ENGL 203: Early African-American Literature: Primary Sources

"Harriet Jacobs's 1861 autobiography was the first written narrative by a female slave in America. Using the pseudonym Linda, Jacobs recounts the horrors of her life as a slave and a mother. She documents the physical and sexual abuse she went through prior to her escape from slavery and gaining freedom for herself and two children. The "Contexts" section provides a selection of public statements written by prominent abolitionists, including Harriet Jacobs, on the cruelty of slavery. A selection of correspondence between Harriet Jacobs and her fellow abolitionists is also included. The "Criticism" selection examines a variety of topics, ranging from the form of the text to discussions on oral tradition, activism, the intersection of race and gender, and print culture. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included."--Provided by publisher.

"In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston went to Plateau, Alabama, just outside Mobile, to interview eighty-six-year-old Cudjo Lewis. Of the millions of men, women, and children transported from Africa to America as slaves, Cudjo was then the only person alive to tell the story of this integral part of the nation's history. Hurston was there to record Cudjo's firsthand account of the raid that led to his capture and bondage fifty years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in the United States.

"Recently discovered as a hand-written document in the Buckingham Smith Collection at the New York Historical Society, this remarkable first-person narrative traces the life of Sitiki, whose name was changed to Jack Smith after his enslavement in America. Captured and sold into slavery in Africa as a five-year-old, Sitiki traveled to America as a cabin boy. Eventually sold by the ship's captain to Josiah Smith of Savannah, Georgia, he lived there and in Connecticut with his new master. Captured by the British during the War of 1812, he was returned to the Smiths, to be freed only after the Civil War. He went on to become the first black Methodist minister in St. Augustine, Florida, where he established his own church."

For his humanistic religious verse, his poignant and deeply personal antislavery poems, and, above all, his lifelong enthusiasm for liberty, nature, and the art of poetry, George Moses Horton merits a place of distinction among nineteenth-century African American poets. Enslaved from birth until the close of the Civil War, the self-taught Horton was the first American slave to protest his bondage in published verse and the first black man to publish a book in the South. As a man and as a poet, his achievements were extraordinary. In this volume, Joan Sherman collects sixty-two of Horton's poems. Her comprehensive introduction--combining biography, history, cultural commentary, and critical insight--presents a compelling and detailed picture of this remarkable man's life and art. George Moses Horton (ca. 1797-1883) was born in Northampton County, North Carolina. A slave for sixty-eight years, Horton spent much of his life on a farm near Chapel Hill, and in time he fostered a deep connection with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The author of three books of poetry, Horton was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame in May of 1996.

Uses the music and lyrics of thirteen African-American songs as a focal point for relating the history of the African-American experience and for telling American musical history.

A selection of twenty spirituals, music from the time of slavery.