VL African American Literature and Culture

Syllabus
1. Introduction. Black History and Culture
2. The Beginnings and the Harlem Renaissance
Claude McKay’s Banjo 3. Richard Wright’s Native Son. From Naturalism to Existentialism
4. Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man: Modernism and
the Novel
5. Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon. Questions of Identity

Topics Today
Terminology
Stereotyping
AA History, first poet Phyllis Wheatley
Social Situation Today (Statistics)
Aesthetics and Cosmetics (Ebony)
Why Cultural Studies?

Terminology
What is an African American?
Anyone descended from African slaves and living in the US?
Anyone who is looked upon as being an African American?
Anyone with African ancestors who lives in the US and regards himself as an American?
Anyone who sees himself as an African American?
The Question of ‚Passing‘

Terminology
Changing labels:
Nigger (very negative!)
Negro (racial label, compare: Caucasian), used in Harlem Renaissance: The New Negro, ed. Alain Locke (Anthology)
Colored (inclusive label, e.g. NAACP: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People)
Black (political implications: Black Panthers, Black Muslims)
Afroamerican, Afro-American
African-American (Danger of Hyphenization)
Black American
African American (equality of original homeland and new homeland)
The long search for new labels indicates alienation and continued discrimination
The double name (AA) indicates lack of integration too

Terminology
What is African American Literature?
Literature about African Americans (including e.g. novels by William Faulkner) or literature by African Americans?
Why distinguish between North American literature and African American literature?

Terminology: Racial and stereotypical labels, often dated
Racial: Mulatto, (archaic:) Quadroon, Octoroon, Sambo [tragic octoroon/quadroons are figures in abolitionist literature: Lydia Maria Child, The Quadroons, Longfellow, „The Quadroon Girl“]
Animal/Sexual: Ape, buck etc.
Rapist (e.g. in Native Son)
Ideological:
Sambo
Uncle Tom [Beecher-Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom‘s Cabin publ. 1852]
Darkie
Boy (old derogatory form of address)
Black mammy
For white people:
The man [any man in a position of authority, the government]
Redneck [poor southern whites, also an ultra-conservative]
Cracker [originally white slave owner who cracks the whip]
White trash, poor white
etc.
A stereotype is a label that reduces a person to a few positive or negative, often exaggerated, features

Stereotyping and Minstrel Shows
Sice 1840 shows with comic characters, dancing, singing and sketches, with wither white people in blackface or black actors with exaggerated racial features.Blacks presented as a bit stupid, happy-go-lucky, musical, lazy etc. Popular till about 1910. A famous stereotype was Jim Crow.

Theoretician of stereotyping and mimicry: Frantz Fanon
Black Skin, White Masks (1952)
„The black man wants to be white. The white man slaves to reach a human level.“
Both races are psychologically and existenially dependent upon one another, but the white man is dominant: „the black soul is a white man’s artifact.“
If a white man feels threatened by the black man‘s gaze he is himself following animal behaviour. Also if he reduces all threats to sexuality: „In relation to the Negro, everything takes place on the genital level.“

Frantz Fanon (1925-1961)
Born in Martinique
Soldier in Algeria, fought in France against Nazi regime till 1944, studied in France, became a psychiatrist 1951, worked in Algeria from 1953-57, in 1954 joined the Front de Libération Nationale, 1957 expelled from Algeria, died 1961 of leukemia.
Precursor of postcolonial studies and founder of postcolonial theory, besides Aimé Césaire and Léopold Senghor, the founders of negritude.
Black Skins, White Masks (1952)
The Wretched of the Earth (1961)

Black History, Some essential dates
Antonio Gonsalves takes 12 slaves to Portugal
Ca.1515 sugar cane imported from the West Indies, slaves imported to W.I.
1619 20 Africans arrive at Jamestown, one year before the Mayflower comes to Plymouth
17th c. Spain, Portugal, Holland, France and England fight for control of slave trade, England finally wins 1713 (end of war of succession)
Royal African Company gains a monopoly, (overall, 90 % of slaves go to the Caribbean and South America)
About 1/3 of population in British territories are black; quakers organize the Pennsylvania society for the abolition of slavery
Declaration of Independence (July 4)
1783 First anti-slavery petition in British Parliament
1787 Northwest Ordinance forbids slavery north of the Ohio
Fugitive Slave Act (constitutional amendment)
Overseas slave trade closed. 1 Mill, slaves in the US
1815 Quaker Levi Coffin establishes Underground Railway to Canada
1830 2 Mill. Slaves in the US, 1860 4 Mill.

