In week 43 of the humanities crash course, I read two essential texts in the struggle against racial injustice: W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail. I also revisited my notes for Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, which I read several years ago.

To complement these readings, I saw a venerated film adaptation of another classic book about prejudice. The film moved me less than these extraordinary texts, for reasons I’ll explain below.

Readings

I’ll unpack the readings chronologically. The oldest — Douglass’s autobiography — was published in 1845, before the Civil War. The book offers an unflinching look at slavery from a slave’s perspective. Douglass starts with his early life on a plantation, where he witnesses brutal interactions between slaves and slaveholders and is separated from his mother.

Eventually, he learns to read and develops a desire for freedom. He’s sold to another owner, who takes him to Baltimore. There, he continues his education and experiences urban slavery. He’s sent to the brutal “slave breaker” Edward Covey. This experience, plus his continued education, leads him to plan and execute an escape north.

After a few failed efforts, he escapes, landing in New Bedford, Massachusetts. While technically free, he still experiences discrimination. He enters abolitionist circles and starts advocating an end to slavery. Eventually, he decides to set down his experiences in the book we’re reading to further his advocacy.

This brings us to W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk, published almost four decades after the end of the Civil War. Alas, the end of slavery didn’t end racial injustice. The book explains Reconstruction’s failure to bring about justice and the pernicious impacts of ongoing racism. Parts read like a sociology texbook, while others offer deeply personal experiences.

Du Bois explains that Black folk experience “double consciousness”: an internal conflict that comes from navigating a society that devalues them while striving for dignity and improvement. He uses the metaphor of a veil separating Black folk from their compatriots: continual awareness of this veil underlies African-American self-perception.

Overwhelming social, cultural, and economic challenges kept the veil intact. Some people approached these challenges with good faith but there were also lots of opportunists in the mix. Du Bois doesn’t provide easy answers. That said, he suggests more classical education (as opposed to Booker T. Washington’s vocational approach) would’ve helped.

On to this week’s third reading, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail. Context: sixty years after Du Bois’s book, a condition of legal apartheid exists in the South. Dr. King has been jailed for participating in non-violent protests against Alabama’s Jim Crow segregation laws.

The direct audience for his open letter are his fellow clergy who question the wisdom and timeliness of his actions. But we are the real audience for this lucid, clear, and compelling explanation of the need for civil disobedience in the face of unjust laws. Dr. King challenges moderates — i.e., most of us — who value order over justice. That said, he remains hopeful that justice will prevail.

Audiovisual

Music: Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Billie Holiday. I’m most familiar with Armstrong, one of my favorite performers in any medium, but also spent some time with Ellington and Holiday this week. What extraordinary talent!

Arts: artists from the Harlem Renaissance, a creative, cultural, and intellectual movement centered in Harlem, NY during the 1920s—30s that helped redefine the African-American experience.

Painting of a lively jazz scene with a couple dancing in a crowded room. Musicians play trumpets and clarinets while people socialize, creating a vibrant atmosphere. *Blues* (1929) by Archibald Motley via [Wikimedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archibald_Motley#/media/File:Blues_-_Archibald_Motley_Jr_(25844028778).jpg)

Blues (1929) by Archibald Motley via Wikimedia

That I wasn’t aware of these artists says more about me than I should admit in writing. But that’s what learning the humanities is supposed to do: expose blind spots so we can correct course.

Cinema: Robert Mulligan’s TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (1962), based on Harper Lee’s eponymous Pulitzer-winning novel.

The story is told from the POV of three children, siblings Scout and Jim Finch and their friend Dill living in a Deep South small town during the Great Depression. Their father, Atticus Finch, is a lawyer defending an innocent Black man accused of rape. The children witness the ugliness, injustice, and violence of racism and learn from their father important moral lessons.

While this is considered one of the best films ever made and a deeply moving story, I couldn’t overlook its shortcomings. Atticus Finch, played by Gregory Peck, is clearly the film’s hero, but Tom Robinson — the accused man — is its heart. Brock Peters, who played Robinson, gives an extraordinary performance overflowing with dignity and frustration. Alas, he — and all the other Black actors — get little screen time.

How different from this week’s readings, which tackled prejudice from the victim’s perspective! I get it: the film was meant to move an early 1960s mainstream American audience. Still, it felt unbalanced. I also disliked Elmer Bernstein’s music, which I found overwrought and overbearing. The whole, while executed masterfully (lots of suspense!), is a product of a different time.

