The Ethiopian Prophecy in Black American Letters

8. Figural Exhaustion: Parodying the Figures of Ethiopia

8 Figural Exhaustion Parodying the Figures of Ethiopia The Emancipation Proclamation, even with its exceptions, marked a watershed moment in American history. By an executive order, the slaves held in Confederate states were proclaimed free. Even though only threefourths of the American slave population was covered under Lincoln’s proclamation (the other one-fourth of the slaves in areas and states still faithful to the Union fell outside of Lincoln’s constitutional powers and hencethepurviewoftheproclamation),itwasoneoftheearlystepstaken during the war that would eventually change the course of life for both slaves and free people of color in America. This road would eventually transform all slaves into free men and women, from human chattel to United States citizens; however, this transformation lacked the suddenness of Gregor Samsa’s overnight metamorphosis from man into vermin. It took more than three years after the end of the Civil War for “all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to its jurisprudence” to become citizens of the United States. The legal and historical significance of the Fourteenth Amendment cannot be overstated because this was an event that transformed the Negro and colored populations—and by extension, the majority white population—in the United States. For thefirsttimeinAmericanhistory,Negroesandcoloredpeoplehadconstitutional rights as citizens. Despite the creation of Black Codes and other means of repression, and even the failure of Reconstruction, the passing of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments constituted a legal and political break with antebellum America for slaves and free people of color. The legal end of slavery, the incorporation of Negroes and 202 / The Ethiopian Prophecy in Black American Letters people of color as American citizens, and the right to vote made Negroes and people of color Americans. The Civil War and Reconstruction had a chilling effect on the interpretation of Psalm 68:31 and the figurations of Ethiopia in the United States for almost thirty years. Before 1861, the hope that princes would leave Egypt and the promise that Ethiopia would lift her hands to God dropped from the lips and dripped from the pens of ministers, emigrationists, journalists, abolitionists, writers, and poets in the United States. For almost one hundred years (from Wheatley’s 1774 letter to the Rev. Samuel Hopkins to Crummell’s publication of the Future of Africa in 1862) the emancipationoftheslaves,freepeopleofcolor,andWestAfricanNegroes from the shackles of ignorance and heathenism and from the tyranny of irresponsible power (slavery and the denial of civil and human rights) were tied to the figures of Ethiopia that emerged out of the engagement between black readers and the grámmata of Psalm 68:31. The Union victory and Reconstruction had a profound effect upon black exegetes of Psalm 68:31. Their hopes and dreams derived from reading Psalm 68:31 went into what I will call “figural hibernation.” American democracy was in the midst of redefining itself and so were the various “black” populations (Negroes, colored people, the Latins, and the Seminole Negroes) in the United States. For decades, the figure of Ethiopia was dormant. It appeared sporadically between 1865 and 1896 (for example in Edward W. Blyden’s Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race, 1888, and in Delany’s Origin of Races and Color, 1879), but by and large it did not reemerge until its renaissance in the middle of the 1890s. Nevertheless, it was during this period of figural hibernation that Douglass employed the figure of Ethiopia and turned it into one of parody. Douglass, followed by Ralph Ellison, took away the authority of the figure of Ethiopia by reducing it to the level of comedy. Instead of rendering Ethiopia as a sacrosanct figure, Douglass and Ellison made fun of it. These parodies indicate that the hermeneutical trajectory of Psalm 68:31 among black readers had turned inward and begun to cannibalize itself. This activity created new figures of Ethiopia that were disfigured and resonated with poetic power, yet lacked the religious, mythical, racial, and moral authority of their predecessors. Figural Exhaustion: Parodying the Figures of Ethiopia / 203 Criticizing the Freedmen Recall Douglass’s second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), published during slavery. Psalm 68:31 appeared in the last sentence of the penultimate paragraph of his narrative. Douglass’s interpretation of the verse, as we have seen, neutralized Ethiopia as a figure of Christian conversion, racial or national identity, and missionary emigrationism. As Richard Allen before him, Douglass was an ardent American who did...