Dr. Sterling A. Brown: Dialect Poet and Professor

As we have discussed so far in African American Literature, one of the chief concerns of African American writers of the Renaissance was the positioning of the folk within the literary heritage. That is, whether one should consider dialect poetry and the acknowledgment of the folk aesthetic as part of an evolving African American art form. Gates points out that during the Harlem Renaissance, that critics relegated dialect poetry to the "expression of humor and pathos" . Poets like Langston Hughes and Paul Laurence Dunbar, to relative effect, insisted dialect verse as a vital art form, and elevated the spoken word of African American 'folk' as a recognized and legitimate artistic expression. Perhaps to even greater extent, poet Sterling A. Brown, has been heralded as the master of dialect poetry--particularly in the estimation of James Weldon Johnson(1248).

Howard University's website informs us that "Professor Brown devoted his life to the development of an authentic black folk literature. He was one of the first scholars to identify folklore as a vital component of the black aesthetic and to recognize its validity as a form of artistic expression"(1). True to this form, Brown's poetry engages a sympathetic rendering of spoken dialect and draws from recognizable African American folk heroes.


Born on Howard University campus in 1901, Sterling A. Brown came into the world under privileged circumstances. His father was an accomplished professor at University, and was a personal friend to Frederick Douglass and Paul Laurence Dunbar. The younger Brown continued in his father's footsteps and was surrounded by African American intelligentsia throughout his life, encountering well-known and prominent figures Jessie Fauset and Angeline Grimke. He studied at Williams College and later at Harvard; but despite his illustrious education asserted that 'the best teachers' he had 'were the poor black folk of the South,' referring to Lynchburg, Virginia, where he taught at the Virginia Seminary (Gates 1248). Brown later became a faculty member at Howard, like his father. He published several seminal works that included The Negro in American Fiction and The Negro Caravan. Additionally, Brown enjoyed a long and illustrious career as a professor, receiving an honorary doctorate from Howard in 1969. He was also offered a position at the private Vassar College--a noteworthy event in which a black professor was invited to teach at a predominantly white college. However, Brown turned down the offer, preferring to remain with his students at Howard.

Ida B. Wells Symposium

Ida B. Wells Symposium @ Rhodes


Posted on September 24, 2012 by midsouthstudies

To celebrate the 150th Anniversary of Ida B. Wells’ birth, Rhodes College is holding a symposium to celebrate her activism in Memphis. Wells (1862-1931) came of age in Memphis, moving to the city in 1880. She was forced to flee Memphis for her anti-lynching journalism in 1892.



Monday, October 29



■Memphis Center Public Christening 5:00 pm Memphis Center

■Paula Giddings, keynote lecture, “A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching,” BCLC 6:30 pm

Tuesday, October 30



■Amy Wood, “Lynching and Spectacle: Ida B. Wells, Anti-Lynching Activism, and the Use of Photography as Testimony” 4:00 pm in Blount Auditorium

■Reception in Buckman Hall Lobby

■Theatrical Performance of Iola: A One-act Reflection on Wells’ Memphis Years, 6:00 pm in Hardie Auditorium. Co-written by Dave Mason and Rychetta Watkins

Alain Locke: "The New Negro"

"The Old Negro, we must remember, was a creature of moral debate and historical controversy. He has been a stock figure perpetuated as an historical fiction partly in innocent sentimentalism, partly in deliberate reactionism. The Negro himself has contributed his share to this through a sort of protective social mimicry forced upon him by the adverse circumstances of dependence" (Locke 985).

"Through having had to appeal from the unjust stereotypes of his oppressors and traducers to those of his liberators, friends and benefactors he has had to subscribe to the traditional positions from which his case has been viewed. Little true social or self-understanding has or could come from such a situation" (985).

"Similarly the mind of the Negro seems suddenly to have slipped from under the tyranny of social intimidation and to be shaking off the psychology of imitation and implied inferiority. By shedding the old chrysalis of the Negro problem we are achieving something like a spiritual emancipation. Until recently, lacking self-understanding, we have been almost as much of a problem to ourselves as we still are to others. But the decade that found us with a problem has left us only with a task" (985).

"With this renewed self-respect and self-dependence, the life of the Negro community is bound to enter a new dynamic phase, the buoyancy from within compensating for whatever pressure there may be of conditions from without" (985).

"The popular melodrama has about played itself out, and it is time to scrap the fictions, garret the bogeys and settle down to a realistic facing of facts" (986).

"A main change has been, of course, that shifting of the Negro population which has made the Negro problem no longer exclusively or even predominantly Southern. Why should our minds remain sectionalized, when the problem itself no longer is? Then the trend of migration has not only been twoard the North and Central Midwest, but city-ward and to the great centers of industry--the problems of adjustment are new, practical, local and not peculiarly racial" (986).

"Here in Manhattan is not merely the largest Negro community in the world, but the first concentration in history of the many diverse elements of Negro life. It has attracted the African, the West Indian, the Negro American; has brought together the Negro of the North and the Negro of the South; the man from the city and the man from the town and village; the peasant, the student, the business man, the professional man, artist, poet, musician, adventurer and worker, preacher and criminal, exploiter and social outcast" (987). 

"So what began in terms of segregation becomes more and more, as its elements mix and react, the laboratory of a great race-welding" (987).

"There is a growing realization that in social effort the cooperative basis must supplant long-distance philanthropy, and that the only safeguard fro mass relations in the future must be provided in the carefully maintained contacts of enlightened minorities of both race groups. In the intellectual realm a renewed and keen curiosity is replacing the recent apathy; the Negro is being carefully studied, not just talked about and discussed. In art and letters, instead of being wholly caricatured, he is being seriously portrayed and painted" (988).

"The Negro today is inevitably moving forward under the control largely of his own objectives. What are these objectives? Those of his outer life are happily already well and finally formulated, for they are none other then the ideals of American institutions and democracy..." (989).

Abolitionism in the North: William Lloyd Garrison

Some Background on Slavery's Abolition in the North

The official ban on importing slaves into the United States came in 1808; however this edict did not control the trafficking of slaves within the U.S. borders. At the end of the eighteenth century following the Revolutionary War, many individual instances of manumission took place. Slave-holders freed slaves by dint of the growing philosophies of freedom and independence; however, others freed their bondsmen due to changing economic climates, in which many farmers moved from single-crop (tobacco) farming to variegated crops and therefore needed fewer hands to work the fields. The mass reformation movements that eventually ended slavery in the nation did not come until the Second Great Awakening, which occurred during the 1820's and 1830's. Religious groups such as the Quakers, Moravians, and Methodists argued that the holding of slaves was sinful in the eyes of God, thus turning the tide on the long-standing biblical justification of slavery by southern slave owners. Those who argued for the immediate end of slavery were followers of William Lloyd Garrison (Garrisonians); however others such as John Quincy Adams argued secular rationale for the end of the institution on grounds that it was a societal evil and opposed its expansion into uncolonized territories.
Hence Abolitionism in all areas outside the south fell into two camps: those for the immediate end to slavery throughout the nation; and those in favor of ending its expansion (1).

