African American Letters (Part IV):

in #english6 years ago (edited)

The Slave Narratives or Blacks’ Own Declaration of Independence.

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Greetings, Steemians. To finish the series of posts on the first 100 years (or so) of African American literature, I would like to address this time the Slave Narratives that contributed to African Americans’ struggle for human and political rights.

You can find the previous posts here:

https://steemit.com/english/@hlezama/african-american-letters
https://steemit.com/english/@hlezama/african-american-letters-part-ii
https://steemit.com/english/@hlezama/african-american-letters-part-iii

Slave Narratives usually follow a common plot: from the enslaved state at the plantation, to the scape (with all its drama and complications), to the crossing of a border (real or symbolic) that provides the transition from bondage to freedom. Whether written by the slaves themselves or with assistance from abolitionists, the change towards
physical and legal emancipation involved literacy as a prerequisite to emancipation of the mind.

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Although he did not write his narrative himself (it was “committed to paper by the elegant pen of a young lady”),
James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw
(1712-1775) is known as the first African published in Britain. A Narrative of the Most remarkable Particulars in the Life of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, an African Prince, As related by himself, inaugurates the genre that will contribute the most to the abolitionist cause in Europe and America.

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With a preface by the Reverend Walter Shirley, cousin to Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, James Albert’s text became part of the white-sponsored initiatives to prove the transformative power of Christianity. Even though James Albert’s narrative lacks the antislavery commitment, it served as a reference for the different kinds of narratives that circulated at the end of the 18th century and influenced the racial discourse that permeated the publications of both pro-slavery and abolitionist propaganda. As Henry Louis Gates Jr. puts it,

the Anglo-African literary tradition was created two centuries ago in order to demonstrate that persons of African descend possessed the requisite degrees of reason and wit to create literature, that they were, indeed, full and equal members of the community of rational, sentient beings, that they could indeed write (Preface xxviii).

It was not going to be an easy task to go against the “self-evident truths” established by eminent philosophers such as David Hume or Immanuel Kant, who had agreed on the “natural inferiority” of the Negroes.

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Published in 1772 (although some sources, including Gates Jr., date it 1770),
James Albert’s narrative belongs to the category of “tales of religious redemption
.” Like the poetry of Jupiter Hammon, the salve narratives that emphasize religious conversion, tend to be rather complacent about the state of things. The authors accept with resignation God’s design and wait patiently for their transition to a better life. James Albert saw himself “traveling through many difficulties towards our HEAVENLY HOME, and waiting patiently for his gracious call when the lord will deliver us out of the evils of this present world and bring us to the EVERLASTING GLORY of the word to come” (34). By the time he finishes his narrative he and his family were facing starvation in England.

At best,
the narrative interrogates whites’ religious convictions
: “I could scarcely believe it possible that the place where so many eminent Christians had lived and preached could abound with so much wickedness and deceit,” he writes about England (23). James Albert does not describe racial discrimination but envy, coming from both blacks and whites. He was what some people would call a “happy [and lucky] slave.”

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The most important aspect of James Albert’s narrative is probably the trope of the talking book, which will be used by other black writers, including Equiano.
“I was never so surprised in my whole life as when I saw the book talk to my master” (11). After seeing that the book would not speak to him he concludes “that every body and every thing despis’d me because I was black”
(12). He was “convinced of [his] own corrupt nature” (15), tried to kill himself more than once (16), was “treated with ridicule and contempt” (17); but he affirms to have experienced some kind of revelation: he saw a “light inexpressible dart down from heaven upon me” (17). From then on, he would live to cultivate himself while honoring the fundamental Christian principles.
Literacy will then be understood as the sine qua non of progress and respect.

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The second category of slave narratives is that of
“tales to inspire the abolitionist struggle.”
Gustavus Vassa’s narrative (a.k.a. Olaudah Equiano) bridges these first two. To some extent, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself (1789) is also a tale of religious redemption, but it is a more complete and exciting tale, which became a best-seller in his time, and allowed Equiano a comfortable life out of the royalties of the book sales and the lecturing tours. In that sense,
his narrative is also a “tale of progress.”
Equiano was able, at some point after buying his freedom, to do business on his own by trading goods during the time he spent as a seaman. Of course, he could do that in Europe, Africa and the Caribbean; America was not ready to allow a Negro such celebrity status.
Equiano’s narrative provides the ingenuity, drama, insightfulness, naïveté, and exoticism 18th century Europe looked for in Africa. He takes the reader along his journey of discoveries, from new animals and technologies to new environments and elements; the feelings, the excitement, and the horror of the new and unexpected.


