The Interdisciplinary Juxtaposition of Richard Wright and by John Lawlor and David Leight

According to Maryemma Graham archival research in support of these courses, in the introduction to her Teaching African it puts forth a case study of African American American Literature: Teory and Practice, while writers Zora Neale Hurston and Richard the teaching of literature needs to be informed Wright to show how students can understand by theory, “…teachers do not want to be and break through the dichotomy often posed handed down judgments about any literature, between the two writers’ perspectives. and especially not about African American Scholars have long contrasted Hurston literature. Tey do want to be assisted with the and Wright as representatives of opposing process of engaging new literatures critically and ideologies, not least because of their very holistically” (2). Her 1998 collection of essays public feud; however, more recent research by teachers explores ways in which literature has pointed to the ways in which they shared teachers can inform theory through the interests and advocacies. Historical social consideration of multiple contexts and active environmental factors impacted both writers, engagement with those context. Only through and both sought to defne their identities while such discussions about the actualization of altering the racially oppressive social context literary theory and scholarship, she contends, in which they were writing. As this paper will can students and faculty more fully articulate demonstrate, their participation in the Federal and understand the relationships between texts. Writers Project (FWP) during the Great To that end, this paper considers Depression extends recent research on the pair the interrelation of history and literature as a and the teaching of African American literature mutually supportive interdisciplinary study by showing how teaching their historical texts and teaching approach that integrates historical in context with their literary texts leads to a documents as contextual information. After more comprehensive understanding of both. describing the authors’ linked courses and

50 Community College Humanities Review THE LINKED COURSES Norris and Grifth provided one of many early links between the courses, and early Te interdisciplinary approach ex- iterations of the course included fairly obvious plained in this paper derives from a history/ links, such as Walt Whitman’s role in the Civil literature class co-taught for about ten years War, William Dean Howells’ “Editha” and the by the authors that merged a traditional Spanish American War, Jack London’s “Te American history since the Civil War course Law of Life” and Social Darwinism, memoirs by with a similarly traditional post-Civil War Booker T. Washington and Zitkala Ša, Upton American literature survey course. While ostensibly stand-alone courses, the two have been co-requisites for Te core premise behind the history/ students, with both instructors in the literature course is that writers exist in classroom for the full duration of each and report on history period; in efect, the courses are fused. Te core premise behind the history/ literature course is that writers exist in and Sinclair’s Te Jungle and the meat-packing report on history. Teir writings help clarify industry, Modernist responses to World War I, period concepts, and values and, in doing so, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Babylon Revised” and the writers serve as agents of change, seeking to Stock Market Crash of 1929, and the Harlem explore and, often, remedy societal ills. Renaissance. In designing the course, the As a representative example, the class authors sought intersecting points such as these. contrasts alternative presentations of narratives, Toward this end, the authors initially created a such as Frank Norris’s exploration of progressive series of “cases” through cross referencing Te era corporate greed in his 1902 short story, American Pageant history textbook with Te “A Deal in Wheat.” After the class reads and Norton Anthology of American Literature. discusses the story, it views D.W. Grifth’s 1909 flm “A Corner in Wheat,” which was IDENTIFYING HISTORICAL based on the Norris story and several of his DOCUMENTS other works, including the 1903 novel, Te Pit. Norris sought to expose abusive corporate While survey textbooks ofer a wealth practices. In so doing, both Norris and Grifth of links—and more and more frequently represent author as social activist. Te class include descriptions of cultural, historical, and focuses primarily on alternative endings of social context—their oferings are necessarily the story and flm. Te story ends with the limited. Te authors have subsequently main character, a former farmer, at the mercy supplemented this basic course matrix of the robber barons, caught in the breadlines with research at the Rutherford B. Hayes and then, as Norris writes, in the capitalist Presidential Center (HPC), the National machine. By contrast, the end of the Grifth Archives and Records Administration (NARA), flm fnds the principle robber baron dead, and the Library of Congress (LOC). Te killed in a suitably ironic accident at his own object of the research was to access and acquire mill. Te class is able to see how the history primary source documents and media (print, of the progressive movement can be framed audio, video, images) to deepen the authors’ diferently for diverse audiences and media. knowledge and students’ learning experiences.