William Lloyd Garrison, an outspoken abolitionist and founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society, published The Liberator a weekly anti-slavery pamphlet that continued in circulation until the end of the Civil War (1861-65). Garrison was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts in 1805, to a 'merchant sailing master.' When Garrison was still a boy, his father abandoned the family, which forced the child to work, 'selling molasses candy and delivering wood' (2). He grew up developing an affinity for journalism, and earned several apprenticeships as a journalist. By the age of twenty-five, he became involved in the Abolitionist movement, joining the American Colonization Society: a group of abolitionists ostensibly devoted to colonizing freed blacks on the West Coast of Africa. However, Garrison later left the organization when he learned that only a few members of the ACS actually advocated manumission; most were devoted to keeping the institution of slavery intact.

Garrison's background in journalism fortified the enterprising young man for his role as a writer and publisher. In 1831, his abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator. As an advocate for the immediate end of slavery, Garrison became acquainted with, and later supported, the fugitive slave and orator, Frederick Douglass. However, the friendship between the two men ended when Douglass argued that the U.S. Constitution could be used "as a weapon against slavery." Garrison, who believed the Constitution to be a "pro-slavery document" disagreed, and consequently felt betrayed by Douglass's actions. The two men never made amends (3).

Despite this falling out and the often rancorous relationship he shared with many of the country's pro-slavery politicians, Garrison remained dedicated to the causes of abolition and assimilation of the nation's freed black population. In the first issue of The Liberator, Garrison has been quoted as saying:

"I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; – but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest – I will not equivocate – I will not excuse – I will not retreat a single inch – AND I WILL BE HEARD. The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal, and to hasten the resurrection of the dead"(4).

Vocabulary

Below are some of the terms, historical periods, and figures we will be referring to in the first portion of our semester. We will refer to these terms and figures regularly as we consider some of the key literary works in African American Literature:

The Vernacular Tradition

Eye Dialect: Literary text written to mimic the language of the folk.

Vernacular: “belonging to, developed in, and spoken or used by the people of a particular place, region, or country: native; indigenous” (qtd. in Gates 6)

The Folk: Demographic characterized by rural living and conventional values.

Performativity: Used to describe a method of communication: performative as opposed to literary.
Oral Tradition: Tradition among folk cultures of transmitting narrative orally as opposed to writing.
Conjure: Folk magic and healing practices that have evolved from West African religious traditions. So called in the Delta, Carolinas, and Middle South.
Hoodoo: Conjure as evolved in New Orleans in the 19th Century. Distinguished from "Voodoo."
Voodoo: Erroneous translation of "Vodu": system of magic and religious practice that evolved from the Yoruba tradition to the Caribbean.
Marie Leveau (Laveau): Legendary 'voodoo' priestess from New Orleans. (19th Century)
Hush Arbor: Natural clearings where 19th-century slaves gathered for religious purposes.
Ring Shout: Formation of worshipers in a circle, or 'ring' where participants engaged in call-and-response religious worship.
Field Holler: Songs sung by slaves in the field; characterized by call-and-response pattern.
Lining Song: Songs sung by linemen working on railroad track.
Playing the Dozens: Oral practice of swapping insults.
Signifying: Subtle, covert references to something, or someone else.
Diaspora: The dispersion of peoples from their original homeland: the African diaspora; the Jewish diaspora, etc.

Slave Narratives

Middle Passage: the sea journey undertaken by slave ships from West Africa to the West Indies.
Triangle Trade: refers to the trade in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that involved shipping goods from Britain to West Africa to be exchanged for slaves, these slaves being shipped to the West Indies and exchanged for sugar, rum, and other commodities, which were in turn shipped back to Britain.
Amanuensis: A third party who writes from the perspective of another, as in the Narrative of Sojourner Truth. Effectively, a 'ghost writer.'
Authenticating Letter: A letter that appears in the preceding pages of a slave narrative, written by a third party to assert the authenticity of the narrative.
Abolition: 19th Century movement among Northerners to abolish slavery. Key figures include William Lloyd Garrison, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frederick Douglass, Nat Turner, John Brown, Denmark Vesey, and Olaudah Equiano
Conversion Narrative: Episode of a slave narrative in which the protagonist describes his or her conversion to Christianity.
Episodic: A literary work divided into sections, or "episodes," such as Frederick Douglass's My Bondage and My Freedom.
Miscegenation: the interbreeding of people considered to be of different racial types.
Mulatto: a person of mixed white and black ancestry, esp. a person with one white and one black parent.
Quadroon: a person whose parents are a mulatto and a white person and who is therefore one-quarter black by descent.
Octoroon: a person whose parents are a quadroon and a white person and who is therefore one-eighth black by descent.
Reconstruction: The period following the American Civil War that lasted approximately from 1863-1877.

Vernacular Forms: The Spiritual

"Negro spirituals are the religious songs sung by African Americans since the earliest days of slavery and first gathered in a book in 1801 by the black church leader Richard Allen. As scholars have observed, this term, whether abbreviated as spirituals or not, is somewhat misleading: for many black slaves, and for their offspring, the divisions between secular and sacred were not as definite as the designation spirituals would suggest. Certainly these religious songs were not sung only in churches or in religious ritual settings. Travelers in the Old South and slaves themselves reported that music about God and the Bible was sung during work time, play time, and rest time as well as on Sundays at praise meetings. As historian Lawrence Levine observed, for slaves, the concept of the sacred signified a strong will to incorporate 'within this world all the elements of the divine'" (Gates 8).

Gates' depiction of the relationship between slaves and religiosity and between slaves and their sorrow songs touches on an important ethnographic aspect of African--and African American cosmologies. Despite the virulence of the European slave trader and the North American plantation owner, West African religious traditions survived through reiterative and performative aspects of slave Christianity. The "Ring Shout" of Gullah communities in the South Carolina coastal region carries elements of Vodu ceremony, as does the "call-and-response" tradition of the early days of the black church. Moreover, like the West African follower of Vodun, the slaves whose sorrow songs spoke of 'flying away home' and of Moses, the messianic representation of deliverance, visualized a spiritual world that regularly interceded upon the real, the actual. Therefore, the spiritual and redemptive were not distant notions: these were very much a part of day-to-day life.

