African American Intellectuals Research Articles

Enriching Humean Sympathy: Reading Hume’s Moral Philosophy in Light of African American Philosophical Thought

Abstract: In this paper, I show how reading Hume’s moral philosophy in light of seminal works by nineteenth- and twentieth-century African American authors can provide resources for developing a richer and more intentionally relational conception of sympathy. I begin by identifying two phenomena to which African American intellectuals like Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Anna Julia Cooper refer with the term “sympathy.” For ease of reference, I label these phenomena “sympathetic commitment” and “sympathetic understanding,” respectively. I then show that there are concepts in Hume’s moral philosophy that refer to similar phenomena and suggest that Hume scholars can draw on these concepts to develop an enriched and distinctively Humean sense of sympathy.

Anti-apartheid transatlantic networks in the age of the civil rights struggle: Bloke Modisane in the United States

In the Spring of 1963, London-based South African exiled artist and intellectual Bloke Modisane traveled to the United States on a co-sponsored visiting lecture tour of ten historically black colleges and universities in the South. A guest of the American Society of African Culture (AMSAC) and the United Negro College Fund (UNCF), Modisane’s lectures were a combination of intellectual, political, and performative registers which provided treatments on topics such as African rhythms in music and dance, South African literature, race and identity, and the anti-apartheid struggle. The institutions that he lectured in were actively involved in the struggle for civil rights in the early 1960s, positioning his visit at the center of the ongoing black freedom struggle in America. This article argues that Modisane was an active participant in anti-apartheid transatlantic networks and made a small but significant contribution to the cultural dimension of the anti-apartheid and civil rights struggles as a public intellectual and artist. It focusses on the Southern college circuit of civil rights activism and aims to enrich our understanding of mid-century transatlantic pan-Africanism, cultural solidarity, and transnational linkages between black South African and African American intellectuals, especially realized in the literary rather than political-organizational locus of black transnationalism.

Black Joy: Love, Intimacy, and Sexuality Amongst Black Intellectuals in the Academy

When I was in graduate school, I met a Black man! Before I knew his name, or anything about him, I was drawn to his energy. It was a chance meeting outside the Black Cultural Center. Little did I know then, God had a plan for this man and I. Eventually, I met this man. His name was Lewis. Only later did I remember the chance encounter. At first, we connected professionally based on our shared research about the Black community in Columbus, and we met … at the Black Cultural Center. The chance meeting, and our first meeting, however, would set the stage for our intellectual triumphs, professional challenges, community strength and most importantly, our shared love, intimacy and sexuality. While there is a body of literature that has examined the lived experiences of Black scholars in the academy, none of it has elucidated Black love, intimacy, and sexuality amongst two Black academics in Predominately White Institutions (Christian, 2017; Hendrix, 2021; Kuradusenge-McLeod, 2021; McFerguson, 2022; Mukandi & Bond, 2019; Stewart, 2020; Ward Randolph, 2010). This autoethnographic article explored love, intimacy and sexuality in the academy amongst two Black scholars. In this treatise, the author's musings focus on the love, intimacy and sexuality she shared with her late husband, a political scientist. She illuminated the significance of love, intimacy and sexuality in fostering productivity in the academy, how African American intellectuals addressed challenges through intimacy, and how love, intimacy and sexuality served as a protective and restorative shield that strengthened their communal bond in the hostile environment often accosting Black faculty in higher education which can amount to "state-based racist violence" (Mukundi & Bond, 2019, p. 254). In turn, shared love, intimacy and sexuality amongst these two academics highlights the need for them in the lives of Black faculty as a buffer against institutional violence in PWIs (Varel, 2018).

