Racial Discrimination, Protest and Emancipation: Testimony of

African American Autobiographies

Vandana Pathak

Dept. of English,

L.A.D.& Smt.R.P. College for Women, Nagpur-10.

Autobiography

• Autobiography is the most democratic genre in American literature &the oldest, offering the best opportunity “for examining a variety of particular confrontations of culture by particular people in particular settings.”

• Written by people in all walks of life,• These Black American writers were far

removed from the fringes of life and literacy.

Black American Autobiographies

• Black writers chose a variety of genres, forms, & themes to document & record their struggle.

• Slave narrative or autobiography was a mode of expression widely accepted.

• These autobiographies converted the physical &psychological aspects of the past into a living part and, in a way, recreated, revisited, and analyzed the past as the setting so as to search for the identity and define the self.

Voice of the Community• Black American Autobiographies

expose the oppressive condition of the Blacks &the repressive tactics adopted by the whites against them.

• An autobiography is necessarily the story of an individual,

• The racist structures have made it necessary for the Black American autobiographer to act as the voice of the community or to speak for the collective.

Three Periods

• Butterfield has divided Black autobiographies into three periods : Slave narratives (1831-1895) -narrator comes to accept his place through religion,

• the period of search (1901-1961) – narrator turns inward &tries to come to grip with his identity and

• the period of rebirth (since 1961) -relates the problem to larger issues.

Slave Narratives

• The slave narratives deal with the experiences, thoughts, and feelings of human beings held in chattel slavery and reveal the impact of slavery on black men, women and children, individually and collectively. The main objective was to awaken the conscience of the nation. Sterling Brown calls these early autobiographies as “literary weapons.”

Key Concepts• Race relations is that “behavior which

develops among people who are aware of each other’s actual or perceived physical differences.

• The term ‘racism’ (as used in literature) seems to refer to a philosophy of racial antipathy.

• “Black is a term used for those Americans who were of African extraction, defines the ethnic traits of the erstwhile slaves”. Black has replaced Negro and Negro has taken over the place of Nigger.

Key Concepts contd….• "Consciousness is a state of awareness of

one’s own existence, position and surroundings. So, racial consciousness means the awareness among a group of people of their own racial identity, inheritance, heredity and so on”.

• Racial consciousness is also known as “Black consciousness.”

Racial Discrimination• Black American autobiographies draw upon

the experiences of Black American writers. • “…the problem of the color line is insoluble,

that the idea of an equalitarian America belongs to baskets of history and that the concept of an America melting pot is one to which sane men no longer adhere.”

• Bibb, Douglass, Washington, Du Bois, Brown, Wright ,Hughes, Malcolm X, Parks, etc have narrated experiences of discrimination.

Booker T. Washington’s Experience

• On his way to Hampton from Malden, Washington’s coach stopped for a night at a common, unpainted hotel. All other passengers were shown to their rooms & were getting ready for supper. He had no money in his pocket and it was a cold night. Washington confides, “Without asking as to whether I had any money, the man at the desk firmly refused to even consider the matter of providing me with food or lodging. This was my first experience in finding out what the color of my skin meant’’ (Washington,Ch.III,11).

Discrimination in Darkwater Voices from within the Veil

“ I arise at seven. The milkman has neglected me. He pays little attention to colored districts. My white neighbor glares elaborately. I walk softly lest I disturb him. The children jeer as I pass to work. The women in the street car withdraw their skirts or prefer to stand. The police is truculent. The elevator man hates to serve Negroes. My job is insecure because the white union wants it & does not want me. I try to lunch, but no place near will serve me. I go forty blocks to Marshall’s, but the committee

Darkwater…contd. of Fourteen loses Marshall’s; they say white women

frequent it. ‘‘Do all eating places discriminate?’’ No, but how shall I know which do not -except - I hurry home through crowds. They mutter or get angry. I go to a mass- meeting. They stare. I go to a church. ‘‘We don’t admit niggers!’’ …I seek new work. ‘‘Our employees would not work with you; our customers would object.’’ I ask to help in social uplift.

• ‘‘Why-er-we will write you.’’• I enter the free field of science. Every laboratory door is

closed and no endowments are available. I seek the universal mistress, Art; the studio door is locked. I write literature. ‘‘We cannot publish stories of colored folks of that type.’’ It’s the only type I know.

