Frederick Douglass, 1818-1895

thefederalistpapers.org

According to our text, the early twentieth century saw a momentary enthusiasm for remembering Douglass as one of the most memorable and formidable anti-slavery speakers, lecturers, and intellects. However, it was not until the 1960s, in which the nation saw a cry for Black Studies programs in colleges and universities, that the life and work of Frederick Douglass was reconsidered. In a rare instance, the African American publication, Ebony magazine published an article on Douglass. The post-modern era of Civil Rights Activism caused black intellectuals to cast a backward glance at the endeavors of their forebears. The article began:

"Born a slave, he escaped to freedom while still young and devoted a long and fruitful life to the winning of freedom for all Negroes. A fervent integrationist, he was the first of the 'freedom riders' and 'sit iners.' He felt that true freedom could not com for him until all Negroes were free and equal" (Ebony Magazine, 1963).

Born in Talbot County in about 1818 to Harriet Bailey and an "unknown white man," Frederick Douglass emerged from the brutality and subjugation of slavery to become one of this nation's most revered activists, reformers, abolitionists, and statesmen (Gates 385). Our text points out that James McHune Smith, a physician and contemporary of Douglass's in the Abolitionist movement, described Douglass as a "'noble example'" of American perseverance and self-actualization. Douglass moved audiences with his eloquence and oratory, which he delivered while still under the threat of recapture. The speaker casts an ironic figure against the spectre of the stated goals of American independence: Douglass was the very epitome of the self-made individual who elevated himself from the depths of bondage, to freedom.

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Written by Himself was the author's first autobiography published in 1845; the subtitle assuming even greater significance as its author battled against assumptions that a black man was incapable of intellectual thought or reflection. Ten years later, following a disagreement with abolitionist journalist William Lloyd Garrison, he would republish his biography under the title My Bondage and My Freedom. The second narrative, which includes the addendum of his life as an orator for human rights, is comparatively a more trenchant, reflective, and philosophical review of Douglass's life in slavery. In it, he recounts numerous remembrances of the horrors of physical abuse which he himself bore; and the abuse he witnessed of others, particularly women.

Notably, Douglass is credited with introducing the "I-Narrative" of slave autobiography: one that features the first-person account of slavery from one who experienced--and witnessed its horrors firsthand. Also of note, Douglass's second biography explores not simply the physical horrors of slavery, but the moral, psychological, and emotional abuses incurred from the institution. Determined to defend the personhood and humanity of the slave subject, Douglass's project was an examination of the individual's evolution as he journeyed from bondage to freedom.

Each edition of Douglass's story includes what are now considered the conventions of the slave narrative. Narrative and My Bondage and My Freedom are episodic in structure, featuring his recollections of an idyllic childhood in his grandmother's cottage before coming to an awareness of his condition as a slave. He came of age as a house servant to Thomas Auld and his benevolent wife, Lucretia, before going to Baltimore to serve at the household of Hugh and Sophia Auld. In the Auld household, Douglass would learn to read from Scripture until Mr. Auld demanded his wife to stop instructing him, insisting that if one were "to give (a slave) and inch, he will take the entire ell." It was at this point that Douglass realized that the key to freedom was literacy.

Following an altercation between Hugh Auld and his brother, Thomas (Douglass's legal owner) Douglass was sent to work as a farmhand at St. Michaels, where he was turned over to the notorious slave-breaker, Edward Covey. Our text relates that "after six months of unstinting labor, merciless whippings, and repeated humiliations, the desperate sixteen-year-old slave fought back, resisting one of Covey's attempted beatings and intimidating his tormentor sufficiently to prevent future attacks. Douglass's account of his struggle with Covey would become the heroic turning point of his future autobiographies and one of the most celebrated scenes in all of antebellum African American literature" (385). Douglass's triumph over the monstrous Covey may have served as a significant turning point in Douglass's emergence as the formidable and undaunted figure for which he is renowned.

