Romance with the American Dream the African American Dream

Home , Nella Larsen, Twelve Years a Slave

сourse: Romance with the American Dream The African American Dream

Author: I.V.Morozova

Introduction “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” These famous lines from the Declaration of Independence (1776), which reflected the reason for the creation of a new state, for almost two centuries had no bearing on the lives and rights of the black population of this country, just as on the rights of women and the native population. Therefore, the main dream of African Americans is tied to the hope that these great words would become a reality for them as well. Frederick Douglass (real name Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, 1818—1895), one of the main abolitionists (from the Latin “abolitio” – to annul, abolish – the movement to free the black slaves), educator, talented orator and writer knew what he was doing in his famous speech “Fifth of July” (1852), ironically playing on the Fourth of July, the date that the Declaration of Independence was adopted and the U.S. national holiday. In that address he said that on that date the black population had nothing to celebrate.

Frederick Douglass Brady-Handy © Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA

The first slave ship reached the shores of the British Colony of Virginia, in North America, in 1619; in 1808 the importation of African slaves into the country was banned by the Constitution, although this did not prevent smugglers from delivering shiploads of blacks right up until 1861, when the Civil War (1861-1865) broke out. The Emancipation Proclamation, signed by President Abraham Lincoln, was published on January 1, 1863, but the Southern slave-holding states refused to accept it until the victory of the North. On February 1, 1865, the abolition of slavery on all U.S. territory was enshrined in the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. Abraham Lincoln Alexander Gardner © Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA The abolition of slavery for Southerners was, in many respects, just a formality, and for a long time they continued to exhibit (and indeed, at times still do so today) signs of racial intransigence and white supremacy (from the Latin supremus – higher, highest). The so-called “Jim Crow laws” on racial segregation (from Latin segregacio – to separate) were adopted in the American South after the abolition of slavery and were in force until the mid-1960s. There were separate schools for white and black children, separate public transport, or separate seats on transport, bans on housing blacks and whites together in hotels, separate cafés and restaurants for white and “colored,” etc. These laws got their name from a comic figure in minstrel shows, who portrayed what were thought to be ridiculous mannerisms of African Americans. The very name, therefore, signified a derogatory and dismissive attitude towards blacks. A whole series of racist organizations (the Ku Klux Klan, the White League, the Red Shirts, etc.) were active from the mid-1860s, operating almost openly in the Southern states. Until the Civil War, the attitude towards African Americans in the South had a certain patriarchal tone, where Southern ideologues tried to justify the existing order. For example, Louisa McCord (1810-1879) believed devoutly in the superiority of the white race, which she wrote about in her numerous essays on the topic. In one of them, called “Diversity of the Races: Its Bearing Upon Negro Slavery,” (1850) she maintained that Africans were representatives of an inferior race, like large children, with an underdeveloped intellect, but with immense strength, therefore needing constant oversight from those more senior. In addition, she insisted that all the blacks needed was food and clothing, the guiding reason and protection of white people, which is what slavery gives them. Freeing the black man, according to McCord, would lead to murder, rebellion and the devastation of the South. In his book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), Mark Twain (1835-1910) warned that it would be difficult to change the minds of Southerners in regard to blacks. Huck Finn, who spent a long time floating on a raft with his friend Jim, a runaway slave, at the last minute decides to write a letter to Jim’s owner and apologize. Only a few minutes later, remembering everything, he rejects his plan, even at the risk of his soul: “All right then, I’ll go to hell!” The meaning of this scene is that the Southerner Huck, who not only doesn’t own a slave, he doesn’t have a penny to his name, is convinced, nevertheless, that heavenly retribution awaits because he assisted a runaway slave. Mark Twain’s thought is clear: only by living together, working together, suffering and rejoicing, can people understand each other and see in someone with different-colored skin a person equal to oneself. To receive freedom and defend their human dignity, African Americans had to travel a long path, and pay dearly for true equality. This is the main dream of African Americans, which from the moment it arose up until the present day runs through all of African American literature. Slave narratives African American literature begins in the 18th century, with the first works being autobiographies; after all, only slaves themselves, who felt the full horror of captivity, could truthfully and reliably tell what it was to like to be a black slave. It was at this time that a series of texts appeared that are called “slave narratives.” It is worth mentioning the most famous of these, which had an influence on the tradition of black slaves talking about themselves: A Narrative of the Most Remarkable Particulars in the Life of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, an African Prince, as Related by Himself (1772); Narrative of the Enslavement of Ottobah Cugoano, a Native of Africa; Published by Himself in the Year 1787; The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, The African, Written by Himself (1789).

