J. Mason Brewer lecture, "The Afro-American Slave Experience: As Reflected in Individual and Group Narrative," at the University of Iowa, June 10, 1974

Speaker 1: The following was recorded June 10th, 1974, as part of the Sixth Annual Institute on Afro-American Culture held at the University of Iowa. Speaking on the Afro-American Slave Experience as Reflected in Individual and Group Narrative is J. Mason Brewer, visiting Professor and member of the Graduate Faculty at East Texas State University. J. Mason Brewer: Preceded only by the Negro spiritual, the individual Slave Narrative represents one of the Afro-Americans earliest contributions to American literature. In spite of the fact that the first Slave Narratives made their appearance in the year 1705, and that thousands of them have been collected and recorded, scholars have not until recently been interested in examining and evaluating seriously, the testimonials of Afro-American slaves. It is encouraging to note, however, today that some of the most erudite Black scholars, as well as some outstanding white authors have made significant comment expressing their impressions of the Afro-American slave experience. J. Mason Brewer: Chief among these is W.E.B. Du Bois who says in his Gift of Black Folk. Listen to the wind, oh God, the reader that wail across the whip-cords stretched taut on broken human hearts, listen to the bones, the bare bleached bones of slaves that line the lanes of seven seas and beat eternal tomtoms in the forest of the laboring deep. Listen to the blood, the cold thick blood that spills its filth across the fields and flowers of the free. Listen to the souls that wing and thrill and weep and scream and sob and sing above it all. What shall these things mean? Oh God, the reader? You know, you know. These words of W.E.B. Du Bois reveal not only the poetic beauty of his prose, but the stern challenge of his message, his book, The Gift of Black Folk is unsurpassed as an index to the Afro-Americans inner life and feeling. A passionate unfolding of the Afro-American struggle in an alien world inside of himself. J. Mason Brewer: B. A. Botkin in his book of Slave Narratives, titled Lay My Burden Down says, as a mixture of fact and fiction then, colored by fantasy and idealization of old people recalling the past. These Narratives constitute a kind of collective saga. Thomas W. Talley author of Negro Folk Rhymes issues the following statement regarding the Afro-American slave experience. Restricted, cramped, bound in unwilling servitude, he looked about him in his miserable little world to see whatever of the beautiful or happy he might find. That which he discovered is pathetically slight, but such as it was it served to keep alive his stunted artist-soul under the most adverse circumstances. J. Mason Brewer: Charles Harold Nichols in his Black Men in Chains remarks, among the earliest writings by Black people in America are accounts of their own lives. Those who have experienced slavery have left us intimate views of the domestic slave trade of life and work on plantations and of their anguished reactions to their slave status. Having presented the views of some of the most outstanding authors who've been interested in pursuing investigations in the era of Afro-American Slave Narrative, may we now turn our attention to a consideration of the Narratives themselves as related by the individual ex-slaves. Bearing in mind, the old expression that says the proof of the pudding is the pudding itself. J. Mason Brewer: To begin with, there are two categories of individual Slave Narratives, the Antebellum Narratives, those printed before the Civil War and the Postbellum Slave Narratives, those collected and published after the Civil War. That Antebellum Narratives are lengthy and functional, while the Postbellum Narratives are brief and informative. Most of the Antebellum Slave Narratives rewritten by white abolitionists with the exception of those written by members of the ex slave intelligentsia like Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown, Josiah Henson, and a few others. The Antebellum Narratives with their accounts of extreme cruelty, helped create sympathy for the abolitionist movement. A good example of this type of sympathy producing Narrative is one related by William Wells brown who once saw a slave jump into the water from a Steamboat to avoid being punished for stealing meat. Despite the Black man's cries and pleadings, his pursuers strike him with pipe poles until he drowned. J. Mason Brewer: After hauling the corpse on board with a hook, they accuse the slave of playing possum and kick him to make him get up. The men leave when there's no response and the