Julius Lester lecture, "Slave Narratives and Contemporary Culture: A Psychohistorical View," at the University of Iowa, June 15, 1974
Speaker 1: The following was recorded June 15th, 1974, as part of the Sixth Annual Institute on Afro-American Culture held at the University of Iowa. Speaking on Slave Narrative and Contemporary Culture, a Psycho-Historical View, is Julius Lester, author and critic. Making the introduction is Darwin Turner, Chairman of the Afro-American Studies Department at the University of Iowa.
Darwin Turner: In 1968, a book appeared with a provocative title, Look Out, Whitey! Black Power's Gon' Get Your Mama! I'm not certain whether some individuals were lured in the end of the '60s to buy the book because of the title, but if they did they discovered not an emotional diatribe, characteristic of some of the rhetoric at the time, but a series of thoughtful, provocative essays, articulating the artistic literary cultural and social political judgments of a writer and critic whom only a few people knew at that time. Since that time, many people know the name of Julius Lester, our lecturer for today.
Darwin Turner: He was born in St. Louis in 1939 but very quickly the family moved to Nashville where he was reared. He received his bachelor's in English from Fisk University where one of his teachers was Robert Hayden, a lecturer in this Institute. He's published widely as a freelance writer and critic, and he is widely known for two books of special importance to the subject of this Institute, Black Folk Tales, a modernization of old tales of Black people. I highly recommend the book to you. And To Be a Slave. The title is evidence of the material. He's presently working on an autobiography.
Darwin Turner: This morning he will be talking on the subject Slave Narratives and Contemporary Culture, a Psycho-Historical View. Before he left, Robert Hayden told me to introduce Julius Lester by repeating a phrase which Robert Hayden has borrowed from Julius Lester. "Sit on back up in there, Julius."
Julius Lester: One on one I want to apologize for reading something, because this would be the first time I ever read anything to an audience. I just generally just talk. But some things you do have to write down. So, I want to apologize for reading.
Julius Lester: Then also, I want to say that, when I finish that, since I know I think it's of very little use for me to come someplace and speak if I don't hear from people after I say whatever I have to say, and that I don't have any ego involvement with what I write. I do what I do. And if you don't like it, that don't mean that we can't be friends. So, that I really, really ... When I finish, if you're mad at me, don't go around the corner and talk about it. I'm here. I'll be here all day. You can tell me, and that's okay. But anyway I really want us to talk to each other.
Julius Lester: The book I did back in 1968 was called To Be a Slave, and I guess I've always wanted to know what was it like to be a slave from the inside. So, I made one attempt in 1968, and there are always certain things kind of nagging at me. When Dr. Turner finally caught up with me, which ain't easy to do by a long shot, and it ain't easy to get me to respond once you catch up with me, it was an opportunity for me to come at the whole subject of what was it like to be a slave and to try to put down on paper some of the things that had been nagging at me. I haven't been able to synthesize what I said in To Be a Slave with what I'm going to say here today, but, anyway, I will throw this out, and we can talk about it.
Julius Lester: The attitudes of historians toward the Afro-American slaves have vacillated between trying to prove that slaves were content or that they were not. This debate is understandable, for if it could be proven that slaves were happy, then slavery was justified. Today, however, no respected historian would attempt to morally justify and defend slavery. The matter of the slaves' response to it should be looked at without ideological considerations. Whether the slaves were content or not is ultimately secondary to trying to determine the slaves' psychological landscape. This is obviously difficult to do, but the attempt must be made, for the institution of slavery ended a little over a century ago, which in historical time is scarcely more than the tick of a clock.
Julius Lester: A new psychological landscape was not created within Blacks at the incident of emancipation, and white Americans did not cease to practice racism with the cessation of slavery but merely found new ways to play the same old melody. Therefore, if Blacks are to understand themselves today, they must look at who they were psycho-historically, and they must do so without ideological preconceptions or projecting onto the past the emotions of the present. This is not easy, because what is at stake is myself. I would like to look at slavery and see a Nat Turner behind every bush, a Harriet Tubman behind every tree.
Julius Lester: The impulse within me to see in history what I want to see is as strong as it is in white intellectuals who look at America and see the amber waves of grain shining from sea to shining sea, while conveniently overlooking the blood of slaughtered Indians trickling through the wheat fields. If Black intellectuals and scholars are to establish new criteria for scholarship, they must be fearless and wholly dedicated to truth, and not just Black truth, which ultimately can never be more than the converse of white truth. I do not know the truth of the psycho-history of slavery and do not know whether it can be known, but the effort to find it must be made.
Julius Lester: Stanley Elkins' book, Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life, represents the first and most far-reaching attempt to write a psycho-history of the Afro-American slave. This only occupies one section of the book, but it has given the work its deserved and controversial fame. And if you're not familiar with it, it is mandatory reading. I also guarantee it'll make you mad, which ain't bad.