Spring 2017 51 Trough active engagement of literary study Te class reviews each of the three with the documentary history of the period, documents separately for how the images and both teachers and students can discover how texts provide opportunities for inquiry into narratives are constructed. racial injustice. Tomas Nast’s illustration Both of the authors participated in “Patience on Monument” ofers students the National Endowment for the Humanities a sense of the nature and extent of racism (NEH)-funded “Landmark” workshop, Progress prevalent in the in the post-Civil and Poverty, at the Hayes Presidential Center in War era both textually and graphically. In Freemont, Ohio, which provided opportunities text, the monument’s inscriptions include nine for joint research for relevant course materials. relating to slavery, four relating to the Civil Documents scanned and later included in War, and eighteen that speak to injustice during the course ranged from letters to Hayes from the reconstruction era. Examples of slavery Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. DuBois, inscriptions are “Branded and Manacled” and petitions from Elizabeth Cady Stanton and “Knowledge a Closed Book.” “Fort Pillow Susan B. Anthony, and stereographs and Massacre,” a Civil War reference, represents reports from Carlisle Indian School founder the extreme risk that African-American soldiers Captain Richard Pratt—all relevant to (USCT) faced in their fght for freedom if the letters, memoirs, and stories involving captured by Confederate forces. Post-war text treatment of African Americans, women, and includes several references to violence and the Native Americans, respectively. fact that, according to the text, “[a] Negro has no rights which a white man is bound to respect.” Several Literary treatment of African-Americans in lengthy inscriptions are quotes the post-Civil War era to 1932 is hardly less from newspapers of the era. stunning, if more subtle at times. Beyond the text, the graphics tell a story of abject horror. An USCT veteran in tattered Among the documents accessed at clothing sits upon the monument with his the Hayes Center Library, three key images right hand holding his head. His rife is at his focus understanding on the rampant racism feet. At the base of the monument are the dead of American society in the post-Civil War era. bodies of his wife, clutching a dead baby in her Tomas Nast’s political cartoon “Patience on arms with another bloody dead child nearby. a Monument” portrays an African-American Flanking the monument on the right side are Civil War soldier (USCT) in tatters, standing scenes of a lynching and an orphanage on fre. on a monument inscribed with slavery facts A man with “KKK” on his hat looks on. Nast and reconstruction era injustices and racial portrays a lamppost lynching on the left. Te violence. Te second document is an article by aggregate impact of the text and graphics is Sterling A. Brown entitled “Negro Character as stunning. Seen by White Authors” that identifed seven Literary treatment of African- racial stereotypes. Te third document is an Americans in the post-Civil War era to 1932 illustration of an African-American religious is hardly less stunning, if more subtle at times. revival meeting in with accompanying In a second document shared with the class, caption. poet and literature professor Sterling A. Brown

52 Community College Humanities Review Richard Wright in his study identifes seven stereotypes in his 1933 article, (aka DJ Spooky) takes D. W. Grifth’s 1915 “Negro Character as Seen by White Authors.” Birth of a Nation and adds trance audio and Brown’s list includes “Te Contented Slave,” visual enhancement with periodic narrative. “Te Wretched Freeman,” Te Comic Negro,” In all, seven clips provide visualization of the “Te Brute Negro,” “Te Tragic Mulatto,” “Te stereotypes. Of the seven, two were shown Local Color Negro,” and the “Exotic Primitive,” to the class. One portrayed the “Contented and Brown provides detailed examples drawn Slave,” ironically with a “black-faced” actor from literature for each of the above. One fulflling a central role in the clip. Essentially a of the exemplar works Brown references is video step out of the Dunning School of Civil Tomas Dixon’s Te Clansman, published in War historiography that bemoaned the “Lost 1907. While Brown notes that Dixon’s “kind Cause,” this clip represents slaves as happy and of writing is in abeyance today,” he did write well treated in captivity. that Dixon’s stories gained “a dubious sort of Te second clip is much more volatile. immortality, and fnally fxed the stereotype in Sexually charged, it follows a chase scene in the mass-mind” (192). Fixing the stereotype in which Gus, an African-American Civil War the mass mind was an outcome of a flm that soldier, attempts to catch and presumably rape derived in large part from Te Clansman: that Elsie Stoneman; Elsie, played by Lillian Gish, flm was Te Birth of a Nation. commits suicide by jumping of a clif rather Paul Miller’s flm Rebirth of a Nation than enduring the sexual attack. Casting Gish enabled the extraction of clips that demonstrate in the role of Elsie heightened the tension of the stereotypes identifed by Brown. Miller the scene. Te image of a black male sexual

