Uplifting Black Souls: the African American Jeremiad :: Free Essays Online

Uplifting Black Souls the African American JeremiadMission narrativeA black jeremiad is a writing or a deliverance that constantly emphasizes the need for and methods to achieve social change. David Howard Pitney in his book The black Jeremiad, rightly suggests what the components of a jeremiad are 1) citing the promise, 2) criticism of present declension or retrogression from the promise, 3) resolving prophecy that society will shortly send off its mission and redeem the promise(Howard-Pitney 8). The authors we have chosen have scripted prominent jeremiads, and we will show wherefore they can be considered jeremiads why they were heavy when they were written and why they are still important today. floorDavid Walker (act.1828-1829), Frederick Douglass (act. 1852-1880), Booker T. Washington (act. 1895-1915) and W.E.B. DuBois (act. 1895-1968) are some of the most important African-American jeremiads in our history. Black jeremiads stem from the Jeffersonian idea of immanent and divine law. This law emphasizes the right to granting immunity as well as liberty. The American jeremiad originated amongst 17th century prudes who believed that their destiny was to form a utopian society in the Americas. By the 19th century, black jeremiads had adopted these Puritan ideals and utilize them to incite the need for the abolition of slavery and to serve as a warning of the punishment that would await those who continued with the sins of slavery. The writings and speeches of these jeremiads was utilise to uplift and unify their race and to promote blacks to take action in order to achieve equality but not self-separation from the rest of American society. This idea of unification without self-separation, illustrates the idea of black nationalism with established the empty words for jeremiads. On David Walker One of the most persuasive African American writers of antebellum America, was able to shake the American society with his pamphlet ingathering to The Colored People of the United States. Walker, A free Negro born(p) in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1796, although enjoyed a little more freedom than the rest of his colored brethren in bondage took on the role of a Jeremiadic speaker and writer to his people. In Walkers Appeal, Walker followed a method used by a Free black man in 1788 employ the pseudonym of Othello in a two-part essay responding to Jeffersons Notes on the State of Virginia , called establish on Negro Slavery. Following Othellos Jeremiadic essay, Walker had a warning for ashen Christian America about the wrathful vengeance of God that would supervene upon them because of the institution of slavery.