Julius Lester: Elkins' thesis is that slavery was, quote, "a closed society," unquote, that is a system in which, quote, "contact with free society could occur only on the most narrowly circumscribed of terms, a system in which all lines of authority descended from the master and in which alternative social bases that might have supported alternative standards were systematically suppressed. The individual, for his very psychic security, had to picture his master in some way as the good father," unquote.
Julius Lester: This system produced a dominant slave personality which Elkins describes as Sambo, or Uncle Tom as we would call him today. That is a figure who was, quote, "docile but irresponsible, loyal but lazy, humble but chronically given to lying and stealing. His behavior was full of infantile silliness and his talk inflated with childish exaggeration. His relationship with his master was one of utter dependence and childlike attachment." Unquote. Elkins supports his thesis of the infantile slave personality by comparing the society in which the slaves lived, the plantation, with the Nazi concentration camps where studies have shown the Sambo personality was evident in Jews.
Julius Lester: This in its broadest lines is the thrust of Elkins' psycho-history investigation. And while on the surface it may sound like a restatement of the plantation myth that slaves were content, that was not Elkins' intent. He was attempting to describe the personality of the oppressed. His failure is that he was not able to see his own racism. That is, he ignores the only record of slavery from the point of view of those, quote, "who wore the shoe," unquote, as one slave put it. I refer of course to the slave narrative. Further, while positing that slavery was a closed system, one in which there were no alternative social bases that might have supported alternative standards, Elkins ignores Black religion, music, and folklore as they existed under slavery, and therefore found meaning toward the creation of a self separate from that the system wanted them to have.
Julius Lester: Having said that, however, it is not to dismiss Elkins, for he is in part correct, as much as I hate to admit it. The Uncle Tom stereotype, as is true with any stereotype, is not a total fabrication but an exaggeration of actual behavior. Though my emotions plead with me to say that Sambo did not exist, the evidence of the slave narratives tell me that he did. And I must go farther and consider the very distinct possibility that he might have been my slave great-grandfather. The question is not whether Sambo existed but whether he existed to the extent that Elkins claims, whether or not Sambo represents the dominant personality type of the slaves.
Julius Lester: George Rawick, in his The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography, is closer to the truth. Quote, "We must conceive the slave personality as an ambivalent one. On the one hand are submissiveness and a sense that one deserves to be a slave. On the other hand are the great deal of anger and ways that protect the personality and have objective results in the improvement of the slave's situation and eventual liberation. Unless the slave has had a tendency to be a Sambo, he can never become Nat Turner. One who has never feared becoming Sambo never need rebel to maintain his humanity. A pure Sambo or a pure rebel is a theoretical abstraction, which does not concretely help us understand the behavior of living human beings. Unless we understand the contradictory nature of the rebel personality, we can never portray this reality." End quote.
Julius Lester: Having said this, however, Rawick then proceeds to paint the slave as Nat Turner, sloughing over the ambivalencies, the contradictions, and giving us the current historical picture of slaves as rebels. He does not try to ascertain the attitudes by which the slaves lived, the texture of that mysterious entity called the self. Definition of self is essential to human existence. Who am I? It is the question to which every society, civilization, nature, and culture tries to provide an answer, because, without knowledge of self, we do not live. How the question is answered personally and collectively defines what we do, how we do it, the nature and content of interpersonal relations, et cetera. Ultimately, the story of humanity is the attempt to define and fulfill self.
Julius Lester: The slave began life without their most basic component of identity, a name, a label by white he/she was known. Quote, "We didn't know nothing like young folks do now. We hardly knowed our names. We was cussed for so many bitches and sons of bitches and bloody bitches and blood of bitches. We never heard our names scarcely at all." Another quote, "A Negro has got no name. My father was a Ransom, and he had an uncle named Hankin. If you belong to Mr. Jones and he sell you to Mr. Johnson, consequently you go by the name of your owner. Now where you get a name? We are wearing the name of our master." Another quote, quote, "I was here in slavery days. I was here. When I come here, colored people didn't have their ages. The boss man had it."
Julius Lester: One of the constants throughout the slave narrative is uncertainty about age and the wearing of the owner's name. The immediate effect of this is obvious. I belong psychologically to he/she from whom I received my surname. If I cannot name myself, I cannot own myself. And immediately, we see, I think, how the psycho-history of slavery affects contemporary Blacks. There was a man named Malcolm Little who used a slash mark of an X to eradicate that historical naming the slaves were describing. Other Blacks today have gone further in their attempt at breaking the psychological bonds of slavery and in giving themselves and their children Arabic and Swahili names. And this is just a small illustration of how the psychology of Blacks, which emerged from the slave experience, affects Blacks today.
Julius Lester: The process of self-definition for the slave was a difficult one, beginning with the fact of not having a name separate from that of the ones who owned them. Whether the slave wanted to or not, he/she identified with those whose name they bore. How far did such identification with the slaver owner/master go? For some, it was complete. Quote, "I thought as long as I stayed where the white folks was they would protect me from all harm, even the stars and the elements, storms and whatnot. Just staying at a white folk's and I had nothing to worry about. I thought white folks made the stars, sun, and everything on earth."
