Samson and the Making of American Martyrs

By the 1850s, some abolitionists had begun to use the term “Samson” to refer to those involved in insurrections by enslaved persons. By the dawn of the Civil War, they extended that term to describe real-life persons who fought to end slavery. In the last half of the nineteenth century, poets, clergy, scholars, and other intellectuals began to identify biblical Samson with historical individuals who challenged racial oppression in America. The biblical hero had already become a potent symbol of African Americans’ collective strength in the fight against slavery and other barriers to social advancement. Eventually, he became associated with those who took up this struggle through passionate rhetoric, violence, and, at times, political compromise. In the process, persons like John Brown, Fredrick Douglass, Gabriel Prosser, Nat Turner, and Booker T. Washington became memorialized as larger-than-life Samson figures.

Introduction

Samson is a popular subject in biblical scholarship on the use of the Bible in art, literature, and popular culture, although this scholarship tends to focus on Samson in White European and White American art and literature. The introduction explains how Samson becomes identified with people of African descent in American literature. It discusses the biblical story of Samson and the lack of physical descriptions of Samson in the Bible. It provides examples of the racialized uses of Samson in poetry, sermons, speeches, narratives by enslaved persons, court records, and newspapers. It offers some possible reasons why the biblical story of Samson may have become associated with African Americans.

Black Samson of Brandywine

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was not the only writer to popularize a Black Samson figure. Moving away from treating Samson as an abolitionist hero, other writers continued to develop this uniquely American Samson figure within folklore, fiction, and poetry in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Black Samson became immortalized in Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “Black Samson of Brandywine,” which transformed Samson into a symbol of African American achievement. In this chapter, we highlight the writers who offer new understandings of Samson as a loyal American patriot. Folklore about the Battle of Brandywine developed a less revolutionary and more conciliatory image of Black Samson than those modeled after the biblical story.

Epilogue

In the epilogue, the authors offer brief reflections on writing this book. They discuss the historical context in which they wrote the book starting with the protests in Ferguson Missouri following the police killing of Michael Brown. They comment on their reaction to the selection of a sculpture titled “Freedman” by John Quincy Adams Ward for the cover art, and they relate this art work to Samson traditions. In addition, they reiterate the long history of Samson’s use in addressing issues of race and racism and share their thoughts on the historic and ongoing relevance of Black Samson in America.

Black Samson and Labor Movements

The strained relationship of African Americans and organized labor generated a wide variety of opinions among African American writers in the early twentieth century. Some saw organized labor as a threat to African American social and economic progress while others saw socialism and communism as a vehicle for it. In this chapter, we track developments in the use of Samson imagery by African American writers who examined the complex and often contentious relationship between African Americans, labor movements, and the Communist Party from the early twentieth century through the Harlem Renaissance, the Great Depression, and toward the Civil Rights Era.

Black Samson in the Temple of Liberty

In the nineteenth century, prominent writers and politicians invoked the Temple of Liberty in debates over slavery. The Temple of Liberty was a symbolic term for the United States. Both pro- and anti-slavery advocates had concerns regarding the stability of the nation’s democracy due to the enslavement of African peoples. The idea of Black Samson in the Temple of Liberty became a powerful image within anti-slavery efforts. For example, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1842 poem “The Warning” popularized the image of a blinded Black Samson figure destroying the temple. In this chapter, we analyze how nineteenth-century American writers used Samson to address not only slavery but also other issues related to race. In doing so, these writers created a lasting link between the biblical Samson and African Americans that helped to generate a uniquely American Black Samson figure.

Visual Representations of Black Samson

Since the mid-nineteenth century, visual images of Black Samson have developed in editorial cartoons, film, paintings, comic books, graphic novels, and television alongside traditions about him in American literature and music. Similar to his literary representations, some artists from different racial backgrounds have created Black Samson figures that address various social and political controversies in the United States. From his nineteenth-century appearance in Harper’s Weekly to his twenty-first-century appearance on the History Channel, visual representations of Black Samson in popular culture have continued to shape Black Samson into a racially polarizing American icon. In this chapter, we trace the use of Black Samson figures in the visual arts from the mid-nineteenth century to the present.

But Some of Us Are Strong Believers in the Samson Myth

The African American women discussed in this chapter use the Black Samson tradition to focus on the complex intersections of race and gender. From the Harlem Renaissance to the Black Arts movement, the major artistic and literary movements that helped shape African American culture throughout the twentieth century involved women who found something in Samson’s story that resonated with them deeply. One might think that the story of a hyper-masculine biblical hero would not provide much material for reflections upon the intersections of race and gender in America. Yet, from the playful audacity of Christina Moody’s claim that she could defeat Jack Johnson to the painful predictions from Gaza in Lucille Clifton’s poem dedicated to Ramona Africa, the twentieth century witnessed African American women claiming a place within the Black Samson tradition.

The Samson Complex

As campaigns for civil rights intensified in the 1950s and 1960s, parties calling for more militant approaches in the struggle against racial injustice invoked Samson’s climactic action in the Philistine temple. At the same time, this racially charged image sparked controversy among African American intellectuals and activists as some claimed that the younger activists had a “Samson complex” that would ultimately result in nothing but self-destruction. The use of Samson imagery signaled the growing fault lines among leading African American intellectuals and activists regarding how to achieve meaningful racial justice. Some imagined Samson as a model of militant resistance even at the cost of one’s life. Others interpreted his death as a cautionary tale about the end results of imprudent reactionary strategies.