This close interaction with the spiritual endowed slaves to visualize a means to overcome the daily misery of chattel slavery. Their songs, which bespeak their profound sufferings, also locate a communal uplift through shared experience.

Founded in the early 1870s at Fisk University in Tennessee, the Jubilee singers, an a capella vocal group, assembled to raise money for their school. One of their early recordings (1909) of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" recalls the staunch resilience of the early North American slaves.

The Vernacular Tradition: A History in the U.S.

This week we will be reading about and discussing the "Vernacular Tradition" in the U.S. The 'vernacular' refers to all forms of creative expression that include songs, games, 'dozens,' storytelling, sermons, blues and jazz traditions, and other modes of primarily oral artistic creation. Our text points out that the vernacular tradition arose in part as a mode of self- and group- preservation: a type codification in which members of the group could communicate secretly, beyond the prying ears of an oppressor (Gates 3). What occurred among African slaves in the New World was a complex and dynamic system of communicating experience. This system, is called 'signifying' by author Henry Louis Gates, and can be found in the strains of 'sorrow songs,' 'field hollers,' folktales, and other modes of oral expression, in which African American experience is encoded and passed on.

The record of early expressions in the vernacular tradition has been aligned with what scholars refer to as 'the folk', and its expressive output as 'folklore.' For some, these terms may be considered pejorative: that is, to call a cultural artifact 'folk' might suggest an 'over-sentimentalization' of black experience, and undermine a more serious consideration of early African American art forms. Gates remarks that the terms 'vernacular' and 'folk,' for some critics suggest a "category of things that are male, attached only to lower-class groups, and otherwise simplistically expressive of a vast and complexly layered and dispersed group of people" (3). However, I wish to point out that 'folk' expression reveals the core resilience and creativity of the early African American, who found ways to preserve a collective experience under the harshest and most malevolent of systems.

The slave trade sought to eradicate the social, cultural, and religious histories and practices of its victims. After having endured the horrors of human trafficking on the African continent, and the brutality of the Middle Passage, African bondsmen suffered the psychological and emotional trauma that attended violent dislocation to strange and hostile New World. Family ties were ruptured; language was eradicated; and religious practices of African tribes were stamped out under penalty of further brutality. Forced conversions to Christianity were followed by periods in which slave owners forbade slaves from practicing religion for fear of conspiracy. What becomes apparent in the lines of the folk songs and tales is the mode of 'signifying' Gates speaks of. While one meaning might be apparent on the surface, these lines served as code for sublimated meaning that ranged from expressions of woe and misery, to cautionary messages, to conveying messages about survival in a hostile and inhumane institution.

The Vernacular Tradition can be best understood, in words of Gates: "...the vernacular is not a body of quaint, folksy items. It is not an exclusive male province. Nor is it associated with a particular level of society or with a particular historical era. It is neither long ago, far away, nor fading. Instead, the vernacular encompasses vigorous, dynamic processes of expression, past and present" (3-4). Further, as we examine the examples of the vernacular tradition, we will discover the ways in which a rich and indomitable spirit and shared heritage has been perpetuated and distilled by a people who had routinely been taught to believe that they 'had no history.'

Welcome!

Welcome to English 2650, African American Literature. This website is designed as a teaching aid for me, and as a rich resource for you to have access to information concerning the authors, eras, and movements we will be discussing this semester.

Over the course of our weeks together, I will be posting lessons, links to information, and online resources to class materials such as the syllabus, essay specifications, and notices to this website. I hope you will check in regularly, as you have open access to this blog, and it is your resource to learning. 

This fall, I have exciting plans for us that I hope will be enriching and rewarding for all of us. We will explore the nature of self-revelation in African American literature from the earliest slave narratives of Olaudah Equiano and Frederick Douglass, to the 1970s return to folk culture initiated by Alice Walker and Toni Morrison. Our coverage of the 20th century Civil Rights Movement will be complemented by a guided tour of the National Civil Rights Museum in November. In addition, we will explore the some of the directions that African American literature has taken due to the vibrant imaginations of contemporary African American--and Afro-Caribbean authors, such as Octavia Butler and Nalo Hopkinson.

I look forward to a wonderful semester!

Syllabus

Textbook Information:
Gates, Henry L. et al. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. 2nd ed. New York: 
      Norton, 2004. ISBN: 0-393-97778-1

Who I Am

My name is Julie L. Lester. I am an Assistant Professor of African American Literature and Composition at Southwest Tennessee Community College in Memphis, Tennessee. My dissertation engaged the work of Zora Neale Hurston and its influence on Caribbean writers of Speculative and Science Fiction, the inimitable Nalo Hopkinson, and Erna Brodber. I graduated with my Ph.D. in African American Literature from the University of Memphis in 2011 under the sage guidance of Dr. Reginald Martin, Ph.D.

Being very evidently Caucasian, one of the first, and (obviously) unavoidable questions my students ask me is why I chose African American Literature as my specialty. My response is that I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee. My parents, John and Willene Lester, both educators in their own rights, grew up in Neshoba County, Mississippi.

As a young person, I grew up relishing the aroma of fresh cornbread and turnip greens, fried chicken, pole beans, boiled peanuts, collards, fresh corn, molasses, baked ham, and the lingering delight on the tongue of sweet iced tea. The lilting music of southern accents soothed me to sleep, as did the ticking of my grandfather's steady--if monotonous--mantle clock. But race relations were seldom spoken of. Why the 'nigras' dwelled on the far side of town and seldom interfered with the whites was never a subject to be broached. The shocking, often mortifying events of a recent past in Neshoba were dismissed as ancient history. It never puzzled me until I was grown.

Then I picked up a copy of Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. The folk of Eatonville--a demographic with whom I'd never had a personal acquaintance--seemed remarkably like my own family. I felt an immediate, and intimate connection. It was an instant and  all-encompassing love and I was hooked. It occurred to me that regardless of the apparent superficiality of 'color', we--the black, and the white community of the South--shared a cultural heritage, and we were very much the same...'folk.'
 
Those who know their regional history, know that Memphis and Neshoba County are two significant and historically charged sites of interest on the historical timeline of racial relations. As a child, I was immediately aware--even in the seventies--of the lingering racial tension that existed in the South, and that atmosphere excited my curiosity. Though African American and Anglo American Southerners, in some ways, share a mutually exclusive set of histories, I maintain that those histories are intertwined in culturally and socially meaningful ways. We are part of each others' histories, and hence, part of each other. Balkanizing histories, I contend,  is an antiquated and obsolescent thing of the past, and further, a function that inhibits the progression of human understanding.

