Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1988 "The rT ouble I've Seen": Visions and Revisions of Bondage, Flight, and Freedom in Black American Autobiography. David Lewis Dudley Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Dudley, David Lewis, ""The rT ouble I've Seen": Visions and Revisions of Bondage, Flight, and Freedom in Black American Autobiography." (1988). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 4494. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/4494 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. PLEASE NOTE: In all cases this material has been filmed in the best possible way from the available copy. Problems encountered with this document have been identified here with a check mark V . 1. Glossy photographs or pages____ 2. Colored illustrations, paper or print_____ 3. Photographs with dark background ____ 4. Illustrations are poor copy _____ 5. Pages with black marks, not original copy _____ 6. Print shows through as there is text on both sides of page______ 7. Indistinct, broken or small print on several pages______ 8. Print exceeds margin requirements_____ 9. Tightly bound copy with print lost in spine______ 10. Computer printout pages with indistinct print_____ 11. Page(s)_________lacking when material received, and not available from school or author. 12. Page(s) seem to be missing in numbering only as text follows. 13. Two pages numbered . Text follows. 14. Curling and wrinkled pages_____ 15. Dissertation contains pages with print at a slant, filmed as received 16. Other_________________________________ Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. "The Trouble I ’ ve Seen": Visions and Revisions of Bondage, Flight, and Freedom in Black American Autobiography A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of English by David Lewis Dudley B.A., Duke University, 1970 M.Div., Concordia Seminary, 1975 M.A., The University of West Florida, 1984 May 18,1988 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. for Eileen i i Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Acknowledgements Many people have helped me complete this paper. I thank my family and friends for their encouragement and for their interest in my work. Particular thanks to Dr. James Olney for his guidance during the planning and writing of the dissertation, and for his friendship. I thank Dr. Jerry Kennedy for his helpful suggestions about the style and substance of the manuscript. The librarians at the Pace Library of the University of West Florida were unfailingly willing to help roe obtain materials. I thank them. The Department of English and Foreign Languages of the University of West Florida provided great help in the printing of the manuscript in its various drafts. Thanks to Drs. Stanton Millet and Ron Miller for their generosity. Finally, I acknowledge my great debt to Ms. Linda Uebelsteadt, who spent many hours typing and printing this work. I thank her for her patience, her good humor, and her generous spirit. Philippians 4:13 iii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Table of Contents Acknowledgements 1i 1 Table of Contents 1v Abstract v Chapter One: Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington 1 Chapter Two: Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois 69 Chapter Three: Richard Wright 116 Chapter Four: Richard Wright, James, Baldwin, and Eldridge 169 Cleaver Chapter Five: Malcolm X 214 Bibliography 263 Vita 270 iv Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Abstract This dissertation, an historical overview of black American autobiography from Frederick Douglass to Malcolm X, examines a recurring pattern and two related themes in the genre. Ever since the escaped slave narratives established bondage, flig h t, and freedom as the three-part pattern of their organization, black autobiographers have employed these same elements to te ll their life stories. The creation of the free "I" is the pervasive theme of black American autobiography, freedom being won and the autobiographical self established through a symbolic struggle against and victory over a powerful father figure. This figure may be the paternalistic white culture in which the autobiographer lives as part of an oppressed minority, the autobiographer’s biological father, an older man who exerts great influence on the autobiographer’ s thinking, or the autobiographer’s predecessor in the black autobiographical tradition. By striking out against the father, the autobiographer creates his own "imaginative space" and finds his individuality. Chapter One traces the creation of the three-part pattern and its perfection in Douglass’ s Narrative. Booker T. Washington’s Up From Slavery is seen as an attempt by Washington to "tame" Douglass and to assume leadership of American blacks. Chapter Two examines W.E.B. Du Bois’s challenge to Washington for that leadership, detailing how the two men waged a long literary war for Douglass’s mantle. Richard Wright’ s Black Boy is the subject of Chapter Three. Wright lashes out against white America for seeking to keep him in v Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. psychological bondage and traces his rebellion against the racist South and his flig h t to the North and a rtis tic freedom. Chapter Four examines how James Baldwin attacks Wright and challenges him for a rtis tic leadership among blacks; Eldridge Cleaver then uses similar tactics against Baldwin. Chapter Five treats The Autobiography of Malcolm X. examining Malcolm’ s struggle for intellectual freedom once he is ousted from his once-secure identity as spiritual son and heir apparent to Elijah Muhammad. Alex Haley’ s role as co-creator of the autobiography is also studied, and the dissertation concludes with a general treatment of black American autobiography’ s relationship to black culture, American autobiography, and autobiography as a whole. vi Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Chapter One INTRODUCTION Critics of Afro-American writing have discovered a wealth of sources which have contributed to that lite ra tu re ’ s richness. Some trace the.African influence on black writers; others detect picaresque characters and plots. Many have noted elements of black folk culture in black writing: blues, jazz, spirituals, sermons, toasts, the "dozens," cautionary tales, trickster tales, legends, rural and urban speech patterns, folk beliefs such as voodoo and conjure, and standard folk characters.1 Others trace the influence of American literature upon black writers—the 19th century romantic tradition emphasizing personal freedom and identity