LITR 4232: American Renaissance

Sample Student Research Project, fall 2004

Sherry Mann

Exploring the Significance of Slave Narratives

Introduction

The history of African Americans contains compelling and complex issues. African Americans were oppressed of their individuality and culture, and their humanity was totally crushed and abused. Slaves did not have much say in their choices in life, especially as plantation workers. One way to recapture or maintain their identity was through writing. Without written language, it would be almost impossible to pass down historical experiences. It would instead become an oral tradition, but a problem of temporary knowledge would occur causing stories to move away from truth and into fiction or story telling. However, several formal slaves decided not to go that route. Instead many documented their history to enrich their dark and conflicted experience to spread positive influence across the nation in a written form that would remain with America forever. Some of the writing is filled with anger and, interestingly, feelings of nostalgia. Slavery was their life, and the best way to live, survive, or to be triumphant was to look at it with a positive perspective, and this kind of perception is revealed in the narratives, which provides a sense of romanticism.

Clearly, slave narratives are a way to represent African American slave’s dark struggles in history. First of all, general background and definitions of slave narratives are important to research. One thing worth exploring is when and how these slave narratives were compiled. Were these narratives effective, influential and inspiring to the white community and by what means or techniques? How did the dominant culture react to slave narratives? I would also like to study and review biographical information on some famous and effective writers who wrote in this type of genre, such as Olaudah Equiano, Harriet A Jacobs, and Frederick Douglass. By leafing through the subject of slave narratives in the Oxford Companion to African American Literature, I hope to find some additional branches to delve into. Several helpful and credible Web-sites and databases are worth reviewing as well in order to gain some quick accessible knowledge, which will hopefully open up some avenues of exploration.

As a potential secondary English teacher, it’s vital to touch base with and appreciate other cultural experiences other than the white culture. Slave narratives are one category of African American literature, but one that is full of great influential writers that achieve high depths in their writing. The narratives portray significant themes such as the inhumane and graphic treatment of the servant, sexual abuse of women, working conditions and demands, relationship between master and slave, plantation vs. city life, resistance vs. assimilation and linkage between literacy and freedom. Although possibilities of discomfort and personal offenses may form as a result from teaching either a course or a unit on this topic, through careful analysis and discussion and sensitivity towards the subject, students will feel gratified after gaining knowledge of African American slave narratives. So, what I also hope to learn through extensive research is how to go about approaching slave narratives in the classroom.

What are slave narratives?

Slave narratives, a form of autobiography, captivate the horrendous historical experiences of African American antebellum slavery from 1760 to the end of the Civil War. The authors give voice to their experiences and feelings of slavery providing a realistic depiction and representation of slavery. In The Journal of Negro Education, Polsky defines slave narratives as “biographical and autobiographical tales of bondage and freedom either written or told by former slaves”  (166). Providing a more metaphorical definition of slave narratives, Bayliss, in his introduction to Black Slave Narratives states, “The slave narratives are the Blues in prose. They are the honest records of slave experience written by those who suffered under the system” (9).

Usually written in the form of a book-length narrative, slave narratives preserve their history not only as a reminder to the nation but also to ensure and influence black and white progress (Andrews “Slave Narrative” 667).  Authors such as W.E.B Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, and Richard Wright explain that the purpose of an autobiography is to “represent graphically the social problems endemic to the American color line and to speak compellingly and personally to white readers about racial prejudice, ignorance, and fear”  (Andrews “Autobiography” 34). One Web-site states that slave narratives are a type of anti-slavery or abolitionist writing, “significant in the abolitionists’ fight against slavery,” and they represent “the abolitionist movement’s voice of reality”  (“Slave Narratives and Uncle” 1). Marked as the beginning of African American literary culture, slave narratives contribute to the “liberation and empowerment of African Americans in the United States”  (Andrews “Autobiography” 34).

Slave narratives were extremely popular during the abolitionist movement. Some slave narratives are so influential and effective that they obtain a sense of elevated worth. Frederick Douglass, within five years, sold 30,000 copies of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. The narratives written by Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown, and Harriet A. Jacobs, “became virtual testaments in the hands of abolitionists proclaiming the antislavery gospel during the antebellum era in the United States” (Andrews “Slave Narrative” 667). Slave narratives were so demanding and popular that several were translated into other languages.

