Hopeful Children

"Any black man who can read a book are the gateway to a forbidden world. And we are joyful when we hear a black man speak like a book. The people who say how the world is to be run, who have fires in winter, who wear warm clothes, who get enough to eat, are the people who make books speak to them. SOmetimes of a night we tell our children to get out the old big family Bible and read to us, and we listen wonderingly until, tired from a long day in the fields, we fall asleep" (Wright, 65).

"The land we till is beautiful, with red and black and brown clay, with fresh and hungry smells, with pine trees and palm trees" (32)

12 Million Black Voices

"We want what others have, the right to share in the upward march of the Amerian life, the only life we remember or have ever known." 146

Laura & Alex

James and Ayesha - Quote from Pg 38

In the introduction one of the essayists makes comment on how in the present day blacks have stretched as far as positions of power in American society, but, in Wright's commentary, he repeatedly remarks that blacks, despite the better positions they were able to hold such as the one pictured here, still lacked any real power or position in society. Ayesha found a quote which encompasses this idea: "The economic and political power of the South is not held in our hands; we do not own banks, iron and steel mills, railroads, office buildings, ships, wharves, or power plants" (38).

Spirituality in the Face of Oppression

"What we have not dared to feel in the presence of the Lords of the Land, we now feel in church."
(Wright 68)

Awesomeness by: Claire Peckham and Alexis Cownan 

"While we are leaving, our black boys come back from Flanders, telling us of how their white officers of the United States Army had treated them, how they had kept them in labor battalions, how they had Jim-Crowed them in the trenches even when they were fighting and dying, how the white officers had instructed the French people to segregate them," (88).

"The land we till is beautiful, with red and black and brown clay, with fresh and hungry smells, with pine trees and palm trees" (32)

We Work

In the main, we black folk earn our living in two ways in the northern cities: we work as domestics or as laborers. Pg. 117

Pastoral Photograph

"At midday the sun blazes and bleaches the soil. Butterflies flit through the heat; wasps sting sharp, straight lines; birds fluff and flounce, piping in querulous joy." (Wright 32)

Play

"They say we speak treasonably when we declare that human life is plastic, that human nature is malleable, that men possess the dignity and meaning of the environmental and institutional forms through which they are lucky or unlucky enough to express themselves" (130)

For me, a big part of the fascination of 12 Million Black Voices is Wright's account of the relationship between the African-American experience and art. Wright seems to suggest a complex relationship between subjugation and aesthetics, whereby music and literature and painting (and, perhaps a bit later, film) participate in the politics of racial inequality whether or not such works of art were created with an explicitly political message or intention. For Wright, art becomes a means by which disenfranchised African-American communities come to terms with an often unjust and hostile world; the beauties and pleasures of art can be a means of escape from life's cruelties, but they can also be a means of constructing them differently, of learning to see the world in a way that racist whites can't or won't. It's interesting that the meaning and nature of African-American seems to vary with the perspectives of its audience. The music and writing of the "Black Belts" seems strange and threatening to racist white onlookers- that very same impulse of escape and recreation seems like rebellion and iconoclasm to those on the other end of the racial divide.

Discussion questions: what relationship does 12 Million Black Voices suggest between art and politics? Can escapism and beauty be forms of rebellion?

"The seasons of the plantation no longer dictate the lives of many of us; hundreds of thousands of us are moving into the sphere of conscious history.
We are the new tide. We stand at the crossroads. We watch each new procession. The hot wires carry urgent appeals. Print compels us. Voices are speaking. Men are moving! And we shall be with them..." (147)