captain calls after them, you have killed this nigger, now take him off my boat. The body is then dragged to shore, left for the night and picked up by the trash cart the next day. It might be appropriate to note here also regarding the functional nature of the Antebellum Slave Narratives, that many of the fugitive slaves who had escaped and who had ghost writers, rewrite their Narratives, used the money obtained from sale pf paperback editions of their Narratives to buy freedom for some relative who still remained in bondage. The books usually sold for 25 cents a copy. J. Mason Brewer: While the Antebellum Narratives are important documents, it is the briefer Postbellum Narratives upon which we must rely for a more comprehensive view of the Afro-American slave experience. A careful inspection of these short Narratives, thousands of which have been collected, reflects the following. First that the slaves were treated cruelly. Second, that the slaves exhibited dauntless courage and third, that the slaves developed a nostalgic tendency. Supporting the fact that the slaves were treated cruelly by their own admission, I should like at this time to submit the following testimony from Out of the Mouths of Ex slaves by John B. Cade, the first Black man to recognize the importance of preserving the Postbellum Slave Narratives. I was on the program with him in Houston, in November 1935 at the national meeting of association for the study of Negro life and history. Cade was impressive and important as an early collector. J. Mason Brewer: Out of the Mouths of Ex-slaves. Our master would punish us by putting us in stocks. If a slave committed a bad crime, he would be put into the stocks by his head. That is his head was put through the hole so that it would fasten around his neck. If the crime was not bad, he would be put in by his feet. Someone carried water and food to him. We were also punished by whipping with a whip made from cowhide or a large whip called a bullwhip. When a mother was sent to attend her baby, she had a certain time to stay. If she stayed over that time, she was whipped. New Bradford of the same slave holding area says my second master, Mr. Hood and his wife were very cruel to their cook. One day, she cooked some biscuits and brought them to the table. Mrs. Hood decided that she had kept one or two for herself. Now she, the slave was not allowed to eat biscuits at all. Consequently, Mr and Mrs. Hood began questioning the cook. J. Mason Brewer: Of course the cook had eaten the biscuit, but forgot to wash the pan in which they had been cooked. Mr. Hood counted the number of biscuits on the table then went into the kitchen where he could see the signs on the pan from which he was able to judge that the cook had misplaced two biscuits. Mr. Hood finished the dinner, then took the cook out and whipped the blood out of her. And now some supporting Narratives from B.A. Botkin Lay My Burden Down will supplement the painful quotes from the Black writer John B. Cade. Botkin, as all of you probably know is white. My own master was Dave Giles. The meanest man that ever lived, he didn't have many slaves, my mummy and me and my uncle Bill and Truman. He had owned my grandma, but he gave her a bad whipping and she never did get over it and died. J. Mason Brewer: We all done as much work as a dozen niggers. We knowed, we had to. I seen old master getting mad at Truman and he buckled him down across the bale and whipped him till he cut the blood out of him. And then he rubbed salt and pepper in the raw places. It looked like Truman would die. It hurt me bad. I know that it don't sound reasonable that a white man in a Christian community would do such a thing, but you can realize how heartless he was. People didn't know about it. And we'd ask them to tell for we know that he'd kill us if we did. You must remember he owned us body and soul, and there wasn't anything we could do about it. Old mistress and her three girls was mean to us too. One time me and my sister was spinning and old mistress went to the well-house and she found a chicken snake and killed it. J. Mason Brewer: She brought it back and then she throwed it around my sister's neck. She just laughed and laughed about it. She thought it was a big joke. Old master stayed drunk all the time. I reckon that's the reason he was so fetched mean. My, how we hated him. He finally killed himself drinking. And I remember mistress called us in to look at him in his coffin. We all marched by him slowly and I just happened to look up and caught my sister's eye. And we both just naturally started laughing. Why shouldn't we? We was glad he was dead. It's a good thing we had our laugh, old mistress took us