Julius Lester: Another quote, "I want to see old master again anyways. I reckon I'll just go up and ask him what he wants me to do, and he'll tell me. And if I don't know how, he'll show me how. And I'll try to do it to please him. When I get it done, I want to hear him grumble like he used to and say, 'Charlie, you ain't go no sense, but you is a good boy. This here ain't very good, but it'll do, I reckon. Get yourself a little piece of that brown sugar, but don't let no nigger see you eating it. If you do, I'll whip your Black behind.' That ain't the way it's going to be in Heaven, I reckon, but I can't sit here and think of no way better I'd like to have it."
Julius Lester: These are examples of the Sambo personality, people who not only made their peace with being slaves but achieved their ego fulfillment through it. Quote, "Then was really happy days for us niggers. There was something back there that we ain't got now, and that's security. We had somebody to go to when we was in trouble. We had a master that would fight for us and help us and laugh with us and comfort us when we had to be punished. I sometimes wish I could be back on the old place. You ain't never walked across a frosty field in the early morn and gone to the big house to build a fire for your mistress and when she wake up slow, have her say to you, 'Well, how's my little nigger today?'"
Julius Lester: For the Sambo personality, being secure psychologically and physically was all-important, and an examination of the slave narratives shows that Sambo was not rare. Indeed, as Rawick implies, Sambo existed within every slave to some degree. The exception is the slave who thoroughly hated slavery, who was opposed to it on principle and had no happy memories. It is true that there was much slave resistance, but the examples of slave resistance with which the slave narratives are replete are within a peculiar context. For example, slaves constantly ran away, and on the surface this could be taken as a sign of opposition to slavery. However, time after time when stories are told in the narrative about runaways, leaving is almost invariably in response to harsh treatment within slavery not slavery itself. Quote, "I don't reckon Paul would ever have run off if Old Miss hadn't whipped me and if Old Master hadn't struck him. They was good til then."
Julius Lester: There are innumerable stories of slaves who ran and hid in the woods after a beating, returning to the plantation only after the slave owner had gotten word to them that he would not beat them again if they came back. The same pattern exists in the stories of slaves fighting back. It was an act of self-defense against a particular act of violence. This is important, because it indicates a basic acceptance of the status quo by the slaves. Let me hasten to add that acceptance is not the same as liking. Their concern was not with the overthrow of the institution but as painless a life as possible within it. One slave summed it up simply "Slaves didn't have nothing terrible to worry about if they acted right." Another said that slavery was bad because some white folks didn't treat their niggers right. This kind of statement is more the rule than the exception throughout the narratives.
Julius Lester: To understand why the slaves sought to make their lives as easy as possible within the institution, rather than attempting to destroy it, one must look at the nature of the institution. While it was not as closed a system as Elkins believes, it was effective in controlling almost every aspect of Black life. One could not leave the plantation without a pass. There were patrols at night to catch and punish any slaves who may have slipped off for a visit to another plantation or a prayer meeting. And there was always a constant threat of whippings, death, or being sold.
Julius Lester: Charles Nichols in his Many Thousand Gone makes the important observation that, quote, "Physical punishment, lower caste status, the denial of every chance of improvement create a personality that is fearful, aggressive, guilty, and disintegrated. It is impossible to estimate what the institution of slavery cost the negro and American society generally," unquote.
Julius Lester: The slave narratives indicate that fear was the enslaver, and fear the major component of the slave's emotional life. One slave said, quote, "A man was scared all the time of being sold away from his wife and children," unquote, while another revealed a different face of fear, quote, "No slave never runned away from Billy's plantation. They never even wanted to try. They was always afraid they might not be able to take as good a care of theyselves as master Billy did for them, and they didn't know what would happen to them off the plantation."
Julius Lester: There was a constant threat of physical violence, of being separated from one's family, and the even more profound fear which being dependent created, the fear of being capable of taking care of him/herself. Thus, for many slaves, emancipation was unwelcome. Quote, "Freedom in us could leave where you had been born and bred, but it meant too that us had to scratch for us own selves. I stayed right with my white folks as long as I could."
Julius Lester: One slave was philosophical and eloquent when talking about emancipation: "Niggers kept talking about being free, but they wasn't free then and they ain't now. Putting them free just like putting goat hair on a sheep. When it rained, the goat come a-running and get in the shelter, because his hair won't shed the rain and he'd get cold. But the sheep ain't got sense enough to get in the shelter but just stand out and let it rain on him all day. But the good Lord fixed the sheep up with a wooly jacket that turned the water off, and he don't get cold. So, he don't have to have no brains. The nigger doing slavery was like the sheep. He couldn't take care of his self, but his master looked out for him, and he didn't have to use his brains. The master's protection was like the wooly coat, but the emancipation come and take off the wooly coat and leave the nigger with no protection and he can't take care of his self either."
