17
Muldrow
“The Divine Mission,” “Jesus, give me of Thy Spirit,” “A Land Above Us”
Poems by Alfred Campbell
Figure 1
www.loc.gov
“We are not Beasts as you count, and use us, but rational Souls. Can we help it if the Sun, too close and fervent kisses… tinctured us with a dark complexion?” – Thomas Tryon
Marian Muldrow
ENGL 5125
Professor Erben
17 November 2006
The Free Slave
I am black and powerful.
I wonder why my pain hurts so loud.
I hear the bell of freedom.
I see the bright light in the sky.
I want to be pure in His sight.
I am black and powerful.
I pretend that I don’t feel the pain.
I feel the kisses of a thousand clouds.
I touch my own inner beauty.
I worry my burden will become too heavy.
I cry when no one thinks I can feel.
I am black and powerful.
I understand things meant to be hidden.
I say I will own the soil I walk on daily.
I dream that heaven is a whisper away.
I try to love, as they hate.
I hope no one can hear my pain.
I am black and powerful.
- Marian Muldrow
Editorial Note
In transcribing this text, I kept the original spelling the same. Slavery was a time of African Americans, former Africans, finding and developing their own understanding and way of communicating within the larger context of the English language. By changing the language and words, I would in essence change our nations literary past.
Figure 1 The design was originally adopted as a seal of the Society for the Abolition of Slavery in England as early as 1787. The item is housed in the Rare Book, Broadside Collection, portfolio 118, no. 32a at the Library of Congress.
I feel that it is not a secret or little known fact that slavery was a prominent component in the shaping of the United States of America. Because of that, I was particularly interested in transcribing a text centered on slavery. Slavery, history and Christianity are important and intriguing to me. The fact that slaves were religious sparks a curiosity in me that I wanted to attempt to understand and cultivate into the minds of those who lack a full understanding of slavery, racism, Christianity, and its lingering impression on today, yesterday, and tomorrow. Furthermore, I choose poetry because of the way speakers of poems can manipulate and alter words to make them mean so many things in, at times, so little space. While the white reader would read the text as the black writer dwelling in circumstance, the black writer is actually telling his people ways out of their present conditions.
Because time was so precious for them, that could be the reason for the short, but allusive, language in the poems. For example, in Alfred Campbell’s “Jesus, Give me of Thy spirit,” a white reader would take the lines
I would be Thy imitator
I would choose Thee for my guide,
Oh! Thou loving Mediator
to mean that the slave condones his or her place in society as ordered by the white man. Whereas a fellow slave would understand that they were ultimately working and living for Jesus, and He guided their lives; not the white man for whom they worked.
I constantly tell my students, who struggle to grasp the language that we speak everyday, that without words, I would not have anything to say. Without words and a past filled with poetry and expression, we would be a nation of wondering souls with no sense of where we were going or where from where we came. Since the poetry of Campbell, specifically “The Divine Mission,” “Jesus, give me of Thy Spirit,” and “A Land Above Us” ties in both my passions, poetry and Christianity, I thought it only fitting to uncover a part of the nation’s past, Christianity and how slaves gained and maintained it, that seems unmentioned, yet so evident, in the larger society.
It seems as if poetry has always made its way into the literary sphere throughout the different eras of literature. The age of slavery was no different. Poetry is the “founding moment of African American literature” (Keizer 592). It was a way for slaves to voice their feelings about the injustice being committed against them by means of Christian scriptures.
Poetry allowed slaves to express themselves in a life where voice and opinions were non-existent. It allowed them to escape to a “sort of trance or faraway state of being” (Farmer 146). They had the opportunity to feel free in a time where the word was a silent shriek on the lips of all of those who were not white. In addition, poetry was a genre of writing that was meant to be read aloud. Since many slaves could not read, being able to verbalize their feelings was very important to them. Furthermore, like most accounts and writings from early Americans, such as Native Americans and that of Olaudah Equiano, a former slave, they wrote about the conversion experience of religion, more specifically Christianity. Slaves would gravitate towards religious texts and share that with their counterparts.
Even though this was a literary time for blacks to speak their emotions because of the lack of written literary knowledge, there were slaves who could read. Some slaves immersed into a world of literacy despite the fact that doing so was taboo in the early to mid 1800’s. This accomplishment occurred through the aid of their masters. However, it was not simply an act of kindness in many instances, nor did this ability come without its retributions. According to Janet Cornelius in “‘We Slipped and Learned to Read:’ Slave Accounts of the Literary Process 1830-1865,” literacy became “a two-edged sword: owners offered literacy to increase their control, but resourceful slaves seized the opportunity to expand their own powers. For masters, it became a way to take enslavement to another level because they could travel and dictate documents and messages for their owners. They would also send messages home in the event that something happened to the masters. In addition, it allowed literate slaves “privacy, leisure time, and mobility” (Corneluis171). Thus, literacy, both written and spoken, allowed slaves a chance to either accelerate themselves onto a higher plateau or caused them to slip even further into the midst of not being acknowledged as a complete person.
Not all slaves received the all too desired rights to literacy. As one would expect, the slaves referred to as house slaves usually gained access into this somewhat coveted world. Cornelius does not detail how one became or gained the label of house slave. What she does account is the fact that approximately seventy –one percent of slaves learned to read before twelve, and twenty –nine percent learned after the age of twelve (Cornelius175). The tools and resources that whites received were not available to blacks in the same capacity. Even with this setback, considering the time and culture realities, these numbers come as a surprise.
