Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg

Magisterarbeit
im Magisterstudiengang Anglistik

The Development of the Self-Image in Black Autobiographical Writing (Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois and Malcolm X)

Moritz Oehl

Table of Contents

1. Introduction ... 3

2. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass ... 10

2.1 Summary ... 11
2.2 Basic Structure and Narrative Techniques ... 14
2.2.1 The Genre of the Slave Narrative ... 14
2.2.1.1 Historical Circumstances ... 14
2.2.1.2 Typical Stylistic Features of the Slave Narrative ... 15
2.2.1.3 Intentions and Purposes of the Slave Narrative ... 18
2.2.1.4 Relationship between “Autobiography” and “Slave Narrative” ... 19
2.2.2 Basic Structure and Narrative Techniques of the Narrative ... 21
2.3 Textual Interpretation ... 27
2.3.1 “I suffered little from any thing else than hunger and cold” – ... 27
Douglass’s Childhood on the Plantation ... 27
2.3.2 “A Sense of my own manhood” – Knowledge and Resistance ... 32
2.3.3 “I left my chains” – Escape and Freedom ... 37

3. W.E.B. Du Bois: Darkwater – Voices from within the Veil ... 41

3.1 Summary ... 42
3.2 Basic Structure and Narrative Techniques ... 46
3.2.1 Black Writing at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century ... 46
3.2.1.1 Historical Circumstances ... 46
3.2.1.2 Literary Forms, Strategies and Works ... 47
3.2.1.3 Literary Influences ... 49
3.2.1.4 Stylistic Features ... 50
3.2.2 Basic Structure and Narrative Techniques of Darkwater ... 52
3.3 Textual Interpretation ... 56
3.3.1 “Thank God! no ‘Anglo-Saxon’” – Du Bois as a Victim of Racial Oppression and as Black Leader ... 57
3.3.2 “It is the mother I ever recall” – Du Bois′s Concern for Women ... 61
3.3.3 “Awake, O ancient race!” – Du Bois and his African Roots ... 65

4. The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965) ... 72

4.1 Summary ... 73
4.2 Basic Structure and Narrative Techniques ... 81
4.2.1 Black Literature in the 1960’s ... 81
4.2.1.1 Historical Circumstances for Writing ... 81
4.2.1.2 Literary Forms, Strategies and Works ... 82
4.2.1.3 The Autobiographical Genre vs. Black Autobiographies ... 83
4.2.1.4 The Conversion or Educational Narrative ... 85
4.2.1.5 Other Genres for Classifying The Autobiography ... 87
4.2.2 Basic Structure and Narrative Techniques of The Autobiography of Malcolm X ... 89
4.3 Textual Interpretation ... 96
4.3.1 From “Mascot” to “Hustler”: Childhood and Adolescence ... 97
4.3.2 From “Satan” to “Minister Malcolm X”: Convert and Black Muslim ... 100
4.3.3 “El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz”: Malcolm and his Break with the “Nation of Islam” ... 105

5. Conclusion ... 110

Bibliography ... 119

1. Introduction

Is white America really sorry for her crimes against the black people? Does white America have the capacity to repent – and to atone? Does the capacity to repent, to atone, exist in a majority, in one-half, in even one-third of American white society? Many black men, the victims – in fact most black men – would like to be able to forgive, to forget, the crimes. But most American white people seem not to have it in them to make any serious atonement – to do justice to the black man.

– From The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965) – ¹

Who and what are blacks in the United States and what has white America done to them? In 2004, 37,502,000 out of a total population of 293,655,000 Americans were of African- American origin.² Blacks thus statistically represent 12.77 per cent of the US population. They have been a crucial group for the country ever since they first set foot on American ground. They are the foundation of American wealth and the victims of a long tradition of forced labor and racism. For centuries they have faced whites’ racism and nevertheless have stayed in the country. The history of blacks is the history of a people brought to its present location against its own free will. However unbelievable and cruel their past has been, blacks’ importance for American culture nowadays is enormous. Blacks win gold medals for the US Olympic Team and dominate the national sports leagues; black musicians lead the American charts; black actors receive awards for their movie appearances and a black politician, Condoleezza Rice, has even become Secretary of State under President Bush. Their road to success, however, has been marked by a long and tiring struggle, a search for an identity in a society that has for centuries regarded and treated blacks as inhuman property.