Wright spends roughly 140 pages describing, in harrowing detail, the plight of the average African-American and the roles they played in Southern and Northern society. It is, therefore, nice to see him ending on a seemingly positive note. The closing paragraph and accompanying picture of a man with his face upturned and his expression positive, encapsulates the journey that African-Americans have made from despair to the strong hope of change. Wright expresses, in strong terms, the dream of African-Americans to become a part of American life and partake of the successes and opportunities available to others. He acknowledges the importance of cooperation between whites and blacks but also recognizes that the African-American consciousness has been moulded by their experiences with whites. With the last passage, he highlights their endurance and their strong will to fight back against the injustice of oppression and make a change for themselves. 12 Million Black Voices is a compelling narrative about the sufferings of African-Americans at the hands of the whites, but it's also a declaration of the strength and perseverance that characterizes them. Wright still uses "us-them" language, but here I think it is necessary to use this kind of divisive language to indicate that they are a people who are no longer taking no for an answer and who are fed up of the alienation imposed by the South and the Black Belt in the North and are ready to become part of a new era of  tolerance and acceptance. He uses short, emphatic phrases to drive the point home but what intrigued me was the ellipses at the end of the last sentence. It seems to serve as a form of temperance to his prior declarations but it seems ill-fitting, given that his earlier sentences are empassioned and straightforward.

Question: why do you think Wright chose to end 12 Million Black Voices in such a manner? Does it affect the impact that the ending had on you? Would you say the ending is positive or cautious?

Seeking Inclusion

"It is when we seek to express ourselves that the paradoxical cleavage in our lives shows most. Day after day we labor in the gigantic factories and mills of Western civilization, but we have never been allowed to become an organic part of this civilization; we have yet to share its ultimate hopes and expectations. Its incentives and perspectives, which form the core of meaning for so many millions, have yet to lift our personalities to levels of purpose. Instead, after working all day in one civilization, we go home to our Black Belts and live, within the orbit of the surviving remnants of the culture of the South, our naive, casual, verbal, fluid folk life." (Wright 127)

Here, Wright reflects on the seemingly inherent futility of the goal of cultural homogeneity between whites and blacks in America. Although legally granted citizenship, Wright sees a country that is culturally unwilling to assimilate and associate with black culture. Wright elucidates the fact that until people are ready to actively afford blacks the same treatment as whites, there will forever be a barrier that actively furthers the distance and hostility between the two groups. The underlying act of disassociation serves only to weaken the country as a whole and set back any kind of cultural homogeneity that could be achieved through more widespread acceptance of black citizens. By actively shunning black culture, there is an almost conscious damnation of any kind of social progress made by blacks and in doing so binds black citizens to the "remnants" of their own Southern culture wholly removed from the world around them.

QUESTION: Wright suggests that since blacks are consciously excluded from the American civilization, great dividends could be reaped from acceptance and inclusion into the more mainstream sphere of existence in the country. How does this help inform Wright's usage of terms like 'we,' 'us,' and 'you' earlier in the book?

The Long March Home

"Lord in Heaven! God God Almighty! Great Day in the Morning! It's here! Our time has come! We are leaving! We are angry no more; we are leaving! We are bitter no more; we are leaving! We are leaving our homes, pulling the stakes up to move on. We look up at the high southern sky and remember all the sunshine and the rain and we feel a sense of loss, but we are leaving." (Wright 92)

Wright creates this atmosphere of reigning victory and joy with the opening paragraph, implying the duality of nostalgia and future promise the African American masses felt at the end of the reign of slavery. He utilizes repetition, continuously exclaiming, "We are leaving" (Wright 92). The repetition successfully complements the elated moment because of its implied depth. The continuous reappearance of the phrase highlights the awe and utter shock the African American masses felt, giving way to the incredulous emotional response that resulted from abolition. The repetition gives way to a stream of consciousness dictation, as if the collective speaker is in disbelief, repeatedly remarking the idea of leaving, as if in disbelief. Slavery in the South proved to be a time of turmoil and relentless conflict for the emerging cultural group, providing the African American identity with unity on the base of prejudice and prosecution. The simple three words "we are leaving" implies a decisive driving force that they will undoubtedly leave as one, in promise of a better future, these emotions unanimously resonate in the speaker's voice. Wright's repetition of phrase brings the reader to realize the importance of this mass migration of Black people to the North and its historical and emotional impact on the emerging culture as a whole. 