Olaudah Equiano © Wikimedia Commons

These books contain documentary descriptions of the horrors of being captured, the agonizing journey across the ocean, the harsh reality of slavery, contrasted to idyllic remembrances of childhood in Africa, which is associated with the image of Paradise Lost. It is in these narratives that the dream of returning to native Africa was born, dreams of freedom and justice based on the Biblical rule that the former pagans had internalized: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Following generations of black slaves, however, did not remember Africa, they did not even know their own birthdays, or the birthdays of their parents. They dreamed of the restoration of human dignity, freedom and equal rights with other citizens of the U.S. To this generation of slaves, born in captivity but escaping it, Frederick Douglass was a convincing answer to the argument of Southern ideologues that the black man was backward, with a low level of intelligence. In 1847, Douglass began publishing The North Star, which became one of the leading anti-slavery organs. During the Civil War it took an active part in the formation of the first African American regiments. Douglass’ book, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself (1845), continues the tradition of “slave narratives,” but it differs from them significantly. Douglass creates an image, not of a helpless captive, whose fate is wholly in the hands of the slave owner and his desire to release his slave, but a runaway-hero, who in 1840 became the main character in African American biographies. Frederick Douglass begins his life story with the declaration that slaves do not have birthdays, so he doesn’t know his own. He doesn’t remember his parents, because he was raised by his grandmother. He worked where his master sent him – on plantations, on wharves, and, finally, after two unsuccessful attempts, he ran away to the North and became a free man. Douglass’ story, however, is not just a tale about the horrors of slavery and the acquisition of freedom, even though there are many scenes portraying the real lives of slaves and the humiliations they suffered. Slavery is depicted in all its inhumanity, not only in regard to the slave, but to the slave owner, since, according to Douglass, slavery corrupts both, leading to moral degradation. He tells of one of his mistresses who had a kind nature. She decided to teach the bright boy to read and write, but received such a stern lecture from her husband that she stopped the lessons and began to treat the slaves very severely: “That cheerful eye, under the influence of slavery, soon became red with rage; that voice, made all of sweet accord, changed to one of harsh and horrid discord; and that angelic face gave place to that of a demon.” Frederick Douglass’ book, unlike the majority of “slave narratives,” is not just a simple presentation of events. Even the most important of them, such as his successful escape, is not written about in detail. He simply states the fact, presents it as the natural result of an enormous amount of work on himself, of strength of will that allowed him to defend his human dignity. Horrified by the drunkenness that was so widespread among the slaves, Douglass once gave in to this temptation himself, but, feeling that he was losing his human dignity, he took himself in hand and began preparing even more thoroughly for his escape. What we have is the story of a difficult path to self-identity, a search for the force within oneself to help acquire the physical and moral strength to oppose injustice. Frederick Douglass gives a large role to education in the making of a free person, considering it incompatible with slavery. For this reason, he learns to read and write by any means necessary, sometimes resorting to the methods of a major character in African American folklore, the trickster. There is one noteworthy scene where Douglass pranks white boys, teasing them that they don’t know how to write the letters correctly. Of course, the boys start to boast about how much they know, and the quick-witted black boy learns the letters himself. Doesn’t this bring to mind the famous folklore tale of the Tar Baby, when Br’er Rabbit, who has been caught by Br’er Fox, begs his captor not to throw him in the briar patch, understanding that, just out of contrariness, Br’er Fox would do that very thing? Douglass’ Narrative recreates the history of how the black man established his spiritual identity while being held as a slave. He poses the question of choice, and responsibility for one’s own fate, smashing the stereotype of the black man created by Southern ideology. Frederick Douglass himself became the best example of the runaway-hero in African American autobiography in the 1840s, whose dream of freedom was happily fulfilled: “Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever. It was heard in every sound, and seen in every thing. <…> I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling it.” In 1853, Douglass published The Heroic Slave, the first work of African American literary prose, enshrining the image of the freedom fighter in African American literature. A real incident inspired the narrative. In 1841, Madison Washington, a slave, fomented a rebellion on a brig that was taking slaves from Virginia to a slave market in New Orleans. Along with more than 100 fellow unfortunates, he managed to seize the ship and take it to the Bahamas, where Britain had abolished slavery in 1839. By their act, which at first glance seemed insane, driven by despair and a passionate desire for freedom, they won, providing a brilliant example of the runaway-hero. The figure of the runaway-hero became a fixture in the 1840s, not only in the formation of black consciousness, but in spreading knowledge of slavery from first-hand sources, shattering the idea of the obedient and weak-willed slave. Such autobiographical narratives as Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave. Written by Himself (1847) by William Wells Brown (1814-1884), or The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself, (1849), by Josiah Henson (1789-1883) were extremely popular and were reprinted many times.