Julius Lester: This fear of being unable to take care ... This fear of being able to take care of oneself that the first slave expressed became the conviction that Blacks could not care for themselves in the louder slave. It is an eloquent, poetic expression of Black self-hatred and belief in Black inferiority, and it is this psycho-history legacy from slavery that the Black conscious movement that began in the mid '60s is trying to eradicate. When the Reverend Jesse Jackson stands before mass meetings and exalts the crowd to shouldn't with him "I am somebody, I am somebody," he is confronting the psycho-history residue of dependency and fear which permeated the psychology of Blacks in slavery.
Julius Lester: One of the most intriguing moments that occurs in most slave narratives is the one in which the slave is told that he/she is free. What a fantastic historical moment, and how fortunate we are to have thousands of individuals recounting the moment in which their lives were significantly changed. Before beginning my study of slave narratives in 1964, I thought there would have been no slaves who would have not been overjoyed by emancipation. But I was projecting my 20th century awareness and psychology onto a previous era. Many slaves were ecstatic and left the old plantation before master finished saying the word free. It is significant though that many, and while I have not done a statistical analysis I would say the majority, had wholly other kinds of reactions.
Julius Lester: "When old master comes down to the cotton patch to tell us about being free, he say, 'I hate to tell you, but I knows I got to. You is free, just as free as me and anybody else that's white.' We didn't hardly know what he means. We just sort of huddled around together like scared rabbits. But after we knowed what he mean, didn't many of us go, because we didn't know where to have went." "Niggers can't hardly get used to the idea. When they wants to leave the place, they still go up to the big house for a pass. They just can't understand about the freedom." "That was good news, I reckon, but nobody knew what to do about it. They didn't know just exactly what it meant. It was something that the white folks and slaves all the time talk about, that's all. Folks that ain't never been free don't rightly know the feel of being free. They don't know the meaning of it. I keeps on being afraid, because I can't get it out of my mind I still belong to mistress."
Julius Lester: If anything indicated the personality which evolved under slavery, it is the reactions of slaves at the cessation of bondage. Contrary to what we would like to think, a large percentage were more Sambo than Nat Turner. They had accepted the institution and its values. They knew what it was to be a good slave, and one ex-slave said that nobody on the plantation where she lived was whipped, quote, "unless they deserved it," unquote. The slaved lived in an emotional environment of terror, and the natural response was to mitigate the terror as much as possible. The success or failure of a slave's life depended on how successful he/she was in accommodating themselves to the system.
Julius Lester: The life of Charles Ball is illustrative. Owned by a crewman, he first attempted to curry favor by helping in the capture of two slaves who had murdered the daughter of a neighboring slave owner. For his help, however, he received nothing. He was only momentarily discouraged, however, and built a fish trap on his own time and caught a number of fish. Quote, "I gave a large fish to the overseer and took three more to the great house. These were the first fresh fish that had been in the family this season, and I was much praised by my master and young mistresses for my skill and success in fishing. But this was all the advantage I received from this effort to court the favor of the great. I went away from the house not only disappointed but chagrined and thought to myself that, if my master and young mistresses had nothing but words to give me for my fish, we should not carry on a very large traffic," end quote.
Julius Lester: The Sambo in Ball was not born only because it was not nurtured. However, accommodation to the system took other forms, and these other forms were instrumental in creating a separate slave value system whose effect was curious. Quote from Charles Ball's autobiography: "I was never acquainted with a slave who believed that he violated any rule of morality by appropriating to himself anything that belonged to his master, if it was necessary to his comfort. The master might call it theft and brand it with the name of crime, but the slave reasoned differently when he took a portion of his master's goods to satisfy his hunger, keep himself warm, or to gratify his passion for luxurious enjoyment."
Julius Lester: Frederick Douglass expounded the ethic of stealing thus: "It was only a question of removal, to take his meat out of one tub and put it into another. The ownership of the meat was not affected by the transaction. At first, he owned it in the tub, and last he owned it in me."
Julius Lester: Contemporary historians cite the frequency of stealing as an example of slave resistance, but is it not a double-edged act? For at the same time, the stealing from the slave owner was also a means of adjusting to the system, of making it bearable. A smart slave owner would have made certain the chickens, hogs, turkeys, et cetera, were available for the sole purpose of being stolen, for the act gave the slave a feeling that he was putting something over on old master as well as getting himself a little luxury. A successful thief was a more contented slave. Lying was another aspect of the slave's value system and justified in much the same way as stealing.
Julius Lester: Here we come to the most ambiguous area of slave psychology: role-playing. One slave defined it precisely, quote, "I always tried to teach my children to be respectful and act like they think the white folks they dealing with expect them to act," unquote. It was a useful rule for survival, but how much of it was real and how much was simply playing Sambo?
Julius Lester: Quote, "Your master told Tom, a young nigger there, one time not to go to the frolic. 'Clean up them dishes and go to bed,' he say, and Tom said, 'Yes, sir, master.' But master watched Tom through the door, and after a while Tom slipped out and away he went with young master right behind him. He got there and found Tom cutting the ground, shovel big as anybody. Young master called him. 'Tom,' he say. 'Tom, didn't I tell you you couldn't come to this frolic?' 'Yes, sir,' says Tom. 'You sure did, and I just come to tell them I couldn't come.'" Like us, the young master had to admire Tom's mental agility and verbal skill, and Tom escaped a lashing.