These “crimes against the black people” that Malcolm X mentioned above is what African-American authors write about in their literature. For white readers, their books are often like a sting from a bee and not easy to cope with. But their accounts are worth reading. Nowhere else will you find a more honest description of what it feels like to be black in a country founded on the premise that “All men are created equal”. A country that for generations simply would not accept the fact that blacks might demand that right, as well. Of course, white writers have also tried to bring the plight of African-American to public attention. We might think of Mark Twain’s “nigger” Jim in Huckleberry Finn, or Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin which both, albeit with differently shaped characters, have impressive messages to convey. But only literature by black writers is really able to evaluate the harsh reality of being a “slave”, a “nigger”, a “negro”, a “colored person” or an “African-American”. Only those who for centuries have been addressed with these formerly derogative, nowadays somehow more respectful labels really have something to say about their feelings. The aim of this study on the development of the self-image in black autobiographical writing is to discover who and what blacks are, what has been done to them and how they convey their messages through literature.

In black writing, autobiography inhabits a special position. Ever since slavery, autobiographical accounts by African-Americans have thereby developed away from the classic examples of the genre. According to Stephen Butterfield, unlike Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography and other “classic” white American personal narratives, black autobiography cannot simply be categorized as a “kind of manual of how to achieve power, wealth, and fame”.³ It is crucial to know that by writing a personal memoir, African-Americans do more than simply summarize their lives or give their readers advice on how to behave themselves. Rather, black autobiographies often provide their African-American readers with a sense of group identity and attempt to give a meaning to their existences. Butterfield best describes the special status of African-American autobiography:

The self is conceived as a member of an oppressed social group, with ties and responsibilities to the other members. It is a conscious political identity, drawing sustenance from the past experience of the group, giving back the iron of its endurance fashioned into armor and weapons for the use of the next generation of fighters. […] The appeal of black autobiographies is in their political awareness, their empathy for suffering, they ability to break down the division of “I” and “you”, their knowledge of oppression and discovery of ways to cope with that experience, and their sense of shared life, shared triumph, and communal responsibility. The self belongs to the people, and the people find a voice in the self.⁴

While each of the chosen works of this study will be set in relation to white autobiographies and compared to some of them in the respective chapters, the reader of this thesis shall keep in mind the special meaning of black autobiographies.

What is more, not only are black autobiographical writings important in providing a communal experience for African-Americans, they also give their white readers something to think about. One does not necessarily need to visit the places where Douglass, Du Bois and Malcolm X lived to gain new insights into the, to some extent still existing, American racial dilemma. Their, and other African-Americans’ autobiographies can also prove to be of some value to white students and scholars by a close reading. Although written in 1974, Stephen Butterfield’s articulation of black autobiographical writings’ special meaning for non-blacks is still valid more than thirty years later:

They help us to see what has been left out of the picture of our national life by white writers and critics, how our critical judgment has been limited, indeed, crippled, by a blind spot toward Afro-American culture […] To read closely what they have to say, to allow their message entry into the bloodstream and vital nerve centers, is to look the monster of slavery and racism full in the face, to confront it nakedly, without the shield of interpretation by white historians. Knowledge of the sins of the fathers is a terrible burden for the children of pirates, murderers, kidnappers, rapists, for the children of those who received the benefits of stolen labor and genocide and closed their eyes, perhaps with a humanitarian shudder, to its effects. ⁵

[...]

1 Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X. As Told to Alex Haley, 1965 (New York: Ballantine Books, 1999) 377. For reasons of simplification I will shorten the title to The Autobiography or The Autobiography of Malcolm X in the remainder of this thesis.
2 Statistical Abstract of the United States: Section 1. Population, 2006, 11.02.2006 <http://www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/06statab/pop.pdf>
3 Stephen Butterfield, Black Autobiography in America (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1974) 2.
4 Ibid., 3.
5 Butterfield, 3-4.