Even white audiences who read these kinds of writings were moved and filled with compassion for African Americans. Some white audiences found such narratives “captivating” and “electrifying,” and the slave narratives “won many to the abolitionist cause” (“Slave Narratives and Uncle” 1). In addition, white audiences were able to perceive African Americans as intellectual beings with the ability to document their own experiences.  On the other hand, some former slaves, who were illiterate, told their experiences to an abolitionist who wrote their history for them, which is how the Works Progress Administration collected the narratives of American slavery.

The earliest slave narratives appeared in the eighteenth century. Most of the slave narratives that appeared before the civil war were most successful and caused more sympathy and compassion than the narratives that occurred after the war because people didn’t want to hear about it anymore; they were too exhausted by this point. After the war, many ex-slave writers wrote more romanticized narratives compared to a more pragmatic antebellum narrative that challenged the antislavery crusade. After the civil war, slave narratives became so diverse and varied that, in a way, they lacked a unified representation of slavery (Yetman 2).

Slave narratives helped erase the stereotypes of “content slaves,” and allowed the audience to understand the harsh realities of slave life.  However, it’s not likely that it converted all pro-slavery individuals into righteous individuals. Yetman states that “there is little doubt that [the slave narratives] effectively countered the propaganda of pro-slavery apologists” (2).

A time line of dates for change occurrences in narratives collected from Polsky’s journal:

Works Cited

Andrews, William L. “Autobiography.” The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. Ed. William L. Andrews, et al. NY: Oxford, 1997. 34-37.

 ---. “Slave Narrative.” The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. Ed. William L. Andrews, et al. NY: Oxford, 1997. 667-670.

Bayliss, John F, ed. Introduction. Black Slave Narratives. By John F. Bayliss. London: Collier-Macmillan, 1970. 7-21.

Polsky, Milton. “American Slave Narrative: Dramatic Resource Material for the Classroom.” The Journal of Negro Education 45, No. 2 (1976): 166-178. 12 Nov 2004 <http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2984%28197621% 2945%3A2%3C166%3ATASNDR%3E2.0.CO%3b2-X>.

“Slave Narratives and Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Africans in America. 1998. WGBH. PBS Online. 12 Nov. 2004 <http://www.pbsorg/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2958. html>.

Yetman, Norman R. “Slave Narratives During Slavery and After.” The Library of Congress. 20 Oct. 2004 <http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/ snhtml/snintro02.html>.

General Information about the Works Progress Administration Slave Narratives

In the late 1930s, abolitionist writers and journalists for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) interviewed formal slaves from seventeen southern states about “what it felt like to be a slave in the United States.” As a part of the Federal Writers’ Project, at least two thousand autobiographical accounts of formal slaves were collected and transposed into writing by mostly white writers. The last slave narrative documented in the collection was in 1939 when the number of ex-slaves to interview were exhausted (Yetman “An Introduction” 1).

These oral collections of autobiographical information were transferred as mostly first person accounts into the Slave Narrative Collection, “which stands today as one of the most enduring and noteworthy achievements of the WPA” (1). According to Fort in an online anthology, “Each narrative taken alone offers a fragmentary, microcosmic representation of slave life”  (1). However, by looking at each personal account as a whole, it offers a unitary representation of life experiences for all formal slaves. The collection explores several “compelling themes of nineteenth-century slavery, including labor, resistance and flight, family life, relations with masters, and religious belief”  (1).

If it wasn’t for Benjamin A. Botkin, “who directed the process of these materials,” the collection of narratives would have been “permanent storage in the Library of Congress.” Because of Botkin’s concern and sensitivity to the preservation of the material, he sent it to Washington, and it was “presented in bound volumes to the Library of Congress in 1941.”  He also subtitled the collection of narratives, A Folk History of Slavery in the United States, which was previously titled Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project (Yetman “How” 11). However, it wasn’t until the 1970s that scholars widely used the material.  (“Should”16).

Works Cited

Fort, Bruce. American Slave Narratives: An Online Anthology. Ed. Randall Hall. 1996. U of Virginia. 20 Oct. 2004 <http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/wpa/ wpahome.html>.

Yetman, Norman R. “An Introduction to the WPA Slave Narratives.” The Library of Congress. 20 Oct. 2004 <http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/ snhtml/snintro00. html>.

---. “How the Narratives Were Compiled.” The Library of Congress. 20 Oct. 2004 <http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ ammem/snhtml/snintro11.html>.

---. “Should the Slave Narrative Collection Be Used?” The Library of Congress. 20 Oct. 2004 <http://lcweb 2.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snintro16.html>.