One of the most striking aspects of Douglass's second autobiography is that, despite the eloquent language of the text, Douglass portrays his life in and after slavery with rare directness and explicit honesty. Douglass is brutally direct and incisive, naming precise dates, places, and names associated with the events that took place. His intrepid honesty never wavered despite the fact that he was a fugitive slave. In an excerpt from My Bondage and My Freedom, Douglass explains that he often tired from recounting his life in slavery to Northern audiences; however, he took great pains to write the history of his plight not once, but three times. Douglass's autobiographies gave form to the so-called 'slave narrative,' endowing the form with its recognizable conventions, and paving the way for the evolution of black autobiography and 'writing the self into existence.'

Charles W. Chesnutt: Cross-Section of Traditions

*image from blackhistorynow.com

Charles Waddell Chesnutt (1858-1932) was born in Cleveland, Ohio to freed persons of color, Anna Maria Samson and Andrew Chesnutt, a grocer and businessman. By the time he was nine, Chesnutt's family moved him to Fayateville, North Carolina, where the young boy was confronted with the racial divisions and worsening economy of the South. As he grew older into his teens, he became the vice-superintendent of the normal (teachers') school at Fayateville. He married his wife, Susan Perry in 1878 and moved North to escape the poverty and racism he encountered in Fayateville. With a law degree in hand, Chesnutt supported his family by working as a court stenographer while harboring ambitions of becoming a writer.

His first short story to be published, "The Goophered Grapevine" was published in the national magazine The Atlantic Monthly in 1887, and in 1899, this and several other short stories appeared in a collection, The Conjure Woman. Concurrent with the time in which Chesnutt was most productive, the nation was witnessing the turmoil of the post-Reconstruction era. The turn of the 20th century saw numerous social and political movements that helped to shape the character of the literature of its time. The first World War gave rise to a growing sense of global nationalism, while locally, racial tension intensified with the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan--a violent terrorist organization stirred to action with the arrival of D.W. Griffith's notorious propaganda film, Birth of a Nation.

This film, which was based on Thomas Dixon's novel The Clansman, propagated racial stereotyping as part of its violent and nationalistic agenda. The familiar hoods, which were worn as much to obscure the wearer's identity as to frighten and intimidate its victims were borne out of the assumptions among whites of African American 'superstition.'

Meanwhile, many of Chesnutt's white contemporaries, such as Thomas Nelson Page and Joel Chandler Harris wrote elegiac narratives that romanticized the plantation society of the Old South. This genre of popular literature, sardonically referred to as "Moonlight and Magnolias," often cast the social hierarchy of paternalist slavery as the "ideal society," while configuring the white male as a heroic figure, the Ole Miss as a long-suffering pillar of female virtue, and the house servants as beloved family retainers, devoted to the care and comfort of their white masters. Writers like Page, et al., popularized images of the benevolent servants whom he referred to as "Old Time Negros," and promulgated the idea that their otherwise 'savage' natures had been softened by the civilizing force of plantation slavery.

*An illustration from Mars Chan and Other Stories by Thomas Nelson Page. From the website www.twain.lib.virginia.edu

The rise of the so-called "New Negro"--an assertive black intellectual, was frequently recast as a rapacious predator of white woman's virtue in the fiction of Thomas Nelson Page, particularly, and most notably in The Clansman.

Doubtless, Chesnutt's short stories, such as "The Goophered Grapevine" suggests a sardonic critique of the racist stereotypes propagated by writers like Page. Joel Chandler Harris, who popularized such stories as "The Wonderful Tar Baby Story," that featured a kindly elder slave called "Uncle Remus," advocated such stereotyping in his own right.

By focusing more analytically on questions of race construction and hierarchy in the U.S., Chesnutt's fiction critiqued white assumptions concerning blacks in the Reconstruction South. Uncle Julius McAdoo, for instance, presents a rival to Harris' Uncle Remus as the devoted servant bound to the plantation and the master's legacy.

Though similar in style and to some extent in content to Page's fiction, Chesnutt's short stories view life and race in the South through the lens of both white and black characters in the postbellum era. "The Goophered Grapevine" ('goopher,' another word for 'conjure'), engages the questions concerning heritage, tradition, and legacy. This short story in particular, responds to assumptions that blacks in the South had no heritage--and what heritage they had if any--was based primarily on folk superstition. 

As we read and discuss Chesnutt's short story, how does Uncle Julius McAdoo represent a figure that combats the popular racist stereotypes of the time? Does he?