There were various ways that slaves gained literacy. Those who taught slaves were usually the master or other slaves. Masters had to be careful of other slave owners finding out because “patrols, mobs, and social ostracism faced owners who taught their slaves” (Cornelius173). Parents who became literate also taught their children. They did this by either “sending them to school with their master’s children or sharing what they learned” (Cornelius177). Though few slaves admitted to literacy during slavery, many former slaves felt it a status symbol to proclaim it after slavery ceased.
Slavery is a term that brings about unpleasant thoughts and tension when mentioned among people, especially so when they are of various races. It is, some believe, what shaped America, and what molded the ideology of its people. However, to understand the period and what, not only slaves, but whites as well were going through, it is best to see the period through its historical framework. Slavery did not happen just by chance. It actually “evolved out of the practice of servitude [by whites] in English America” (Cantor 452). What did happen by chance was the fact that blacks were the people to receive this dishonor. New Englanders thought that to be a slave, slaves had to be treated with brutality. In order to do this, “it was necessary to find [a slave] less than a man; to find him a beast, a thing without a soul to lose. The goal was attainable since the Negro was… different in color, language, religion, and appearance” (Cantor 457). Consequently, the role of a slave became a role for people of inferior status. Others, who were not slaves, viewed them as being different in a sociably unacceptable manner.
Many considered the black race to be inviolable. To be white meant one was superior to everyone else, and it became the epitome of beauty and acceptance. This idea transmitted into other areas including poetry and the arts. It became a medium for men to get women. A poem written during the colonial period demonstrates this belief.
Her eyes to suns, her skin to snow compare,
Her cheeks to roses, and to jet her hair:
And thus, and only thus you’ll please the Fair (Cantor 458).
Since this standard of beauty was set, it made it harder for blacks to transcend out of their state of darkness.
Because of the wavering of abolishing or justifying slavery, it became a part of the political and cultural debate of the time. Slaves wanted freedom right then; however, the masters tried to teach them that freedom would come in the next life. Masters attempted to instill in their slaves that “God Himself condoned slavery” (Lawrence 384). They thought that by allowing the slaves to sing and speak about bondage that is where the slaves would remain. In addition, they allowed the slaves to recite their poetry and hymns because the slaveholders thought it improved work ethic. As mentioned, there were ambiguities on the part of the slaveholders. They assumed that the slaves were simply working, as that was their job. Actually, the slaves were using their poetry to send messages to each other and spread information. They were also using it as an opportunity to mingle the teachings of the Bible with the songlike nature of their traditional religion (Lawrence 383).
Even though whites were the ones that enslaved blacks, not all whites agreed with the establishment of such a hierarchal way of living where one race was superior to another. This is where Christianity and slavery merged. According to the research conducted by Milton Cantor, there were those who felt “that only heathens could be enslaved by Christians and that, once a slave had been Christianized, he was automatically free” (454). Because this was the case and the belief openly held when it came to Christianity and slavery, white slave owners thought, “Baptism might bring freedom and loss of property, a possibility that was anathema to most slaveholders. Finally, there was the fear that conversion would encourage unrest. It would make them ‘greater knaves’ than they were… and possibly ‘result in the cutting of the throats of the baptizers’” (Cantor 454). It seems as if the white slaveholders feared the power of their own religion. Instead of sharing what they were practicing, they attempted to use it to oppress slaves even further. It is no wonder that the slaves sought religion as a source of comfort and liberation. They did not have anything else to reach for, and if it was this powerful and such a vehicle of inspiration and motivation, they had nothing to loss by becoming a part of it.
Even though some slaves’ owners fought against their slaves becoming literate, as with any other debate, there were those who agreed that they should. Some masters “believed in the intrinsic value of education… and owners felt their slaves should be able to read the Bible (Cornelius 177-78). Whatever the context or reason, slaves, once free, were open to more opportunities financially and socially in a literacy driven new world to them.
Not only were slaves practicing Christianity indirectly because of their masters, religion was a part of their culture before the branding of the label slave. According to Charshee Lawrence in “The Double Meanings of the Spirituals,” some blacks participated in prayer while living in their tribes (379). They used it as a release of different types of aggression. Its also was a means of creating and strengthening feelings of solidarity among each other (Lawrence 380). If at no other point in their lives, as slaves they would have wanted to feel that connection of family and camaraderie with those to whom they could relate. Coming together for a common activity that they were familiar with gave them this outlet and escape from everyday life. They were able to combine something they knew, religion, with something of their own creation, music, prayerful ideas, and rhythmic body movements. This combination is what fueled slaves to preserve their heritage and eventually abandon slavery altogether. The presence of these ideals is still in today’s black culture. During African American religious services, the “patting feet, swaying bodies, and clapping” hands (Lawrence 382) keep the people interacted and engaged in the service.
Slaves also saw the connection between the land they were in and heaven. Campbell’s “A Land Above Us” is an example of this. He writes,
For a purer land, happier land
For a home where all is bright;
Where earth’s care is never turning
All thy pleasures into blight?”
They saw hope and freedom, not only in heaven, but also on earth (Lawrence 385). They knew that believing in God would give them the insight into a spiritual balance where all of their needs would be met. Instead of oppressing themselves, they were educating, and in a sense, unshackling themselves.
Cornelius goes on to explain, that for the slaves, the Bible “enabled a slave to undercut a masters’ attempt to restrict Christian teaching to carefully selected Biblical passages” (172). This also plays into the before mentioned double- edged sword. In one respect, by learning to read, the slaves gained access to a wider selection in the Bible other than simply what masters choose to share orally. For the masters, they lost some of their control, scripture by scripture. Learning to read the Bible could potentially liberate the slaves because of the notion of a better life in the next one or the promise of rewards due to obedience that the books make mention throughout the text.