{"id":28808,"date":"2022-02-26T03:43:00","date_gmt":"2022-02-26T03:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=28808"},"modified":"2022-03-01T00:27:20","modified_gmt":"2022-03-01T00:27:20","slug":"how-a-black-writer-in-19th-century-america-used-humor-to-combat-white-supremacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/how-a-black-writer-in-19th-century-america-used-humor-to-combat-white-supremacy\/","title":{"rendered":"How a Black writer in 19th-century America used humor to combat white supremacy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Rodney Taylor<\/a>, University of South Carolina<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Any writer has to struggle with the dilemma of staying true to their vision or giving editors and readers what they want. A number of factors might influence the latter: the market, trends and sensibilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But in the decades after the Civil War, Black writers looking to faithfully depict the horrors of slavery had to contend with readers whose worldviews were colored by racism, as well as an entire swath of the country eager to paper over the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Charles Chesnutt<\/a> was one of those writers. Forced to work with skeptical editors and within the confines of popular forms, Chesnutt nonetheless worked to shine a light on the legacy of slavery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His 1899 collection of stories, \u201cThe Conjure Woman<\/a>,\u201d took place on a Southern plantation and sold well. At first glance, the stories seemed to mimic other books set in the South written in a style called \u201clocal color<\/a>,\u201d which focuses on regional characters, dialects and customs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Chesnutt had actually written a subversive counternarrative, using humor to poke holes in the nostalgic myths of the South and expose the contradictions of a racist society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rewriting the past<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

After the Civil War, there was a concerted effort to portray the South as a pastoral place possessed with a culture of honor. Slavery, meanwhile, had been a nurturing, even benevolent, institution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These beliefs bled into the era\u2019s fiction, with white authors such as Thomas Nelson Page<\/a> and Joel Chandler Harris<\/a> writing stories that sentimentalized and softened the complex histories of the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Broadsheet<\/a>
Writer and editor Joel Chandler Harris published a magazine named for his famous character Uncle Remus. Jay Paull\/Getty Images<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Many of these stories feature a formerly enslaved older male who\u2019s given the affectionate moniker \u201cUncle.\u201d These characters tended to describe the Civil War as an affront on the Southern way of life, while presenting the South and its landed gentry as heroic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In \u201cA Story of the War<\/a>,\u201d for example, Harris introduces the character Uncle Remus, who recounts the time his master went away to fight the Civil War. Overcome with concern for the man who enslaved him, Uncle Remus follows him and witnesses a Northern soldier preparing to shoot him. In a moment of panic, Remus shoots the Northerner, wounding him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA Story of the War,\u201d like most Southern local color tales, appealed to readers invested in the Lost Cause of the Old South<\/a>, a revisionist ideology that depicts the creation of the Confederate States and cause of the Civil War as just and heroic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Historian Fred Bailey<\/a> notes that stories like Page\u2019s and Harris\u2019 were \u201chailed by the South\u2019s upper-classes,\u201d while associations like the United Daughters of the Confederacy<\/a> routinely read from these works at their meetings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chesnutt\u2019s revisionist humor<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

