The Ethiopian Prophecy in Black American Letters

Introduction. The Inch and Ells of Psalm 68:31

Introduction The Inch and Ells of Psalm 68:31 Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God Psalm 68:31 Frederick Douglass’s initiation into the world of reading is a well-known story in My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), second only to his battle with Covey in dramatic significance. Douglass’s introduction, at the hand of his mistress, Mrs. Sophia Auld, to what he calls the “mystery of reading” is probably the most important personal event in his life as a slave: Douglass explicitly links the emergence of his intelligence to reading. This “mystery of reading” accounts for Douglass’s understanding of his historical situation, his critique of the institution of slavery, his will to be free, his resistance to Covey, and his subsequent escape from slavery. When telling the story of how he acquires literacy, Douglass includes Master Hugh’s censure of Sophia for teaching him or any slave how to read. Recounting Master Hugh’s words, what Douglass characterizes as “the true philosophy of slavery,” he writes: “If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell. . . . Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world; if you teach the nigger ...howtoreadthebible,therewillbenokeepinghim;itwouldforever unfit him for duties of a slave . . . learning would do him no good, but probably, a great deal of harm—making him disconsolate and unhappy. If you learn him how to read, he’ll want to know how to write; and, this accomplished, he’ll be running away with himself” (146). Just as Master Hugh predicted, reading makes Douglass unfit for slavery because it situates him in the world differently than when he was illiterate. It transforms Douglass’s subjectivity and differentiates his understanding of the world from that of his fellow, illiterate, slaves. 2 / The Ethiopian Prophecy in Black American Letters Staying within the diction of Master Hugh, Psalm 68:31 is the “inch” and the figurations of Ethiopia derived from the verse are its “ells.”1 The indeterminate nature of reading and the allusionary and plastic properties of figures form diverse and contentious trajectories of Psalm 68:31. From Phillis Wheatley’s 1774 letter to the Rev. Samuel Hopkins to Alice Walker’s 1982 novel, The Color Purple, the readings, interpretations, citations , and allusions to Psalm 68:31 play a significant role in the emergence of black subjectivity, the creation of black letters, the articulations of black engagements with the world and the black imaginary, and the formations of black collective identity. For some black readers, the verse variously signifies the spiritual and intellectual uplifting of black Americans and Africans , the emigration of black Americans to Africa, emancipation from slavery and colonialism, citizenship for black Americans, and African autonomy . For others it signifies a literary motif, myth, parody, or prophecy of a new global order for the twentieth century. Through figural readings of Psalm 68:31, black readers attempt to figure out their respective moments and histories, and to give meaning to meaninglessness. In this book, I will analyze this most significant verse in two different ways. First, I will engage in a close reading of the interpretations, citations of, and allusions to Psalm 68:31 in black American letters and map the various figurations and disfigurations of Ethiopia that are configured in black American letters. While my mapping of the configurations of Ethiopia derived from Psalm 68:31 will be extensive, it will not be exhaustive . There are two reasons for this. First, as Albert Raboteau points out in his essay on nineteenth-century black religious thought, Psalm 68:31 is “without doubt the most quoted verse in black religious history” (A Fire in the Bones 42). The sermons, newspapers, pamphlets, personal letters , and private writings that employ Psalm 68:31, but which are inaccessible to scholarly analysis because they have never even been indexed, catalogued, edited, or seen for many decades, are beyond the scope of my research. In fact, a number of texts containing Psalm 68:31 have probably been lost or destroyed before they could be preserved. Hopefully, future archivists will save the existing texts that employ Psalm 68:31 and remain tucked away in black churches and organizations, and these papers will be organized and made available for scholarly study. Second, the fiction of mastery of printed materials is an academic dream of modernity. Even though Psalm 68:31 is only one verse from the Old Testament, in the age [18.226.222.12] Project MUSE...