Julius Lester: A not inconsiderable portion of Black folklore consists of tales like this in which Blacks escape danger through their verbal adroitness, the ability to bend the truth, and be funny simultaneously, outwitting the adversary. When the only alternative is to tell a truth that will get one punished, one becomes an artist at deceit. The danger, however, is when does one cross the line between playing Sambo and being Sambo? The human psyche is not so constructed that there can be total separation between the interior life and a person's behavior. Playing Sambo placed the slave of great danger of becoming Sambo without ever recognizing it. After playing Sambo before old master during the day, were the slaves able to stop playing Sambo when he/she returned to the slave quarters?
Julius Lester: One verse that is common in blues and work songs is "Got one mind for the captain to see, got another mind for what I know is me." Never has the schizophrenia of Black existence been stated more starkly or profoundly. But is it as clear-cut as the anonymous singer would want us to believe, or was he trying to convince himself that he was not the Sambo that whites believed he was? In trying to understand the psychology of the slave, it is here that we come to the crux of what that psychology must have been. The slave had one persona before whites while simultaneously trying to create a separate identity, thus the slave lived in two worlds but has psychic possession of neither. His/her interior existence was therefore one of functional schizophrenia.
Julius Lester: One fascinating example of this was Arnold Gragston, born in 1840 in Mason County, Kentucky, near the banks of the Ohio River. One night while courting a girl on another plantation, he was asked to row a young runaway slave girl across the river to Ohio, a free state. He accepted not because of any commitment to freedom but because the girl was pretty. See, folks ain't changed. Soon, however, he was rowing runaways across almost every night, and by the time slavery ended had helped 2 or 300 escape.
Julius Lester: What is amazing, however, is that Gragston did not row himself to freedom on the very first night, and his explanation is illumination. Quote, "Even though I could have been free any night myself, I figured I wasn't getting along so bad. So, I would stay on Mr. Tabb's place and help the others get free. I did it for four years." Though he was a slave, he had no urgency about being free or any notion that perhaps he might get along even better if he were free. Not until he was almost caught on night as he rowed his 12th runaway of the night across the river did he himself escape.
Julius Lester: Gragston's life illustrates a fundamental fact not only of slavery but of human existence. We adjust to whatever is as long as basic ego needs are satisfied. Gragston was content to remain in slavery as long as there was no threat of death or punishment and did not leave until there was. He had a comfortable place within the system without becoming a Sambo. Neither, however, did he become a rebel. Instead, he vowed a life of dual roles, slave and freedom fighter, and the circumstances allowed him to keep them clearly separated.
Julius Lester: Most slaves could not make such a clear demarcation between selves or roles. The roles overlapped and merged into a self, one that was fragmented and chipped. By seeking the best life possible within the system, the slave was accepting the system as legitimate. Proof of this is the numerous instances of slaves who purchased their freedom and that of relatives. If one psychologically owns him, herself, he/she does not purchase that self.
Julius Lester: Charles Nichols makes an important observation from his study of slave narratives: many of the slaves who took their freedom by running away felt guilty. Quote, "Such guilt feelings are not only evidence of the effectiveness of the slaveholders' teachings but also and more significantly they indicate how guilt follows closely upon fear and aggression," end quote.
Julius Lester: A mythology has been created of the slave as rebel, but close study of slave narratives makes this image as false as Elkins' Sambo. Historians have wanted slaves to be representative of their particular political attitudes, but Afro-American slaves were what we all are: human beings. Any human being in the same situation would have reacted in much the same way. If prisoners of war suffer permanent psychological damage from a few years in prison camps, if prisoners in this country's penal institutions are psychologically maimed and emotionally stunted by their incarceration, then it is horrifying to even begin to try and understand the psychological ramifications of almost 250 years of slavery.
Julius Lester: On the one hand, it is astounding that Blacks are able to function in society on any level at all. That is certainly a testament not only to something in the human spirit but to that Black culture whose foundations were laid during slavery. I have not had the space to examine in this paper Black slave religion, the strength of the Black family during slavery, music, oral culture, those things that went to create a separate identity, but I have discussed this in my To Be a Slave, and George Rawick does a superb job in his The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography. And I would say that if George were not here.
Julius Lester: Here, I have deliberately focused on what it means psychologically to be oppressed and the implications of that for the descendants of the oppressed. This paper has its inception in the slow recognition of the psycho-historical remnants of slavery within myself, a descendant of slaves, for I see in me that slave value system wherein one created a persona for old master, and I am an expert at letting myself be whatever I think others want me to be when it is to my advantage. I combat it, but it is hard, because it was bred into me from the cradle, as natural to me as walking or eating. And, as I suspect it was with the slaves, the captain for whom I create this persona is not always white, but anyone whom I fear to confront but know I can manipulate.
