Black Folklore and the Politics of Racial Representation by Shirley Moody-Turner (review)

Black Folklore and the Politics of Racial Representation chronicles some visionary approaches to folklore employed by writers and scholars associated with the Hampton Folklore Society of the Hampton Institute in Virginia, scholars often overshadowed by the work of Zora Neale Hurston. For instance, Hurston’s work, while still truly indispensable and groundbreaking, seems slightly less radical after reading Anna Julia Cooper’s 1894 address to the Hampton Folklore Society in which she articulated a sophisticated, scathing critique of fin de siècle folkloristic methodology, lamenting that “to write as a white man, to sing as a white man, to swagger as a white man, to bully as a white man—this is achievement, this is success” (p. 91). Following a broad assessment of the representation of black folklore in the early Jim Crow era, Moody-Turner focuses specifically on the work of a number of thinkers, most notably Cooper, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Charles Chesnutt, all of whom were, to varying degrees, associated with the Hampton Folklore Society.

Founded in the late nineteenth century, the Hampton Folklore Society’s inauspicious origins rest in an antagonistic approach to black folklore taken by Samuel Armstrong, one of the founders of the Hampton Institute. Armstrong placed special emphasis on folklore because he believed that it prevented the school’s African American students, one of whom was Booker T. Washington, from assimilating into the mainstream of American society. Paradoxically, this orientation toward folklore, albeit a negative one, encouraged faculty and students to collect and preserve a tremendous amount of folklore as examples. As time went on, some of the folklore, spirituals in particular, turned out to be highly profitable for the school, and the emphasis shifted toward understanding and appreciating the unique artistry of black folklore. Shortly thereafter, an informal partnership was formed with the American Folklore Society, which was also in its early years, and the Hampton Folklore Society became a venue through which some truly visionary ideas about the study of folklore were first articulated.

Many of the savvy ethnographic maneuvers believed to be innovations of the last few decades in folklore studies were actually deployed over a century ago by folklorists and other scholars associated with the Hampton Institute. For example, the conceptualization of folklore as a process rather than a static artifact emerges in many of the works Moody-Turner addresses in this book. Likewise, all of the thinkers considered in the book, but especially Anna Julia Cooper, who is the focus of the book’s third chapter, expressed a keen appreciation for not only folklore itself but also for the ways in which representations of folklore were deployed politically to shape ideas about race throughout American culture. The scholars under consideration questioned scientific approaches to folklore, arguing that the supposed objectivity of such paradigms frequently masked deep biases and bigotry. As often as not, these writers offered alternate representational strategies through their own work.

Of the book’s five chapters, “The Stolen Voice,” which focuses on Charles Chesnutt, is perhaps the most provocative, original, and useful. While much has been written of Chesnutt’s literary uses of folklore in his conjuration stories, Moody-Turner focuses on one of the author’s less-studied works, The Colonel’s Dream. She argues that, in addition to his unorthodox use of black folklore, Chesnutt, in The Colonel’s Dream, also carefully framed the folk customs of white communities of the Reconstruction Era, customs that may not have been as romanticized yet were equally vital to race relations in the New South. Moody-Turner’s reading sheds additional light on the complex artistry of a significant American writer, and the idea that Charles Chesnutt revealed the dynamics of folklore in white communities constitutes a significant critical innovation. Her observations, moreover, are relevant throughout contemporary folkloristic practice as, throughout the book, the author reminds readers that there is still a need for more nuanced, less-romanticized approaches to the study of American folklore.

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