• This is my life. It makes me idiotic. It gives me artificial problems. I hesitate, I rush, I waver.

• In fine, I am sensitive! (Du Bois, Darkwater, Ch. IX)

Richard Wright : The Black Boy• “... I was amazed, when I asked passers-by, to

learn that there were practically no hotels for Negroes in Harlem. I kept walking. Finally I saw a tall, clean hotel; black people were passing the doors and no white people were in sight. Confidently I entered and was surprised to see a white clerk behind the desk. I hesitated.

• ‘‘I’d like a room,’ I said.• ‘‘Not here’’, he said.• ‘‘But isn’t this Harlem?’’ I asked.• ‘‘Yes, but this hotel is for white only’’, he said

(Wright, 349-50).

Claude Brown

• The only exception was that of colored barbershops. Claude’s friend says, “They’ve got colored barbershops. That’s all they let us have, Sonny. The only reason they let us have a colored barbershop is because those white devils don’t know nothing’ about cutting no colored hair. They don’t really know nothin’, man” (Brown,327).

Discrimination-Effect• Social discrimination existing at all levels of class Life

style discrimination based on unique demeanor, speech, clothing and food is reflected.

• Skin color discrimination, economic discrimination, and criminal justice discrimination is also highlighted.

• Discrimination has direct effect on physical and mental health, economic and social resources and coping strategies. When people are ripped away from their own natural identity (i.e. their native culture), they suffer from an inferiority complex.

• Fanon believes that the Black must adopt a white mask in order to become a real human being to the oppressive culture by adopting the language of the oppressive culture (Fanon).

Protest Literature• The literature of the Black Americans is known as

protest literature.• Its main aim is to sensitize, to awaken people and

make them aware of injustices at the local as well as global level.

• Leaders like Du Bois, Frederick Douglass, Washington and Martin Luther King, etc had raised voices against it. Many Slave narratives, some amanuensis documents, provided voices to the voiceless slave community. This protest of the Black Americans against marginalization, discrimination, exploitation, slavery, violence and torture, etc. is reflected in the Slave Narratives and later in Black American autobiographies.

Henry Bibb: Protest

• Bibb says, “It was at Kentucky that I first entered my protest against the bloody institution of slavery, by running away from it, and declared that I would no longer work for any man as I had done, without wages” (Bibb, 170).

W.E.B. Du Bois• W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk (1903) is

renowned as a protest document.• Protesting against the plight of Negros in the South

and their votes, he writes, “Daily the Negro is coming more and more to look

upon law and justice, not as protecting safeguards, but as sources of humiliation and oppression. The laws are made by men who have little interest in him; they are executed by men who have absolutely no motive for treating the black people with courtesy, or consideration; and finally, the accused law-breaker is tried, not by his peers, but too often by men who would rather punish ten innocent Negroes than let one guilty one escape” (TSBF, Chapter Nine ).

Langston Hughes: The Big Sea• “It was like throwing a million bricks out of my heart-

for it wasn’t only the books that I wanted to throw away, but everything unpleasant and miserable out of my past : the memory of my father, the poverty and uncertainties of my mother’s life, the stupidities of color - prejudice, black in a white world, the fear of not finding a job, the bewilderment of no one to talk to about things that trouble you, the feeling of always being controlled by others - by parents, by employers, by some other necessity not your own. All these things I wanted to throw away. To be free of. To escape from. I wanted to be a man on my own, control my own life, and go my own way. I was twenty-one. So I threw the books in the sea”(Hughes, 98).

Richard Wright: The Black Boy• Richard Wright had long ago emotionally rejected the

world in which he lived. He realized that “Big Bill” Thompson used the Negro vote to control the City Hall. Wright says,

• “... he was engaged in vast political deals of which the Negro voters, political innocents, had no notion. With my pencil I wrote in a determined scrawl across the face of the ballots:

I Protest This Fraud• I knew my gesture was futile. But I wanted somebody

to know that out of that vast sea of ignorance in the Black Belt there was at least one person who knew the game for what it was” (TBB, 238).

Richard Wright contd…• Richard Wright too felt that words could be weapons

against injustice. Hence, he was at the forefront of the “School for Social Protest” in Chicago, a literary movement which resulted in a wealth of progressive literature.