William Wells Brown © The State Historical Society of Missouri

In the 1850s, the runaway-hero becomes the runaway-philosopher, as seen in the autobiography of Solomon Northup (1807/8-1863?), Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853, (1853). In this dramatic story of the kidnapping of a free black man, of how he was sold and spent 12 years in slavery with no contact with his family and no hope of returning to his former life, Solomon Northup exposes a whole universe of slave trading and slave-owning. He emphasizes the humiliations, the longing for his lost life, the despair that gradually claimed him. Parallel to this, however, he ponders the vicissitudes of fate and the injustice of slave-owning in general, and of the value of freedom. Autobiographies of slaves and runaways were one of the foundations for a unique tradition in African American literature, linked to the idea of freedom and the dream of equality. What does it mean to be a free African American? The period of Reconstruction in the South (the reintegration of the Southern states into the United States, 1865-1877) was a time of great hope for African Americans. Around 50 settlements were created that had a 100% African American population, with their own police and administration, and a lot was done to educate the black population, for example, the famous black universities were opened – Howard in Washington, D.C., (1866), Fisk in Nashville, Tennessee, (1866) and Tuskegee in Alabama (1881). The founder of Tuskegee University was Booker T. Washington, (1856-1915), one of the most outstanding educators and fighters for black education, orator, politician and writer. During segregation, he promoted a concept for the development of the black population that was acceptable to Southerners: segregation in the name of future integration, with the famous slogan “separate but equal.” Following Frederick Douglass, he believed that the most important thing was to educate American blacks, so that they could take care of themselves. However, given the lag in the intellectual development of African Americans as a consequence of slavery, it would be best to do this separate from whites at first, which would allow blacks to make racial progress, create their own systems of education, medicine and business. Once they reached an acceptable level of development, black institutions would gradually integrate with white ones. This approach, especially in the South, made it possible to find white patrons, and get help from government organizations. That is how Tuskegee University was created, with a Board of Directors that contained rich and influential politicians and businessmen.

Booker T. Washington © Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA

In his novel Up from Slavery (1901), which was largely autobiographical, Washington writes a story about how an African American attained his dream. The main theme here is the power of education, which makes it possible to completely transform the life of a little black boy, who compares school to heaven. Washington sees the key to building one’s own life, first of all, in a technical education, which could be beneficial for the African American population. The main task of modern education was to change black people’s attitude towards labor, which had been terribly distorted by slavery. The ideas of Booker T. Washington on full integration into white society, which were completely in line with his time and the conditions in the South, were re-examined in the 1920s by the leaders of the Harlem Renaissance. This was a powerful cultural movement, and a period when African American culture flourished, with all the diversity of its representatives’ views, reflecting the African American search for identity and demands for real equality. This idea was expressed vividly and poetically in a verse by Langston Hughes (1902-1967), “I, Too” (1926), resonating with the famous poem by Walt Whitman (1819–1892) “I Hear America Singing” (1867): I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes,

But I laugh, And eat well, And grow strong.

Tomorrow, I’ll be at the table When company comes. Nobody’ll dare Say to me, “Eat in the kitchen,” Then.

Besides, They’ll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed—

I, too, am America. The ideological leader of the Harlem renaissance was William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B.) Du Bois (1868-1963), who, unlike Booker T. Washington, spoke out against segregation, saying that the most talented representatives of the black race had the right to be immediately integrated into society, and would bring the rest along with them. In itself, the Harlem Renaissance was that powerful wave of talent that destroyed all stereotypes and reformatted American culture as a whole. The 1920s are unthinkable without African American music, dance and style of clothing.