Spring 2017 53 predator stalking a young, white, beloved if not insanity. Tey are, moreover, actress was too much for many critics of the easily imposed upon and led away by flm, who sought to have the scene excised mountebanks and pretenders who fnd by censors (Stokes 134-40). Violent public proft in playing upon their credulity. responses to this flm mirrored the earlier Te picture is sketched from real life reactions to Dixon’s play that was based entirely and it admirably portrays the strong on Te Clansman (154). By soliciting students emotions which possess and sway the for their responses to the clips, the instructors half-crazed audiences. (195) help students to understand how writers and flmmakers are both a product and producer of In no caption do the student “editors” use their times. phrases like “hysteria” or “half-crazed,” A third document shared with the the absence of which the instructors fnd class is an illustration of an African-American encouraging. Students typically express religious revival said to have taken place in amazement when presented with the original Florida. Printed in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated on caption. October 13, 1889, the original caption reads “A Negro Prophet in Florida – Prepar’ for de HURSTON AND WRIGHT CASE STUDY day of Wrath [sic]” (201). In class, students assume the role of illustration editor and Historical context provided by these prepare a maximum ffty word description. videos, articles, and illustrations provide a Upon completion, a sampling of students’ pathway for students to see the racial bias and descriptions are discussed and then compared antipathy that faced writers in the 1930s Federal to the original description for the illustration Writers’ Project such as Hurston and Wright. that appeared on page 195. Invariably, the Mark Twain writes that “when a thousand able novels have been written, there you have the soul of By soliciting students for their responses to the people, the life of the the clips, the instructors help students to people, the speech of the understand how writers and flmmakers are people. And the shadings of character, manners, feelings, both a product and producer of their times. ambitions, will be infnite” (qtd. in Taylor 5). Twain foreshadowed the infnite students’ descriptions contrast starkly with shadings of narrative of the FWP, but he could the blatant racism expressed in the original not have anticipated the lives of the many description. Te original description is the writers who benefted from these projects. following: Te cast of characters in the Federal Writers’ Project included many literary luminaries or Te negroes [sic] of the South are future luminaries. Robert Hayden researched particularly susceptible of religious the anti-slavery movement in Detroit and in emotion, and they not infrequently Illinois; Claude McKay wrote about Harlem; give way to extravagant demonstrations Ralph Ellison notably based material later used which border closely upon hysteria, in Invisible Man on his FWP interviews; and

54 Community College Humanities Review Zora Neale Hurston

John Cheever worked on one of the FWP’s [that] is, indeed, an act of protest” (286). more popular guidebooks, the WPA Guide to Where Wright “conforms to white standards” . (287), Jordan argues that Hurston celebrates But perhaps no two writers in the African American culture through her the Federal Writers’ Project contrasted so experience of being raised in an all-Black town. interestingly as Zora Neale Hurston and For Hurston, outright protest makes no sense Richard Wright because their FWP work because to reject love from war and violence, followed similar trajectories, but also because she writes, is “plain white craziness” (her they responded critically to each other’s emphasis, 288). Yet in positing the necessity writings. In literary scholarship, initial of teaching the contrast between Hurston and contrasts between Hurston and Wright were Wright, she also ofers teachers the opportunity made by June Jordan, poet and professor, who to explore the complexity of the relationship. writes about teaching Hurston’s Teir Eyes Were By fnding that “[w]e should equally value Watching God and using the book to question and equally emulate Black Protest and Black the way Richard Wright stood “towering before Afrmation, for we require both” (289), Jordan and above” all other Black writers (286). Jones sets up the dichotomy, aided, of course, by rejects that “protest writing—and that only one Hurston herself. kind of protest writing—deserves our support William J. Maxwell, for instance, and study” (her emphasis, 286). Hurston, she picks up on Jordan’s argument in his 1999 New writes, provides an “afrmation of Black values Negro, Old Left. In lamenting how Hurston and and lifestyle within the American context Wright have served as “the formative division