Discussion Question: 

If the newly freed African American population knew of the prejudice and the hardship they would face on Northern soil prior to the mass migrations which followed abolition, would they have left the South? Why or why not?

The Scottsboro Boys

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/FTrials/scottsboro/SB_acct.html

Richard Wright, taking on the voice of African Americans, particularly freed slaves traveling North for work, makes a reference to the nine "Scottsboro Boys," who in 1931 were accused of gang raping two white girls on a Southern Railroad freight run. Wright places the reference in very close proximity to an argument about the road in which black and white people have travelled. He writes;

"We were able to seize nine black boys in a jail in Scottsboro, Alabama, lift them so high in our collective hands, focus such a battery of comment and interpretation upon them, that they became symbols to all the world of the plight of black folk in America," (145).

"If we had been allowed to participate in the vital processes of America's national growth, what would have been the texture of our lives, the pattern of our traditions, the routine of our customs, the state of our arts, the code of our laws, the function of our government! Whatever others may say, we black folk say that America would have been stronger and greater!" (145).

Wright continues to argue that Africans who were brought to America to be slaves, have travelled the same road in 300 years that whites have traversed in 3,000. Do you agree? And what might it mean for Wright to place the Scottsboro Boys reference right next to the idea that our lives would have been remarkably different had African Americans been able to "participate in the vital processes of America's national growth"?

In autumn, the land is afire with color (32).

"Queen Cotton"

"From now on the laws of Queen Cotton rule our lives. (Contrary to popular assumption, cotton is a queen, not a king. Kings are dictatorial; cotton is not only dictatorial but self-destructive, an impervious woman in the throes of constant childbirth, a woman who is driven by her greedy passion to bear endless bales of cotton, though she well knows that she will die if she continues to give birth to her fleecy children!) If we black folk had only to work to feed the Lords of the Land, to supply delicacies for their tables- as did the slaves of old for their masters- our degradation upon the plantations would not have been the harshest form of human servitude the world has ever known. But we had to raise cotton to clothe the world; cotton meant money, and money meant power and authority and prestige. To plant vegetables for our tables was often forbidden, for raising a garden narrowed the area to be planted in cotton. The world demanded cotton, and the Lords of the Land ordered more acres to be planted- planted right up to our doorsteps! - and the ritual of Queen Cotton became brutal and bloody" (38).

      I really enjoy Wright's style of writing here. It comes across as poetic and powerful more than just historical. I have always been accustomed to hearing the term "King Cotton" in history and have never really realized that his description of it makes so much more sense. His comparing of the cotton to a "self-destructive", dictatorial woman in constant childbirth really adds to one's understanding of just how harsh it was in those times; there really was no end to it. And even worst, everything revolved around cotton. It was central to the Bosses of the Buildings "owners of the industry", the Lords of the Land, and especially the slaves. It was all a ritual. Buried underneath the never ending cotton was their liberation- unreachable, to say the least.  The writing style used in this passage, and throughout the work, captures the reader like no other history book may have done before. Wright's use of "us" to describe the chain of events that went on gives us a voice that we can rely on to really feel what went on in those plantations and on those ships. I really can't say much more other than the fact that I really enjoy his powerful imagery and use of ideas such as in the line "we had to raise cotton to cloth the world". "Queen Cotton" will now forever replace what I once thought was King.

How does Wright's writing style move you and encourage you to experience historical events, perhaps already known, differently than any other history book you may have come across before?    

American South <=> Nazi Germany?

“To paint the picture of how we live on the tobacco, cane, rice, and cotton plantations is to compete with mighty artists: the movies, the radio, the newspapers, the magazines, and even the Church. They have painted one picture: charming, idyllic, romantic; but we live another: full of the fear of the Lords of the Land, bowing and grinning when we meet white faces, toiling from sun to sun, living in unpainted wooden shacks that sit casually and insecurely upon the red clay” (35).