So, as part of a personal odyssey to uncover and decode the South of my youth, I chose to devote my life to a literary canon that has served to enrich my life, to make my life make sense, and to answer the long unanswered questions of a child who grew up oblivious to, or confounded by the racial conflicts of the past--and in some small way, to mend them.

Though it may appear at once to be incongruous that a terminally 'white' female such as myself should find such reassurance, joy, inspiration, and hope in the works of African American writers, it is at once, a fact, a life's work, and in fact, a lifelong romance. 


JL

The National Civil Rights Museum, Memphis, TN

On April 25th, 2012, I had the distinct pleasure of accompanying my English 2650 (African American Literature) class from Southwest Tennessee Community College, on a field trip to the National Civil Rights Museum located at the historic Lorraine Motel. We were able to tour the museum, which included the hotel room shared by Dr. Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy shortly before King's assassination on April 4, 1968.

Below are a few photographs I took of the event.

 One of the most iconic signs of African American--and American History.

My students, Yram Sikes and Holly Melcalf.

Lauren and Holly meeting me at the Museum.

Stacy Scott, Terrika Finnie, Holly Metcalf, Tamarly Eatmon, Patricia Tia, Van Taylor, Lauren Rose, Nakisha Vaxter, Yram Sikes, Whitney Phipps, and Marvin Mcneal. 

Lauren Rose. A perfect, candid moment.

Wreath that marks the site where Dr. King was murdered.

Jaqueline Smith continues her protest against the building of the Museum.

Thanks to each and everyone of my students for making this day so memorable and lovely. I will remember this day, and you all, always. ~Dr. Lester