out and whipped us with a broomstick. She didn't make us sorry though. To whip me, she put my head between the two fence rails and she taken the cowhide whip and beat me until I couldn't sit down for a week. J. Mason Brewer: Sometimes she tied our hands around the tree and tied our neck to the tree with our face to the tree. And they would get behind us with a cowhide, with a piece of lead tied to the end. And Lord have mercy, child I shouted when I wasn't happy. All I could say was oh pray, mistress, pray. That was our way to say, Lord have mercy. The last whipping old mistress give me, she tied me to a tree and oh my Lord, old miss sure did whip me that day. That was the worst whipping I ever got in my life. I cried and buckled and hollered until I couldn't, I'll give up for dead and she wouldn't stop. I stopped crying and said, old miss, if I were you and you were me, I wouldn't beat you this way. That struck old miss's heart and she let me go. And she did not have the heart to beat me anymore. J. Mason Brewer: Examples of accounts of the individual slave experience, asserting the fact that slaves exhibited dauntless courage are hereby submitted. First I quote from B.A. Botkin's Lay My Burden Down. White folks, I'm going to tell you a story about a mean overseer and what happened to him during the slavery days. It all commenced when a nigger named Jake Williams got a whipping for staying out after the time on his pass done give out. All the niggers on the place hated the overseer worse than pizen because he was so mean and used to try to think of things to whup us for. One morning, the slaves was lined up, ready to eat their breakfast. And Jake Williams was petting his old redbone hound. About that time the overseer come up and see Jacob petting his hound. J. Mason Brewer: And he said, nigger, you ain't got time to be fooling along that dog. Now make him get. Jake tried to make the dog go home but the dog didn't want to leave Jake. And then the overseer pick up a rock and slam the dog in the back. The dog, he then went howling off. That night, Jake, he come to my cabin and he say to me, Heywood, I is going to run away to a free state. I ain't going to put up with this treatment no longer. I can't stand much more. I gives him my hand and I say Jake I hope you gets there. Maybe I'll see you again sometime. Heywood, he said, I wish you'd look after my hound Belle, feed her and keep her the best you can. She's a mighty good possum and coon dog. I hates to part with her but I knows that you is the best person I could leave her with. J. Mason Brewer: And with that Jake slip out of the door and I see them walking toward the swamp down the long furrows of corn. It didn't take the overseer long to find out that Jake done run away and when he did, he got out the bloodhounds and started off after him. It wasn't long before Jake heard them hounds howling in the distance. Jake, he was too tired to go any further. He circled around and doubled on his tracks so as to confuse the hounds. And then he climbed a tree. It wasn't long before he see the light of the overseer coming through the woods and the dogs was getting closer and closer. J. Mason Brewer: Finally, they smelled a tree that Jake was in and they started barking rounded. The overseer lifted his lighted pine knot in the air, so he could see Jake. He say, nigger, come on down now. You done wasted enough of my time, but Jake, he never moved to make a sound. And all the time the dogs kept a howling and overseer kept persuading. Come on down, he said, again, if you don't, I'm coming up there and knock you out in that tree with a stick. J. Mason Brewer: Jake still, he never moved and overseer began to climb the tree. And when he got where he could almost reach Jake, he swung that stick and he'd come down on Jake's leg and hurt him terrible. Jake, he raised his foot and kicked the overseer right in the mouth. And that white man went stumbling to the ground. And when he hit it, the hounds pounced on him. Jake, then lowered himself to the bottom limb so he could see what had happened. He saw the dogs are tearing at the man and he hollered, hold him Belle, hold him gal. The leader of the pack of hounds, white folks wasn't no blood hound. She was a plain old redbone possum and coon dog. And the rest of them dogs done just like she'd done tearing at the overseer's throat. All the while Jake hollering from the tree for the dogs to get him. It wasn't long before them dogs tore the man all to pieces and he died right under that maple tree that he run Jake up. J. Mason Brewer: Jake, he and that coon hound struck off through the woods. The rest of the pack come home. I seed Jake after us niggers was freed. That's