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois C. M. Battey © Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA

W.E.B. Du Bois, unlike his predecessors, insisted on the necessity for an education in the humanities, studying ethnography, folklore and history in order to understand oneself. African American identity is the main question of the Harlem renaissance, and W.E.B. Du Bois had tried to answer it in 1903 in his work The Souls of Black Folk: “After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world, a world which yields him no true self- consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness, an American, a Negro; two warring souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.” Emphasizing the similarity to the son of the Biblical Jacob, Du Bois calls attention to courage as the essential characteristic of the African American. According to the Bible, the seventh of Jacob’s twelve sons was the founder of the Tribe of Gad, which was placed on the front lines of the Israeli people, and was most often in battle, suffering from the attacks of Syrian leaders and, as a result, was conquered by the Assyrian king. In addition, Gad was given the gift of inner sight, premonition, so those qualities also belong to the black soul, in Du Bois’ opinion, The main thing here, however, is the idea of the duality of the African American soul, the question of the duality of his consciousness, which belongs to two traditions – African and Western. For this reason, finding one’s essential nature becomes the main question, on both the ideological and artistic levels. Langston Hughes, for example, experimented in his poetry with African American musical traditions – blues and jazz, uniting these with modernist tendencies. These experiments had a huge significance for the further development, not only of African American literature, but of American literature in general. The problem of African American identity and the defense of the African American right to be unique, unlike the rest, was always decided in the borderland between the white world and the black world, i.e. in the very process of self-identification there existed the sense of the borderline nature of the African American. The “borderland” as a socio-cultural phenomenon, and all the problems associated with it, became central to American literature in the last third of the 20th century, when the question of various “hyphenated” identities came to the forefront – i.e., Americans who were exploring their ethnic roots. These problems first arose, however, in discussions about what it meant to be an African American. Even at the end of the 19th century, the question of African American self-identification from the point of view of the borderland could be found in the works of the major black prose writer at the turn of the century, Charles Waddell Chesnutt (1858-1932). He came from a wealthy family; his parents were light-skinned octoroons (those who were 1/8 black). It would have been easy for Charles Chesnutt to pass himself off as white, but he became, in Du Bois’ expression, one of those whites who, because they had black blood, decided to become black. It’s no accident that the main theme in his work was “passing” as in “passing for white,” which signified a change of racial affiliation, which led to a sense of duality, not only between the two races, but inside each of them. Thus, inside the black race there was the problem of the disdain of the light-skinned towards the dark-skinned, and of the dark-skinned towards the “yellow bastards” – a complex stratification tied to the shade of one’s skin. In his works – a collection of stories The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line (1901); the novels The House Behind the Cedars (1900), The Marrow of Tradition (1901), and The Colonel’s Dream (1905) – Chesnutt looks at the theme of the racial borderland, racial attitudes, and the tragedy of a man whom society does not help in his search for identity, instead destroying his dream of finding one. In addition, he is certain that the process of racial miscegenation in America was inevitable and positive. As a result of this combination a new American would appear, who had absorbed the best qualities of all races. This is the theme of his article “The Future American” (1901). The problem of identity within the theme of “passing” is a favorite theme of writers for the Harlem Renaissance. Nella Larsen (1891-1964), for example, touches on this idea in her novel Passing (1929). She describes a meeting between two classmates who were talking about their lives. Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry are two fairly light-skinned black women who are able to pass as white. Clare chooses the path of hiding her identity and marries a rich white man with racist views. For this reason, she is panicked at the thought of exposure. Irene, on the other hand, who is the narrator, marries a dark-skinned doctor and lives in Harlem. Sometimes she passes as white, but only as a matter of convenience – to attend the theater, for example, or to go to white restaurants and clubs. Clare’s subterfuge in finally exposed. The novel ends with the heroine falling out a window. The circumstances of her death are not completely clear: either she threw herself out of the window, or Irene pushed her, suspecting that her husband was having an affair with Clare. The heroine’s husband also might have done it, learning of his wife’s racial identity.