Zora Neale Hurston: Story in Harlem Slang

					Wait till I light up my coal-pot and I'll tell you about this Zigaboo called Jelly. Well, all right now. He was a sealskin brown and papa-tree-top-tall. Skinny in the hips and solid built for speed. He was born with this rough-dried hair, but when he laid on the grease and pressed it down overnight with his stocking-cap, it looked just like that righteous moss, and had so many waves you got seasick from looking. Solid, man, solid! His mama named him Marvel, but after a month on Lenox Avenue, he changed all that to Jelly. How come? Well, he put it in the street that when it came to filling that long-felt need, sugarcuring the ladies' feelings, he was in a class by himself and nobody knew his name, so he had to tell 'em. "It must be Jelly, 'cause jam don't shake." Therefore, his name was Jelly. That was what was on his sign. The stuff was there and it was mellow. Whenever he was challenged by a hard-head or a frail eel on the right of his title he would eye-ball the idol-breaker with a slice of ice and put on his ugly-laugh, made up of scorn and pity, and say: "Youse just dumb to the fact, baby. If you don't know what you talking 'bout, you better ask Granny Grunt. I wouldn't mislead you, baby. I don't need to¾ not with the help I got." Then he would give the Pimp's sign, and percolate on down the Avenue. You can't go behind a fact like that. So this day he was airing out on the Avenue. It had to be late afternoon, or he would not have been out of bed. All you did by rolling out early was to stir your stomach up. That made you hunt for more dishes to dirty. The longer you slept, the less you had to eat. But you can't collar nods all day. No matter how long you stay in bed, and how quiet you keep, sooner or later that big gut is going to reach over and grab that little one and start to gnaw. That's confidential right from the Bible. You got to get out on the beat and collar yourself a hot. So Jelly got into his zoot suit with the reet pleats and got out to skivver around and do himself some good. At 132nd Street, he spied one of his colleagues on the opposite sidewalk, standing in front of a café. Jelly figured that if he bull-skated just right, he might confidence Sweet Back out of a thousand on a plate. Maybe a shot of scrap-iron or a reefer. Therefore, Jelly took a quick backward look at his shoe soles to see how his leather was holding out. The way he figured it after the peep was that he had plenty to get across and maybe do a little more cruising besides. So he stanched out into the street and made the crossing. "Hi there, Sweet Back!" he exploded cheerfully. "Gimme some skin!" "Lay de skin on me, pal!" Sweet Back grabbed Jelly's outstretched hand and shook hard. "Ain't seen you since the last time, Jelly. What's cookin'?" "Oh, just like de bear I ain't nowhere. Like de bear's brother, I ain't no further. Like de bear's daughter ain't got a quarter," Right away, he wished he had not been so honest. Sweet Back gave him a top-superior, cut-eye look. Looked at Jelly just like a showman looks at an ape. Just as far above Jelly as fried chicken is over branch water. "Cold in hand, hunh?" He talked down to Jelly. "A red hot pimp like you say you is, ain't got no business in the barrel. Last night when I left you, you was beating up your gums and broadcasting about how hot you was. Just as hot as July-jam, you told me. What you doing cold in hand?" "Aw, man, can't you take a joke? I was just beating up my gums when I said I was broke. How can I be broke when I got de best woman in Harlem? If I ask her for a dime, she'll give me a ten dollar bill; ask her for drink of likker, and she'll buy me a whiskey still. If I'm lying, I'm flying!" "Gar, don't hang out dat dirty washing in my back yard! Didn't I see you last night with dat beat chick, scoffing a hot dog? Dat chick you had was beat to de heels. Boy, you ain't no good for what you live." "If you ain't lying now, you flying. You ain't got de first thin. You ain't got nickel one." Jelly threw back the long skirt of his coat and rammed his hand down into his pants pocket. "Put your money where your mouth is!" he challenged, as he mock-struggled to haul out a huge roll. "Back your crap with your money. I bet you five dollars!" Sweet Back made the same gesture of hauling out nonexistent money. "I been raised in the church. I don't bet, but I'll doubt you. Five rocks!" "I thought so!" Jelly crowed, and hurriedly pulled his empty hand out of his pocket. "I knowed you'd back up when I drawed my roll on you." "You ain't drawed no roll on me, Jelly. You ain't drawed nothing but your pocket. You better stop dat boogerbooing. Next time I'm liable to make you do it." There was a splinter of regret in his voice. If Jelly really had had some money, he might have staked him, Sweet Back, to a hot. Good Southern cornbread with a piano on a platter. Oh, well! The right broad would, or might, come along. "Who boogerbooing?" Jelly snorted. "Jig, I don't have to. Talking about me with a beat chick scoffing a hot dog! You must of not seen ,me, 'cause last night I was riding round in a Yellow Cab, with a yellow gal, drinking yellow likker and spending yellow money. Tell 'em 'bout me, tell 'em!" "Git out of my face, Jelly! Dat broad I seen you with wasn't no pe-ola. She was one of them coal-scuttle blondes with hair just as close to her head as ninety-nine is to a hundred. She look-ted like she had seventy-five pounds of clear bosom, guts in her feet, and she look-ted like six months in front and nine months behind. Buy you a whiskey still! Dat broad couldn't make the down payment on a pair of sox." "Sweet Back, you fixing to talk out of place." Jelly stiffened. "If you trying to jump salty, Jelly, that's your mammy." "Don't play in de family, Sweet Back. I don't play de dozens. I done told you." "Who playing de dozens? You trying to get your hips up on your shoulders 'cause I said you was with a beat broad. One of them lam blacks." "Who? Me? Long as you been knowing me, Sweet Back, you ain't never seen me with nothing but pe-olas. I can get any frail eel I want to. How come I'm up here in New York? You don't know, do you? Since youse dumb to the fact, I reckon I'll have to make you hep. I had to leave from down south 'cause Miss Anne used to worry me so bad to go with me. Who, me? Man, I don't deal in no coal. Know what I tell 'em? If they's white, they's right! If they's yellow, they's mellow! If they's brown, they can stick around. But if they come black, they better git way back! Tell 'em bout me!" "Aw, man, you trying to show your grandma how to milk ducks. Best you can do is to confidence some kitchen-mechanic out of a dime or two. Me, I knocks de pad with them cack-broads up on Sugar Hill, and fills 'em full of melody. Man, I'm quick death and easy judgment. Youse just a home-boy, Jelly. Don't try to follow me." "Me follow you! Man, I come on like the Gang Busters, and go off like The March of Time! If dat ain't so, God is gone to Jersey City and you know He wouldn't be messing 'round a place like that. Know what my woman done? We hauled off and went to church last Sunday, and when they passed 'round the plate for the penny collection, I throwed in a dollar. De man looked at me real hard for dat. Dat made my woman mad, so she called him back and throwed in a twenty dollar bill! Told him to take dat and go! Dat's what he got for looking at me 'cause I throwed in a dollar." "Jelly, de wind may blow and de door may slam; dat what you shooting ain't worth a damn!" Jelly slammed his hand in his bosom as if to draw a gun. Sweet Back did the same. "If you wants to fight, Sweet Back, the favor is in me." "I was deep-thinking then, Jelly. It's a good thing I ain't short-tempered. 'T'aint nothing to you, nohow. You ain't hit me yet." Both burst into a laugh and changed from fighting to lounging poses. "Don't get too yaller on me, Jelly. You liable to get hurt some day." "You over-sports your hand your ownself. Too blamed astorperious. I just don't pay you no mind. Lay de skin on me!" They broke their handshake hurriedly, because both of them looked up the Avenue and saw the same thing. It was a girl and they both remembered that it was Wednesday afternoon. All of the domestics off for the afternoon with their pay in their pockets. Some of them bound to be hungry for love. That meant a dinner, a shot of scrap-iron, maybe room rent and a reefer or two. Both went into the pose and put on the look. "Big stars falling!" Jelly said out loud when she was in hearing distance. "It must be just before day!" "Yeah, man!" Sweet Back agreed. "Must be a recess in Heaven, pretty angel like that out on the ground." The girl drew abreast of them, reeling and rocking her hips. "I'd walk clear to Diddy-Wah-Diddy to get a chance to speak to a pretty lil' ground-angel like that" Jelly went on. "Aw, man, you ain't willing to go very far. Me, I'd go slap to Ginny-Gall, where they eat cow-rump, skin and all." The girl smiled, so Jelly set his hat and took the plunge. "Baby," he crooned, "what's on de rail for de lizard?" The girl halted and braced her hips with her hands. "A Zigaboo down in Georgy, where I come from, asked a woman that one time and the judge told him 'ninety days.'" "Georgy!" Sweet Back pretended to be elated. "Where 'bouts in Georgy is you from? Delaware?" "Delaware?" Jelly snorted. "My people! My people! Free schools and dumb jigs! Man, how you going to put Delaware in Georgy? You ought to know dat's in Maryland." "Oh, don't try to make out youse no northerner, you! Youse from right down in 'Bam your ownself!" The girl turned on Jelly. "Yeah, I'm from there and I aims to stay from there." "One of them Russians, eh?" the girl retorted. "Rushed up here to get away from a job of work." That kind of talk was not leading towards the dinner table. "But baby!" Jelly gasped. "Dat shape you got on you! I bet the Coca Cola Company is paying you good money for the patent!" The girl smiled with pleasure at this, so Sweet Back jumped in. "I know youse somebody swell to know. Youse real people. You grins like a regular fellow." He gave her his most killing look and let it simmer in. "These dickty jigs round here tries to smile. S'pose you and me go inside the café here and grab a hot?" "You got any money?" the girl asked, and stiffened like a ramrod. "Nobody ain't pimping on me. You dig me?" "Aw, now, baby!" "I seen you two mullet-heads before. I was uptown when Joe Brown had you all in the go-long last night. Dat cop sure hates a pimp! All he needs to see is the pimps' salute, and he'll out with his night-stick and whip your head to the red. Beat your head just as flat as a dime!" She went off into a great blow of laughter. "Oh, let's us don't talk about the law. Let's talk about us," Sweet Back persisted. "You going inside with me to holler 'let one come flopping! One come grunting! Snatch one from de rear!'" "Naw indeed!" the girl laughed harshly. "You skillets is trying to promote a meal on me. But it'll never happen, brother. You barking up the wrong tree. I wouldn't give you air if you was stopped up in a jug. I'm not putting out a thing. I'm just like the cemetery I'm not putting out, I'm taking in! Dig?" "I'll tell you like the farmer told the potato plant you now and dig you later." The girl made a movement to switch on off. Sweet Back had not dirtied a plate since the day before. He made a weak but desperate gesture. "Trying to snatch my pocketbook, eh?" she blazed. Instead of running, she grabbed hold of Sweet Back's draping coattail and made a slashing gesture. "How much split you want back here? If your feets don't hurry up and take you 'way from here, you'll ride away. I'll spread my lungs all over New York and call the law. Go ahead, Bedbug! Touch me! And I'll holler like a pretty white woman!" The boys were ready to flee, but she turned suddenly and rocked on off with her ear-rings snapping and her heels popping. "My people! My people!" Sweet Back sighed. "I know you feel chewed," Jelly said, in an effort to make it appear that he had had no part in the fiasco. "Oh, let her go," Sweet Back said magnanimously. "When I see people without the periodical principles they's supposed to have, I just don't fool with 'em. What I want to steal her old pocketbook with all the money I got? I could buy a beat chick like her and give her away. I got money's mammy and Grandma change. One of my women, and not the best one I got neither, is buying me ten shag suits at one time." He glanced sidewise at Jelly to see if he was convincing. But Jelly's thoughts were far away. He was remembering those full, hot meals he had left back in Alabama to seek wealth and splendor in Harlem without working. He had even forgotten to look cocky and rich.