Expressivism, Pluralism, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's “A Suggestion on the Negro Problem”

Expressivism, Pluralism, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's “A Suggestion on the Negro Problem”

Singing Like Germans: Black Musicians in the Land of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms, by Kira Thurman

<i>Singing Like Germans: Black Musicians in the Land of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms</i>, by Kira Thurman

The Black Badge of Courage: The Politics of Recording Black Union Army Service and the Militarization of Black History in the Civil War's Aftermath

Abstract Scholars have detailed how Black activists looked to public forums to secure Black soldiers’ valor in American memory following the Civil War. This article reveals that they were not the only operators preserving African Americans’ wartime contributions. Rather than gravitating toward orations or monuments like other prominent activists, William Wells Brown and Frances Rollin turned to the power of history during Reconstruction. Drawing together trends of antebellum historical writing and nationalism among African American intellectuals and leaders, Brown and Rollin constructed heroic, textual accounts of Black Civil War soldiers. Brown contended that the soldiers were crucial not only to abolition but also to rescuing the Union. With his The Negro in the American Rebellion (1867), Brown contributed to a more inclusive version of American nationalism. Rollin added an ethnographic argument, crafting a muscular retelling of Martin Delany's wartime service. Rollin's Life and Public Services of Martin R. Delany (1868) affirmed Black pride and annulled burgeoning racial tropes. As a result, by the 1870s, Brown and Rollin helped assure African Americans a place in the body politic and crafted an enduring symbol—the Black badge of courage—that cemented military service as a central theme of Black historical writing.

Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield's Mid-to-Late Career, Philanthropy, and Activism in Nineteenth-Century America

Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield's Mid-to-Late Career, Philanthropy, and Activism in Nineteenth-Century America

Contributing Authors

Say Burgin is assistant professor of history at Dickinson College. Her publications have appeared in the Women's History Review, Journal of American Studies, Journal of International Women's Studies, The Nation, and elsewhere. Her first book project examines the myth that Black Power was “antiwhite” and the white fight for Black Power in Detroit. Say was a regular contributor to Black Perspectives, the blog of the African American Intellectual History Society. She also co-created the educational website Rosa Parks's Biography: A Resource for Teaching Rosa Parks (https://rosaparksbiography.org/). Follow her on Twitter @sayburgin.Robert T. Chase is associate professor of history at Stony Brook University. His research and teaching interests include the history of mass incarceration and the construction of what historians call “the carceral state.” He is also the co-director of the national organization Historians Against Slavery (HAS). He is an expert in social justice, Latino/a, and civil rights movements, and political and African American history. He is the editor of the book Caging Borders and Carceral States: Incarcerations, Immigration Detentions, and Resistance (2019). His book We are Not Slaves won the Best Book Award from the Division of Critical Criminology and Social Justice, American Society of Criminology; the Hank Lacayo Best Labor-Themed Award from the International Latino Book Award; and honorable mention for the Betty and Alfred Lee McClung Award from the Association for Humanist Sociology.Simon Hall is professor of modern history at the University of Leeds, where his research and teaching focus on the civil rights–Black Power movements, the student radicalism of the long 1960s, and global protest during the Cold War. His previous books include 1956: The World in Revolt (2016) and Peace and Freedom: The Civil Rights and Antiwar Movements in the 1960s (2005).Brandon James Render is a PhD candidate in the History Department at the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include twentieth-century United States social and intellectual history, post-1945 social movements and “the culture wars,” and public policy. His dissertation, “Colorblind University,” traces the intellectual genealogy of race-neutral policies and practices in higher education through admissions policies, departmental structure, and curriculum design. In addition to service as a graduate research fellow at the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy in 2018–19, he is the 2021-22 Mitchem Dissertation Fellow at Marquette University.

Eugene Rivers and the responsibility of intellectuals

Eugene Rivers and the responsibility of intellectuals

Interview with Nadia Nurhussein Black Land: Imperial Ethiopianism in African America

In October 2020, Adom Getachew interviewed Nadia Nurhussein about her recent book “Black Land: Imperial Ethiopianism and African America” published by Princeton University Press in 2019. Black Land delves into nineteenth- and twentieth-century African American artistic and journalistic depictions of Ethiopia, illuminating the increasing tensions and ironies behind cultural celebrations of an African country asserting itself as an imperial power. Nurhussein navigates texts by Walt Whitman, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Pauline Hopkins, Harry Dean, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, George Schuyler, and others, alongside images and performances that show the intersection of African America with Ethiopia during historic political shifts. From a description of a notorious 1920 Star Order of Ethiopia flag-burning demonstration in Chicago to a discussion of the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie as Time magazine’s Man of the Year for 1935, Nurhussein illuminates the growing complications that modern Ethiopia posed for American writers and activists who wrestled with Pan-African ideal and the reality of Ethiopia as an imperialist state. Black Land was Winner of the MSA Book Prize, from the Modernist Studies Association, finalist for the Pauli Murray Book Prize from the African American Intellectual History Society and shortlisted for the MAAH Stone Book Award from the Museum of African American History.