Spring 2017 55 Zora Neale Hurston with Rochelle French and Gabriel Brown in Eatonville, Florida in the African-American literary tradition” Library of Congress through joint research (155), he argues that, by focusing only on the there. Te one author’s familiarity with the diferences, critics “have blinded themselves to LOC stemmed from participation in two more-than-trivial points of contact between intensive versions of the American Cities/Public the two writers” (157). Both writers, not Spaces Institute sponsored by the NEH, the just Hurston, use narratives of folk culture Community College Humanities Association to push back against the Great Migration, (CCHA), and the John W. Kluge Center. he writes, especially through their difering Research was executed in the Computer Center, anthropological and Communist perspectives. the Main Reading Room, and Performance More recently, Megan Obourn has argued Arts Reading Room. Complementary to that both Wright and Hurston use aspects of the research, the LOC ofered an exhibit on female voice to set the stage for voices in the the Federal Teatre Project (FTP) that was early civil rights movement (241). Critics miss valuable in understanding the scope of Zora the point, she writes, if they stress the broader Neale Hurston and, to a lesser extent, Richard political oppositions to the exclusion of their Wright’s work as both worked briefy for the shared political interests as expressed through, FTP. Further, the Prints and Photographs in particular, gendered voice work. Reading Room provided access to a full It is to this end of seeing how Hurston collection of FWP States’ Guides. Text and and Wright can be more cogently compared image documents supported inquiry into both that the authors turned to the FWP materials, Wright and Hurston. An additional depository beginning with a search of documents at the was the National Archives and Records

56 Community College Humanities Review Administration (NARA) facilities at both famous Polk County, so full of varied industries College Park, MD and downtown Washington, that it is full of song and story. Te most robust DC. NARA collections of materials from both and lusty songs of road and camp sprout the Federal Writers’ Project and the House in this area like corn in April. ‘Uncle Bud’ Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) Planchita’ ‘Ella Wall’ and other real characters rounded out the primary sources used in the poured into song and shaped into legend” (4). case, and they are considered within the course Following this description, which the students framework. respond to for its colorful language, Hurston Te class studies Wright and Hurston quoted the lyrics from “Evalina”: “Evalina, by looking at the writings (and, in the case of Evalina you know the baby dont favor me, Hurston, listening to audio) that the two did Eh, / Eh, you know the baby dont favor me” for the FWP, their reviews of each other’s work, (4). “Evalina” is also available online from the and a discussion of how that work paralleled LOC, and students hear Hurston these and informed their short stories. Te instructors lines, followed by a brief interview with Dr. ofer a series of juxtapositions between Hurston Corse about how the culture of the West Indies and Wright in order to show how the writers’ parallels that of Florida, where “[t]hey hold difering attitudes toward race and writing were jumping dances every week,” Hurston tells her. expressed throughout their government work According to Stetson Kennedy, Florida state and then continued through their articles and director for Folkore, Oral History, and Ethnic fction. As Maxwell and Obourn express, the Studies, upon her acceptance of Hurston’s work that Hurston and Wright did with real application, Corse good-naturedly warned her people and situations, in other words, helped future coworkers of Hurston’s proclivities: to build their shared cultural attitudes. Te largest, lasting legacy of the “Zora Neale Hurston, the Florida Federal Writers’ Project is a series of state and Negro novelist, has signed onto the regional guidebooks, which enabled writers project and will soon be paying us a to do oral and documentary research about visit. Zora has been fêted by New York local customs while at the same time providing literary circles, and is given to putting helpful travel handbooks. Hurston wrote for on certain airs, including the smoking Te WPA Guide to Florida: Te Federal Writers’ of cigarettes in the presence of white Project Guide to 1930s Florida (1939) and people. So we must all make allowances Te Florida Negro, the latter unpublished in for Zora.” (qtd. in Kennedy) her lifetime. Te focus of her work was on folklore, myths, and music, and students are Students enjoy these expressions of introduced to Hurston thorough this historical Hurston’s attitude. Writings from Hurston’s ethnography. A telling example of her work work on Te Florida Negro in particular are appears in a 1939 manuscript titled “Proposed included in Folklore, Memoirs, and Other Recording Exposition,” which is a proposal Writings (1995), and the LOC maintains that she sent to Dr. Carita Doggett Corse, who online multiple recordings of Hurston made was a Florida director of the Federal Writers’ for the FWP as well as a selection of her play Project. In her proposal, available through the manuscripts. Library of Congress, Hurston describes in an Te students are then shown a passage almost poetic, fragmentary way the “justly of Richard Wright’s manuscript titled, “A