Specifications for Essay I

English 2650

Section 201
Spring 2012

African American Literature

Essay I

So far this semester, we have read and discussed some of the key literary and creative productions of African Americans in the New World. We have encountered the trickster figure and the ‘signifying’ functions of the African American folktales and songs; the spiritual and gospel forms that provided solace and masking functions for the slave and his descendants; and we have looked at examples of early African American biography’s antecedents in the Slave Narrative, beginning with Olaudah Equiano. These texts convey to us many of the prevailing themes and preoccupations that attended the African American struggle for freedom, recognition, and civil rights in the years leading up to the turn of the twentieth century. For this first formal essay, you are to choose at least one text that we have covered so far, and analyze that text in accordance with one (or two) of the themes we have covered. Your essay should be thesis-driven: that is, it should be shaped and structured along one central point or observation you wish to make about the texts you are addressing.

The following are some prompts that you may wish to follow:

• Consider the peculiar situation of the female slave as characterized in the excerpt from Harriet Jacob’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. What ordeals did the female slave face according to Linda Brent’s narrative? How does Linda Brent’s narrative intersect thematically with the fictionalized narrative of Clotel by William Wells Brown? In your essay, you should reference passages or scenes in the narrative that illustrate these points of intersection.
• In a similar vein, compare the experiences of Sojourner Truth and Harriet Jacobs. How did slavery attempt to define their respective roles as women and as mothers? How did the machinery of slavery use their gender against them—particularly in the case of the Mistress of the house?
• Analyze the character of the trickster figure in African American folktale. How is this figure reinterpreted or contested from one text or from one author to another?  How does “Brer Rabbit” as characterized by Joel Chandler Harris differ from that of the trickster figures in Zora Neale Hurston’s retelling of African American lore?
• The editors of our textbook describe Frederick Douglass’s autobiographical Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass as featuring a “style of self-representation, through which he (Douglass) re-created the slave as an evolving self bound for mental as well as physical freedom” (Gates, et al. 386). In what ways does Douglass’s narrative demonstrate this psychological evolution? Compare Douglass’s attitudes concerning the stages of the freedman’s evolving sense of self and those of Booker T. Washington. You might even imagine a dialogue between the two authors. On what points would they agree or disagree? Give some examples from either text.

You may use one of these prompts, or formulate a thesis of your own that compares or contrasts two authors or texts. However, there must be a central point you wish to argue and prove. You may use sources outside of our text; however, you are only permitted to use sources made available through the Southwest library’s website, and you must cite/credit those sources with MLA citation.

*Essays should be formatted with one-inch margins, double-spaced, and typed in 12-point font.

Due Date: Monday, March 12th

The Social and Cultural Context of Clotel

Clotel, Or The President's Daughter by William Wells Brown is the author's fictionalized account of Sally Hemings, the woman alleged to have borne children to President Thomas Jefferson. The novel imagines the plight of Hemings whose fictional counterpart is Currer and her daughter Clotel. While the novel exposes many of the systemic hypocrisies and injustices of slavery, as well as the plague of prejudice that infested the northern, free states at the time, Clotel examines many of the social conventions and practices that attended the Peculiar Institution.

Among these and most apparent is the dramatic scene of the Slave Auction, where many a family was torn apart. Older slaves were transformed in appearance to give the impression of youth and vitality to a potential buyer; mothers were separated from children; and young "Quadroon" women were in high demand by white males to become 'seamstresses,' 'laundresses,' and 'governesses,' while suffering the added indignity of becoming concubines to their white masters. The rendering below allows us a glimpse at a slave auction situated in grand ballroom of a southern hotel.

At the same time in major cities such as Natchez, New Orleans, and St. Louis, a custom known alternately as "fancy balls," "Mulatto Balls," and "Negro Balls" became common, along with a practice known as placage, in which young Mulatto, Quadroon, and Creole women became involved in 'extralegal' arrangements with white men of wealth and stature. The tradition of placage began in the eighteenth century because there was deemed to be a shortage of white women for European colonial males. In the interest of maintaining territorial holdings, arrangements of this sort were made between single white males and enslaved women of color. According to the Encyclopedia of Louisiana, "Since marriage between free persons and slaves was legally prohibited during this period (as a means to conserve expansive territorial holdings), couples evaded the law by setting up households beyond the bonds of matrimony. Further, the conservation of territorial holdings was crucial at this time, because the distribution of land among heirs could undercut family prosperity and create competition among brothers"(1). By the nineteenth century, however, many of the "Octoroon Balls" as they were called, were patronized by white married men.

In William Wells Brown's Clotel we see a literary dramatization of these arrangements which were, according to sources, observed with 'uneasy acceptance.'

Below is a rendering by artist Edouard Marquis (1867) that gives us insight into the opulence with which many kept Creole women were treated at this time.




*Wikipedia Commons

My Bondage and My Freedom Excerpt

Students:

If you are interested, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has an excellent website called Documenting the American South. At this site, you can access full-text of Frederick Douglass's narrative, My Bondage and My Freedom. Here, I have excerpted a portion from the Covey episode, pages 223-232. Thanks!

CHAPTER XVI.
ANOTHER PRESSURE OF THE TYRANT'S VICE.

EXPERIENCE AT COVEY'S SUMMED UP--FIRST SIX MONTHS SEVERER THAN THE SECOND--PRELIMINARIES TO THE CHANGE--REASONS FOR NARRATING THE CIRCUMSTANCES--SCENE IN THE TREADING YARD--AUTHOR TAKEN ILL--UNUSUAL BRUTALITY OF COVEY--AUTHOR ESCAPES TO ST. MICHAEL'S--THE PURSUIT--SUFFERING IN THE WOODS--DRIVEN BACK AGAIN TO COVEY'S--BEARING OF "MASTER THOMAS"--THE SLAVE IS NEVER SICK--NATURAL TO EXPECT SLAVES TO FEIGN SICKNESS--LAZINESS OF SLAVEHOLDERS.

THE foregoing chapter, with all its horrid incidents and shocking features, may be taken as a fair representation of the first six months of my life at Covey's. The reader has but to repeat, in his own mind, once a week, the scene in the woods, where Covey subjected me to his merciless lash, to have a true idea of my bitter experience there, during the first period of the breaking process through which Mr. Covey carried me. I have no heart to repeat each separate transaction, in which I was a victim of his violence and brutality. Such a narration would fill a volume much larger than the present one. I aim only to give the reader a truthful impression of my slave life, without unnecessarily affecting him with harrowing details.