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One of the most fascinating things about Equiano’s narrative is that, from the start,
he establishes some daring similarities between his people and the Jews
. His anthropological and sociological description of his culture makes him sound authoritative and proud.

Some of our offerings are eaten with bitter herbs […] We practised [sic] circumcision like the Jews and made offerings and feasts on that occasion in the same manner as they did. Like them also, our children were named from some event […] I was named Olaudah, which in our language, signifies vicissitude or fortune also, one favored or having a loud voice and well spoken (59).

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Equiano suggests that
“one people sprung from the other.” They shared the same government system (chiefs or judges), the law of retaliation, sacrificing and burnt offerings, washings and purifications (62).
Even though Equiano progressively shows his admiration for white people and their culture, he makes it clear that there was no reason for Europeans to think of Africans as inferior.
He is blunt enough to affirm that in many respects Africans are superior to Europeans!

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We are almost a nation of dancers, musicians and poets […] Our manners are simple, our luxuries are few. The dresses of both sexes are nearly the same […] brighter and richer than any I have seen in Europe […] unacquainted with those refinement in cookery which debouch the taste […] Before we taste food we always wash our hands: indeed our cleanliness on all occasions is extreme […] In our buildings we study convenience rather than ornament.
(52-54).

Although Equiano recognizes that Africans also had slaves (so did the Jews; therefore, he did not see it as a problem), he emphasizes the difference with European enslavement.

With us they do no more work than other members of the community, even their masters; their food, clothing and lodging were nearly the same as theirs (58).

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For Equiano, prejudice against Africans was based mostly on the difference in skin color which, according to some studies of the time, might be caused by difference in climate. He hoped that that knowledge “may tend also to remove the prejudice that some conceive against the natives of Africa on account of their colour.”
He questions Europeans’ alleged moral superiority by how they treated African slaves
: “Are they treated as men?
Does not slavery itself depress the mind, and extinguish all its fire and every noble sentiment?
[…] Let the polish and haughty European recollect that his ancestors were once, like the Africans, uncivilized and even barbarous” (63).

One of the strongest arguments against whites’ cruelty and immorality is made by Equiano in the fifth chapter of the first part of the narrative. In it he tells about the “cruelties of every kind” he witnessed in the West Indies.

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It was almost a constant practice with our clerks, and other whites, to commit
violent depredations on the chastity of the female slaves […] I have even known them gratify their brutal passion with females not ten years old
[…] And yet in Monserrat I have seen a negro man staked to the ground, and cut most shockingly, and then his ears cut off bit by bit, because he had been connected with a white woman who was a common prostitute.
(121).
African American writers will exploit this double standard in future narratives and pamphlets to put white morality to shame. Black women were wenches, animals, but slave owners loved to rape them. Their bastard children would become also slaves, carrying the double stigma in their mulatto features with the additional hatred of the white mistresses, who would see in them the debauchery of their Christian husbands.

Equiano eventually became a businessman and, thinking as a businessman, he ends his narrative with a rather practical proposition envisioning both economic and social profits for both blacks and whites.

If the blacks were permitted to remain in their own country, they would double themselves every fifteen years. In proportion to such increase will be the demand for manufactures. Cotton and indigo grow spontaneously in most parts of Africa; a consideration this of no small consequence to the manufacturing towns of Great [Britain].

Obviously, Equiano was underestimating the destructive force of economic ambition and political power.

With
Frederick Douglass
(1818?-1895) we get to the pinnacle of slave narratives. The most popular, the most widely known and anthologized, the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) became the most direct attack against the “peculiar institution.” This would be the first of three autobiographies Douglass would write in his lifetime. It was rooted in American soil (Maryland) and detached from the romanticism of the African ancestors or spiritual revelations. Douglass narrative strips white hypocrisy on religious and moral grounds and reveals blacks’ courage and wit.

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From the very opening of the narrative
we learn about the psychological cruelty imposed on black slaves from their births
. “I have no accurate knowledge of my age […] My mother and I were separated when I was but an infant,” a common practice whose ultimate result was the destruction of the natural affection between mothers and children (281-282).
We also learned about the horrors of physical punishment
. Douglass’s first master, Anthony is described as a cruel man, “hardened by a long life of slaveholding,” and who seemed “to take great pleasure in whipping a slave.” Douglass tells about his aunt Hester, whose “noble form, and graceful proportions, having very few equals, and fewer superiors, in personal appearance among the colored or white women,” drove his master crazy, to the point of brutally punishing her if he saw her with other men.

I have often been awaken at the dawn of day by the most heart-rending shrieks [of aunt Hester], whom he used to tie up to a joist, and whip upon her naked back till she was literally covered with blood. No words, no tears, no prayers from his gory victim, seemed to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose. The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped the longest” (284).