Allison Davis: Social Scientist for Social Justice

Allison Davis (1902–1983) was one of the premier African American intellectuals of his generation. Having inherited a world dominated by the color line yet privileged enough to attend the most elite universities in the United States, Davis dedicated his life to social science. At turns an anthropologist, sociologist, psychologist, psychoanalyst, and educationalist, Davis spent his career com-batting race and class inequalities within an academy dominated by White men. He personally broke barriers by becoming the first African American to earn tenure at a predominantly White university, and his research was no less path breaking. It pushed the theoretical boundaries of multiples disciplines and influenced policymakers and activists alike. Through works such as Deep South (1941), Children of Bondage (1940), the Social-Class Influences upon Education (1948), and many other publications, Davis had a significant impact on American intellectual life—one that endures to this day. This essay explains Davis's contributions while also critically assessing the limitations of his body of work, including the top-down model of social change he represented and the marginalization of women and gender.

“Subtle, vicious effects”: Lillian Steele Proctor's Pioneering Investigation of Gifted African American Children in Washington, DC

AbstractThis essay examines the first detailed study of gifted African American youth: Lillian Steele Proctor's master's thesis from the late 1920s on Black children in Washington, DC. Unlike formative research on gifted children by educational psychologists, Proctor's investigation emphasized children's experiences at school, home, and community in determining their abilities, opportunities, and accomplishments. Proctor's work also anticipated African American intellectuals’ critiques of racist claims about intelligence and giftedness that would flourish in the 1930s. In focusing on the nation's capital, her investigation drew from a municipality with a high proportion of African American residents that was segregated by law. Proctor pointed directly to systemic racism as both contributing to the relative invisibility of gifted African American youth and in thwarting opportunities to realize their intellectual potential. In an environment of racial subordination and segregation, these gifted children found themselves excluded from cultural resources and educational opportunities.

Gandhi, ‘The Coloured Races’, and the Future of Satyagraha: The View from the African American Press

W. E. B. Du Bois, the editor of the Crisis, a journal of the ‘darker races’ that was the organ of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, was among the earliest African American intellectuals to take a strong interest in Gandhi. However, the African American press, represented by newspapers such as the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender, was as a whole prolific in its representation of the Indian Independence movement. This article, after a detailed consideration of Du Bois’s advocacy of Gandhi’s ideas, analyses the worldview of the African American press and its outlook towards the movement in India. It is argued that a more ecumenical conception of the ‘Global South’ ought to be sensitive to African American history, and I suggest that African American newspapers played a critical role in shaping notions of the solidarity of coloured peoples, pivoting their arguments around the Indian Independence movement and particularly the satyagraha campaigns of Gandhi.

How Did We End Up With Donald Trump?