Review of Polsky’s “The American Slave: Dramatic Resource Material for the Classroom”

Polsky’s online journal explains why slave narratives are a good source for children to help both acquire information about African American history and to appreciate and enjoy the literature. His ideas and research are extremely beneficial because the information is relevant for academic purposes. Polsky is a part of the Department of Theatre and Cinema and Hunter College of CUNY. I had a hard time finding constructive sources, but this author is really helpful and interesting. I perceived his piece as inspiring, persuasive, and motivating. This is an extremely well written piece offering several examples and historical background information to back up his belief that slave narratives are absolutely useful in the classroom. The author refers to children when he speaks of the audience to whom narratives would capture interest, but students of all ages should be encouraged to read such stimulating material.

He first explains that slave narratives should be considered a genre because they all share specific qualities in that they portray evilness of slavery, fight “the notion of black inferiority,” share similar language, present dramatic experiences, and portray irony, humor, and more. In addition, they are written as a way to promote change and acts as a “weapon in the warfare against slavery”  (166).

Polsky speaks from an educational standpoint and explains how slave narratives are great for teaching the emotions and experiences of slavery and the theme of resistance, and he provides ample evidence of resistance. From the story plots, students will come to understand that resistance occurred with not only individuals but groups as well. (168). Slave narratives provide African American children a “positive concept of pride.” Children of all colors will learn African American “contributions to this country,” and that slave narratives paint a “truer picture” of slavery. Polsky points out the importance in presenting African Americans “as humans, with the strengths and flaws of humanity”  (173).

 Polsky believes that what children mostly love is “adventure,” predominately present throughout the genre, but also “action, danger, struggle, mystery and humor” (168). Because story plots contain “daring” and “inventive” escapes,” students will find the genre ‘interesting and suspense-filled”  (169). Polsky provides several examples of exciting and interesting run away incidents and the effects, and one main thing students will find “thrilling” are the strategies created to avoid being detected. Humor is also incorporated especially in the 1840s and the 1850s even in a text with such severe cruelty (171). The author also goes on about how children can identify with more complex characters and how imagination and daringness in characters is appealing (172).

He also suggests that “panel discussions and role-playing” are possible for the classroom. Some suggestions of roles are “those who resisted in a variety of ways, and those who pretended to adapt in order to survive” (174). My first response to this was, “How can you do this without reading a piece based on each role?” Modeling is so critical for students, and narratives are usually long pieces. Polsky solved my concern right away suggesting that slave narratives usually share several viewpoints and situations. For example, Frederick Douglass employed three kinds of “militant resistance” into his narrative (174).

Slave narratives also utilize a variety of effective language such as metaphors, “vivid imagery,” “word play,” “clever dialogue,” “verbal wit,” “anecdotes,” and irony. In addition, students learn the purpose and significance of slave songs and how it is a form of resistance  (174). Another important quality to address is the various settings, and one way to emphasize this in the classroom is through “period dress and props” which are engaging to children  (175).

Polsky takes a step further and provides an abundance of ideas for classroom projects. The following are a selected few from page 177:

·        Performance of plays or improvisations of favorite scenes in the narratives

·        Comparison of “different modes of escape and other forms of resistance”

·        Role-playing for specific viewpoints such as a “slave, slaveholders, free soilers, abolitionists, and so forth,” in which the teacher forms the different committees

·        Discussion or debates by a posed question such as, “What qualities comprise a hero?” 

·        Research on the history of abolition or origin of spirituals

·        Performance of African American dances

Furthermore, field trips to museums and several “compelling and inspiring” resources are always available to enrich or initiate students’ learning  (178). The author includes several useful and reliable resources for children. Overall, Polsky encourages creativity, originality, and especially exploration of the arts. He touches on several interests and learning abilities, especially tactile and kinesthetic learners.

Works Cited

Polsky, Milton. “American Slave Narrative: Dramatic Resource Material for the Classroom.” The Journal of Negro Education 45, No. 2 (1976): 166-178. 12 Nov 2004 <http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2984%28197621% 2945%3A2%3C166%3ATASNDR%3E2.0.CO%3b2-X>.

Biography of Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797)

            Olaudah Equiano, later referred to as Gustavus Vassa, wrote The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, the  “prototype of the nineteenth-century slave narrative” (Gates 8). He was only eleven when he was seized from his native home and taken aboard on the slave ship. He observed the maltreatment and the evil white influence that pervaded upon slaves’ individuality and humanity.

As Gates puts it, Equiano was “one of the best traveled people in the world”   (8). After having been sold to a British captain, he experienced ten years involved in commerce and warfare on board. Through saving up money accumulated from several private enterprises then paying himself out of slavery, Equiano achieved his freedom on July 10, 1766. He continued to travel to several countries and found work aboard ships.

