian Heg (Northfield, MN: Norwegian-American Historical Association, 1936), page 82.
- “To Gunild, July 19, 1862”, p. 110.
- “To Gunild, January 21, 1863”, p. 178.
- “To Gunild, July 28, 1863”, p. 232.
- Adam Goodheart, “1861: The Civil War Awakening” (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), pp. 49-50.
- Donald E. Reynolds, “Texas Terror: The Slave Insurrection Panic of 1860 and the Secession of the Lower South” (Baton Rouge: Louisiana University Press, 2007), 29-33, 79-95, 117, 120-121, 148-155, 168-169, 193-199, 203-207.
- “Speech of Hon. John C. Breckenridge delivered at Ashland, KY., Sept. 5, 1860.”, 21 September 1860, Richmond Enquirer, pp. 1-4.
- “THE TERRORS OF SUBMISSION” (reprint from the Charleston Mercury), 7 November 1860, page 1, columns 4-5, Dallas Herald.
- “TELEGRAPHIC NEWS”, 18 December 1860, The Hillsdale Standard (Hillsdale, MI), page 3, column 7.
- Page 1, 17 January (1890), Torchlight Appeal, Fort Worth Texas, volume 3, number 27. Miscellaneous Negro Newspapers.
- Page 1, 3 February (1890), Torchlight Appeal, Fort Worth Texas, volume 3, number 29. Miscellaneous Negro Newspapers.
- Page 1, 22 February 1890, Torchlight Appeal, Fort Worth Texas, volume 3, number 32. Miscellaneous Negro Newspapers.
