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Redefining American Identity

Redefining American Identity. HUM 3285: British and American Literature Spring 2011 Dr. Perdigao February 18, 2011. Race and/in America. 1526: 100 African slaves brought to North American continent 1619: Jamestown, Virginia colony established with twenty Africans as indentured servants

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Redefining American Identity

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  1. Redefining American Identity HUM 3285: British and American Literature Spring 2011 Dr. Perdigao February 18, 2011

  2. Race and/in America • 1526: 100 African slaves brought to North American continent • 1619: Jamestown, Virginia colony established with twenty Africans as indentured servants • 1645: Trade in African slaves begins in Boston, becoming triangular trade between North/South America, Europe, and Africa • 1705: Slave code defines slave status: all Negro, mulatto, and Indian non-Christians • 1740: Comprehensive “Negro Act” denies slaves basic freedoms, including the right to read • 1760: Narrative of the Uncommon Sufferings and Surprizing Deliverance of Briton Hammon, first dictated slave narrative in America • 1773: Phillis Wheatley’s Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects, first book published by a black slave in America

  3. Race and/in America • 1775: First anti-slavery society organized in Philadelphia • 1776: Colonies declare independence from Britain; Continental Congress votes against the importation of slaves in all thirteen united colonies • 1793: First Fugitive Slave Act • 1808: African slave trade officially ended in Britain • 1816: American Colonization Society founded in Washington, DC to return freed slaves to Africa • 1830: International salve trade officially ends; illegal traffic continues • 1830-60: Slave narratives become the most popular form of American literature • 1831: Nat Turner’s revolt in Virginia; Underground Railroad • 1833: Oberlin College founded as first coeducational, racially integrated US college

  4. Race and/in America • 1839: Amistad revolt led by Joseph Cinque, carried out by fifty-three Africans • 1845: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself • 1850s: Hannah Crafts’ The Bondwoman’s Narrative, first novel by an African American woman; Congress passes second Fugitive Slave Act; fugitive slave hunts • 1852: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly • 1853: William Wells Brown’s Clotel, or the President’s Daughter, first known African American novel • 1857: Dred Scott decision—denial of access to federal courts • 1861-65: American Civil War • 1861: Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl • 1862: Emancipation Proclamation abolishes slavery

  5. Race and/in America • 1865: 13th Amendment passed, freedom to former slaves; Freedmen’s Bureau and Freedmen’s Bank; Ku Klux Klan formed in Tennessee; assassination of Lincoln • 1866: Civil Rights Act—citizenship for all Americans • 1867: Howard University founded in Washington, D.C. for former slaves; Reconstruction begins • 1868: 14th Amendment passed, granting African American citizenship and civil rights • 1870: 15th Amendment passed, giving African American male citizens the right to vote • 1877: Reconstruction ends • 1881: Booker T. Washington founds Tuskegee Institute in Alabama • 1883: Supreme Court repeals Civil Rights Act of 1866

  6. Race and/in America • 1896: Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court case upholds separate but equal doctrine • 1901: Booker T. Washington’s Up from Slavery • 1903: W. E. B. Du Bois’ Souls of Black Folk • 1909: NAACP founded • 1910-30: Great Migration of African Americans from South to North, second African Diaspora • 1910: The Crisis NAACP journal founded; anti-lynching campaign begins • 1915: Death of Booker T. Washington; Association for the Study of Negro Life and History founded • 1919: “Red Summer” of more than eighty lynchings and twenty-five race riots; McKay’s “If We Must Die” and Hughes’ “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”

  7. Race and/in America • 1920: 19th Amendment gives women right to vote; Prohibition begins; Marcus Garvey’s First International Convention of the Negro Peoples of the World leads to the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) for racial solidarity and return to Africa; the New Negro (Harlem) Renaissance begins • 1923: Toomer’s Cane • 1925: Alain Locke’s The New Negro, anthology of Harlem Renaissance • 1926: Hughes’ The Weary Blues and “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain”; Nella Larsen’s Quicksand; Negro History Week established • 1928: McKay’s Home to Harlem; Larsen’s Passing • 1933: New Deal legislation; WPA (Works Progress Administration) begins, giving support to writers and artists • 1937: Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (The Cambridge Companion to the African American Novel. Ed. Maryemma Graham. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004.)

  8. Harlem Renaissance • Beginnings in 1914, 1927, spanning 1923-1929 (Heath 1741), even 1895 with Booker T. Washington’s address • Colored American Magazine, founded in 1900 • Crisis magazine, established in 1910 for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) • W. E. B. Du Bois, essays on art and culture, running Crisis, with editor Jessie Fauset • Charles S. Johnson, editor of Opportunity • Cultural identity, psychological reconstruction, intellectual responsibility as themes in Harlem Renaissance writing • Alain Locke’s The New Negro, progressive views of writer in black America • “talented tenth”

  9. Reconstructing a tradition • Social realist or “protest novel” or impressionism or high modernism • Ideas about culture and cultural transmission • Recovery and revision of the canon • African-derived oral forms and traditional Western literary forms • Uses of the folktale, slave narrative, the blues • Questioning place of tradition—cultural continuity, innovation, radical change • “The continuous need to explain and ‘inscribe the self’ in a world which has historically denied the existence of that self gives both focus and intensity to the act of writing a story about black life” (Graham 5). • Writing as act of cultural revisionism, redefining history and historical memory, confronting the past