how come I knowed all about it. It must have been six years after they killed the overseer. It was in Kentucky that I run across Jake. He was sitting on some steps of a nigger cabin, a hound dog was sitting at his side. I tell him how glad I had to see him. And then I look at the dog. That ain't Belle, I said. No, Jake answers. That's her puppy. Then he told me the whole story. I always did want to know what happened to him. J. Mason Brewer: And the following observation from Out of the Mouths of Ex slaves by John B. Cade. Mr. Johnson was a water boy in the days of slavery. He states that he was one who could talk so fast and say so many funny things that his mistress could never whip him. Mrs. Mary Francis, an ex slave woman, about 90 years of age states that during slavery time, many of the slaves endured all kinds of torture in order to escape the hard punishments inflicted upon them. She tells of an instance when an uncle of hers resisted one of the overseers and struck his master a severe blow when the master attempted to beat him with a cowhide whip for not working fast enough for him. J. Mason Brewer: After having this encounter with the master was the poor slave knew that it meant death. If he remained on the place and that if he ran away, the hound would be sent in pursuit. Thus he had to think fast, have a means of escape. Immediately. He set out for the woods. After crossing a small stream in a dense forest he came to a spot where there was a large hole in the ground. J. Mason Brewer: This was the place for him. He took trees, leaves, and branches to cover it over in order that he might be protected from wild animals and storms. He made a bed of leaves upon which to sleep and kept near him a large club, which was his only weapon. He killed birds and game and other wild animals of the forest for food. He seized every opportunity to slip back to the plantation, to visit the cabin in which his mother lived so as to stay in touch with her and his family. No one knew of his whereabouts, but his mother. And she kept it strictly, strictly a secret. This particular slave remained in the forest until the hair covered his body and he looked like the animals about him. When freedom came, he revealed himself, went to his wife and children who were in there to the utmost surprise and fright, greeted him although they were not thoroughly convinced that he was who he claimed to be. J. Mason Brewer: The third major characteristic reflected by the individual Slave Narrative is that it developed a nostalgic tendency in this slaves, longing and yearning for the first plantation he lived on. Our father slavery system or for a sweetheart left on a plantation from which he escaped that was sold. The following Narrative exemplifies this nostalgic quality. But all in all, white folks, then was the really happy days for this niggers. Of course, we didn't have the advantages that we had now, but that was something back there that we ain't got now. And that's security. Yes sir, 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 cry with us. We had a mistress that would nurse us when we were sick and a comfort to us when we had to be punished. I sometimes wish I could be back on the old place. J. Mason Brewer: I can see the cool house now packed with fresh butter and milk and cream. I can see the spring with down amongst the willows and the water trickling down between little rocks. I can hear the took is a goblin in the yard and the chickens are running around in the sun and shuffling in the dust. I can see the bend in the Creek, just below our house and the cows as they come to drink into stellar water and get their feet cool. Yes sir, white folk, you ain't never seen nothing like it. So you can't tell the joy you get from looking for dewberries, on a hunting Guinea eggs and sitting in the shade of the peach tree reaching up and pulling off a ripe peach and eating it slow. You ain't never seen you people gathered about and singing in the moonlight or hear the lark at the break of day. J. Mason Brewer: You ain't never walked across the frosty field in the early morning and going to the big house to build a fire for your mistress. And when she wake up and hear her say, well, how's my little nigger today. This nostalgic quality is also expressed in a Narrative that involves my native Texas and the neighboring state of Arkansas. I was big enough to remember well, I was coming back from Texas after we refugee there when the fighting of the war was so bad at St. Charles. We stayed in Texas till the surrender, then we all come back in lots of wagons. I was sick, but they put me on a little bed and me and all the little children rode in a Jersey that one old Negro