Nella Larsen’s novel exposes the depth of the reasons forcing African Americans to cross racial lines and change their identity. The main factor is the humiliation of the black race, and pressure from white society. It is this that pushes African Americans to cross racial borders, forces them to wear a mask and dilute their personality. A contemporary of Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960), a star of the Harlem Renaissance, presented a different point of view on the problem of identity and “passing.” In her famous novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), she juxtaposes two ways of dealing with one’s racial identity: on the one hand, the heroine of the novel, Janie, a light-skinned beauty, fully senses her affiliation with the black community; on the other hand, there is Mrs. Turner, a mulatto, who is trying to escape her race, who is not accepted by either the black or the white communities. Zora Hurston, in essence, dedicated all of her work to the problem of black cultural identity. In 1925, she enrolled in Barnard College, a female institution affiliated with Columbia University, where she became a student of Franz Uri Boas (1858-1942), the founder of cultural anthropology. His teaching was the basis for her own research into African American culture. Hurston went on numerous expeditions, where she collected folklore and voodoo traditions. Perhaps it is thanks to this “anthropological dimension” of African American culture that Zora Hurston was an exception in the Harlem movement. She did not want to deal with the purely sociological or political problems of racial equality, as her friends in the Harlem Renaissance had. It would, however, be a mistake to think that problems of racial discrimination did not bother Zora Hurston. She wrote a whole series of essays dedicated to that problem, including “How It Feels to be Colored Me” (1928), “The ‘Pet Negro’ System” (1943), “My Most Humiliating Jim Crow Experience” (1944), “What White Publishers Won’t Publish,” 1950, etc. However, she did not find it possible to participate in the propaganda activities of the Harlem activists since, as she herself acknowledged, she could not fix with a few lines something that people and God had been doing for thousands of years. Hurston’s task, therefore, was to study the African American cultural code on all levels. In addition to folklore, she included African American traditions in her literature, along with questions that concerned them, and the unique language of the blacks. All of her works are full of African American dialect, distinguished by the use of metaphor and comparisons, as well as a very specific verbal art called “playing dozens.” This was a type of “insult contest” which, in Hurst’s opinion was a consequence of the unique nature of African American culture, and the yearning of African Americans for originality in linguistic expression. Her dream was for the genuine equality of all races, which she treats with humor in her essay “How It Feels to be Colored Me:” “But in the main, I feel like a brown bag of miscellany propped against a wall. Against a wall in company with other bags, white, red and yellow. Pour out the contents, and there is discovered a jumble of small, things priceless and worthless. A first-water diamond, an empty spool, bits of broken glass, lengths of string, a key to a door long since crumbled away, a rusty knife-blade, old shoes saved for a road that never was and never will be, a nail bent under the weight of things too heavy for any nail, a dried flower or two still a little fragrant. In your hand is the brown bag. On the ground before you is the jumble it held – so much like the jumble in the bags, could they be emptied, that all might be dumped in a single heap and the bags refilled without altering the content of any greatly. A bit of colored glass more or less would not matter. Perhaps that is how the Great Stuffer of Bags filled them in the first place — who knows?” Zora Neale Hurston is now considered the founder of modern African American literature, but at the time her colleagues did not accept her. Richard Wright (1908-1960), for example, turned against Their Eyes Were Watching God, because of its clearly expressed racial message. Wright himself, in his novel Native Son (1940), in describing the fate of a young African American, Bigger Thomas, made racial conflict the central theme of the narrative. Bigger first kills a white girl by accident, and then quite deliberately kills his girlfriend, asking himself the question, à la Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment: “whether I am a trembling creature or whether I have the right…” Wright touches on the problem of the meaning of human life. In killing, Bigger violates the role allotted to him, in the end he goes beyond the limits of the existence that was determined, not by himself, but by society, proving that he exists and is capable of action. In this manner, Wright’s novel signified a change in the way African Americans identified themselves, justifying an act of violence and determining their dream for the 1960s. “Black Is Beautiful”