Spring 2017 57 Survey of the Amusement Facilities of District a boyhood game is both chilling and appalling. #35,” written for the FWP in Chicago and Later in life, he encountered workplace racism. discovered by Rosemary Hathaway. Wright In both cases, the lesson he was taught came describes the taverns as “dark, dank places with a large dose of violence, as shown in his where the neighborhood drunks hang out passage below: night and day” (qtd. in Hathaway 97). Te tone of his description contrasts sharply with One of the bell-boys I knew in this that of Hurston. As he continues: hotel was keeping steady company with one of the Negro maids. Out of Te cost of the entertainment a clear sky the police descended upon is recovered through the sale of high his home and arrested him, accusing priced drinks. Te talent of the him of bastardy. Te poor boy swore entertainers is nil. Most of them are he had no intimate relations with the amateurs, and are secured from nearby girl. Nevertheless, they forced him to neighborhoods. marry her. When the child arrived, Te ideological import of the it was found to be much lighter in entertainment is largely sexual. Blues complexion than either of the two and popular songs are sung. Dances supposedly legal parents. Te white such as the Continental and Snake-hips, men around the hotel made a great (sic) are performed. Fights are many joke of it. Tey spread the rumor that and frequent. (qtd. in Hathaway 98) some white cow must have scared the poor girl while she was carrying the Te students tend to note the ways in which baby. If you were in their presence Hurston fnds joy in the activities that Wright when this explanation was ofered, you fnds troubling and sordid. Yet students also were supposed to laugh. (49) see how both share a similar focus on risqué entertainment and relationships, with Hurston As an African-American male, Wright was celebrating rural Florida and Wright taking to subjected to the de-humanizing stereotypes task an urban Chicago. As Maxwell argues, and virulent racial bias that dominated the they are in diferent ways problematizing the American social landscape. Great Migration. Besides these more sociological descriptions, many Racism, more than class, was the driving authors contributed to a 1937 force behind Wright's work. compendium of short fction, poetry, and essays called American Stuf: An Anthology of Prose & Verse by At the time, the Dies Committee, Members of the Federal Writers’ Project. Wright’s which later turned into the House Un- contribution was titled “Te Ethics of Living American Activities Committee (HUAC), was Jim Crow,” later added to Uncle Tom’s Children, scrutinizing Richard Wright’s work. Wright’s and the essay is shared with students for essay drew the attention of the HUAC, discussion. His story about growing up in the which saw the essay as inciting class warfare. south and his initiation to racism while playing Te transcript of the testimony notes that

58 Community College Humanities Review A historic marker in Natchez, Mississippi, commemorating Richard Wright

“Richard Wright is a colored Communist” recognize that loyalty to the Communist (“Investigation,” 1006), and in fact quotes Party was actually loyalty to the peoples’ cause several passages, including the above episode, (HUAC fle). Racism, more than class, was the into the Congressional record. Edwin P. Banta, driving force behind Wright’s work. who was a librarian with the Federal Writers’ Te classroom session moves to a Project in New York City, called “Ethics” discussion of how Wright’s attitude toward “so vile that it is unft for youth to read,” yet racism refected his assessment of Hurston’s published by the FWP (“Investigation,” 1010). writing. In his October 5, 1937, New Masses At no point in the HUAC fles researched review of Teir Eyes Are Watching God, Wright by the one author was there any discussion compliments Hurston before saying “her within the committee of the truth of Wright’s prose is cloaked in that facile sensuality that autobiographical essay. In the 1930s, Wright has dogged Negro expression since the days joined the John Reed Club in Chicago, a of Phillis Wheatley.” He criticizes what he Communist organization (Fabre 35), which led calls “the minstrel technique that makes the to the Dies and the HUAC interest. Although ‘white folks’ laugh” in what he cites as her he resigned from Communist Party in 1944 appeal “to a white audience whose chauvinistic and published “I Tried to be a Communist” in tastes she knows how to satisfy” (“Between”). Te Atlantic magazine, the HUAC continued Te students react to Hurston’s response to its surveillance of him up to his death in 1960. Wright in her April 2, 1938, review of Uncle Te HUAC had veiled hostility to Wright; the Tom’s Children in Saturday Review. Calling it Communists were outspoken in their contempt “a book about hatreds,” she writes that “[n]ot for him. Robert Minor, writing in the Daily one act of understanding and sympathy comes Worker, criticized Wright for his failure to to pass in the entire work” (912). She fnds

