White Supremacy in Children's Literature
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WHITE SUPREMACY IN CHILDREN’S LITERATURE CHILDREN’S LITERATURE AND CULTURE JACK ZIPES, SERIES EDITOR CHILDREN’S LITERATURE IDEOLOGIES OF IDENTITY IN COMES OF AGE ADOLESCENT FICTION Toward a New Aesthetic by Robyn McCallum by Maria Nikolajeva NARRATING AFRICA REDISCOVERIES IN CHILDREN’S George Henty and The Fiction LITERATURE of Empire by Suzanne Rahn by Mawuena Kossi Logan REGENDERING THE SCHOOL TRANSCENDING BOUNDARIES STORY Writing for a Dual Audience of Sassy Sissies and Tattling Tomboys Children and Adults by Beverly Lyon Clark edited by Sandra L.Beckett WHITE SUPREMACY IN TRANSLATING FOR CHILDREN CHILDREN’S LITERATURE by Riitta Oittinen Characterizations of African Americans, 1830–1900 CHILDREN’S FILMS by Donnarae McCann History, Ideology, Pedagogy, Theory by Ian Wojcik-Andrews RETELLING STORIES, FRAMING CULTURE RUSSELL HOBAN/FORTY YEARS Traditional Story and Essays on His Writings for Children Metanarratives in Children’s by Alida Allison Literature by John Stephens and EMPIRE’S CHILDREN Robyn McCallum Empire and Imperialism in Classic British Children’s Books THE CASE OF PETER RABBIT by M.Daphne Kutzer Changing Conditions of Literature for Children A NECESSARY FANTASY? by Margaret Mackey The Heroic Figure in Children’s Popular Culture LITTLE WOMEN AND THE edited by Dudley Jones and Tony FEMINIST IMAGINATION Watkins Criticism, Controversy, Personal Essays edited by Janice M.Alberghene and Beverly Lyon Clark WHITE SUPREMACY IN CHILDREN’S LITERATURE CHARACTERIZATIONS OF AFRICAN AMERICANS, 1830–1900 DONNARAE MACCANN ROUTLEDGE NEW YORK AND LONDON First paperback edition published in 2001 by Routledge 29 West 35th Street New York, NY 10001 Published in Great Britain by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane London EC4P 4EE Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group. This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002. Copyright © 1998 by Donnarae McCann Previously published in hardback as vol. 1043 in the Garland Reference Library of Social Science. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or uti- lized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data MacCann, Donnarae. White supremacy in children’s literature: characterizations of African Americans, 1830–1900/Donnarae MacCann. p. cm. Includes bibliographic references (p. ) and indexes. ISBN 0-8153-2056-6 (alk. paper) ISBN 0-415-92890-7 (pbk.) 1. American literature—19th century—History and criticism 2. Afro—Americans in literature. 3. White supremacy movements— United States—History—19th century. 4. American Literature—White authors—History and criticism. 5. Children’s literature, American— History and criticism. 6. Characters and characteristics in literature. 7. Racism in literature. I. Title. II.Series: Garland reference library of social science; v.1043. III. Series: Garland reference library of social science. Children’s literature and culture series; v.4. PS173.N4M33 1998 810.9'3520396073–dc21 97–37620 CIP ISBN 0-203-90511-3 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-90604-7 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-92890-7 (Print Edition) In fond memory of Jonathan W.Walton Jr. Contents Preface ix A Note on Usage xi Introduction xiii Part I: The Antebellum Years Chapter One Ambivalent Abolitionism 3 A Sampling of Narratives Chapter Two Sociopolitical and Artistic Dimensions 25 of Abolitionist Tales Chapter Three Personal and Institutional Dimensions 47 Part II: The Postbellum Years Chapter Four Children’s Fiction 83 A Sampling Chapter Five The Social/Political Context 123 Chapter Six Literary Lives 155 Chapter Seven Postwar Institutions 185 viii Contents Chapter Eight Literary Methods and Conventions 211 Chapter Nine Conclusion The “Lost Cause” Wins 233 Bibliography Works for the Young 243 Other Sources 246 Index 261 Preface Assembling materials from different fields is an effort to deepen understanding of complex subjects. It is the method of American studies, the discipline that shaped the present project. Specifically, I have tried to keep nineteenth-century portrayals of Blacks and pertinent facets of social history in the same range of vision. I have looked at the white supremacist civilization that produced a white supremacist children’s literature, and documented the ideology of white racism as formulated for young reading audiences. My work on this subject was compelled by the conviction that social history is knowable and that social understanding is malleable and potentially progressive. But the record must be laid bare in clear and specific terms. In endeavoring to achieve this clarity, I have been aided by members of the University of Iowa academic community. In particular I want to extend thanks to those who helped with the dissertation on which this book is based. I owe an endless debt to the late Jonathan W.Walton Jr.