mammies drove along behind the wagons and our young master Colonel Bob Cheney rode a great big Black horse. J. Mason Brewer: Oh, he nice looking on that horse. Every once in a while, he'd ride back to the last wagon to see if everything was all right. I remember how scared us children was when we crossed the red river. Amen. They said, we cross in your red river today, but we ain't going to cross you no more because we going back home to Arkansas, we are not without positive reactions from ex-slaves regarding slavery from John B. Cade's conclusion of his Out of the Mouths of Ex-slaves who says, although the majority of those questioned did not express themselves upon the institution, 14 delivered themselves in no uncertain terms. What might be surprising to some is the fact that several ex-slaves and not only feel no animus, but actually long for the good old times. This is Cade's major example. One of the investigators closed his account of an interview with an ex slave who says that slaves fared much better than Negroes do now. J. Mason Brewer: He said he would be much better treated where we ex slaves. Lee Henderson states that he admires those days as he got along very nicely and did not have to work very hard. Some would have a much better time if they were in slavery now. Priscilla Owen says that slaves on that plantation had a much better time than most Negroes are having now. One old gentleman said his master was simply fine in every way. Since surrender, he has often wished for slavery again, because he surely had a really splendid time. An example of a longing for a sweetheart from which the narrator had been separated was sent to me by Rita of the Dallas Times Herald, which did a feature on me in 1974. J. Mason Brewer: The writer who seemed to be white asked me to identify this nostalgic song, which he called Ella Rhee, sweet Ella Rhee so dear to me is lost forever more. Our home was down in Tennessee before the cruel war. Who carry me back to Tennessee back where I long to be, among the fields of yellow corn, to my darling Ellie Rhee. Why did I from day to day, keep wishing to be free and from my master runaway and leave my Ella Rhee. Significant is the increasing extent to which screen and stage are reflecting the Afro-American individual slave experience to the larger public. And in the most convincing of all farms, visual action, Cicely Tyson's recent triumph in the autobiography of Ms. Jane Pittman shows that there is a new seriousness and dignity in Afro-American characterization. The stellar performance of Ms. Tyson represents unprecedented progress. The individual Narrative material cannot be classified as traditional folklore because it has not been handed down from one generation to the other or passed around to others by word of mouth. It is classified as miscellaneous folkloristic composition. J. Mason Brewer: Having reviewed the major ingredients of the individual Slave Narrative and what they reflect, may we now turn our attention to the traits and characteristics of Afro-Americans as reflected in the group Narrative. To begin with the group Narrative differs from the individual Slave Narrative in that it has all the qualities of traditional or pure folklore, historical longevity group poverty status, and geographical spread. It might be well to observe here also that there is a paucity of Afro-American slave tales or group Narratives due to the fact that the significance of this type of Narrative was overlooked by early collectors. And also by those directing the federal writers' project who unwittingly instructed those engaged in collecting the individual Slave Narratives to limit their collecting to the individual experience Narrative. A golden opportunity to have collected the group that was bypassed with the end result, that there are less than 100 group experienced Narratives of the slavery period with humans as the main characters that have been collected and printed. J. Mason Brewer: Those that have been collected, however, reflect certain qualities that boasted the courage of the ex slave and caused him to maintain an optimistic outlook on life. These group Narrative tales reveal the fact that they had slaves created for themselves a make believe world. A world of fantasy in which they possessed power. Always emerging victor in contest with supposedly superior adversaries. The following tales from my own collection of slave tales, Juneteenth, illustrate this quality. There were some slaves who had a reputation for keeping out of work because of their wit and humor. These slaves kept their masters laughing most of the time and were able if not to keep from working altogether, at least to draw the lighter