Spring 2017 59 that “all of the characters in this book are elemental and brutish” and that though “the book contains some beautiful writing,” which the students characterize as a “backhanded” compliment, Wright displays “the picture of the South that the communists have been passing around,” a region “ruled by brutish hatred and nothing else” (913). While Wright’s relationship with the Communist Party was on thin ice, that didn’t stop Hurston from using it to suggest that political purposes are not the role of the artist. As the class case Zora Neale Hurston draws to a close, two oft- anthologized stories by Hurston and Wright are contrasted to show sill a pone of spicy potato pudding. how the writers’ fction paralleled their FWP Very little talk during the meal work and echoed the contrasts they provided but that little consisted of banter that in their reviews. Te students often note the pretended to deny afection but in ways in which Hurston describes the afection reality faunted it. Like when Missie between young husband and wife in the May reached for a second helping of frequently anthologized 1933 short story titled the tater pone. Joe snatched it out of “Te Gilded Six-Bits,” originally published her reach. in Story magazine, and then how their very After Missie May had made two human mistakes lead to potential tragedy: or three unsuccessful grabs at the pan, she begged, “Aw, Joe gimme some Joe splashed in the bedroom mo’dat tater pone.” and Missie May fanned around in “Nope, sweetenin’ is for us men- the kitchen. A fresh red and white folks. Y’all pretty lil frail eels don’t checked cloth on the table. Big pitcher need nothin’lak dis. You too sweet of buttermilk beaded with pale drops already.” (1714) of butter from the churn. Hot fried mullet, cracking bread, ham hock Teir playfulness ends when Joe comes atop a mound of string beans and new home unexpectedly to fnd a man whom he’d potatoes, and perched on the window- admired in his bed with Missie May:

60 Community College Humanities Review of human relationships, which she explored through her intricate understanding of the culture of her lived experience. Joe learns that he can be more of a man by forgiving his wife than by killing his cuckold. Wright’s “Te Man Who Was Almost a Man,” originally published in 1939 in Harper’s Bazaar, tells the story of a 17-year- old African American male who is yearning to be a man. Te character Dave Saunders buys a gun in an attempt to feel powerful. Yet he does not know how to use the gun, and he

Richard Wright carelessly shoots and kills a mule he was using to plow a white man’s feld. Dave Te great belt on the wheel of Time initially lies to cover his guilt, but when he slipped and eternity stood still. By the ultimately confesses, the reaction is not what match light he could see the man’s legs he expects: fghting with his breeches in his frantic desire to get them on. He had both Dave turned and walked slowly. chance and time to kill the intruder He heard people laughing. Dave in his helpless condition—half in and glared, his eyes welling with tears. half out of his pants—but he was too Hot anger bubbled in him. Ten he weak to take action. Te shapeless swallowed and stumbled on. enemies of humanity that live in the Tat night Dave did not sleep. hours of Time had waylaid Joe. He He was glad that he had gotten out was assaulted in his weakness. Like of killing the mule so easily, but he Samson awakening after his haircut. was hurt. Something hot seemed to So he just opened his mouth and turn over inside him each time he laughed. (1717) remembered how they had laughed. (2074). Joe’s laughter at his situation—and his eventual forgiveness of Missie May, who Dave sufers humiliation diferently despises her actions more than Joe ever could— than Joe. And unlike the nervous laughter in emphasizes how Hurston could see the depth the hotel of Wright’s American Stuf article,