• Mencken’s book made him realize the power of words. He pictured “the man as a raging demon, slashing with his pen, consumed with hate, denouncing everything American...” and understood,

• “... Yes, this man was fighting, fighting with words. He was using words as a weapon, using them as one would use a club. Could words be weapons? Well, yes, for here they were. Then, may be, perhaps, I could use them as a weapon?” (TBB, 248)

Richard Wright• Sartre, in his essay, “For whom does one write” shows what

is exceptional in Richard Wright’s work. He says,• “[E]each work of Wright contains what Baudelaire would

have called a double, simultaneous postulation” – that is, Wright is addressing himself to two different audiences when he writes. He is addressing both blacks and whites, and for each he needs to supply different information. Blacks will understand readily what he is talking about. Whites, on the other hand, cannot possibly understand the point of view of Wright’s black background. Nor can Wright hope to have them fully see the world through his eyes. So, for white readers, he must supply information that will have an effect entirely different from that of his own people. He must, by his tale, induce in whites a feeling of indignation that will lead them to act. This dual purpose, Sartre says, is what creates the tension in Wright’s work”.

A soldier in a march against oppression

• Stephen Butterfield calls the “self” of the Black autobiography "a soldier in a long and historical march” against oppression. He comments,

• “The self of Black autobiography, on the whole, taking into account the effect of western culture on the Afro-American is not an individual with a private career, but a soldier in a long, historic march toward canon. The self is conceived as a member of an oppressed social group; with ties and responsibilities to other members. It is a conscious political identity, drawing sustenance from the past experience of the group... The autobiographical form is one of the ways that Black Americans have asserted their right to live and grow. It is a bid for freedom, a beak of hope cracking the shell of slavery and exploitation” (Bande).

Gordon Parks• On one occasion, Parks with his friends took

seats in a bus behind the driver. The driver demanded that they go to back of the bus and refused to move the bus if they did not go back. They refused to do so. An aged Black woman told them not to move in a voice trembling with rage. Parks’ two friends were outranked by their superior in the bus. Parks had no such restriction. He too pointed out his position. The white officer told the driver to make a move. The Black woman became very happy due to this protest.

Gordon Parks contd….• Park narrates, • “Toni came home from school one Wednesday in

a snit saying she wasn’t going back because of a book that a teacher assigned her class to read. When I read the passage that offended her I agreed. Published in England, it referred to American blacks as “darkies” and “pickaninnies.” I confronted the headmaster and explained why David nor Toni was at school. He expressed shock and immediately banned the book from class. It had never occurred to me that Toni would express such rage; and I was proud of her reaction when bigotry touched her small universe” (VIM, 144).

Baldwin: Protest

• Protest is an integral part of life. It manifests itself in various hues and colors like negation, rejection, anger, thefts, drugs, violence, and crime, etc. Baldwin very frankly admits, “There is not a Negro alive who does not have this rage in his blood - one has the choice, merely, of living with it consciously or surrendering to it. As for me, this fever has recurred in me, and does, and will until the day I die” (Baldwin, 1957,94).

Theme of Emancipation

• Black American autobiographies offer an insight into the lives of the Blacks and these documents reflect on the intensity of racial problem. According to Baldwin, ‘‘the problem is rooted in the question how one treats one’s flesh and blood, especially one’s children’’ (Baldwin, 185). The lives of the children reveal that they were and are caught, trapped, and forced to lead suspended lives. A yearning for change, for liberation is felt in almost all writers of this genre.

Meaning & Significance• The term emancipation has a great fascination and

significance for all marginalized, oppressed communities in the world. It means freedom from physical bondage and breaking of shackles meant to impose physical restraint. It is a dynamic, ever evolving concept. In the case of Black American autobiographers, emancipation indicates yearning to be free associated with a growth in consciousness resulting in protests, revolts, and movements. It is a yearning for equality and justice. It is a demand for just human rights, civil, political, and social. It is a demand by the oppressed, exploited, and subjugated to be treated exactly like their oppressors and exploiters. A subtle yearning for emancipation is noticeable in all slave narratives. It is related with their self awareness, self-assertion, consciousness (individual as well as collective) and identity.

Olaudah Equiano

• The very mention of freedom excited Equiano, “This gave me new life and spirits; and my heart burned within me, while I thought the time long till I obtained freedom. For though my master had not promised it to me, yet, besides the assurances I had received that he had no right to detain me, he always treated me with the greatest kindness, and responded to me in an unbounded confidence” (Edwards,173).