As a young slave, he developed an urgent desire to increase his literacy and faith. Through some intimate relationships, he learned to read and was introduced to Christianity. Therefore, later in his career, he became an abolitionist leader and practiced the Methodist religion. He also married Susanna Cullen, a European woman, in 1792, and they had two daughters.

            It wasn’t until the 1780s that Equiano became active in the antislavery movement and wrote a two-volume autobiography of his experience concerning his life transformation from enslavement to freedom (Costanzo 257). Described as “spiritual” and a form of “social protest, his narrative “presents his moving story by revealing his horrific testimony of bondage,” and the “vital part” of the “winning of his freedom”  (258).

            What’s interesting about his biography is his naïve perspective presented at the beginning of the novel. He continues to view the Europeans with supernatural and unrealistic depictions.  He shares his rite of passage with the audience providing an astounding effect on his style of writing.

Biography of Harriet A Jacobs (1813-1897)

            Referred to as a “slave narrator, fugitive slave, and reformer,” Harriet Ann Jacobs is best known for her slave narrative, Incidents in the life a Slave Girl published in 1861. Her womanly narrative, which “reshaped the genre to encompass female experience,” is enriched with slave antebellum, family relationships, and fits in the category of a somewhat domestic novel narrated by her “pseudonymous” Linda Brent. (Yellin 394).

            Jacobs’ mother’s name is Delilah, and her father’s name is “probably Elijah,” who was a carpenter. Having been born into slavery in Edenton, North Carolina, Jacobs narrated how she enjoyed her family life until her mother died when Harriet was only six years old. As a result, she was sent to live with her mistress, “who taught her to read and to sew.” The turning point in her life occurred about ten years later when she was taken into the home of Dr. James Norcom, who she referred to as Dr. Flint. She confessed that Dr. Flint sexually abused her, and to avoid this conflicted experience, she formed a relationship with “a young white neighbor,” who became the father of her two children, Joseph and Louisa Matilda. Because of the combination of Dr. James’ treatment and the worry that he would make her children as slaves, she decided “to run away in hopes that” Dr. Flint would “sell her children so that her father will buy and free her children.” She escaped in 1835 and hid in the narrow and enclosed space in the attic of her grandmother, who was not a slave due to her admired intelligence and her small bakery business (394).

Jacobs later escaped in 1842 to New York and reunited with her children. In 1849, she moved to Rochester and became an activist when she met up with her activist brother, “a member of Frederick Douglass’s circle” (394). At this moment in her life, she met a feminist Quaker woman by the name of Amy Post, who persuaded her into writing about her life experience. After the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, Jacobs returned to New York City, and despite the recent act, she was kidnapped and purchased by her employer, Cornelia Grinnell Willis. However, she was ultimately freed at the end of her slave narrative.

In the early 1860s in Alexandria, Virginia, Harriet and her mother, Louisa, established the Jacobs Free School. In1864, Jacobs became a member of the feminist Women’s Loyal National League. Because of incidents of anti-black violence in the South, they moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1896, Jacobs attended the National Association of Colored Women in Washington. She continued her feminist and dedicated work until she died in Washington in 1897 (394).

Biography of Frederick Douglass (1818-1895)

Harriet Bailey gave birth to her son, Frederick Douglass, in 1818 on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. In his life as an “orator, journalist, editor, and autobiographer,” Douglass was recognized as a “premier” and effective speaker and writer from the civil war until his death and wrote “the most influential African American text of his era”  (225).  He tried to influence and remind his readers and listeners, including whites and blacks, about the American dream of racial unity and equality through his speeches and in his writing.

As a child, he observed many dramatic incidents such as the time when he witnessed the brutal beating of his Aunt Hester. On the other hand, he was not as ill treated as most other slaves, but he did experience “deprivations of food, clothing, and emotional contact with his mother and grandmother”  (225). He was sent to Baltimore in 1826 to stay five years with his master’s son in law, Hugh. In the beginning, he was taught the alphabet and some literacy skills by Hugh’s wife, Sophia. After Hugh influenced her mind of the potential evil she would cause, she discontinued educating Douglass. As a result, he rebelliously decided to take a step towards freedom by teaching himself to read and write.

