After doing the extremely hard job of escaping slavery, Frederick Douglass faced an equally challenging job of creating a persuasive image — an image that would make people want to join the abolition movement. He knew the power of a picture and what it was capable of doing, so when in front of the camera […]
Frederick Douglass practiced what he preached. Through his seminal work Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave he shows that he is a true American hero/badass. He is a fighter and he portrays himself as such. He cultivates this image through the pictures he chooses for his book cover and how he […]
Frederick Douglass made sure to create a self-image that would make him a credible black abolitionist in the 19th century. His image was dependent on the photographs that were taken of him, his speeches, and how he wrote about himself in his narrative. In the video titled History, Photography, and Race in the South: From […]
Before the genre existed, Frederick Douglass wrote an autobiography entitled Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, often referred to as the Narrative. Douglass chronicled his intervallic existence from a man turned into a “slave” and, through hardship, into a man with agency. Born to an enslaved black mother and white enslaver […]
In The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Douglass crafts a harrowing and intense account of his journey out of slavery and into freedom. The entirety of his story boils down to a concept explored in “History, Photography, and Race in the South: From the Civil War to Now Part 4—Pictures and Progress: Frederick […]
Clotel by William Wells Brown follows the enslaved progeny of Thomas Jefferson through the deep south in the early 1800s. Clotel and her sister are the daughters of Jefferson. The first chapter of the book describes their being sold at auction. By this, we are right away made aware of how damning it is to be […]
Clotel, by Williams Wells Brown, offers one of the first pieces of literature written by an African American novelist. Because of its time of publication, the work shows a lens that had never been seen in American literature. Wells tells a story of the society where black people have to navigate colorism and racism while […]
For this last post, we will read several sermons from late in King’s life and consider how these items from the late 1960s may complicate, nuance, or challenge some of the ways that King has been remembered in public memory since that time. We will also hear from Brian Ward about King’s 1967 visit to […]
For this fifth assignment, we’re considering questions of public memory and history here in Atlanta. The photo above was taken on the Bell Building in downtown Atlanta on Georgia State’s campus. For the last several years, there has been controversy about how to “Save the Bell.” While this post doesn’t ask you to dive into […]
For your fourth post, we’re re-examining British history and public memory through a careful examination of the intersection between Black identity and British identity. Together, our readings and viewings will help us think through the complex relationships of race and nation in historical and contemporary moments. We will also consider how the public memory of […]
For your third blog post, we’re exploring the relationship between Ireland, the UK, and the U.S. South. Reading: Quinlan, Kieran. “Introduction.” Strange Kin: Ireland & the American South. LSU Press, 2005. Listening: “North & South Elsewhere,” About South Podcast. Frederick Douglass writes in his Narrative: “I went one day down on the wharf of Mr. […]
A historical novel borrowed from historical truth, Clotel is the tragic tale of three generations of biracial women in the antebellum south, where William Wells Brown dives deep into the issues of enslavement, politics, and religion in America. He interweaves this dramatic tale where enslavement is justified due to religious doctrine that classified certain skin tones […]
Throughout Clotel, William Wells Brown’s ideologies and messages at times seem to contradict each other. The reader is left to distinguish if these contradictions, such as characterizing Sam in an anti-slavery novel, are because of this own failings and/or internalized racism within the author, or if they are intentional contradictions to highlight the perfidious nature […]
William Wells Brown’s novel Clotel serves as a major milestone. Not only because it’s considered the first published novel to be written by an African American, but because it forces its readers to really think about slavery and the effects of it. More than that, it shows us how Christians at that time thought. Often […]
The dramatic and sensational narrative that William Wells Brown crafts in Clotel captivates readers and pushes them to explore the principles of slavery and politics in early America. “Slavery” is a vast reference to the host of race-driven issues that perpetuated in the country, containing subsets of conflicts in colorism, religion, and regional loyalism for […]
This week we’re reading Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Watch: https://www.nga.gov/audio-video/mann-symposium/mann-symposium-part4-video.html Supplementary Reading 1: Read and examine the images in Appendix A (page 173-184) on the European editions of Douglass’s narratives Supplementary Reading 2 (select one): Read any one of the Douglass letters written from Scotland in Appendix B Read Item 10 in Appendix […]
This week we’re reading William Wells Brown’s Clotel. Supplementary Reading (select one): “Clotel,” Hereford Times (17 December 1853) — Starts on page 215 “W.W. Brown’s New Work,” National Anti-Slavery Standard 31 December 1853 (Review republished from the London Eastern Star) — Starts on page 218 “Clotel” Anti-Slavery Advocate 2 (January 1854) — Starts on page […]