Hush Harbors in African American Rhetorics

"From the Harbor to Da Academic Hoood: Hush Harbors and an African American Rhetorical Tradition" by Vorris L. Nunley
in _African American Rhetorics: Interdisciplinary Perspectives_. Ed Ronald Jackson and Elaine Richardson. SIUP, 2004.


Nunley addresses "hush harbor sites" and "hush harbor rhetoric" in this essay.

"Hush harbor sites" serve as "camouflaged locations, hidden sites, and enclosed places as emancipatory cells where they come in from the wilderness, unite their tongues, speak the unspoken, and single their own songs to their own selves in their own communities" (223). What counts as a hush harbor site, both in the historical and contemporary sense for African American peoples? Nunley provides a fairly extensive list of possible hush habors: "Woods, plantation borders, churches, burial societies, beauty shops, slave frolics, barbershops, and kitchens" (223). Nunley cites Lawrence Levine who argues in _Black Culture and Black Consciousness_ (1997) that hush harbors were places where enslaved African Americans established spaces to have unauthorized, covert meetings in "bush arbors, cane breaks, or hush harbors" (225). A hush harbor is not only a place, it is a "conceptual metaphor" for strategies of "masquerade" "hidden in plain sight"(Nunley 226 citing Levine 83). Hush harbors became places where black folks escaped the white gaze and gathered to engage with one another. Historically, hush harbors were places where African Americans gathered to plan escapes from slavery, where worship in the black church was made possible. Citing Ira Berlin, Eric Sundquist, and Robert Wright and Wilbur Hughes, Nunley notes that many black institutions have emerged from the space of the hush harbor: "Formal institutions such as the National Colored Woman's Association, the Black Panthers, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference" (227).

In addition to the term hush harbor space, Nunley introduces the idea of a hush harbor rhetoric "" a rhetorical tradition constructed through Black public spheres with a distinctive relationship to spatiality (material and discursive), audience, African American nomoi (social conventions and beliefs that constitute a world view or knowledge), and epistemology" (222). Nunley argues that scholarship in rhetoric has neglected an understanding of "spatiality," which he calls "the distinctive fourth term of the rhetorical situation" (222).

Nunley warns the reader, however, that hush harbors are not just places where Black folks congregate, but they are Black spaces because "African American nomos (social convention, worldview knowledge), rhetoric, phronesis (practice wisdom and intelligence), tropes, and commonplaces are normative in the encounters that occur in these locations" (224). Space is an important construct in Nunley's essay. It's important not only because hush harbors are spaces, but because space has been relatively neglected in rhetorical study. Nunley reviews work on architecture, postmodern geography, and rhetorical studies of space (e.g., Mountford). While Mountford addresses how spaces produce meaning, Nunley points out that she doesn't look at African American "rhetorical spaces" as "expressions of a textual and rhetorical tradition" (228). Thus, hush harbors are more than a space for gathering, they are sites of practices AND "theorizing, epistemology and history " (230). Nunley goes on to show how this is the case in African American literature and public address, namely through The "Ballot or the Bullet," Malcolm X's speech given in Cleveland on April 3, 1964. He offers a thoughtful analysis of how Malcolm X deployed a different ethos when addressing the black audience in Cleveland ("The Ballot or the Bullet) vs. addressing a predominantly white audience in his speech "The Black Revolution" given in Palm Gardens, N. Both speeches addressed similar themes, but the different audiences necessitated different appeals. Nunley shows how Malcolm X adapated his speech accordingly and how "The Ballot or the Bullet" given to a black audience in Cleveland is an example of hush harbor rhetoric. I like this section a great deal, but I'd like to see more analysis of how hush harbor rhetoric works in the "The Ballot or the Bullet." I get the general concept, but I'd like to see more close textual analysis of the speech itself so I can understand how Malcolm X was working within the hush harbor rhetorical space.

However, this kind of close analysis of public address is not Nunley's goal. The essay moves on to discuss the concept of black audience and black commonplaces (nomoi from Susan Jarratt). While Nunley sees hush harbor rhetoric as an important part of African American rhetorical traditions, he emphasizes that hush harbor spaces are not utopian respites free from the internecine conflicts and contradictions" (235). Harbor, perhaps, gives the concept of hush harbor the idea of a sheltered and safe space. But Nunley is not content to rest there--dwelling in the hush harbor has consequences and benefits as he shows in the "The Classroom as Contact and Combat Zone" segment of the piece where he discusses academic hush harbors. Nunley gives an example of an experience he had where he challenged two white graduate students who critiqued a multicultural textbook for being too race-based, Nunley and another student and African American faculty discussed the incident behind closed doors after the class. Yet Nunley uses this example to suggest how hush harbor rhetoric can be a transgressive pedagogical practice. He offers an example of how this can happen through the use of the "lyric shuffle" game that linguist J. Baugh discusses in his book and Beverly Silverstein's service learnign program at Crenshaw High in L.A.. Finally, Nunley ends the piece by arguing that hush harbor rhetoric provides scholars of rhetoric a useful "methodological and pedagogical possibility' (241).

As I read through, I wondered how hush harbors can parallel the space that Nan Johnson refers to as parlor rhetoric in her book on nineteenth century women rhetors? Nineteenth century white women were usually not welcome in public address, so how might parlor rhetorics parallel hush harbors, to some degree? What are the limitations as well as possibilities of comparing these two rhetorical spaces: parlor and hush harbor?