Malcolm X Marion S. Trikosko © Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA In the 1960s the radical wing of the African American civil rights movement took center stage, led by the Black Panthers, who insisted on the right to carry weapons for self-defense. The Nation of Islam, with its nationalist and racist rhetoric, was also prominent, contrasting Islam with Christianity. One of the leaders of the movement, Malcolm X (1925-1965), expressed his attitude towards that profoundly American phenomenon, the American Dream: “We don’t see any American dream. We’ve experienced only the American nightmare.” The assassination of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968), who advocated for equal rights for American blacks and for the peaceful resolution of their problems, only spurred the aggressive resistance of African Americans. A cultural movement during this time was W.E.B. Du Bois’ saying, “black is beautiful,” which engulfed not only the U.S., but many countries in Africa as well. In the 1960s, on the wave of political speeches about African American rights, the theory of the “black aesthetic” and the “Black Arts Movement” were born. Activists in the Black Arts Movement called for art to reflect the problems of the African American community exclusively. African American writers of this period deliberately separated themselves from the mainstream of literary development, from any depiction of white society. Their main source of inspiration was the life of black neighborhoods and the protest growing within them. One of the leaders of this movement, LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka (1934-2014), said: “The Black Artist’s role in America is to aid in the destruction of America as he knows it. His role is to report and reflect so precisely the nature of the society, and of himself, in that society, that other men will be moved by the exactness of his rendering, and if they are black men, grow strong through this moving, having seen their own strength, and weakness, and if they are white men, tremble, curse, and go mad, because they will be drenched with the filth of their evil.”

The dream of African Americans – that they will be heard – was given an interesting interpretation in the novel by Ralph Waldo Ellison (1914-1994), Invisible Man (1952). The hero of this novel does not have a name; he is not only invisible to society, he can’t even see himself. He has been saddled with the role of the worthless black man by society; the entire novel is a search for his own identity. After being expelled from college, the hero comes to New York, where, after a long search for work, he gets a job at a paint factory. Here he is given the task of transforming black paint into white using a special reactive agent. Isn’t this the author mocking the artificial separation of humanity into races? The hero ends up in the hospital following an accident and is subjected to various experiments. The hospital episode could well have been inspired by the notorious events at Tuskegee University, where Ralph Ellison had been a student. From 1932 to 1972, under the aegis of the U.S. Public Health Service, medical experiments were conducted on black men to study the effects of all stages of syphilis. Ellison was convinced that the root of evil lay in the fact that the black American was not seen as human because of the color of his skin. He also calls on whites to see themselves as human, since, just as Frederick Douglass before him, Ellis sees that slavery destroys humanity in the white master as well as in his slave. Ellison calls on everyone to throw off their former guise, leaving it in the underground, where the Invisible Man is hiding: “I’m shaking off the old skin and I’ll leave it here in the hole. I’m coming out, <…> Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?” The theme of reconciliation of racial conflict can be heard in the work of James Baldwin (1924- 1987), follower of Martin Luther King’s ideas. The drama of interpersonal relations between whites and blacks, crippled by the racism in society, was a key theme for the entire nation in the 1960s. A special place in this drama was given to love between whites and blacks. In James Baldwin’s works this love is seen as a force that is capable of liberating the personality. The process, though, is painful and tortuous, since one can only reach the meaning of love through suffering, which plays an extremely important role in the spiritual formation of the personality. More deeply than any of his contemporaries, Baldwin exposed the tragic fate of two people divided by the color of their skin. In his novel Another Country (1962) the heroes are the black jazz musician Rufus and the white girl Leona, poisoned by racial prejudices, in spite of their love. They project their inner fears on each other, and their lives collapse, since they are not strong enough to withstand the test of interracial love. As a result, Rufus dies, and Leona ends up in a mental institution. The female voice in modern African American literature In the 1970s, multiculturalism (a theory of cultural diversity at the base of which is a desire of each national group to retain its own traditions and characteristics) was gaining momentum. It changed not only the interpretation of interracial relations and the road to identity, but also the artistic ways of conveying the problem of African American identity. Female authors came to the forefront; their voice was the leading one for almost all of the last third of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. These include Alice Malsenior Walker (born 1944), Maya Angelou (born Marguerite Ann Johnson, 1928-2014), Gloria Naylor (1950-2016), Toni Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford, 1931-2019). The main theme of their work was how women gained the strength to get out of the situation into which they had been placed by centuries – the “inferior race, inferior gender.” All of their works are tied to stories of black women exploring consciousness and identity and overcoming their traumatic experiences. One example of this is Maya Angelou’s autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969). In it, Maya Angelou recounts how in childhood she was a victim of sexual violence from her mother’s boyfriend. She told her brother and he told the rest of the family. The perpetrator was found guilty but spent only a year in jail. Four days after his release, however, he was murdered. They never found his killer, but everyone suspected the girl’s uncle. She became afraid of the power of her words, and for five years did not utter a sound. These were the years, however, that nurtured the future writer inside her. The theme of the powerful woman is also central in the work of Alice Walker. In her novel Meridian (1976), she tells about a black woman who enters adulthood just as the civil rights movement of the 1960s was becoming active. In her novel The Color Purple (1982), the narrator is the completely downtrodden girl Celie, who suffers beatings and sexual violence from her husband. In the end, she finds support and strength in female friendship. Toni Morrison, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993, is also familiar with this theme. The African American woman in her novels is a victim of violence The Bluest Eye (1970), but nevertheless, does not lose her strength, and acts as the repository of the customs and traditions of the black community. She is the continuation of the race, she bears and raises children, but she carries the burden of a terrible past (Beloved, 1987) and transmits the knowledge gained by ancestors to the following generations. The main feature of both Toni Morrison and Alice Walker, however, are new forms of artistic expression tied to African American folklore. What Zora Neale Hurston had done, and how she wrote, became extremely relevant several decades after her death. In place of a conclusion Modern writers have taken the baton from previous generations of African American writers, widely using both their achievements in resolving the problems of identity of the black population of the U.S. and their artistic inventions. One example of this is Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad (2016), which tells of the horrors of slave life in the antebellum South, of how the young slave Cora runs away from the plantation, and of her long and painful path to freedom. The novel instantly became a New York Times bestseller, and in 2017 was awarded the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. In this novel, Colson Whitehead treats escape from slavery as a phenomenon of a people’s collective memory, which is the basis for the formation of a national and cultural identity. The text contains numerous references to the histories of hundreds of escapees – especially women – and the separation of families, of physical abuse on the plantations, collected in what is, perhaps, the most famous documentary work on escape from slavery, the book by William Still (1821-1902), The Underground Railroad Records, which was published in 1872.