Because of his Douglass’s act of resistance, Thomas Auld temporarily sent him to Maryland to Edward Covey, known as a slave breaker. At the beginning, Covey inhumanly treated Douglass to severe whippings, humiliations, and tortuous labor, but ultimately Douglass no longer tolerated this treatment when at age sixteen, he fought back with Covey, who discontinued brutal abuse thereafter. At this point when he gain a sense of control, it became a turning point in his life, and this scene is “one of the most celebrated scenes in all of antebellum African American literature”  (225).

In 1836 Douglass tried to escape from slavery but was captured and sent to Baltimore to work for the Caulking trade. He was able to escape by train to New York City on September 3, 1838 with the help of Anna Murray who pretended to be a “free black merchant sailor.” Murray and Douglass reunited no more than a month later, married, and lived in New Bedford, Connecticut. About three years later, he became a full-time lecturer for the abolitionist Garrisonian wing.

Finally in 1845, he wrote about his life in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by himself, and within the first five years, he sold over thirty thousand copies. He also began writing for the newspaper, the North Star, and one “literary highlight” he composed in the paper was a novella, “The Heroic Slave.” He later wrote a second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom published in 1855 (226).

Douglass persuaded President Andrew Jackson into allowing African Americans fight for the Union Army, and he also pleaded for permitting African Americans the right to vote. He became so influential and opinionated that he was taken into a political position, “the highest political offices that any African American from the North had ever won”  (226).

At the same time he earned money from his place in office, he also received payments from his popular speeches. He was able to afford a place in Uniontown near Washington, DC. He wrote a memoir, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, which did not receive as much interest and popularity as his two autobiographies. Until the day he died, he remained dedicated to ”building a racially integrated America” in which skin color was not a factor. His work will always be remembered as a way of using “words as a weapon in the struggle for self- and communal liberation”  (226).

Works Cited

Andrews, William L. “Douglass, Frederick.” The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. Ed. William L. Andrews, et al. NY: Oxford, 1997. 225-226.

Costanzo, Angelo. “Equiano, Olaudah.” The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. Ed. William L. Andrews, et al. NY: Oxford, 1997. 257-258.

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., ed. Introduction. The Classic Slave Narratives. By Henry Louis Gates, Jr. NY: Penguin, 1987. 1-14.

 Yellin, Jean Fagan. “Jacobs, Harriet A.” The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. Ed. William L. Andrews, et al. NY: Oxford, 1997. 394.

Conclusion

Bayliss seems to be flawed in his definition of slave narratives as the “blues in prose,” because the Encarta Dictionary: English (North America) defines the “blues”  as “consisting mainly of slow sad songs.” Slave narratives are not predominantly sad. The tone is more hopeful, witty, transcending, and, like Polsky suggests, it has some elements of humor.

I also didn’t realize that former slaves, who had their narratives published, did not always write their own slave narratives. I thought that illiterate former slaves never had a chance to express their experiences for the purpose of it being documented. In a way, that’s a good thing, but at the same time, their written experiences could have been altered in a way that personal style or voice lacks in their narrative. For a continuation on this topic, it would be helpful to find more information about how accurate the narratives from the Slave Narrative Collection really are.

It was refreshing to review and expand my knowledge about Equiano, Jacobs, and Douglass. They have so much to offer in their narratives such as their romantic elements of adventure and hopeful experiences. They become such involved individuals in society as a result of their encounter of slavery. As a slave, they all resisted the whites’ ways in different forms, and the obvious one was their failed and successful attempts of escape. All three are such inspiring authors because of the challenges that they conquered through skillfulness and innovative techniques in order to achieve freedom and humanity.  What is also romantic about these authors is how they dedicated their life to writing, speaking, working, and joining organizations towards the abolitionist and/or feminist works until the day they died.

Even though I didn’t cover everything anticipated, I learned quite a bit. I wasn’t sure I would find anything on using slave narratives in the classroom, but I found a journal that was inspiring and useful due to its persuasiveness and explosiveness in terms of quality and number of creative ideas for the classroom. Performance definitely fits into the language arts realm, so I could easily adapt Polsky’s ideas into my future classroom.

If I were to do something different to my journal, it would have been interesting to have gone into more depth about the techniques and styles employed in the slave narratives written by the famous narrators chosen for my research. I came across some relevant titles in my research but didn’t get a chance to skim though, such as Voice in the Slave Narratives of Olaudah Equinano, Frederick Douglass, and Solomon Northrup by Carver Wendell Waters.  If techniques and styles wouldn’t work out then another great idea, given a chance to continue, would be to adapt what Polsky suggests about the narratives’ qualities, character dynamics, potential classroom projects and relevant resource material to the three famous former slave narrators, which would have really polished my work.