task. Nehemiah was a clever slave and no master who had owned him had ever been able to keep him at work or succeeded in getting him to do heavy work. J. Mason Brewer: He would always have some funny story to tell or some humorous remark to make in response to the master's question or scolding. Because of this faculty of avoiding work, Nehemiah was constantly being transferred from one master to another. As soon as an owner found out that Nehemiah was outwitting him, he sold Nehemiah to some other slaveholder. But one day David Wharton known as the most cruel slave master in Southwest Texas heard about it. I bet I can make that darky work, said David Wharton. And he went to Nehemiah's master in bargain to buy him. The morning of the first day after his purchase, David Wharton walked over to where Nehemiah was standing and said, now you're going to pick 800 pounds of cotton today. Well, master, that's all right said Nehemiah, but if I makes you laugh, won't you let me off today? Well, said David Wharton, who had never been known to laugh in his life. J. Mason Brewer: If you make me laugh, I won't only let you off for the day, but I'll give you your freedom. I declare boss, said Nehemiah, you sure is a good looking man. I'm sorry I can't say the same thing about you retorted David Horton. Oh yes. You could boss, you could, Nehemiah laughed. You could, if you told a big a lie as I did. David Horton could not help laughing at this. He laughed before he thought Nehemiah got his freedom. Master Jim Turner, usually good natured master had a fondness for telling long stories woven out of what he claimed to be his dreams. And especially that he liked the swap dreams with Ike, with a slave who was house servant. Every morning, he would sit Ike telling about what he had dreamed the night before. It always seemed Tyler that the master could tell the best dream tale and I had to admit that he was beaten most of the time. One morning, when Ike entered the masters room to clean it however, he found the master just preparing to get out of bed. J. Mason Brewer: Ike, he said, I certainly did have a strange dream last night. Says you did master, says you did answered Ike. Let me hear it. All right, replied the master. It was like this. I dreamed I went up to nigger heaven last night and I saw there a lot of garbage, some old torn down houses, a few old broken down rotten fences. The muddiest sloppiest streets I ever saw in my life and a big bunch or raggedy, dirty niggers walking around. Master, said Ike, you sure must have had the same thing I did last night. Because I dreamed I went up to the white man paradise and the streets was all of gold and silver. And there was lots of milk and honey there and pretty pearly gates, but there wasn't a soul in the place. J. Mason Brewer: The Afro-American slave also created a second other worldly theory concept. In the area of folk song in which he pictured heaven as his spiritual home, a place where there was security, contentment and happiness, some spirituals expressing this thought are... J. Mason Brewer: ♪ (singing) Swing low, sweet chariot, Coming to carry me home. Swing low, sweet chariot, Coming to carry me home. I looked over Jordan and what did I see, Coming to carry me home. A band of angels coming after me, Coming to carry me home. ♪♪. J. Mason Brewer: And ♪ (singing) I am a poor pilgrim of sorrow, I's left in this wide world alone. But I've heard of a city called heaven. And I'm tryin' to make it my home. Sometimes I am tossed and driven, I don't know where to roam. But I've heard of a city called heaven. I'm tryin' to make it my home. ♪♪ J. Mason Brewer: I had the pleasure of addressing the faculty and students at Fisk University on the occasion of their celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Fisk Jubilee singers. It made me genuinely happy to stand on this hallowed ground near Jubilee Hall. I seem there to comprehend the greatness of man spirit that suffers and endures so hugely far ago, above all the things reflected by the Afro-American slave experience is the fact that the slave had an overwhelming desire for freedom. This thought was always uppermost in his mind and his born out by the following Afro-American group property Narrative. Oh, freedom, oh freedom before I'd be a slave, I'd be buried in my grave and go home to my savior and be saved. The same idea as Apple expressed in a stirring poem by Frances E.W. Hopper, a poet during the Antebellum period who was a worker with the abolitionist movement. J. Mason Brewer: The poem says in part, make me a grave wherever you will, on a lonely plane or a lofty hill, make it among the humblest graves, but not in a land where men are slaves. I ask no