Advertisement for slave auction, 1780

Phyllis Wheatley, first AA poet (1753-1784)

Phyllis Wheatley (1753-84))
Born in West Africa
Bought by a Boston family 1761, well educated by them (Latin, Greek, the classics)
Began writing poetry at age 13, imitated Pope and Milton (poetic diction of the age of classicism)
Visited London with Nathaniel Wheatley 1771 and published poems there
Died early at age 31 in boarding house after being freed from slavery

Phyllis Wheatley
On Being Brought from Africa to America
'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land, Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too: Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
"Their colour is a diabolic die."
Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain, May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.

Black History, some essential dates (2)
1820 Missouri Compromise, no slavery north of the Missouri (Mason-Dixon line)
After 1815 cotton kingdom expands west (Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama)
1817 American Colonization Society, Founding of Liberia
Nat Turner‘s rebellion, 60 white people killed
1833 Britain emancipates colonial slaves and compensates owners
1859 John Brown, a white abolitionist, hung after an attack upon Harpers Ferry
1863 Emancipation Proclamation
1867 Reconstruction Act, 1875 Civil Rights Act (equal accesss to all public institutions, repealed 1883)
1870 15th amendment (free voting)
1876 End of Reconstruction: black codes and Jim Crow laws (Segregation)
Tuskeegee Institute founded by Booker T. Washington
1905 Niagara Movement (from 1909 NAACP), founded by W.E.B. Dubois
1915 Supreme Court declares ‚grandfather clauses‘ illegal

Booker T. Washington (1856-1915)

From Up From Slavery (1901)
I pity from the bottom of my heart any nation or body of people that is so unfortunate as to get entangled in the net of slavery. I have long since ceased to cherish any spirit of bitterness against the Southern white people on account of the enslavement of my race. […] Having once got its tentacles fastened upon the economic and social life of the Republic, it was no easy matter for the country to relieve itself of the institution. …the ten million Negroes inhabiting this country, who themselves or whose ancestors went through the school of American slavery, are in a stronger and more hopeful condition, materially, intellectually, morally, and religiously, than is true of an equal number of black people in any other portion of the globe…. How Providence so often uses men and institutions to accomplish a purpose,

Up from Slavery cont.
In later years, I confess that I do not envy the white boy as I once did. I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed. Looked at from this standpoint, I almost reach the conclusion that often the Negro boy’s birth and connection with an unpopular race is an advantage, so far as real life is concerned.[…] Every persecuted individual and race should get much consolation out of the great human law… that merit, no matter under which skin found, is in the long run, recognized and rewarded.

Up From Slavery, cont.
In all things that are purely social we can be separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.
The wisest among my race underand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing.

W.E.B. Dubois (1868-1963)
-historian, sociologist, politician
-co-fouder of the NAACP 1909
-"It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity." From The Souls of Black Folk (1903)
-opposed Washington’s idea of education in the mechanical crafts, demanding intellectual development. He believed in the talented tenth as leaders for racial uplift. Called Washington the great accommodator. Demanded political and social equality.
-The Philadelphia Negro (1899)

From The Souls of Black Folk
“After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro... two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, — this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self.”