How Did We End Up With Donald Trump? John McMillian (bio) Christopher Caldwell, Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020. 342 pp. Bibliography and index. $28.00 Hillary Clinton was likely in an upbeat mood on September 9, 2016. Earlier that day, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur had pledged $20 million to Democratic groups backing her presidential candidacy. Later that evening, she spoke at an LGBT fundraiser in Manhattan, before a large crowd that had just been warmed up by Barbra Streisand. Naturally, Clinton's remarks were recorded.1 When she quipped that you could fit "half" of Donald Trump's supporters into a "basket of deplorables," her supporters responded with laughter, cheers, and applause. Clinton was seemingly so pleased by the crowd's laudations that she extemporized her next sentence, which also was about Trump supporters: "They're racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—you name it."2 Trump pounced on her statement via Twitter, and Clinton apologized the next day. But her gaffe was not soon forgotten. It did not help Clinton's cause when a group of celebrated left-of-center columnists amplified her remarks. Armed with polling and research data, Ta-Nehisi Coates (The Atlantic), Jamelle Bouie (Slate), Charles Blow (the New York Times), Jonathan Chait (New York), and German Lopez (Vox) argued that Clinton had no reason to apologize. A few of them went further. If Clinton had erred at all, they said, it was only because she had downplayed the portion of Trump supporters who were, indeed, hateful bigots.3 There was no gainsaying that the GOP had taken a dark turn. The 2016 presidential campaign should have made clear that Trump was not fit for the Oval Office. He was vain, vicious, and vulgar. No one had ever seen a candidate so childish, so eager to put his base motives and epic resentments on proud display. Trump was picking at the sores of a wounded nation, and he seemed delighted to do so. Still, the situation required deeper understanding. Scholars, analysts, and political professionals weighed in on the big questions of the day: What foul forces were feeding Trumpism? What knowledge from the past could shed light on our current problems? In June of 2016, the Chronicle of Higher Education published a syllabus for a course titled, "Trump 101."4 This was a collaborative [End Page 310] project involving twenty accomplished scholars from a range of disciplines, but most of them were historians. The syllabus's authors left no doubt that they regarded Trumpism as a baleful phenomenon. Among the classic works they recommended were Theodor Adorno's (et al.'s) The Authoritarian Personality (1950), Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), and Richard Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1966). Harvey Mansfield, the conservative political philosopher, urged readers to turn attention to such ancient thinkers as Plato, Thucydides, and Aristotle, who warned that when demagogues attain power in democracies, the demagogue is not chiefly to blame; the blame rests with those who elect him. None of the arguments or ideas embedded in the "Trump 101" syllabus are controversial in academic circles. Still, "Trump 101" was not well received. The problem, according to 349 humanities scholars who signed an open letter that appeared on the African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS) website, was that the syllabus did not recommend any works by "scholars of color" or "LGBTQ people." That was true. Although numerous books on the syllabus examined the perniciousness of racism and ethnocentrism, those books were written by white authors. The oversight led the letter's signatories to conclude that Trump 101's authors were "committed to presenting a 'whites only' portrayal of American political history." The letter's 349 signatories took the lack of nonwhite authors on "Trump 101" as evidence that the syllabus was "inappropriate," "highly offensive," "intellectually dishonest," "irresponsible," "racially illiterate," and "an artifact of racism."5 Within a week, two historians who critiqued "Trump 101"—N.D.B. Connolly, of Johns Hopkins University, and Keisha N. Blain, of the University of Pittsburgh—had crowd-sourced an alternative document, "Trump Syllabus 2.0." This new syllabus was five times larger than its predecessor, partly...

The State and Future of Black Women's Studies: The Black Women's Studies Association and the National Women's Studies Association in Conversation

230 Feminist Studies 47, no. 1. © 2021 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Nneka D. Dennie The State and Future of Black Women’s Studies: The Black Women’s Studies Association and the National Women’s Studies Association in Conversation On February 25, 2021, the Black Women’s Studies Association (BWSA) and National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) partnered for one of NWSA’s Kitchen Table Talks—a new initiative spearheaded by NWSA President Kaye Wise Whitehead to foster dialogue between NWSA and other organizations. The event, titled “Space Making: State/Future of Black Women’s Studies,” featured three panelists and was moderated by Whitehead. The featured speakers were Stephanie Andrea Allen (BWSA conference chair), Jacinta R. Saffold (BWSA co-founder and treasurer), and Erica L. Williams (member of the NWSA Governing Council). Allen is a Black lesbian writer and publisher whose scholarship examines how lesbian literature and film responds to and resists the heteropatriarchal systems that invisibilize Black lesbians; she is a postdoctoral fellow and visiting assistant professor of gender studies at Indiana University. Saffold is an assistant professor of English at the University of New Orleans who researches twentieth- and twenty-first-century African American literature, hip hop studies, and digital humanities. Williams is an associate professor of anthropology at Spelman College, whose work has examined sex tourism and Black feminist activism in Brazil. Together, Whitehead, Allen, Saffold, and Williams explored their hopes for Black Women’s Studies and illuminated the challenges and joys of advancing the field. News and Views 231 The collaboration between BWSA and NWSA is a testament to how far Black Women’s Studies has come over the past fifty years and a promise of where it may continue to go in the future. NWSA was founded in 1977 and has since served as a hub for researchers, educators, and practitioners who interrogate questions of women and gender in their work. For decades, NWSA has been central to the nationwide US institutionalization of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. By contrast, BWSA is a young organization that is continuing to grow. In 2018, Saffold and I co-founded BWSA in order to provide a community for scholars working in the field of Black Women’s Studies. BWSA is the only professional association specifically designed to bring scholars from a variety of disciplines into conversation about research that centers Black women. We launched BWSA with the goal of ensuring that future generations of scholars can readily access networks and mentorship from researchers who encounter a common question: when your work is simultaneously “too Black” and “too woman” for your field, department, or institution, what do you do? Drawing inspiration from well-established organizations in which we frequently participated, such as NWSA, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), the Association of Black Women Historians (ABWH), and the African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS), Saffold and I sought to build a space that cultivated a Black feminist ethic of care for both the research and the researchers. In that spirit, BWSA provides resources to help scholars do their best work, including a mentorship program, a virtual writing community, a calls-for-papers list for publications, and article as well as graduate student paper prizes. It was an honor to join an organization as trusted and respected as NWSA for a dialogue about our shared visions for Black Women’s Studies. Three key themes emerged from the panelists’ conversation with each other. They repeatedly returned to the importance of making financial commitments to Black Women’s Studies, creating conditions to support Black women’s intellectual labor, and practicing self-care. Speakers explored the interplay between the responsibilities that institutions, communities, and individuals have to Black Women’s Studies and Black feminist scholars. They observed that in order for departments and universities to foster interdisciplinary work on Black women, they need to move beyond paying lip service to the idea that diversity, equity, and inclusion matter; there needs to be permanent funding for work on race, 232 News and Views gender, class, and sexuality. Panelists also emphasized that Black women being in community with each other and supporting one another have always been central to...