It is important to note that in the novel the collective memory of slavery is tied to its individual carrier – a woman, since it is she, the one whom the South always treated as “the inferior gender of the inferior race,” who has to bear the worst trials of the path to freedom. Frederick Douglass, in his autobiography, said that when the real history of the anti-slavery movement is written, women would occupy the most important place in it, since the fate of a slave was more a woman’s lot. For this reason, Colson Whitehead ties the collective memory of African Americans with the individual fate of a woman, who experienced the worst humiliations both from whites and from her black brothers. These trials did not break her; on the contrary, they ignited within her the spirit of freedom. Whitehead’s chosen approach guaranteed the novel’s success: he appealed not only to historical fact, but to the phenomenon of African American collective memory, placing it alongside the cultural, historical and collective memory of the entire nation. The literary tradition of African Americans thus is tied to the understanding of freedom and equality as the main dream of the black population of the U.S. Beginning with the first works, which imitated white literature, African Americans created an independent branch of American literature by turning to their folkloric tradition. They explored the long history of the black struggle for the dream, so that those great words could finally become a reality: “That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Basic and additional literature:

Vashchenko, A., Negro Autobiography as a Genre. The Appearance of the Novel// History of U.S. Literature in 7 volumes, Vol. 3, Moscow, 2000, Nitoburg, E. L., 20th Century African Americans: An Ethno-Historical Sketch, Moscow, Nauka, 2009, p. 600 Panova, O., Modeling the Image of the Black Race in American Culture and Literature on the Cusp of the 19th-20th Centuries Humanitarian and Socio-Economic Science– 2014, No. 1 – pp. 78-82 Panova, O., Colored Worlds: American Literature in Search of a National Identity Moscow 2014 Hurston, Zora Neale, How It Feels to be Colored Me, Translation and Foreword by I. Morozova, Foreign Literature No. 7, 2017 Udler, I. V., In Slavery and Freedom: The Creation and Evolution of the Documentary Genre “Slave Narratives” in the 18th-19th Centuries Chelyabinsk: Encyclopedia, 2009, p. 239 Udler, I. V., “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself” in the Context of the Slave Narrative Genre Chelyabinsk State University Gazette, 2010, No. 11 (192), pp. 133-138 American Slave Narratives: An Online Anthology http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/wpa/wpahome.html http://blackliterature.com/