Reflections

I cited the full title of Douglass’s autobiography above — Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave — because the last part sounds so dissonant to me. Put plainly, the phrase “American Slave” feels like it should be an oxymoron. The U.S. was ostensibly founded on Enlightenment principles of equality and freedom. But for far too long, slavery was the law of the land.

And what a horrible thing it was. I was moved to tears by all three of this week’s texts, the first time that’s happened during the course. It’s hard to imagine anyone being treated so brutally and unfairly, much less anyone as brilliant as Douglass, Du Bois, and Dr. King. Apart from their other accomplishments, they are extraordinarily lucid, erudite, and morally clear writers.

How could anyone consider them anything other than brilliant people? The answer is racism, one of our species’ most pernicious biases. These texts reveal both the depths of racial injustice in American history and what Dr. King called the “moral arc of the universe”: While prejudice is far from a settled issue, reading these texts suggests some progress has happened since — mostly thanks to people like Douglass, Du Bois, and Dr. King.

Notes on Note-taking

As mentioned above, I opted to not re-read Douglass’s autobiography at this time. Alas, my notes from the first reading were sparse: a couple of sentences explaining the main narrative arc and how powerful I’d found the writing. That wasn’t enough: I wanted to go deeper for the overview above.

As I’ve done in previous weeks, I used GPT 4o via the Obsidian Text Generator plugin to refresh my memory. Here’s the prompt I used:

Write a concise summary of the Life of Frederick Douglass, including an outline of the book’s structure. Keep each point in the outline to a single short sentence that expresses the main point of the chapter and how it contributes to the overall narrative.

GPT 4o provided this response (inline in the midst of my Obsidian note):

“Life of Frederick Douglass” is a powerful autobiography detailing the journey of Frederick Douglass from a life of enslavement to becoming a leading voice in the abolitionist movement. The narrative not only recounts his personal experiences but also serves as a broader commentary on the injustices of slavery.

Outline:

  1. Introduction to Slavery
    Douglass introduces his early life on the plantation and the brutal realities of slavery, setting the stage for his quest for freedom.
  2. The Role of Family and Separation
    Describes his separation from his mother, highlighting the dehumanizing effects of slavery on familial bonds.
  3. Early Education and Awakening
    Explains how learning to read sparked Douglass’s awareness and desire for freedom, emphasizing education as a tool for liberation.
  4. Life in Baltimore
    Details his time with Hugh Auld’s family in Baltimore, where he furthered his education and observed different aspects of urban slavery.
  5. The Brutality of Slaveholders
    Recounts experiences with cruel masters like Edward Covey, illustrating the physical and psychological torment faced by enslaved people.
  6. Defiance and Resistance
    Chronicles instances where Douglass resisted oppression, showcasing his growing determination to claim his rights.
  7. Planning an Escape
    Outlines various plans to escape slavery, reflecting both hope and the constant danger involved in seeking freedom.
  8. Successful Escape to Freedom
    Narrates his successful flight northward, marking a turning point from enslavement to self-emancipation.
  9. Life as a Free Man in New Bedford
    Describes adjusting to life in New Bedford as a free man while facing racial discrimination in the North.
  10. Becoming an Abolitionist Speaker
    Explains how he became involved with abolitionist circles, using oratory skills to advocate against slavery.
  11. Writing His Narrative
    Discusses the decision to write his autobiography as a means to share his story and galvanize support for abolitionism.
  12. Reflections on Slavery’s Injustice
    Offers insights into the moral and societal implications of slavery, urging readers toward empathy and action against it.
  13. Conclusion: The Call for Change
    Ends with a call for continued resistance against oppression, encapsulating Douglass’s enduring commitment to justice and equality.

The AI’s take isn’t perfect. For one, Douglass’s book has eleven chapters, but the AI provided thirteen bullets. So, not a one-to-one mapping of the book’s structure. That said, I remember the book hitting all of these points in this sequence. (This approach can also be useful — albeit a bit riskier — before reading a text.)

As usual, I left this summary and outline inline in my notes and clearly attributed them to AI. This way, I’ll know they’re not my thoughts when I revisit this note in the future. This AI-generated text isn’t just a helpful way to jog my memory: it also helps when searching notes and associating ideas in Obsidian. But as always, check the work!

Up Next

Gioia recommends James Joyce’s The Dead and the first episode of Ulysses,
and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. I’ve not read any of these, but I know of their importance. (And I’ve long been intimidated by Ulysses, so we’ll see how that goes!)

Again, there’s a YouTube playlist for the videos I’m sharing here. I’m also sharing these posts via Substack if you’d like to subscribe and comment. See you next week!