—my primary teacher in the field of African American history and the chairperson of my dissertation committee until his sudden passing just months before the work’s completion. Dr. Walton was a person of extraordinary character and spirit, a dedicated scholar, an inspiration to his students. He renewed in me an enthusiasm for historical research and continually revitalized my faith in the interdisciplinary American studies process. Professors Kathleen Tessmer, Albert Stone, and the late Darwin Turner were invaluable as editorial advisers, content experts, and teachers. Dr. Robert Weems was kind enough to join my committee after Dr. Walton’s passing, and I much appreciated his participation and advice. Dr. Fredrick Woodard, the current director of the African American World Studies Program at the University of Iowa, took Dr. x Preface Walton’s place and steered me through the dissertation’s completion. He was standing by at that time of crisis and mourning, and I must add that he has been standing by as a supportive friend for over a decade. We are engaged in an ongoing conversation about literature and culture, a conversation that helped lay the groundwork for this study. Finally I am grateful to my husband, Dick, who assisted me in large and small ways and offered support when I felt swamped by real or imagined difficulties. A Note on Usage In this study the term “Black” is used to mean all peoples of African descent. People of mixed African and European descent come under this heading since they generally face the same problem as other Blacks in the United States and other Western nations. The term is capitalized because it refers to a specific population, the peoples historically connected by the Black diaspora. In recent years the term “White” has taken on a similar meaning, referring to people of European descent. We now find “White” used in books, conferences, and college courses that specifically focus on a field called White studies. I capitalize the term when it designates or implies an ethnic population, but not in instances where the “color line” is the primary connotation (as in “white supremacy,” “white racism,” “white hegemony” and so on). In such value-oriented fields as history, sociology, and art, labels become quickly outmoded; the usages in this book reflect current self-definition within groups as well as my own preferences. Introduction Cultural and social historians have a useful tool in the record created by children’s books. The simple, transparent images contrived for the young are often an unselfconscious distillation of a national consensus or a national debate. They reveal, for example, the degree to which postbellum society retained features of the slavery era; they illustrate how the white supremacy myth infected the mainstream collective consciousness in both epochs. And that myth was perceptible in literature for the young whether the narrative was essentially an antislavery or proslavery tract. The extraordinary predictive power of children’s books is evident in this nineteenth-century drama. Given the ambivalent and/or biased messages directed toward the young, there was little reason to expect a de facto egalitarianism in the postbellum years. This book tells the story of this paradox. The defeated slavocracy was in many respects a cultural winner. Literary, political, biographical, and institutional history are combined in these pages as a way to reveal the scope of the white supremacist ideology. The antislavery cause accelerated the momentum toward war, but then vanished in the regressive milieu of peace—in the romanticized plantation stories, ambivalent protest novels, and prejudiced adventure fiction. Legal emancipation was neutralized in public consciousness by racist tale-telling. And the other institutions that impinged upon children’s lives—schools, churches, libraries, the press—joined in promoting the notion of race hierarchies. Black identity was presented as of less value than European American identity. Blacks were expected to accept a restricted status and role in the American civil community. European American children were xiv Introduction expected to keep African Americans in check, in a subservient position. To understand such a philosophy, we need to consider several variables.1 We need to look at the texts of children’s books and periodicals, the biographical history of writers, the social/political and institutional contexts, the aesthetic conventions of the times, and any special characteristics of audience response. Intellectual