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Douglass also describes the slave songs, the precursors of African Americans’ Spirituals and Blues. “Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains” (290). He also clarifies northerners’ misconceptions about blacks’ singing.

I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find persons who could speak of the singing among slaves as evidence of their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of a slave represent the sorrows of his heart.

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When he finally makes it to New York (no details are provided in this first autobiography to avoid compromising other people), Douglass describes the mixed feeling thusly:

to understand it, one must needs experience it, or imagine himself in similar circumstances. Let him be a fugitive slave in a strange land—a land given up to be the hunting ground for slaveholders—whose inhabitants are legalized kidnappers—where he is every moment subjected to the terrible liability of being seized upon by his fellowmen, as the hideous crocodile seizes upon his prey!—I say, let him place himself in my situation—without home or friends—without money or credit—wanting shelter, and no one to give it—wanting bread, and no money to buy it […] then, and not till then, will he fully appreciate the hardships of, and know how to sympathize with, the toil-worn and whip-scarred fugitive slave.

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Douglass was so aware of the impact of his narrative in a religious conservative culture such as 18th century America that he added an appendix to his narrative in which he clarifies his religious views.

What I have said respecting and against religion, I mean strictly to apply to the slaveholding religion of this land […]

between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ I recognize the widest possible difference
[…] I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land […] I am filled with unutterable loathing when I contemplate the religious pomp and show, together with the horrible inconsistencies, which every where surround me. […] The man who wields the blood-clotted cowskin during the week fills the pulpit on Sunday, and claims to be a minister of the meek and lowly Jesus. The man who robs me of my earnings at the end of each week meets me as a class-leader on Sunday morning, to show me the way of life, and the path of salvation. He who sells my sister, for purposes of prostitution, stands forth as the pious advocate of purity. He who proclaims it a religious duty to read the Bible denies me the right of learning to read the name of the God who made me […]
We see the thief preaching against theft, and the adulterer against adultery.

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Douglass style is as stern as his look in his pictures. He does not make any claim to spiritual superiority or miraculous election. He rarely makes invocations or attributes favorable events to divide providence.
Religion is important, but it is not everything. God is powerful, but just men need to act if they want unjust things to change.
And things did change. Thanks to joint efforts of black and white abolitionists, the political climate of the United States heated up to a breaking point. Douglass’s narrative was followed by William Wells Brown (1847), Sojourner Truth (1850), and Harriet Jacobs (1861), among many others. Every one of them will contribute to the voicing of the pressing issues of the time.

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The election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 was reason enough for South Carolina and other 6 States to secede from the Union. The Civil War erupted and for four years northerners and southerners would kill themselves allegedly for the sake of freedom, but those in bondage were neither freed nor allowed to participate of the fight until three years later. Ironically, Lincoln was willing to keep slavery operating if that meant the preservation of the Union, which was his real priority. The course of actions compelled him to issue the emancipation proclamation in 1862 and that would cost him his life two years later. From then on, blacks in the United States will fight against all kinds of discriminatory policies.
A new generation of black intellectuals will have to devote their lives to thinking, talking and writing about the same self-evident truths, to avoid their being obliterated by the same self-evident double standards.

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Thanks for your visit. Your comments, as always, are more than welcome!


Works Cited or Consulted

• Brown, William Wells. Narrative of William Wells Brown, a Fugitive Slave. Written by Himself. In Slave Narratives. Eds. William L. Andrews and Henry Louis Gates Jr. The Library of America: New York, 2000. (369-424).
• Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. Written by Himself. In Slave Narratives. Eds. William L. Andrews and Henry Louis Gates Jr. The Library of America: New York, 2000. (267-368).
• Equiano, Olaudah. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself. In Slave Narratives. Eds. William L. Andrews and Henry Louis Gates Jr. The Library of America: New York, 2000. (35-243).
• Gates Jr., Henry Louis and Nellie Y. McKay. Eds. The Norton Anthology African American Literature. Norton. New York, 1997.
• Gronniosaw, James Albert. A Narrative of the most Remarkable Particulars in the Life of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, an African Prince, as Related by Himself. In Slave Narratives. Eds. William L. Andrews and Henry Louis Gates Jr. The Library of America: New York, 2000. (1-34).
• Gray, Thomas. "The Confessions of Nat Turner (1831)" (1831). Electronic Texts in
American Studies. 15. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/etas/15.
• Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Written by Herself. In Slave Narratives. Eds. William L. Andrews and Henry Louis Gates Jr. The Library of America: New York, 2000. (743-948).
• Washington, Booker T. Up from Slavery. An Autobiography. Doubleday: New York, 1901.

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