            As I read this quote, I immediately thought of Nazi propaganda in Germany in the 1930s. When Hitler first began using internment camps, they were made out to be not unlike a normal prison, complete with fields for playing sports. The truth about the brutality of Himmler’s KZ camps was masked from the public as far as propaganda went. Of course, we now know that these camps were the Nazi regime’s way of removing “undesirables,” as any non-Aryan or disabled person was known.

            However, despite the attempts to conceal what was happening, Germans knew about the intense persecution, and even had an idea of the violence of the camps. This quote leads me to draw a comparison between the treatment of African Americans in the South and Jews in Nazi Germany. Despite the picture that was painted of slavery in the South, Americans knew the way the slaves were treated, and yet nothing significant was done about it for a long time. This was because, much like the Jews in Germany, African Americans were viewed as “undesirable” in American society, lower forms of life that didn’t deserve rights or even a place among the more superior race (Aryanization). The only difference is the Nazis final solution to this problem was genocide, while America’s solution was slavery.

            In light of the similarities between the two situations, in addition to the commonplace of lynching in the South, how many degrees away from genocide was American slavery?

"The word negro, the term by which, orally or in print, we black folk in the United States are usually designated, is not really a name at all nor a description, but a psychological island whose objective form is the most unanimous fiat in all American History."

Before I talk about my moment I want to comment on Wright's use of the words us and we. I thought Wright chose a really interesting writing style. I assume that this was written for a black and white audience. For the white audience the use of us could creates an image of the author in every situation, calling attention to every injustice on a very personal level. Or it could cause a white reader to feel alienated from the text. While to a black audience the use of us could have created a sense of unity. Do you think Wright chose this style to call both white and black audiences to act? Or do you think it draws more attention to the color line?

Wright refers to the word Negro as a psychological island. I take this to mean that the word secludes them, completely shuts them off from the people in society who do not go by the name negro. I am not sure how to take the way Wright...well writes. As a present day reader I do not know his goal in this text. Did he want to unite blacks and whites together? Or did he believe white Southerners were beyond help and therefore blacks must utilize this "islands" by coming together? I don't know. What do you believe Wright's style of writing says about his message?

Slaves of Alien Tribes

"The Lords of the Land decreed that we must be distributed upon the plantations so that no two of us who spoke a common tongue would be thrown together, lest we plot rebellion. So they shackled one slave to another slave of an alien tribe. Our eyes would look wistfully into the face of a fellow-victim of slavery, but we could say no word to him. Though we could hear, we were deaf; though we could speak, we were dumb!"


Wright's prose is accompanied by many pictures that illustrate the realistic nature of his words. What comes to my eyes first when seeing those pictures is the wrinkled and worn hands of the sharecroppers and other eldery who most likely have spent their lives working on the land. This quote puts into perspective how isolated many of the slaves must of felt being paired with someone that shared their same plight and struggles but had no way of communicating about it until a new way of communication was developed. The last line of the quote is quite poetic as it tells how even the basic liberties of speech and hearing were useless in their situation. I thought Wright's prose was interesting and gave vivid detail into many of the hardships the slaves and sharecroppers endured. I too thought that Wright highlighted well the strifes faced without assigning propaganda as he moved from event to event.

Discussion Question- Of the pictures illustrated which stands out to you the most as a reader?

The Oratory.

"We proceeded to build our language in inflections of voice, through tonal variety, by hurried speech, in honeyed drawls, by rolling our eyes, by flourishing our hands, by assigning to common, simple words new meanings, meanings which enabled us to speak of revolt in the actual presence of the Lords of the Land without their being aware!"

I found Wright's prose on the history and state of Black America to be interesting and compelling. He passes through events in time without being a historian, and highlights anecdotes of strife without completely assigning propaganda. In this passage, he shows the necessity of the oratory and the dialect in Black America, and later on reiterates it through the passage about songs and church. He also makes sure to point out that the songs are not always convincing enough to cover the abhorred thralldom of their lives under plantations and poverty. The most compelling part of this prose for me was the pictures. The intensity of realism brought his words to life.