The State and Future of Black Women's Studies: The Black Women's Studies Association and the National Women's Studies Association in Conversation

230 Feminist Studies 47, no. 1. © 2021 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Nneka D. Dennie The State and Future of Black Women’s Studies: The Black Women’s Studies Association and the National Women’s Studies Association in Conversation On February 25, 2021, the Black Women’s Studies Association (BWSA) and National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) partnered for one of NWSA’s Kitchen Table Talks—a new initiative spearheaded by NWSA President Kaye Wise Whitehead to foster dialogue between NWSA and other organizations. The event, titled “Space Making: State/Future of Black Women’s Studies,” featured three panelists and was moderated by Whitehead. The featured speakers were Stephanie Andrea Allen (BWSA conference chair), Jacinta R. Saffold (BWSA co-founder and treasurer), and Erica L. Williams (member of the NWSA Governing Council). Allen is a Black lesbian writer and publisher whose scholarship examines how lesbian literature and film responds to and resists the heteropatriarchal systems that invisibilize Black lesbians; she is a postdoctoral fellow and visiting assistant professor of gender studies at Indiana University. Saffold is an assistant professor of English at the University of New Orleans who researches twentieth- and twenty-first-century African American literature, hip hop studies, and digital humanities. Williams is an associate professor of anthropology at Spelman College, whose work has examined sex tourism and Black feminist activism in Brazil. Together, Whitehead, Allen, Saffold, and Williams explored their hopes for Black Women’s Studies and illuminated the challenges and joys of advancing the field. News and Views 231 The collaboration between BWSA and NWSA is a testament to how far Black Women’s Studies has come over the past fifty years and a promise of where it may continue to go in the future. NWSA was founded in 1977 and has since served as a hub for researchers, educators, and practitioners who interrogate questions of women and gender in their work. For decades, NWSA has been central to the nationwide US institutionalization of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. By contrast, BWSA is a young organization that is continuing to grow. In 2018, Saffold and I co-founded BWSA in order to provide a community for scholars working in the field of Black Women’s Studies. BWSA is the only professional association specifically designed to bring scholars from a variety of disciplines into conversation about research that centers Black women. We launched BWSA with the goal of ensuring that future generations of scholars can readily access networks and mentorship from researchers who encounter a common question: when your work is simultaneously “too Black” and “too woman” for your field, department, or institution, what do you do? Drawing inspiration from well-established organizations in which we frequently participated, such as NWSA, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), the Association of Black Women Historians (ABWH), and the African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS), Saffold and I sought to build a space that cultivated a Black feminist ethic of care for both the research and the researchers. In that spirit, BWSA provides resources to help scholars do their best work, including a mentorship program, a virtual writing community, a calls-for-papers list for publications, and article as well as graduate student paper prizes. It was an honor to join an organization as trusted and respected as NWSA for a dialogue about our shared visions for Black Women’s Studies. Three key themes emerged from the panelists’ conversation with each other. They repeatedly returned to the importance of making financial commitments to Black Women’s Studies, creating conditions to support Black women’s intellectual labor, and practicing self-care. Speakers explored the interplay between the responsibilities that institutions, communities, and individuals have to Black Women’s Studies and Black feminist scholars. They observed that in order for departments and universities to foster interdisciplinary work on Black women, they need to move beyond paying lip service to the idea that diversity, equity, and inclusion matter; there needs to be permanent funding for work on race, 232 News and Views gender, class, and sexuality. Panelists also emphasized that Black women being in community with each other and supporting one another have always been central to...

