Unit 1 Study Flashcards: Representations of Slavery & Black Intellectual History
Studying Intellectual Black Boys and Men
Portrayal of Quests for Knowledge: For nearly two centuries, thoughtful Black male writers have dedicated their literary works to depicting complex quests for intellectual growth, literacy, and self-discovery undertaken by Black boys and men navigating hostile societal structures.
Key Literary Texts and Authors:
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912) — Authored by James Weldon Johnson, exploring racial identity, passing, and cultural consciousness.
Invisible Man (1952) — Authored by Ralph Ellison, examining psychological invisibility and intellectual development in mid-20th-century America.
Middle Passage (1990) — Authored by Charles Johnson, detailing philosophical and identity transformations during the transatlantic slave trade.
The Intuitionist (1999) — Authored by Colson Whitehead, blending allegory and speculative fiction to address technological and racial progress.
Literary Analysis Detail (The Intuitionist): In Colson Whitehead's novel, a young Black boy teaches himself how to read, only to discover that many of the words he reads carry fluid or elusive meanings (meaning nothing / elevator / intuition), highlighting how language and knowledge acquisition are deeply context-dependent and tied to course discussions on literacy.
Representations of Slavery and Historical Dynamics
The Triangular Trade: An expansive historical process where European sailors navigated ships to Africa, forcibly captured human beings, transported them across the Atlantic to the Americas via the Middle Passage, acquired produced raw goods (such as sugar and cotton) in the Americas, and shipped those goods back to Europe for profit.
Symbols and Stages of Forced Movement:
The Slave Ship: Represents the most enduring symbol of physical transport, traumatic displacement, and brutal systemic oppression regarding the forced transatlantic movement of Africans.
The Middle Passage: Identified as the defining, most brutal stage of forced movement for African Americans, occurring directly across the Atlantic Ocean under horrific living conditions inside ship hulls.
Primary Destinations: The overwhelming majority of enslaved Africans were transported to Brazil and the Caribbean to labor on labor-intensive plantations.
Geographical Orientation in Cultural Imagination:
While 19th-century United States mainstream cultural imagination heavily emphasized Westward expansion, Black people and Black writers prioritized a Northward journey.
Significance of the North: The North represented freedom, physical escape from chattel slavery, and the promise of ultimate personal and political liberation.
Expressive Culture and Coded Messages:
Spirituals: Songs created and sung by enslaved people containing embedded, coded messages to facilitate covert communication, safety warnings, and Underground Railroad escape routes.
Sorrow Songs: The alternative, defining term for spirituals coined by prominent scholar W.E.B. Du Bois in The Souls of Black Folk.
Literary Genre:
The Slave Narrative: Served as the foundational literary genre offering the most in-depth, thorough, and authentic representations of the institution of slavery from the first-hand perspectives of formerly enslaved individuals.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Chapter 1
Biographical Background:
Birth Name: Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey.
Birthplace: Talbot County, State of Maryland.
Birthdate Discrepancy: Douglass was deliberately denied knowledge of his exact birthdate, a systematic tactic used by enslavers to strip enslaved people of their personal identity, history, and humanity.
Chosen Birthday: Douglass selected February 14 as his birthday because his mother affectionately referred to him as her "Valentine."
Publications and Press:
First Published Newspaper: The North Star, an influential anti-slavery newspaper founded and published by Frederick Douglass.
First Black Newspaper: Freedom's Journal, established in 1827 by Samuel Cornish and John Brown Russwurm.
Autobiographical Trilogy:
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845) — His debut narrative detailing his early life in bondage and escape.
My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) — An expanded recount highlighting his development as an abolitionist orator and writer.
Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881) — His final comprehensive autobiography reflecting on the Civil War, Reconstruction, and later career.
Other Contemporary Slave Narrative Authors:
Harriet Jacobs (Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl)
Solomon Northup (Twelve Years a Slave)
Olaudah Equiano (The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano)
Additional notable authors mentioned: William Wells Brown, Henry Bibb.
Target Audience and Objectives:
Primary Audience: White Northern abolitionists and undecided Northern readers.
Core Purpose: To convince white Northern readers of the horrific reality, moral corruption, and structural evil of slavery, thereby enlisting their active political and financial backing for the abolitionist movement.
History and Commemoration:
Negro History Week: The original precursor to Black History Month, established by historian Carter G. Woodson in 1926.
Timing Choice: Established in February to align with the respective birth months of both Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln.
Critical Scene and Scholarly Debate:
Most Cited Scene: The brutal whipping of Aunt Hester by Captain Anthony in Chapter 1, which marks Douglass's childhood entry into the horrific reality of slavery.
Critique: Some contemporary scholars and readers critique Douglass for this portrayal, arguing that it risks subjecting Black women's suffering bodies to a voyeuristic white reading audience.
House & Field Slaves (Malcolm X)
Speech Context: Malcolm X's famous critique of "house and field slaves" is articulated in his November 1963 address titled "Message to the Grass Roots" in Detroit, Michigan.
The House Slave Dynamic:
Identification with the Master: The house slave lived near or in the master's house, ate better food, and completely internalized the master's interests. Whenever the master expressed illness or trouble by saying "we," the house slave would echo, "We sick?" or "We's sick, boss?"
Response to Liberation/Escape: When presented with the prospect of running away or separating, the house slave would reject it, asking, "Where could I get a better house than this? Where could I wear better clothes than this?"
Loss of Identity: Malcolm highlights that many Black people left their minds—specifically their African identity, pride, and historical consciousness—behind in Africa.
