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Chapter 5. The Civil Rights Movement and New Narratives, 1951–2010
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170 Chapter 5 The Civil Rights Movement and New Narratives 1951-2010 I can’t get this out of my thoughts: / If we slipped into a black skin / like a tight coat, / everything would change. —Ann Turner, Nettie’s Trip South (1987) Slavery did its best to make me wretched; I feel no particular obligation to it, but nature, or the blessed God of youth and joy, was mightier than slavery. —Josiah Henson in Julius Lester’s To Be a Slave (1968) With its decision in the Brown v. Board of Education case (1954), the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overturned its earlier accommodation to “separate but equal” segregation, yet a decade later only little over two percent of African American children attended desegregated schools in the South (R. Kennedy 899). Because disparities between civil rights laws and practices were entrenched in American society, civil rights protestors fought for enfranchisement on all fronts. Their efforts were frequently met with violent resistance, and membership in the Ku Klux Klan reached its “peak” during the 1960s (Trelease 626). Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, social activism often prompted and provided for the protection of civil rights. Ranging from the Montgomery bus boycotts following Rosa Parks’s 1955 arrest to the over two hundred thousand people who joined the March on Washington in 1963, civil rights activists demonstrated a resolve to change the nation’s racial politics.1 Perspectives about race eventually underwent significant revision 171 The Civil Rights Movement, 1951–2010 in academic circles. In his landmark study, The Slave Community (1972), John Blassingame pointed out the necessity of a fresh look at the history of slavery, arguing that proslavery stereotypes had permeated not only the American consciousness in general, but historical analysis in particular, for “twentieth- century historians have often uncritically accepted the most popular literary stereotype as an accurate description of slave personality” (224). Since the most popular literary stereotype of slaves was often some version of the uncomplicated Sambo, histories had most commonly presented slaves as unvoiced objects, and often foolish, contented ones at that. The late 1960s through the 1970s thus offered a renaissance in slave studies, particularly in a new focus on slave culture itself. The slave narrative, too, enjoyed a resurgence, as slave experience was reclaimed as the authoritative voice about American slavery.2 Children’s literature showed the effect of these changes. In 1970, the Coretta Scott King Award was created to recognize African American authors and illustrators of children’s literature who “promote understanding and appreciation of the culture of all peoples and their contribution to the realization of the American Dream of a pluralist society” (American). While in 1975 Virginia Hamilton became the first African American to receive the Newbery Award (rather than Newbery Honor), the Coretta Scott King Award has continued to redress the underrepresentation of African Americans in Newbery and Caldecott Awards, while also recognizing a lauded canon of African American children’s literature.3 Although racial stereotypes persisted, by the late twentieth century the overt presence of proslavery plantation stories in children’s literature was rare. One does, however, sometimes find proslavery tropes embedded in texts that might otherwise seem critical of slavery. One such problematic text is the picture book, Jumping the Broom (1994). Told from the point of view of Lettie, a young female slave who describes her sister’s wedding celebration, Jumping the Broom may ostensibly argue the strength of a slave community, yet its verbal and visual narratives, by author Courtni Wright and illustrator Gershom Griffith, dilute representations of slavery’s oppression . Wright acknowledges difficult conditions—cabins are sometimes cold in the winter and Lettie and her family “don’t usually have much free time for fun with all the long hours and hard work” (u.p.). Yet these conditions are not exclusive to slavery. Moreover, the slave women easily adjust, sewing beautiful quilts both to fend [34.238.143.70] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 01:38 GMT) Chapter Five 172 off the cold and to create opportunities to get together and to celebrate . Wright and Griffith thus often focus on pleasant scenes, from descriptions of a quilting bee to lush depictions of tables abundantly loaded with food. In the end, the overriding image of smiling, happy slaves presents people largely unencumbered by enslavement. Indeed, Lettie’s sadness—as she describes it, feeling “lonely knowing that [sister] Tillie will never sleep next to me again” (u.p.)—suggests that loss through a sister’s marriage is...