Reassessing Brer Rabbit: friendship, altruism, and community in the folklore of enslaved African-Americans

2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-146
Author(s):  
Sergio Lussana
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Enslaved African Americans ◽  
Brer Rabbit

scholarly journals Artistic Liberty and Slave Imagery: "Mark Twain's Illustrator," E. W. Kemble, Turns to Harriet Beecher Stowe

2009 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 499-542
Author(s):  
Adam Sonstegard
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
Harriet Beecher Stowe ◽  
Literary Representations ◽  
Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn ◽  
Uncle Tom's Cabin ◽  
European Americans ◽  
American Publishing ◽  
Enslaved African Americans ◽  
Huckleberry Finn

A comparison of Edward Windsor Kemble's illustrations for the first edition of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884––85) and for an 1891 edition of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) shows that Kemble could render enslaved African Americans or impoverished European Americans as delineated individuals or as stereotypical figures, as he catered to audiences that had a stake in seeing these characters as unique personalities or as racialized "types." Marketing Twain's and Stowe's novels for mass audiences, Kemble mediated between literary authors who invest marginalized characters with distinct personalities and empowered, mainstream audiences who were less willing to accept individuality in minority figures. Kemble was not the egregiously racist exception for his time, but a reliable rule for the mainstream American publishing establishment; he typified Gilded Age readers who enjoyed the privileges of purchasing, reading, and illustrating literary representations of marginalized subjects——subjects who clearly did not enjoy such social privileges themselves. When Kemble takes artistic liberties in illustrating literary representations of slavery, then, he demonstrates graphically how Gilded Age readers were taking their own liberties reinterpreting these stories of slaves.

John Chavis

2019 ◽  
pp. 257-278
Author(s):  
Benjamin R. Justesen
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
African Americans ◽  
White Students ◽  
Black Teachers ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
Nat Turner's Rebellion ◽  
Jacksonian Democracy ◽  
Enslaved African Americans ◽  
Free African Americans

This essay on the life of John Chavis illustrates both the opportunities and the obstacles facing free African Americans in post-Revolutionary North Carolina. Details of his early life are uncertain. Reportedly a Revolutionary War veteran, Chavis studied at the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University, and at Liberty Hall Academy, the forerunner of Washington and Lee University. Licensed in 1801 by the Presbyterian General Assembly as a missionary to enslaved African Americans, Chavis proved more popular with white audiences. His principal income for much of his life came from a school he operated in Raleigh, where he taught black and white students and became a confidant of North Carolina senator William P. Mangum. A conservative and an old-line Federalist, Chavis bemoaned the rise of Jacksonian Democracy and opposed the immediate abolition of slavery. Yet restrictions imposed on black teachers and ministers after Nat Turner’s rebellion made his last years difficult. He died in 1838 almost certainly of natural causes, not, as is sometimes reported, of mob violence.

Quaker Women in Lenape Country

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean R. Soderlund
Keyword(s):  
New Jersey ◽  
African Americans ◽  
North America ◽  
Religious Liberty ◽  
Multicultural Society ◽  
Society Of Friends ◽  
Enslaved African Americans ◽  
Women Friends ◽  
Quaker Women

This chapter examines the central role of Quaker women during the years 1675–1710 in developing the first colony founded by members of the Society of Friends in North America. As individuals, women Friends helped to fashion a multicultural society consistent with Quaker beliefs in religious liberty and pacifism by maintaining amicable relations with the Lenape Indians and non-Quaker European settlers. At the same time, however, Friends failed to acknowledge the inconsistency of exploiting enslaved African Americans with Quaker ideals. As leaders of the Salem, Burlington, Chesterfield, and Newton (later Haddonfield) monthly meetings, Quaker women also helped to shape West New Jersey society by strengthening rules of discipline to prevent their children and other Friends from marrying non-Quakers and adopting ‘outward vanities’.

Individual Influence

PMLA ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 132 (5) ◽  
pp. 1244-1250
Author(s):  
George Moses Horton ◽  
Jonathan Senchyne
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African Americans ◽  
North America ◽  
Writing Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
Relative Efficacy ◽  
Chapel Hill ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Enslaved African Americans ◽  
First Time

George Moses Horton (1797?-1883?) is one of three African Americans known to have published poetry while enslaved in colonial north America or the United States. The recently discovered holograph manuscript of “Individual Influence” is the only available evidence that Horton also wrote short essays. Written in 1855 or 1856 and published here for the first time, “Individual Influence” provides a new perspective on Horton's writing process, his strategic affiliations in Chapel Hill, and his changing ideas about the relative efficacy of political and divine influence. More generally, the essay expands the available archive of writing by enslaved African Americans.

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