The Field Slave Dynamic:
Living Conditions & Attitude: Field slaves lived in crude huts, endured backbreaking labor, wore rags, and hated the master.
Response to Liberation/Escape: When offered the chance to escape or separate from the master, the field slave would immediately agree, saying, "Yes, let's run, let's separate, let's escape."
Rejection of Scraps ("Chitterlings"): Despite identifying as a field Negro, Malcolm views "chitterlings" unfavorably because they symbolize the substandard scraps and leftover animal waste enslaved people were forced to consume, serving as an emblem of oppression and degradation rather than pride.
Views on Governance: When the masses of Black people witness the federal government in crisis or international trouble, they do not view it as "our government" in trouble, but rather recognize that "the government" is in trouble.
The Novocain Analogy:
Mechanism: Malcolm compares the strategic tactics of the white power structure (such as gradual integration or pacifying promises) to Novocain administered by a dentist.
Function: Novocain deadens physical pain without curing the underlying tooth decay or illness; similarly, structural pacification deadens Black pain to keep Black people submissive, passive, and oblivious to systemic oppression.
Neo-Slave Narratives and Percival Everett's James
Genre Definition: Neo-slave narratives are modern, contemporary 20th- and 21st-century novels that center on, re-examine, and reimagine the history, psychology, and lived conditions of chattel slavery.
Benchmark Texts in the Genre:
20th Century: Beloved by Toni Morrison (1987) — Widely acclaimed as the definitive neo-slave narrative of the 20th century.
21st Century: The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (2016) — Acclaimed 21st-century benchmark text.
Percival Everett's Literary Output:
James (2024) serves as a direct literary response and radical retelling of Mark Twain's classic 1884 novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, center-staging Jim's agency and intellect.
Everett's most well-known novel prior to James is Erasure (2001).
Erasure was adapted into the Academy Award-winning feature film titled American Fiction (2023).
Analysis of Chapter 2 of James:
Instruction to Enslaved Children: The narrator (Jim/James) conducts covert survival lessons for Black children on how to behave, speak, and code-switch within a violent, white-dominated society.
Condition for Safe Navigation: Safe movement through the world for Black individuals depends entirely on knowing how to perform for white people and understanding white expectations.
Indirect Communication: The practice of never addressing "any subject directly when talking to another slave" is known as talking in code, indirect communication, or coded language to ensure safety and concealment.
White Psychological Need for Control: Enslaved characters observe that white people insist on knowing everything before Black people do because white people "need to control everything."
Safety Dynamics: Enslaved people note a direct correlation: the better and more comfortable white people feel, the safer Black people are from racial violence.
Role of Religion: Religion is characterized by the narrator as a "controlling tool," which white enslavers selectively adhere to only when it is "convenient / useful for them."
African American Poetry on Slavery and Resistance
Robert Hayden — "Frederick Douglass" & "Runagate Runagate":
"not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone, / but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives" — Emphasizes Douglass's living legacy in the ongoing struggle for freedom.
"In league with Garrison Alcott Emerson / Garrett Douglass Thoreau John Brown" — Highlights the historic network of white and Black abolitionists working together.
"Runs falls rises stumbles on from darkness into darkness / and the darkness thicketed with shapes of terror / and the hunters pursuing and the hounds pursuing" — Portrays the terrifying, visceral experience of escaping on the Underground Railroad in "Runagate Runagate."
Rita Dove — "The Slave's Critique of Practical Reason":
"They'll dart underground when you try to catch them, / plunge into quicksand, whirlpools, mazes, / turn into scorpions when you try to catch them." — Captures the elusive, fiery, and radical strategies of slave resistance against capture.
Lucille Clifton — "slaveships", "jasper texas 1998":
"loaded like spoons / into the belly of Jesus / where we lay for weeks" — Depicts the severe physical packing and religious hypocrisy during the Middle Passage.
"i would do it again / plot and plan / and kill too." — Focuses unyielding attention on slave resistance, rebellion, and armed revolt.
"Jesus / why do you not protect us / chained to the heart of the Angel" — Questions divine protection and systemic betrayal during transatlantic transport.
"his eyes grow dimmer / by how i shine / a memory / that will never fade." — Highlights ancestral endurance and indelible historical memory.
"Dead folks can't jaybird-talk, she says; / you keep on going now or die, she says." — Evokes Harriet Tubman's stern leadership on the Underground Railroad and continuous resistance against violence.
Marilyn Nelson — "Cotton Money" (from The Fields of Praise):
"I borrowed your cotton money / To pay for my ticket & to get / Me started in this placed called / Saskatchewan Brrrrrrr!" — Connects Southern plantation labor exploitation with Northern/Canadian migration and financial autonomy.
Langston Hughes — "Freedom's Plow":
"When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful / and terrible thing, needful to man as air," — Frames true freedom as a fundamental human necessity as essential as air itself.
Nikki Giovanni — "Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why)":
"I flew in non-stop / Jumbo jet this A.M." — Connects ancient divine Black heritage across millennia with modern technological figures and pride.
Course Schedule and Key Milestones
Aug 24: Introduction to the course
Aug 26: Studying Intellectual Black Boys and Men
Aug 31: The Most Magnificent Drama (Representations of Slavery)
Sep 2: Narrative of the Life, Chapter 1 by Frederick Douglass
Sep 7: Labor Day (no class)
Sep 9: House & field slaves by Malcolm X; from James by Percival Everett
Sep 14: EBR Center Exhibit
Sep 16: Exam #1