monument proud and high to arrest the gaze of the passers by, all that my yearning spirit craves is bury me not in a land of slaves. These represent serious notes about freedom, but there are also humorous tales about the slave's desire for freedom. For example, the following tale from my Juneteenth, my first collection of slave tales. To Negro slaves, the word New England meant escape from bondage. Many of them look forward to someday getting to this promised land and they are obtaining their freedom. In Matagorda County, near the Gulf of Mexico was a large plantation owned by a master George Karnes. The oldest slave on this plantation was uncle Bob Kennedy. Uncle Bob did not talk much, but was always a very attentive listener. And he usually remembered what he heard. One time you heard white people talking about how slaves had run away to the New England States and gained their freedom. J. Mason Brewer: Some of them, it seems had made their escape in boats. And since the Karnes plantation was on the edge of the Gulf and his master had a small boat, uncle Bob decided to take the water route to New England. One evening about dark, he got a second meal and a jug of molasses and media is way down to the little cove where the masters boat was tied. He got in it with his meal and molasses. Uncle Bob had heard about low tide and high tide and so he thought that sometime during the night, the high tide would take him in the boat out to sea and eventually land him somewhere in New England. Confident that the tides would take care of him. He laid on the boat and soon was asleep. The next morning, early another slave on the plantation, Ezekiel passed close to the boat and seeing uncle Bob in it, shouted to wake him up. J. Mason Brewer: Uncle Bob, uncle Bob, he called, wake up, wake up. On hearing his name called, uncle Bob woke up, rubbing his eyes in a confused manner. Yes, the boat had carried him far away from the plantation to New England, but still there was something not just right about this far in it. Who doesn't knowing me up here so early in New England, he called out. This tale refutes the postulate of some writers who claimed that the slave had no sense of direction that he did not know in which direction to go if he wanted to escape. I know the folk item that refutes this series is the code song follow the drinking gourd. The drinking gourd, as you know, is what slaves called the constellation known as the Big Dipper, which was in the Northern part of the sky. As the story goes, that was a peg legged sailor who made trips to the South and helped slaves escape. J. Mason Brewer: He taught the slaves, the following song, ♪ (singing) Follow the drinkin' gourd. Follow the drinkin' gourd. For the old man say, Follow the drinkin' gourd. ♪♪ The rivers bank is a very good route. ♪ Follow the drinkin' gourd. ♪♪ The dead tree shows the way. ♪ Follow the drinkin' gourd. ♪♪ Left foot, pig foot, goin' on. ♪ Follow the drinkin' gourd. Follow the drinkin' gourd. ♪♪ J. Mason Brewer: These group Narratives and others similar to them showed how false that stereotypes slogan, laughing just to keep from crying, which has been traditionally applied to the Afro-American ears. The humorous folk tales of the Afro-American save experience reflect the fact that the slogan applied to the Black American experience should be laughing so as to keep on trying. In harmony with this philosophy is a quotation from Shakespeare, which says, the deepest sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. An additional quote from Shakespeare, it seems to me, contains a thought that would be very appropriate to conclude this discourse with. This statement reads as follows what's past is prologue. This quote, it seems to me is a plea for hope, for not brooding about what has been done. A plea for faith in the future. What's past is prologue and their everlasting future is before us to improve upon the past. J. Mason Brewer: We must continue to dream of and work for solutions to our problems in the present and the future. A renaissance of American literature is due. The material about us in this strange heartrending race tangle is rich beyond dream and only we can tell the tale and sing the song from the heart. I dream a world where man, no other man will scorn. Where love will bless the earth and peace its paths adorn. I dream a world where all will know sweet freedom's way, where greed no longer saps the soul nor avarice blights our day. A world I dream where Black or white whatever race you be, will share the bounties of the earth and every man is free. Where wretchedness will hang its head and joy, like a pearl, attends the needs of all mankind. Of such I dream, our world.