Julius Lester: I see the survival of the slave value system in the contemporary Black cultural value of being cool, of keeping one's emotions in check, of giving the appearance of always being in control, even when one does not know what's happening. For the slave, it was necessary to keep the emotions in tight control except during prayer meetings, church dances, et cetera. But what was a necessary virtue under slavery may be a psycho-historical anachronism under other conditions.
Julius Lester: I see the survival of the slave value system in what is perhaps the cornerstone of contemporary Black culture, hustling. The slave had to be a hustler, because it was essential for survival. But the hustler mentality survives, and today it is practiced on Blacks. How else could a beast of prey like Superfly become a hero to Black youth?
Julius Lester: I see the survival of the dependency engendered by slavery in a welfare system which feeds and supports that dependency. Just as the slaves did not attack the institution of slavery but asked for reforms under it, Black political organizations today demand the reformation of the welfare system instead of economic reorganization and planning, which would provide meaningful and well-paid jobs for all able to work.
Julius Lester: I see the survival of the slave value system every Saturday night. On the plantation, it was party night, generally sanctioned by the slave's master who knew the advantage of letting his slaves get drunk, blow off steam and frustrations, and was often encouraged by them. Indeed, many slaves tell stories of, particularly at Christmas, lining up at the big house to get liquor from old master. Alcohol and hedonism was part of the slave master's pacification program. Today, marijuana and heroin are being substituted. The psychological dynamic is not different, however, than it was in slavery.
Julius Lester: The Civil Rights Movement of the '60s was confronting not only the political and social manifestations of racism which came into being after slavery, but it was also attempting to confront the psycho-history of slavery. In 1966, James Meredith started on a march through Mississippi, and significantly he called it a March Against Fear. Civil rights organizers in the South found that the enemy they had to conquer was not only the fear of physical reprisal but the belief that Black people could not do anything for themselves.
Julius Lester: The Black Power phenomena which followed was an all-out assault on the lack of a cohesive Black identity. It was an attempt in fact to create one, to override the schizophrenia, the two-ness in the Black soul. Honky was an epithet flung not at whites but at the shadow of old master which yet stretches across the Black soul. In other words, the Black Power movement was an inner psychological war fought in public.
Julius Lester: Black identity cannot be achieved easily, however, particularly if the psycho-history of slavery is not examined. The two-ness of which W.E.B. Du Bois wrote eloquently in 1903 remains. The Black slave and his/her descendants are Sambo, Nat Turner, and what is most hard to admit, old master. George Rawick again writes and paraphrases Hegel, quote, "The will of the master and the will of the slave both appear as a contradiction within the slave," unquote.
Julius Lester: And if I were to define the psychological aspect of the Black experience, I would have to say that it is learning to live with the pain of that contradiction. I am not convinced that this contradiction can be resolved, but whether or not it can depends in great part in ceasing to use the slaves as ammunition for ideological guns. The experience of the Afro-American slave was a human experience. And only when it is examined and understand as human experience can Blacks begin to know themselves.
Julius Lester: Of course implicit throughout this paper is a necessity to study the psycho-history of those who created slavery. If it is frightening to try and ascertain the truth of Black psycho-history, I think I would rather risk dancing with death than to have to enter the nightmare of the collective white soul. Thank you.
Darwin Turner: Earlier Julius Lester asked you to talk with him.
Julius Lester: Yes, ma'am?
Speaker 4: First of all, I thought your paper was exceptional.
Julius Lester: Thank you.
Speaker 4: My attack is only on one sentence. There is no word in the English language that evokes a stronger emotional response than using the word welfare, and it evokes it from a different point of perspective than yours. I'd like to give two examples. One is that I took one of my students, who at that time was approximately 19 years old, I believe, who had finished high school and was working. She had three children by different men, which is the typical stereotype that is with Black women with all these children by different men.
Speaker 4: However, I'm wondering if she really was a very dependent person, because I thought she was a very independent person who was caught in a vice of living in a house with 13 people and about two rooms. When we went there, the welfare worker said, "You have $210 a month." The girl worked an 8:00 to 5:00, the best job she could get. And she wanted freedom [inaudible] to go to nursing school, and the welfare worker said to her, "Negros need to learn to live within their means. I would suggest that you just manage your money better."
Speaker 4: The second thing that bothers me is that everyone in this country over age 65 who is Black has an average income of $2,000 a year. Do you have any remedy for these people who are dependent? For this kind of thing that ... People have not had jobs. I know one in particular, he gets $114 a month. He was an illiterate elevator operator. Is he really dependent, or is he just caught in a vice?
Julius Lester: Well, okay. So, the reason why I brought that up ... I mean, what I'm going to say we've all heard before, we've all said at one time or other. We are caught in a vice, because we are caught in this dynamic of going to the man and protesting, demanding, and asking him to do something for us. And it seems to me the way to break that kind of relationship is that we have to do for ourselves. I'm foolish enough to think that it would be possible for a Black welfare system to be created. It would be administered by Blacks. It would be independent of the federal government.
Speaker 4: Oh, okay.