Black History, Some Essential Dates (III)
1917 Marcus Garvey founds the UNIA (Universal Negro Improvement Assn. (Uniting all of Africa and its diaspora), later Back to Africa movement
1919 Race riots after end of WW I
1930 W.D. Fard founds the Nation of Islam, preaches murdering the white devils (!) (later led by Elijah Muhammad who founded an islamic university), since 2010 under Farrakhan
1935 National Negro Congress (Philip Randolph, leader in labour and civil rights movement)
1946 Supreme Court decides against segregation in public transport, Law passed 1954
1955-56 Montgomery bus boycott (Rosa Parks arrested)
1963 Martin Luther King‘s campaign against segregation in Birmingham, Alabama
1964 Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) world champion against Sonny Liston
1965 Revolts in L.A., 1967 in Detroit and Newark
1965 Malcolm X murdered
1966 Stokeley Carmichael (SNCC) announces Black Power doctrine; Black Panther Party founded (Black is beautiful-movement; Black Aesthetics etc.)
1968 Martin Luther King murdered
1983 Vanessa Williams Miss America
2009 Barak Obama first AA president

Black History, Essential Dates (IV)
2002 Halle Berry first African American woman to win the best actress Oscar
Condoleezza Rice first black female Secretary of State
2014, Aug.9: Michael Brown, unarmed 18 yr. old, killed in Fergusson, Missouri by Darren Wilson, Police Officer
2015, June 17: Nine African Americans killed in Charleston Church Shooting
Today about 40 Million African Americans in the US, 13% of the population

Black Men Killed by Police (2012)
Police officers, security guards, or self-appointed vigilantes extrajudicially killed at least 313 African Americans in 2012 according to a recent study. This means a black person was killed by a security officer every 28 hours. The report notes that it's possible that the real number could be much higher.
The report, entitled "Operation Ghetto Storm", was performed by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, an antiracist grassroots activist organization.

Malcom X
Born Malcolm Little, later El-Hajj Malik
El-Shabazz.
Orphened early, emprisoned at 20 for
breaking and entering and larceny
From 1952 leader of the Nation of Islam
Preacher Black Supremacy and Non-Integration (Separation)
1964 rejects Nation of Islam and his time as a Black Muslim, preaches against racism and for Pan-Africanism
1965 murdered by members of NOI
1965 The Autobiobraphy of Malcom X

Martin Luther King (1929-1968)
Led the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott
Organized the 1963 March on Washington
Delivered there the „I Have a Dream“-speech
Nobel Peace Prize 1964
Assassinatd April 4 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee

From M.L.King, „I Have A Dream“:
"I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
"Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.
"But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition."

The situation of AA today: some statistics

Black and white unemployment

Household incomes compared

Family incomes

Poverty rates on the rise

Segregation in Schools

The marriage gap

Feminization of Poverty

Black Hair Care

Angela Davis (1944 - )
Leader of communist party in the 60s
Civil Rights Activist
Fired from UCLA for inflammatory language
Because had purchased firearms used in attack upon a Calif. Courtroom had to flee from Calif. And was imprisoned 1970
Was judged not guilty in 1972, gun ownership and plot not proven to be connected
Rolling Stones Song „Sweet Black Angel“ dedicated to A.D.
Afro Haistyle politicized

Bo Derek’s Braids (cornrows)
Aeasthetic appropriation of Afroamerican hirstyle as a fashion without political implications

Vanessa Williams, first AA Miss America, 1983

Excerpts from Ebony

Skin lighteners: dominant white aesthetics today

Dreams of success

Ethnic hair care: dominant white aesthetics

Dreams of success: everyone a crowned queen, at least for a day?

Afroamerican critic and theoretician bell hooks publishes her first children‘s book, supporting Afroamerican identity formation

History of Black Hair Care
Ca.1845 hot comb invented in France
1910 Madam C.J. Walker first black self-made millionaire in Guiness Book of Records
1948 Mexican chemist Jose Calva discovers how to straighten kinky hair (process taken from treating sheep’s wool)
1969 FBI disseminates Angela Davis’ image to the masses: afroed and dangerous
1984 Jackson‘s hair catches fire during the shooting of a Pepsi commercial
Nov. 1998 Madam C.J.Walker commemorative stamp issued by U.S. postal service
Nov. 1998 White teacher in Brooklyn threatened for reading Nappy Hair to third grade students
….