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• Literature |
• Music: African American Spirituals |
• Oratory: The Art of the Sermon |
• Architecture: African American Churches, 1780-1925

Literature: Autobiography

An autobiography is the story of a person’s life, written by that person. According to University of Delaware librarian L. Rebecca Johnson Melvin, who created a website on autobiographical writing, people are interested in life stories for several reasons:

Self works often have tremendous popular appeal for the general reader. Readers may enjoy the role of voyeur, but just as often have sympathetic responses to authentic voices found in self works. The serendipity and spontaneity of contemporary life records, inclusion of historically marginal players, confession of personal indiscretions, naïveté of youthful impressions, tedium of the ordinary, suspense of an unfolding drama, realistic suffering in face of life’s hardships, passion of romance, and the fervor of prayer -- all are engaging characteristics of life writing. These works offer subjective but universally familiar accounts of personal experience, of what it was like for an individual to live in a particular time and place. Readers are often led to consider their own lives in comparison with the personal experiences others have described. The self examined is the basis of individual growth, and what is authentically known about others is the basis of human development and understanding.

From “Self Works: Diaries, Scrapbooks, and Other Autobiographical Efforts”

Slave narratives were a unique form of autobiographical writing popular in antebellum America.  These narratives served as moving individual indictments of chattel slavery.  Abolitionists used narratives published before the Civil War to generate support for their cause.  Josiah Henson wrote one such narrative, Father Henson’s Story of His Own Life: Truth Stranger than Fiction. In his book, published in 1858 with a brief preface written by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henson describes his life as a slave in Maryland, slave auctions, escape on the Underground Railroad, and his travels abroad promoting the abolition of slavery.

Read several chapters of Henson’s narrative and consider the following questions:

• What periods of his life were covered in the chapters of the narrative you read?  What were the most notable events that occurred in those periods?
• Why might Henson’s narrative have appealed to readers in the mid-nineteenth century? Use the quotation above to frame your response.
• In what way might Henson’s narrative have led readers to “consider their own lives” and enhance their “human development and understanding”? How might these effects have been useful to the abolitionist movement?
• Henson ends his narrative: “My task is done, if what I have written shall inspire a deeper interest in my race, and shall lead to corresponding activity in their behalf I shall feel amply repaid.”  What does this sentence suggest about Henson’s purpose in writing the narrative? How might that purpose influence his writing?
• Other slave narratives can be located using “Slaves’ writing, American” in the Subject Index. Compare at least one narrative with Henson’s autobiography. Was it written for the same reasons? Do you think people responded in the same way to the two works? Why or why not?

The collection also includes a number of autobiographies that focus on the influence of Christianity on individual lives.  An Autobiography:  The Story of the Lord’s Dealings with Mrs. Amanda Smith, The Colored Evangelist is typical of such autobiographies in the collection. In the work, Amanda Smith describes her travels in the United States, Western Europe, India, and Africa as an independent missionary.  What was Smith’s reason for writing this autobiography? (Hint: Check the end of the autobiography.) In what ways is this reason similar to and different from Josiah Henson’s reason for writing an autobiography? Develop a strategy for determining whether Smith’s reason is a common rationale for writing about one’s faith. Test your strategy on other works in the collection.

Literature: Autobiographical Fiction

Rather than writing the story of their life as an autobiography, some people choose to write autobiographical fiction; that is, they take events from their lives and fictionalize them. People may choose this genre because it gives them dramatic license—the freedom to change events to make them more interesting, to make people’s characters better/worse than in reality, etc. Other people may choose autobiographical fiction to protect themselves or their friends and family.

Albion Winegar Tourgee’s A Fool’s Errand, By One of the Fools, published in 1879, was a popular fictional book based on the author’s experience in North Carolina during Reconstruction.  Tourgee, a lawyer and veteran of the Union Army, settled in North Carolina after the war and worked as an advocate for newly freed slaves. Tourgee later distinguished himself when he argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1897 on behalf of Homer Plessy.

Tourgee’s book was highly acclaimed and celebrated as a “New Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” The story features a fictional character, Comfort Servosse, of French Canadian descent, who joined the Union army during the Civil War.  Servosse settled in the South after the war and worked with freed slaves antagonizing former Confederates.  He opposed the activities of the Ku Klux Klan and blamed some of the violence during Reconstruction on the unwillingness of the federal government to act on behalf of the Freedmen.

Read Chapters XI to XIV of A Fool’s Errand, which recount a series of events that occurred after Servosse and his wife Metta had settled in the South.

• What is the first hint the author gives that Servosse’s efforts to help freedmen were not popular among white Southerners in the area?  Why might the author have included this piece of information in the chapter introducing the political meeting Servosse attended?
• What was the primary topic of the political meeting? Why do you think people at the meeting wanted Servosse to speak? How did he try to avoid speaking? What finally convinced him to make a brief speech?
• Summarize the events following the political meeting. What do these events suggest about the social and legal atmosphere in the South during Reconstruction?
• Why do you think the author sometimes refers to the main character by his name and sometimes calls him “The Fool”? What is the significance of the term “The Fool”? (It may be helpful to read the author’s “Letters to the Publisher” on page 3.) How does the cover illustration relate to the concept of “the fool”?
• Why do you think the author wrote the book as an autobiographical novel rather than an autobiography? (Note that the author’s name does not appear on the book.)

Literature: A Classic Collection of Essays and Sketches

W.E.B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk  is a classic work in American literature. Du Bois assessed the progress of blacks in America and described obstacles that had impeded progress. In saying that “the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line,” Du Bois predicted that issues around race would persist far beyond 1903, when his book was published. W.E.B. Du Bois argued against Booker T. Washington’s credo of humility and accommodation, instead making the case for the moral responsibility of both whites and blacks in creating a society in which African Americans could flourish. While he wrote in the formal style of the day, moral indignation lay below the surface of his words.

The Souls of Black Folk was subtitled Essays and Sketches. What is the difference between an essay and a sketch?  Use a dictionary or another source to develop definitions of these two terms. Then read Chapters III (“Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others”)  and IV (“Of the Meaning of Progress”)  of The Souls of Black Folk.

• Which chapter would you call an essay? Which a sketch? Describe how you used the structure and writing styles of the two chapters to distinguish between an essay and a sketch.
• What was Du Bois’ primary point in each chapter? How did he use different structures and styles to present and support those points?
• What evidence can you find of Du Bois’ underlying indignation? How is that indignation expressed differently in the two chapters?
• Find at least one other chapter that you think is an essay and one that you think is a sketch. By studying these chapters, can you determine why Du Bois addressed some topics/problems through essays and others through sketches?  Think of several contemporary problems that you might want to write about. Which would be best addressed through an essay? A sketch?