Race has been an issue at the heart of the American experiment since the founding of this country. First, there was a genocide committed against Native Americans, through outright war, the introduction of European diseases, and forced dislocations. Black Africans were stolen and imported into the New World from the start and acted as the economic engines upon which much of the country’s wealth was built, especially in the South, where slaves planted and harvested labor intensive crops such as tobacco and cotton. And slavery persisted in parts of the U.S. for some 200 years, until the Civil War and the adoption of the 13th Amendment of the Constitution in 1865. The promise (or the myth) of American Exceptionalism has not included African Americans for a majority of this country’s history, and of course even after 1865, African Americans were denied basic voting rights in this “democracy” until 1965, only about 55 years ago, well within the lives of many people living today.
We don’t have the time to consider all of this history, and nor is this the place, but we are going to read and examine some key associated texts and pieces of literature.
Barack Obama’s 2008 speech on race, delivered in Philadelphia during the campaign, is a fitting place to start in that it places this issue in a contemporary context. Please view the speech. Some of you may remember this, but the speech was delivered during his presidential campaign, and the pastor he refers to is Jeremiah Wright, a Black church pastor who had delivered sermons critical of the United States and its treatment of Black Americans. If you prefer, to read it instead or in addition to viewing the speech, you may do so here.
Obama specifically refers to the founding of United States and the divisive roll that race has played during that time. Do you think he’s correct to say that race issues are still important in America? How could this be true in a country that prides itself on “all men are created equal?” Read the draft of the Declaration of Independence that begins in your text on page 447 and note what was deleted from the final version. Note in particular the section having to do with the slave trade. Why do you think it was deleted and what was the effect of leaving it out?
Jefferson was the main author of the Declaration, and yet he was a slave holder himself. He held between 150 and 200 slaves s on his plantation at Monticello, in the mountains of Virginia, and it is very likely that he had children with his slave Sally Hemings (To read an account of the controversy by the Monticello Foundation, click here.) At his death, most of his slaves were sold to pay off his debts.
He wrote about slavery as an evil practice, and yet he could not fathom a way during his lifetime to bring about the end of the practice. As a highly educated thinker and an Enlightenment-era Rationalist, he tried to think through problems in a logical, fact-based (empirical) way. I point this out because the next piece I want you to read, a section of his book Notes on the State of Virginia (which is something of a survey of different facets of life in Virginia), attempts to “rationally” understand how blacks are “different” from whites. This section of Notes may be read here and is not in our text. Today, of course, we would argue that Jefferson is an ignorant racist. Clearly, his “logic” was not sound. What “facts” does he use to argue that Blacks are inferior to Whites? What does he propose to do with Blacks once they are freed from slavery and why?
Also read Frederick Douglass, From Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, which begins on page p.865. Please read the first 10 pages. Douglass’ account is the canonical (most traditional) narrative of slavery in the American South. When it was first published in 1845, he traveled to England in part to escape the possibility of being re-captured and returned to the South as a slave. When friends bought his freedom, he returned to the United States. His narrative, along with others, were important to the cause of Northern abolitionists because they described life under slavery for a Northern audience. Douglass’ narrative is also extremely smart and well written, so it broke the stereotype of the “ignorant, child-like” Black man. What does he argue is the Biblical support for the institution of slavery? And how does he argue that this Biblical rationale is incorrect? How would you describe the “relationship” he has with his mother, and how does it effect him?
Also by Douglass: “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July.”
Compare the language of this Douglass speech to the language of Jeremiah Wright.
Also, read the first 10 pages of Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, which begins on p.769. Jacobs’ account of her bondage is written of course from a female point of view. What particular hardships does she face that are different from those faced by Douglass?
Following Jacobs’ piece, read the poem by Frances Harper, “The Slave Mother.” (p.1231)
Also read Sojourner Truth’s “Speech To A Women’s Rights Convention” on p.638. The text in the anthology is taken from the first published account in 1851, which differs substantially from the 1863 text read by Alice Walker in this video clip. The speech read by Walker, however, is the more popular version:
Truth’s speech exemplifies how the concerns of the Women’s Rights movement and the Abolititionist (anti-slavery) movement came together in the mid-18th Century. Douglass, for instance, became a strong supporter of equal rights for women. After all, if Douglass was going to argue that it was wrong to oppress another because of the color of his skin, then it was obvious to him that one’s gender should not be a cause for oppression, either.
Finally, view this clip of the contemporary poet Saul Williams performing his piece “Coded Language.” A link to the text may be found here:
Optional:
Stowe, Harriett Beecher. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Link here to Chap. 40, The Martyr
Stowe’s novel was hugely successful, becoming the most widely selling novel of the 19th Century. It is indeed a moving account and includes some fascinating characterizations. However, it is somewhat disparaged today as a sentimental protest novel at best and an act of appropriation and a source of black stereotypes at worst. In particular, the author James Baldwin argues in his essay, “Everybody’s Protest Novel,” that Uncle Tom has been “robbed of his humanity and divested of his sex.” Stowe, he argues, has rendered her argument in biblical terms, rather than human terms. Tom is really no human being at all. He is Christ.
Lucille Clifton. Poems.
Clifton, who died in 2010, was one of my favorite poets. Her poems often concern issues of race and women, and she has a very direct, disarming, and thought-provoking style.
