The African American Slave Narrative

Adapted By: Zikia Jones-Martin

Background Information

• Equiano's Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789) considered as the formative example early in the tradition

• The book established the emblematic subtitle “written by himself/herself”

• Most well-known examples of the 19th century: Frederick *Douglass, William Wells *Brown, and Harriet A. *Jacobs

• “end of the tradition:” thousands of oral histories of former slaves gathered by the Federal Writers' Project in the 1920s and 1930s

Purposes– narratives were used by abolitionists to proclaim the antislavery gospel during the antebellum era in the United States –exposed the inhumanity of the slave system –Truth/authenticity: proving both the credibility of the personal account and its representative quality for the treatment of slaves in general –gave evidence of the humanity of the African American, esp. the intellectual equalities and capacities of African Americans

Thomas Jefferson, from Notes on the State of Virginia

•“Comparing them by their faculties of memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as I think once could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous. [. . .] But never yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration: never see even an elementary trait of painting or sculpture. [. . .] Misery is often the parent of the most affecting touches in poetry.—Among the blacks is misery enough, God knows, but no poetry. [. . .] Religion indeed has produced a Phyllis Whateley [sic.]; but it could not produce a poet. The compositions published under her name are below the dignity of criticism. The heroes of the Dunciad are to her, as Hercules to the author of that poem.”

Slave Narratives• were the dominant genre of writings by

African Americans during and after the Civil War

• reached from a few pages in length to large, independently published volumes (e.g. Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs)

• first known American slave narrative, A Narrative of the Uncommon Sufferings, and Surprizing Deliverance of Briton Hammon, a Negro Man (1760)

• Most narratives from the late eighteenth century decry the slavery of sin much more than the sin of slavery

• with the rise of the militant *antislavery movement in the early nineteenth century came a new demand for slave narratives that would highlight the harsh realities of slavery itself

• abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison were convinced that the eyewitness testimony of former slaves against slavery would touch the hearts and change the minds of many in the northern population of the United States who were either ignorant of or indifferent to the plight of African Americans in the South

• by mid 19th century developed a standardized form of autobiography in which personal memory and a rhetorical attack on slavery blend to produce a powerful expressive tool both as literature and as propaganda

• Influence on Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin

• Most well-known and most successful: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself (1845)

• Selling more than thirty thousand copies in the first five years

• Garrison’s preface: focusing on representativeness of Douglass experience, but also acknowledging his individuality