Frederick Douglass

• Frederick Douglass in his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave says, “From my earliest recollection, I date the entertainment of a deep conviction that slavery would not always be able to hold me within its foul embrace; and in the darkest hours of my career in slavery, this living world of faith and spirit of hope departed not from me, but remained like ministering angels to cheer me through the gloom”(Douglass,34-35). He would talk to little white boys and say, “You will be free as soon as you are twenty one, BUT I AM A SLAVE FOR LIFE ! Have I not as good a right to be free as you have?”(Douglass, 41)

Henry Bibb

• Bibb says, “But more especially, all that I had heard about liberty and freedom to the slaves, I never forgot. Among other good trades I learned the art of running away to perfection. I made a regular business of it, and never gave it up, until I had broken the bonds of slavery and landed myself safely in Canada, where I was regarded as a man, and not as a thing” (Bibb, I, 15-16).

Rapid Changes

• The Black Americans became free in 1863. The Reconstruction program taken up to ameliorate the Black’s lot took a reverse course. The Fourteenth Amendment of 1868 established the rule of law by its “due process clause”, promising the Black equal protection. The right to vote was given to the Blacks by the Fifteenth Amendment of 1870. The Civil Rights Bill of 1875 conferred on them full citizenship with all civil liberties.

The Status• The Black was robed in freedom. But he could not wear the

robe of freedom for a long time; it was torn into rags on his body itself. The Southern States were not in favour of giving civil rights to him. The definition of the term “Black” in the Constitution of most of the Southern States shows that he was not regarded as a full man. He was a fractional man. Soon the Black was defranchised and then stripped of all his civil rights. In 1883 the Supreme Court held the Civil Rights Bill of 1875 as unconstitutional. Again in 1896...

it upheld the “separate but equal” doctrine. The Black’s robe of freedom was miserably torn and he stood in rags only. By the end of nineteenth century, the Black was made

an ubiquitous Jim Crow in America. Then his dream festered like a sore and tried to run away from him in shame. But it was stuck into his rags : it could not run away (Waghmare, 38).

20th Century Scenario• In the twentieth century too, there was not much

change in the condition of Black-Americans. A shift from South to North was seen. Their marginalization and exploitation continued unabated and they always remained on the periphery. In 1954, the Supreme Court declared “separate but equal” doctrine as unconstitutional. In 1960’s Civil Rights Movement gathered momentum and Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech exploded the myth of the American progress and exposed reality. In spite of all these developments, there was not much change in the plight of Black Americans and their problems remained the same.

Du Bois in 1920

• Du Bois in Credo of the Darkwater writes, “I believe in liberty for all men: the space to stretch their arms and their souls, the right to breathe and the right to vote, the freedom to choose their friends, enjoy the sunshine, and ride on the railroads, uncursed by color; thinking, dreaming, working as they will in a kingdom of beauty and love” (Du Bois, Credo).

James Baldwin Letter to MyNephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the

Emancipation • Sets down the condition of the Blacks .He

points out to his nephew,• “You were born where you were born and

faced a future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason. The limits of your ambition were, thus, expected to be set forever. You were born into a society, which spelt out with brutal clarity, in as many ways as possible, that you were a worthless human being. You were not expected to aspire to excellence; you were expected to make peace with mediocrity” (Kannabiran,151).

No Change till 1990’s

• Even after so many years of struggle, Blacks’ problems still haunt them and their misery, and agony is unabated, unredressed &hence, all Black American writers longed/ long for a just, equal, human and humane society. Writers like Baldwin, Richard Wright, Claude Brown, Langston Hughes and Gordon Parks have written their autobiographies in the later decades of the twentieth century when plenty of changes had taken place in the American society and yet all these writers longed for emancipation.

To Sum Up….“It is for this reason that freedom is a powerful

concept for them – freedom from physical and psychological bondage as also freedom to choose a kind of world that they would like to live in. In America this quest for freedom began with slave narratives which became a powerful form of self expression for them. These were the first stirrings of their soul and have undergone innumerable mutations in other forms. Freedom is still an important component of their imaginative perception of reality” (Kapoor, 159).

Thank you !!!Thank you !!!