Allison Davis: Social Scientist for Social Justice

Allison Davis (1902–1983) was one of the premier African American intellectuals of his generation. Having inherited a world dominated by the color line yet privileged enough to attend the most elite universities in the United States, Davis dedicated his life to social science. At turns an anthropologist, sociologist, psychologist, psychoanalyst, and educationalist, Davis spent his career com-batting race and class inequalities within an academy dominated by White men. He personally broke barriers by becoming the first African American to earn tenure at a predominantly White university, and his research was no less path breaking. It pushed the theoretical boundaries of multiples disciplines and influenced policymakers and activists alike. Through works such as Deep South (1941), Children of Bondage (1940), the Social-Class Influences upon Education (1948), and many other publications, Davis had a significant impact on American intellectual life—one that endures to this day. This essay explains Davis's contributions while also critically assessing the limitations of his body of work, including the top-down model of social change he represented and the marginalization of women and gender.

The Patronage Dilemma: Allison Davis's Odyssey from Fellow to Faculty

This article analyzes the role of the Julius Rosenwald Fund in shaping the career of W. Allison Davis, a distinguished anthropologist who became the first African American appointed to the faculty of a mostly white university. From 1928 to 1948, the Rosenwald Fund ran an expansive fellowship program for African American intellectuals, which, despite its significance, remains largely unexamined in the scholarly literature. Davis tied his academic aspirations to Rosenwald Fund support, including for his early research and the terms of his faculty appointment. His experiences illustrate the dynamics inclusion and exclusion of African Americans in the academy; paternalistic promotion and strategic denial functioned as two sides of the same coin. Spotlighting Davis's negotiations, this article establishes how presumptions of racial inferiority guided Rosenwald patronage and demonstrates the extent to which the principles of meritocracy and expertise remained secondary concerns for those interested in cultivating African American intellectuals.

“A History We Can Neither Accept nor Deny: Feeding and Purging the Spirits in Maya Angelou’s All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes”

This essay examines Maya Angelou’s 1980 memoir All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes. From 1962 to 1965, Angelou was part of a community of African American writers, artists, intellectuals, and activists who settled in Ghana as its first president, Kwame Nkrumah, seemed poised to usher in a new era of pan-African unity. Hoping to situate her identity within this dream of global pan-Africanism, Angelou narrates her relationship to Africa through the trope of diaspora-as-family. Her use of this metaphor, however, is complicated by her growing awareness of the involvement of Africans in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, as both victims and participants. While other scholarship on All God’s Children focuses on Angelou’s supposed inability to achieve a diasporan identity, I argue that Angelou is successfully able to come to terms with the trauma of the middle passage by listening to the “voices” of her enslaved ancestors (as they emerge within her own consciousness), and participating in an indigenous Ewe mourning ritual that she inadvertently precipitates. As a result of these experiences, Angelou comes to realize that while narration is important to the formation of both identity and community, African-descended people living in the Americas must first grapple with a historical trauma that exceeds the limits of narration. It is only when Angelou realizes this that she allows herself to be receptive to the spectral voices of her enslaved ancestors and the power of mourning to forge community across divides of time and place.

Review: Young Frederick Douglass: The Maryland Years, by Dickson J. Preston

Review: Young Frederick Douglass: The Maryland Years, by Dickson J. Preston