As I have elsewhere intimated that my hardships were much greater during the first six months of my stay at Covey's, than during the remainder of the year, and as the change in my condition was owing to causes which may help the reader to a better understanding of human nature, when subjected to the terrible extremities of slavery, I will narrate the circumstances of this change, although I may seem thereby to applaud my own courage.

You have, dear reader, seen me humbled, degraded, broken down, enslaved, and brutalized, and you understand how it was done; now let us see the converse of all this, and how it was brought about; and this will take us through the year 1834.

On one of the hottest days of the month of August, of the year just mentioned, had the reader been passing through Covey's farm, he might have seen me at work, in what is there called the "treading yard"--a yard upon which wheat is trodden out from the straw, by the horses' feet. I was there, at work, feeding the "fan," or rather bringing wheat to the fan, while Bill Smith was feeding. Our force consisted of Bill Hughes, Bill Smith, and a slave by the name of Eli; the latter having been hired for this occasion. The work was simple, and required strength and activity, rather than any skill or intelligence, and yet, to one entirely unused to such work, it came very hard. The heat was intense and overpowering, and there was much hurry to get the wheat, trodden out that day, through the fan; since, if that work was done an hour before sundown, the hands would have, according to a promise of Covey, that hour added to their night's rest. I was not behind any of them in the wish to complete the day's work before sundown, and, hence, I struggled with all my might to get the work forward. The promise of one hour's repose on a week day, was sufficient to quicken my pace, and to spur me on to extra endeavor. Besides, we had all planned to go fishing, and I certainly wished to have a hand in that. But I was disappointed, and the day turned out to be one of the bitterest I ever experienced. About three o'clock, while the sun was pouring down his burning rays, and not a breeze was stirring, I broke down; my strength failed me; I was seized with a violent aching of the head, attended with extreme dizziness, and trembling in every limb. Finding what was coming, and feeling it would never do to stop work, I nerved myself up, and staggered on until I fell by the side of the wheat fan, feeling that the earth had fallen upon me. This brought the entire work to a dead stand. There was work for four; each one had his part to perform, and each part depended on the other, so that when one stopped, all were compelled to stop. Covey, who had now become my dread, as well as my tormentor, was at the house, about a hundred yards from where I was fanning, and instantly, upon hearing the fan stop, he came down to the treading yard, to inquire into the cause of our stopping. Bill Smith told him I was sick, and that I was unable longer to bring wheat to the fan.

I had, by this time, crawled away, under the side of a post-and-rail fence, in the shade, and was exceedingly ill. The intense heat of the sun, the heavy dust rising from the fan, the stooping, to take up the wheat from the yard, together with the hurrying, to get through, had caused a rush of blood to my head. In this condition, Covey finding out where I was, came to me; and, after standing over me a while, he asked me what the matter was. I told him as well as I could, for it was with difficulty that I could speak. He then gave me a savage kick in the side, which jarred my whole frame, and commanded me to get up. The man had obtained complete control over me; and if he had commanded me to do any possible thing, I should, in my then state of mind, have endeavored to comply. I made an effort to rise, but fell back in the attempt, before gaining my feet. The brute now gave me another heavy kick, and again told me to rise. I again tried to rise, and succeeded in gaining my feet; but, upon stooping to get the tub with which I was feeding the fan, I again staggered and fell to the ground; and I must have so fallen, had I been sure that a hundred bullets would have pierced me, as the consequence. While down, in this sad condition, and perfectly helpless, the merciless negro breaker took up the hickory slab, with which Hughes had been striking off the wheat to a level with the sides of the half bushel measure, (a very hard weapon,) and with the sharp edge of it, he dealt me a heavy blow on my head which made a large gash, and caused the blood to run freely, saying, at the same time, "If you have got the headache, I'll cure you." This done, he ordered me again to rise, but I made no effort to do so; for I had made up my mind that it was useless, and that the heartless monster might now do his worst; he could but kill me, and that might put me out of my misery. Finding me unable to rise, or rather despairing of my doing so, Covey left me, with a view to getting on with the work without me. I was bleeding very freely, and my face was soon covered with my warm blood. Cruel and merciless as was the motive that dealt that blow, dear reader, the wound was fortunate for me. Bleeding was never more efficacious. The pain in my head speedily abated, and I was soon able to rise. Covey had, as I have said, now left me to my fate; and the question was, shall I return to my work, or shall I find my way to St. Michael's, and make Capt. Auld acquainted with the atrocious cruelty of his brother Covey, and beseech him to get me another master? Remembering the object he had in view, in placing me under the management of Covey, and further, his cruel treatment of my poor crippled cousin, Henny, and his meanness in the matter of feeding and clothing his slaves, there was little ground to hope for a favorable reception at the hands of Capt. Thomas Auld. Nevertheless, I resolved to go straight to Capt. Auld, thinking that, if not animated by motives of humanity, he might be induced to interfere on my behalf from selfish considerations. "He cannot," thought I, "allow his property to be thus bruised and battered, marred and defaced; and I will go to him, and tell him the simple truth about the matter." In order to get to St. Michael's, by the most favorable and direct road, I must walk seven miles; and this, in my sad condition, was no easy performance. I had already lost much blood; I was exhausted by over exertion; my sides were sore from the heavy blows planted there by the stout boots of Mr. Covey; and I was, in every way, in an unfavorable plight for the journey. I however watched my chance, while the cruel and cunning Covey was looking in an opposite direction, and started off, across the field, for St. Michael's. This was a daring step; if it failed, it would only exasperate Covey, and increase the rigors of my bondage, during the remainder of my term of service under him; but the step was taken, and I must go forward. I succeeded in getting nearly half way across the broad field, toward the woods, before Mr. Covey observed me. I was still bleeding, and the exertion of running had started the blood afresh. "Come back! Come back!" vociferated Covey, with threats of what he would do if I did not return instantly. But, disregarding his calls and his threats, I pressed on toward the woods as fast as my feeble state would allow. Seeing no signs of my stopping, Covey caused his horse to be brought out and saddled, as if he intended to pursue me. The race was now to be an unequal one; and, thinking I might be overhauled by him, if I kept the main road, I walked nearly the whole distance in the woods, keeping far enough from the road to avoid detection and pursuit. But, I had not gone far, before my little strength again failed me, and I laid down. The blood was still oozing from the wound in my head; and, for a time, I suffered more than I can describe. There I was, in the deep woods, sick and emaciated, pursued by a wretch whose character for revolting cruelty beggars all opprobrious speech--bleeding, and almost bloodless. I was not without the fear of bleeding to death. The thought of dying in the woods, all alone, and of being torn to pieces by the buzzards, had not yet been rendered tolerable by my many troubles and hardships, and I was glad when the shade of the trees, and the cool evening breeze, combined with my matted hair to stop the flow of blood. After lying there about three quarters of an hour, brooding over the singular and mournful lot to which I was doomed, my mind passing over the whole scale or circle of belief and unbelief, from faith in the overruling providence of God, to the blackest atheism, I again took up my journey toward St. Michael's, more weary and sad than in the morning when I left Thomas Auld's for the home of Mr. Covey. I was bare-footed and bare-headed, and in my shirt sleeves. The way was through bogs and briers, and I tore my feet often during the journey. I was full five hours in going the seven or eight miles; partly, because of the difficulties of the way, and partly, because of the feebleness induced by my illness, bruises and loss of blood. On gaining my master's store, I presented an appearance of wretchedness and woe, fitted to move any but a heart of stone. From the crown of my head to the sole of my feet, there were marks of blood. My hair was all clotted with dust and blood, and the back of my shirt was literally stiff with the same. Briers and thorns had scarred and torn my feet and legs, leaving blood marks there. Had I escaped from a den of tigers, I could not have looked worse than I did on reaching St. Michael's. In this unhappy plight, I appeared before my professedly christian master, humbly to invoke the interposition of his power and authority, to protect me from further abuse and violence. I had begun to hope, during the latter part of my tedious journey toward St. Michael's, that Capt. Auld would now show himself in a nobler light than I had ever before seen him. I was disappointed. I had jumped from a sinking ship into the sea; I had fled from the tiger to something worse. I told him all the circumstances, as well as I could; how I was endeavoring to please Covey; how hard I was at work in the present instance; how unwillingly I sunk down under the heat, toil and pain; the brutal manner in which Covey had kicked me in the side; the gash cut in my head; my hesitation about troubling him (Capt. Auld) with complaints; but, that now I felt it would not be best longer to conceal from him the outrages committed on me from time to time by Covey. At first, master Thomas seemed somewhat affected by the story of my wrongs, but he soon repressed his feelings and became cold as iron. It was impossible--as I stood before him at the first--for him to seem indifferent. I distinctly saw his human nature asserting its conviction against the slave system, which made cases like mine possible; but, as I have said, humanity fell before the systematic tyranny of slavery. He first walked the floor, apparently much agitated by my story, and the sad spectacle I presented; but, presently, it was his turn to talk. He began moderately, by finding excuses for Covey, and ending with a full justification of him, and a passionate condemnation of me. "He had no doubt I deserved the flogging. He did not believe I was sick; I was only endeavoring to get rid of work. My dizziness was laziness, and Covey did right to flog me, as he had done." After thus fairly annihilating me, and rousing himself by his own eloquence,
he fiercely demanded what I wished him to do in the case!