Spring 2017 61 which later became part of his autobiography, In another New Deal Project for the character of Dave looks for a way to the arts, the National Archives’ Still Image retaliate: Division has a photograph captioned: “A negro [sic] from the Chicago Art Project is He turned over, thinking how he shown lettering an exhibit panel.” Te panel had fred the gun. He had an itch to reads in part:”Te foundation upon which fre it again. Ef other men kin shoota this nation stands is the dignity of man as an gun, by Gawd, Ah kin! He was still, individual….. [sic] his right to free expression listening. Mebbe they all sleepin now. of ideas in politics and religion, and in the labor Te house was still. He heard the soft by which he builds his way of life.” Yet, also breathing of his brother. Yes, now! He part of the New Deal imagery is a photograph would go down and get that gun and by Marion Post Walcott. Taken for the Farm see if he could fre it! Security Administration, the lonely fgure of a When he reached the top of a black man is walking up an outside stairway ridge he stood straight and proud to a movie theater’s “colored” entrance. Te in the moonlight, looking at Jim contrasts of these two photographs—both Hawkins’ big white house, feeling the startling in their message and their artistry— gun sagging in his pocket. Lawd, ef Ah echo the important connections between had just one mo bullet Ah’d taka shot disciplines through which teachers can energize at tha house. Ah’d like t scare ol man the study of both literature and history. Hawkins jusa little . . . Jusa enough t let im know Dave Saunders is a man” (2074-75).

Dave’s anger isn’t at the whites exclusively. Everyone laughed at Dave, black and white. His reaction, though, was not geared to make white audiences laugh, as Wright said was Hurston’s aim, but instead to show the danger of inequality and attempt to respond to societal evils. And, again, the stories by both authors negotiate a more complicated understanding of black maleness, which students can see after being led through the writers’ FWP documents and the fuller historical context of the Great Migration. Joe stays while Dave runs; Dave threatens violence but is incapable of action while Joe understands that restraint is the more difcult but more fruitful act. Both see the young black male as a person who must make a choice to preserve his dignity, and leaving is the easy way out.

62 Community College Humanities Review Works Cited

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Spring 2017 63 Norris, Frank. “A Deal in Wheat.” Short Story Classics: Te Best from the Masters of the Genre. N.p. 5 Jan. 2004. Web. 19 Jan. 2006. Te Pit: A Story of Chicago. 1903. Cambridge, MA: Bentley, 1971. Print. Obourn, Megan. “Early Civil Rights ‘Voice Work’ in Richard Wright and Zora Neale Hurston.” Twentieth-Century Literature 58.2 (2012): 238-66. Print. Reesman, Jeanne Campbell and Arnold Krupat, eds. Te Norton Anthology of American Literature. Vols. C and D. 7th ed. New York: Norton, 2007. Print. Sheppard, illustrator. “A Negro Prophet in Florida.” Frank Leslies’ Illustrated. 19 Oct. 1889: 195 and 201. Hayes Presidential Center. Print. Stokes, Melvyn. D.W.Grifth’s Te Birth of a Nation: A History of “Te Most Controversial Motion Picture of All Time. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007. Print. Taylor, David A. Soul of a People: Te WPA Writers’ Project Uncovers Depression America. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2009. Print. Whitman, Walt. “Letter and Corrected Reprint of Oh Captain, My Captain with comments by the author, 9 Feb. 1888.” Walt Whitman Collection. Library of Congress Web. 20 Dec. 2007. Wolcott, Marian Post, photographer. “Negro man entering movie theater by ‘Colored’ entrance.” Farm Services Administration. Oct. 1939. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Reading Room. Wright, Richard. “Te Ethics of Living Jim Crow.” American Stuf: An Anthology of Prose & Verse by Members of the Federal Writers’ Project with Sixteen Prints by the Federal Art Project. New York: Viking, 1937. 39-52. Print. “I Tried to Be a Communist.” Te Atlantic. Aug. 1944. HUAC fle. “Wright” National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC. Legislative Records Branch. Print. “Te Man Who Was Almost a Man.” Reesman and Krupat. 2067-75. Print. Van Vechten, Carl, photographer. “Richard Wright.” 1939. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Reading Room. “Zora Neale Hurston” 1938. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Reading Room.

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