Julius Lester: See? And that's the way to break that dependency upon the federal government. This occurred to me when President Nixon came in office and said, well, he was cutting back on OEO and he was cutting back on ... War on poverty and all of this, and cutting out all of these programs. Folks panicked, and folks spent their money and they hired Greyhound buses and they went to Washington. They marched around the White House, and they marched around HEW and stuff. Then went back and they cut off HEW, OEO and stuff.
Julius Lester: And the solution of that is very obvious. You don't place yourself in a ... I mean, to be powerless means that you have given the power of your life to somebody else who doesn't care about you. The only way to break that is to say, "Well, yeah, we've got to do what we can for ourselves." So, it seems to me that's the only way to break that. I don't think it could be any worse, and it would sure be more human than the welfare system is.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Julius Lester: Come on now. I mean, I was expecting ... Come on now. Y'all ain't going to ... I know it's early in the morning. It's Saturday, and it's hard to talk on Saturday morning. I usually don't talk on Saturdays. I mean, that's the truth. I ain't even up this time of day on Saturday nohow. So, I'm here talking. I ain't going to tell you how late I was up last night and what I was doing either. Some of y'all know though. Yeah?
Speaker 5: I guess I had some problems with your quotes in the slave narratives. I was reading another book [inaudible] Mr. Johnson's [inaudible] plantation.
Julius Lester: Yeah?
Speaker 5: He used quotes in the same manner those statements probably proving any point of view that he wanted to, and some of them I feel that it didn't necessarily reflect ... I don't see how they necessarily reflect the generalization of the slave feeling or the slave mentality. How do you come to grips with the generalization [inaudible]
Julius Lester: I came to grips with the generalization, and believe me, it was very, very difficult for me to do. I came to grips with the generalization, because it occurs so many times. I mean, these are not isolated. I just picked out some that I thought were expressed in very unique kinds of ways. How I got involved in slave narratives was way back in 1963. I read Ben Botkin's book, Lay My Burden Down, and Lay My Burden Down is filled with statements like the kinds of that I have read. And I was very angered by the book, and I was very hurt by the book.
Julius Lester: So, I said, "Well, I'm going to go to the Library of Congress, and I'm going to go through the same material he did and see what he left out." I found a lot of stuff that he left out, which I included in To Be a Slave, but what I found also was that he had not ... I felt he had not done a trip on Black people, that he had not taken isolated things, but he had taken things that were typical.
Julius Lester: That's the basis on which I generalize, that the stuff is there repeatedly. What I had to deal with emotionally and get beyond was, okay, not to be ashamed of this but to recognize, to try to get inside what was his experience and figure out, okay, what would I have done if I had been there. I just had to kind of step back a little bit and not feel that this was a comment on me. That's all.
Speaker 6: How are you controlling the fact that frequently the response in the interview was designed to please the interviewer who-
Julius Lester: Yeah, but see that means ... Okay. What he said was, how do I control the fact that in the interviews frequently the response was one designed to please the interviewer? That tells me something right there. I mean, that is a fact in and of itself. When you read the interviews, some of the interviewers will walk on the porch and ... The interviews aren't just the slaves, but they're the questions in all this. The interviewer will walk on the porch, and he will say, "Well, uncle, how are you this morning?" That sets up a whole dynamic immediately, but the fact that the person being interviewed falls into the role and plays that says as much as what he actually says.
Speaker 6: Given all the limitations of the interviewing situation, aren't you actually doing a psycho-history of the Black confronting a white [inaudible] society in the 1930s, rather than any kind of genuine psycho-historical approach of the 1850s? How do you escape the bounds of the interviewing situation?
Julius Lester: Well, but you-
Speaker 6: But they're not there ... It was a Sambo or a rebel or any kind of pattern in all of the slave narratives.
Julius Lester: Which is the-
Speaker 6: In effect, they are going to be responding to male, white interviewers.
Julius Lester: That is a limitation. I see that also as a test, because, you see, if the slave chooses to play Sambo, that gives me important information. Some of the slaves did not choose to play Sambo before the white interviewer. But the fact that they chose to play that role, if it was a role, is important information.
Speaker 6: Yeah. About the 1930s. It doesn't tell us anything about the psychology of the 1850s.
Julius Lester: I think it does, yeah. I mean, 1850 to 1930 ain't that far psychologically. I ain't that much different than what I was in 1945 really. I think that it does. George?
George: I was just going to say the question also can be raised, are there really significant ... How significant are the differences of the responses when the interviewers were female, Black interviewers? Check that out. You might be a little surprised.
Speaker 6: There's a pattern of greater candor on the part of the interviewee and apparently a willingness to talk about the great variety of forms of resistance and less of [inaudible] but the ... Well, slavery doesn't come across as being quite so cheery, quite so comfortable. The master does not necessarily come across as being the good old boy up at the big house. There's a willingness to attack the master and attack the system and to recognize that [inaudible] been exploited. I think that you can know it's an attack if you go to the manuscripts and compare the two [inaudible]
George: I've not noticed it in the manuscripts [inaudible] manuscripts, which I've read.
Speaker 6: Okay.