With such a complete knock-down to all my hopes, as he had given me, and feeling, as I did, my entire subjection to his power, I had very little heart to reply. I must not affirm my innocence of the allegations which he had piled up against me; for that would be impudence, and would probably call down fresh violence as well as wrath upon me. The guilt of a slave is always, and everywhere, presumed; and the innocence of the slaveholder or the slave employer, is always asserted. The word of the slave, against this presumption, is generally treated as impudence, worthy of punishment. "Do you contradict me, you rascal?" is a final silencer of counter statements from the lips of a slave.

Calming down a little in view of my silence and hesitation, and, perhaps, from a rapid glance at the picture of misery I presented, he inquired again, "what I would have him do?" Thus invited a second time, I told Master Thomas I wished him to allow me to get a new home and to find a new master; that, as sure as I went back to live with Mr. Covey again, I should be killed by him; that he would never forgive my coming to him (Capt[.] Auld) with a complaint against him (Covey;) that, since I had lived with him, he had almost crushed my spirit, and I believed that he would ruin me for future service; that my life was not safe in his hands. This, Master Thomas (my brother in the church) regarded as "nonsense." "There was no danger of Mr. Covey's killing me; he was a good man, industrious and religious,and he would not think of removing me from that home; "besides," said he,--and this I found was the most distressing thought of all to him--"if you should leave Covey now, that your year has but half expired, I should lose your wages for the entire year. You belong to Mr. Covey for one year, and you must go back to him, come what will. You must not trouble me with any more stories about Mr. Covey; and if you do not go immediately home, I will get hold of you myself." This was just what I expected, when I found he had prejudged the case against me. "But, Sir," I said, "I am sick and tired, and I cannot get home to-night." At this, he again relented, and finally he allowed me to remain all night at St. Michael's; but said I must be off early in the morning, and concluded his directions by making me swallow a huge dose of epsom salts--about the only medicine ever administered to slaves.

It was quite natural for Master Thomas to presume I was feigning sickness to escape work, for he probably thought that were he in the place of a slave--with no wages for his work, no praise for well doing, no motive for toil but the lash--he would try every possible scheme by which to escape labor. I say I have no doubt of this; the reason is, that there are not, under the whole heavens, a set of men who cultivate such an intense dread of labor as do the slaveholders. The charge of laziness against the slaves is ever on their lips, and is the standing apology for every species of cruelty and brutality. These men literally "bind heavy burdens, grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they, themselves, will not move them with one of their fingers."

My kind readers shall have, in the next chapter--what they were led, perhaps, to expect to find in this--namely: an account of my partial disenthrallment from the tyranny of Covey, and the marked change which it brought about.

Reminder about SWTCC's Celebration of African Amerian History Month

Remember that if you are interested in earning extra credit, you may earn up to ten additional points on your First formal essay if you elect to speak. If you would like to read a short poem or excerpt from a larger work, let me know and I will pass that on to the coordinator.

THE TWENTY-THIRD NATIONAL

AFRICAN AMERICAN READ-IN

SOUTHWEST TENNESSEE COMMUNITY COLLEGE

FEBRUARY 20, 2012

Southwest Tennessee Community College will host the African American Read- In at 12:00 noon on every campus. Please contact the campus coordinators if you wish to volunteer to do a reading! Let’s make this a great success! Please encourage your students to participate. This is a come-and-go or drop-in event so join us as we listen to students and faculty read excerpts from the works of their favorite African-American writers and speakers. Thank you!

***COME TO THE LIBRARY FOR RESOURCES***

 Ron Claxton: Gill Center, Library-X5970

rclaxton@southwest.tn.edu



 MaLinda F. Wade: Union, Parrish 100–X5357

mwade@southwest.tn.edu



 Marcia Hunter: Maxine Smith, Library–X6062

mhunter@southwest.tn.edu



 Verneta Boone: Whitehaven, Student Break room–X6461

vboone@southwest.tn.edu



 Lisa Coleman/Jane Harris: Macon, ML122 Bornblum Auditorium-X4403/X4246

lcoleman@southwest.tn.edu

maharris@southwest.tn.edu