At first glance, it would seem Chesnutt, who was mixed-race and could have easily passed for white<\/a>, was merely working within the dominant literary form of his time and fashioning stories geared to a white audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like his white contemporaries, Chesnutt, in \u201cThe Conjure Woman,\u201d includes a character who\u2019s an \u201cuncle\u201d living on the abandoned plantation where he once toiled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Chesnutt, as literary historian Dickson Bruce points out in his 2005 essay \u201cConfronting the Crisis: African American Narratives<\/a>,\u201d used the setting of the plantation to present a more authentic representation of slavery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Book<\/a>
The first edition cover of Charles Chesnutt\u2019s \u2018The Conjure Woman.\u2019 Documenting the American South<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Uncle Julius, who appears in each of the collection\u2019s stories, isn\u2019t nostalgic for some bygone era. Instead, he reflects on his own life and seeks to show the humanity of the enslaved. He uses his ability as a raconteur to cleverly swindle a white carpetbagger who bought the plantation Julius lived on during his bondage and after the Civil War. The stories are descriptive, corrective \u2013 and, most importantly, funny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Chesnutt\u2019s tales explicitly engage with the hard history of slavery, each of the stories ends on a lighter note, with Uncle Julius often getting what he wants. Throughout the collection, he parodies the conventions of Southern fiction \u2013 whether refuting racist tropes or showing the cruelty of the ruling class \u2013 subtly poking fun at a culture enveloped by the fog of nostalgia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bound by form<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, Chesnutt felt as if he couldn\u2019t simply write broadsides against myths like the Lost Cause. In order to be published, Black writers needed to appeal to the sensibilities of white readers and the demands of editors<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, Uncle Julius spoke in a Black dialect that sounded similar to those of the uncles authored by white writers. This didn\u2019t come easily for Chesnutt. In one letter to his editor<\/a>, Chesnutt described writing in this dialect as a \u201cdespairing task.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nonetheless, he avoided completely pandering to mainstream expectations of how Black characters should be portrayed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He rejected the emergent historiography of Reconstruction<\/a> that refused to recognize the agency of African Americans, and despite working within the form, Chesnutt didn\u2019t present Julius as a buffoon who was happy to serve the whites in his midst.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even though his stories didn\u2019t overtly denounce racism, Chesnutt hoped they might still chip away at prejudice<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut the subtle almost indefinable feeling of repulsion toward the negro, which is common to most Americans \u2013 and easily enough accounted for, cannot be stormed and taken by assault; the garrison will not capitulate: so their position must be mined, and we will find ourselves in their midst before they think it.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Humor opens doors<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Chesnutt is far from the only Black artist asked to make compromises. Poet Langston Hughes<\/a> had a falling out with his patron, Charlotte Osgood Mason<\/a>, who viewed African Americans as a link to the species\u2019 primitive past and wanted his work to be devoid of political progressivism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Hughes wrote in his 1940 autobiography, \u201cThe Big Sea<\/a>,\u201d \u201cI was only an American Negro \u2013 who had loved the surface of Africa and the rhythms of Africa \u2013 but I was not Africa. I was Chicago and Kansas City and Broadway and Harlem. And I was not what she wanted me to be.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Chesnutt, I also see ties to contemporary Black comedians who center their humor around race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the third season of \u201cChappelle\u2019s Show<\/a>,\u201d Dave Chappelle famously suffered from an existential crisis because the comedian wasn\u2019t sure how people were responding to his humor. In a 2006 interview with Oprah Winfrey<\/a>, he explained how, when filming a sketch in blackface, \u201csomeone on the set, that was white, laughed in such a way \u2013 I know the difference of people laughing with me and laughing at me. And it was the first time I\u2019d ever gotten a laugh that I was uncomfortable with.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shortly after, Chappelle quit the show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Man
Comedian Dave Chappelle struggled over whether the audience was laughing with him or at him. Riccardo Savi\/Getty Images<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

While Chesnutt was certainly not the first African American artist to use humor to depict the horrors of slavery, he was one of the first to reach the American mainstream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The humor disarms readers, helping them cross a psychological threshold and enter a space where a more nuanced conversation about the history of the country can take place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.<\/em> Sign up for our weekly newsletter<\/a>.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rodney Taylor<\/a>, Postdoctoral Fellow in African American Studies, University of South Carolina<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rodney Taylor, University of South Carolina Any writer has to struggle with the dilemma of staying true to their vision or giving editors and readers what they want. A number of factors might influence the latter: the market, trends and sensibilities. But in the decades after the Civil War, Black writers looking to faithfully depict […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":28809,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293,8025],"tags":[6723,1921,11391,2143,7816,1740,11390,498,1728,992,3681,3504],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28808"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28808"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28825,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28808\/revisions\/28825"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}