  10. Jean Toomer (1894-1967) • Poet, dramatist, novelist, essayist, and philosopher • Born in Washington, D. C. • Grandfather was former lieutenant governor of Louisiana during Reconstruction; raised by grandparents after the death of his mother • Dedicated Cane to his grandmother • Attended University of Wisconsin, the American College of Physical Training in Chicago, the University of Chicago, and New York University; entered University of Wisconsin passing for white • Changed name from Nathan Pinchback Toomer to Jean Toomer in 1920, after reading influential texts • Moved to Georgia in 1921 to be acting principal at the Sparta Agricultural and Industrial Institute; Toomer in the South twice, for less than three months • Defined self as American rather than African American

  11. Structuring • Three parts of the novel • First part—southern women, image of sun, changes to slave system, victims of caste • Second part—northern cities, cut off from others, loss of spirituality • Third part—dramatic narrative • “Blood-burning Moon” as end of first section of Cane, only story staging confrontation between races • Not a woman’s name • Louisa, Tom Burwell, Bob Stone • Moon as character, taking part in the tragedy • William M. Ramsey’s “Jean Toomer’s Eternal South” • Two Souths—historical oppression and lack of progress and “eternal South” as site of culture

  12. Reading Race • “points to a cosmic order detached from blind and earth-bound human passions” (Ramsey 87) • The South giving Toomer an identity, liberating him from the loss of spirituality in modernism • Jennifer D. Williams’ “Jean Toomer’s Cane and the Erotics of Mourning” • Battle over masculinity rooted in the economics of slavery (Williams 95) • Lynching—protection of white womanhood, here over a black woman • White men’s rape of black women as other story • Male/female, light/dark, North/South, black/white, urban/countryside, narrative closure/fragmentation (Heath 1743)

  13. Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) • Born in 1891 in Alabama, fifth of eight children; family moved to Eatonville, first incorporated black community in America; father as mayor • Attended Howard University; graduated from Barnard College, studying with Franz Boas • Short story “Spunk” published in Locke’s The New Negro • Collecting folklore in Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana • Returns to Eatonville in 1927 during Great Migration under fellowship from the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History • Folklore collection Mules and Men (1935); novels Jonah’s Gourd Vine (1934), Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937); Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939); autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road (1942) • Mules and Men as first collection of black American folklore by African American • Death in poverty, burial, headstone by Alice Walker

  14. Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) • Wrote Mules and Men in Eau Gallie and Their Eyes Were Watching God in Haiti while on Guggenheim fellowship doing ethnographic research • Worked for the WPA writing sections on folklore for volume on “The Florida Negro” • Changes in landscape for fiction with Native Son, ideas about the protest novel • Idea of preserving and adapting cultural practices versus creating in the dominant style of the time • In 1950s, moved back to Eau Gallie • Scandal with writing to editor of the Orlando Sentinel criticizing ruling in Brown v. Board of Education • Dies in Fort Pierce, in a welfare home • 1960s and 1970s, resuscitation of Hurston’s works

  15. Gildings • Double-voiced narration • Inside/outside perspectives • Missie May and Joe • “But there was something happy about the place” (1839) • Otis D. Slemmons—from Chicago • “Hes jes’ got a corperation. Dat make ‘m look lak a rich white man” (1841). • Moon, sun • Gilded half dollar

  16. Langston Hughes (1902-67) • Hughes born in 1902 in Joplin, Missouri to stenographer father and mother who wrote and acted • Father left for Cuba and then Mexico; failed reconciliation with mother; Hughes lived in Kansas with his working mother; after grandmother died, lived with mother in Illinois • 1916: Hughes named class poet at Ohio school • 1918: Published verse and short stories in Central High Monthly Magazine • 1919: Spent summer with father in Mexico; lives with him for a year • 1921: Hughes published “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” in The Crisis; enrolled in Columbia University; met Fauset, Du Bois, Cullen • 1922: Withdrew from Columbia; continued to publish • 1923: Wrote “The Weary Blues” after visiting a Harlem cabaret

  17. Langston Hughes (1902-67) • 1923: Visited Africa while sailing on steamship • 1924: Settled in Paris; influence of jazz • 1925: Lived in Washington, DC with mother; won Opportunity magazine’s poetry prize for “The Weary Blues” • 1926: Entered Lincoln University • 1927: Met patron Charlotte Mason (“Godmother”); traveled with Hurston who was also supported by Mason • 1929: Graduated from Lincoln; completed first novel • 1930: Visited Cuba; Hughes broke with Mason, Hurston, Locke • 1931: Traveled to Haiti and in 1932 and 1933 Moscow • 1940: published autobiography The Big Sea in same year as Richard Wright’s Native Son

  18. Langston Hughes (1902-67) • 1942: Worked for war effort on projects for the Office of Civil Defense and Writer’s War Committee • 1944: FBI surveillance of Hughes for alleged communist activity; attacked by Special Committee on Un-American Activities of the House of Representatives • 1948: Hughes denounced as a communist in the U.S. Senate • 1953: Served subpoena to appear before Senator McCarthy’s subcommittee on subversive activities; was exonerated but attacks continued • 1961: Inducted into the National Institute of Arts and Letters • 1967: Died after illness, prostate surgery

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