Julius Lester: I just know that, from our reading of it, that it was very obviously the slaves who were trying to hustle the interviewer, as some were very obvious. I accept what they say.
Speaker 8: [inaudible] I was somewhat disturbed with your use of the term Uncle Tom, especially when the characteristics of the Sambo personality excludes the heavy religious comments that you find in those characters.
Julius Lester: Okay. I accept that.
Speaker 9: Can you repeat the question?
Julius Lester: What he said was that he was disturbed by my use of the word Uncle Tom as being synonymous with Sambo, particularly since Sambo excludes the religious element which Harriet Beecher Stowe puts into Uncle Tom. And I accept that.
Speaker 10: I wanted to get back to what I heard you mention about the Black instituted and owned welfare system. I was wondering if this was just a passing thought and if you had any really concrete ideas about how to set up an institution like that.
Julius Lester: I don't have that kind of mind that could set something like that. There are Black people who do.
Speaker 11: And we don't have that kind of money.
Speaker 10: No, we have that.
Julius Lester: We've got the money. We've got the money. If we boycotted the liquor stores for one weekend, we'd have the basis for our program. And that's a fact. You go in some Black folks' home and they've got a bottle of Master 1 down on the counter. What we spend for parties, I mean, that's true. What we spend on cars. We got the money. Blacks have got ... I forget what the figure is, $20 billion or something a year they figure the Black economy is. But we got the money. But it's how we set our priorities, and we set our priorities very individualistically. Back in the back?
Speaker 12: Is there a larger international context in which you [inaudible] the concentration camp analogy was a very poor one. [inaudible] the institution [inaudible] analogy [inaudible]
Julius Lester: I can't think of one, since slavery in America I think in this country was very, very unique and was different than it was in Latin America. There have been a lot of criticisms. That's one of the things that a lot of people have jumped on Elkins about, and he admits himself that it's an imperfect analogy. Perhaps the better analogy, which a couple of people have written about, Christopher Lasch has written about among others, is with the prison system as being much more analogous to slavery. There are studies coming out now on the kind of psychology that is engendered under the prison system, but that's the only other analogy that I can think of. I mentioned that in passing in the paper. Beyond that, I really can't ... There may be analogies in terms of the South African situation, but that we know very little about that from the inside.
Speaker 13: Recently I've read the new Engerman and Fogel, The Time on the Cross. Can you please speak to [inaudible]
Julius Lester: She's asking about the Engerman and Fogel, The Time on the Cross. The book just came out, which I have not ... I have looked at it. I have flipped through it very quickly. I have not read. I would be being unfair to myself and to them if I commented on it. I was much more upset by the review that was in the New York Times than I was by the book. The review in the New York Times read me to think that it was, oh, I don't know, a restatement of the Elkins thesis. But then flipping through the book, I got a different impression. George?
George: Let me ask you this [inaudible] The slave narratives are virtually a unique body of material, that is to say 2,000 or more interviews with people that have common experience, people's history from below. I don't know of a comparable body of stuff elsewhere, at least not that's been scrutinized. I suspect it may be.
George: But I have a feeling, and I'm going to express it as this, that if there were interviews for 2,000 Chinese peasants taken in the 1920s, or there had been the interviews with 2,000 white American factory workers taken during the 1930s while it mattered, you'd get the same kind, a degree at least, although the content would be different, the same kind of ambivalences, the same kind of contradictions, the same kind of sense of the two people, the two roles, and the question of how do you keep them apart and do they merge or don't they merge.
George: That is to say, what I ... And if I'm right on that guess, then what you're saying is a description not only of the slave condition but a much more importantly and therefore comparative, for in the comparative sense, is the statement about the human condition.
Julius Lester: I said that.
George: All right. In that case, that takes [inaudible] is ... That's a different kind of thing.
Julius Lester: Yeah. Well, I said very explicitly that the slave experience has to be looked at in terms as the human, as a human experience. So, I think that there are a lot of other kind of analogous situations which I have not thought about or looked into yet. But I don't think ... You see, what has been done in the past is that the slave experience has been looked at as being unique to Blacks, and therefore it was inherent in Blacks. What I stated in here very explicitly was that any people in a similar situation the result would have been the same. Yeah?
Speaker 14: [inaudible] I think that [inaudible] comparative [inaudible] experience [inaudible] I think that it appeals [inaudible]
Julius Lester: You see, I'm not suggesting that the two are the same. What I'm saying, you see ... It seems to me that what we get caught into sometimes is always reacting against. What I am saying is that there are certain points of similarities between the Black experience and the experience of other ethnic groups in this country, very important points where they diverge, and that we always ... We want to think that we're exclusive and unique, and I think that we overlook insights. We overlook things that would be illuminating by not seeing also where they come together. And I'm saying we've got to do both. That's all. And that's very difficult to do, given particularly ... I know that myself, in trying to deal with Black history, Black culture, there is that intense emotional involvement. So, therefore, I have to keep a check on myself if I am to be any kind of decent writer or a scholar.
Speaker 15: [inaudible]