The African American Dream

Introduction

As any broad survey of American literature can attest, the notion of the American dream has often meant something different to African Americans than it has to any other segment of the population. This is due to the changing status of African Americans in society and to fundamental changes in the collective viewpoint of white Americans over the past three centuries. Even in this ever-shifting human landscape, however, the core concepts of equality and identity have been enduring components of the African American view of the American dream.

Freedom

Since many of the first Americans of African descent were brought to the United States as slaves, the African American dream in its earliest form is perhaps best expressed by a single word: freedom. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789) was the first widely read autobiography written by a former African slave. In his narrative, Equiano tells of his early life in what is now Nigeria and of his horrific journey to the New World aboard a slave ship. His was one of the first well-known descriptions of a slave ship as experienced by one of its slave passengers:

The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us…. The shrieks of the women, and the groans of the dying, rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable.

After spending some time as the property of an officer of the Royal Navy, Equiano was sold to a Philadelphia Quaker who introduced him to Christianity and taught him to read and write in English. Equiano was eventually able to buy his own freedom and become a successful seaman; he ultimately settled in England, where he married and became an important voice in the abolition movement.

Although Vincent Carretta's 2005 biography questions Equiano's assertion that he lived part of his early life in Africa—claiming at least one official record lists his birthplace as South Carolina—there is no doubt that his journey from slave to free man served as a compelling proof of concept for those African Americans who read it. Equiano's story showed that it was possible, through years of hard work and determination, for a black American to achieve not only his own freedom but financial success comparable to that of white Americans.

Equiano's work also served to influence subsequent generations of white Americans who supported the abolition of slavery. One such white abolitionist was Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose experiences with the Underground Railroad led her to write one of the most famous anti-slavery works ever put on paper. Uncle Tom's Cabin, serialized in an abolitionist magazine starting in 1851 and published separately as a novel in 1852, focuses primarily on Tom, a pious, faithful, middle-aged slave who endures tremendous suffering with grace after being sold by his decent but debt-plagued owner to the cruel Simon Legree.

Stowe's idea of the African American dream—a white-abolitionist's fiction—is a different point of view from Equiano's; while many of the African American characters in Uncle Tom's Cabin seek freedom from slavery, they only do so when faced with the prospect of serving violent and ruthless owners or slave traders instead of more benevolent owners like George Shelby and Augustine St. Clare. Those that do escape have little hope of achieving true freedom and equality in the United States and eventually flee to the newly formed African nation of Liberia, created as a safe haven for former slaves. Uncle Tom—the heroic slave who chooses not to run away, instead finding strength in his Christian faith—is killed outright by his cruel owner. Taken as a whole, Stowe's novel offers a rather cynical view of black-white relations in the United States before the Civil War, and suggests that, without sweeping and fundamental societal changes, the African American dream of a better life might only be possible somewhere other than America.

Equality

After the Civil War, American society underwent sweeping changes that resulted in the emancipation of slaves in the United States. However, it soon became clear to many African Americans that freedom in the legal sense did not necessarily equal fair treatment and opportunity, especially in the South. When Reconstruction came to an end and federal troops withdrew from the region in the 1870s, the backlash against Southern blacks was swift and often devastating. One particular brand of injustice was documented by a black journalist named Ida Wells-Barnett, whose pamphlets in the 1890s exposed the horrors of lynching—a form of mob justice where individuals, usually African Americans, were publicly punished and often executed by hanging for crimes, petty or grievous, they may or may not have committed. The most important works related to her anti-lynching crusade were later brought together in the collection On Lynching (1969). Often, lynching tactics were used against Southern blacks who opposed segregation or were perceived as an economic threat to whites, those African Americans who dreamed not just of freedom, but of being treated as equals by other Americans.

This same dream was shared by Booker T. Washington, though his strategy for achieving that dream differed markedly from the views of many other African American activists, including Wells-Barnett. Washington, a former slave who was freed by the Emancipation Proclamation at the age of nine and ultimately built and ran the Tuskegee Institute, documents his journey in the autobiography Up From Slavery (1901). Though Washington believes that equality will come for African Americans, he does not believe that blacks should demand it, but rather that they should earn respect and equality through their own actions. Washington knew that black Americans would continue to face hardships in what he calls "the severe American crucible" for many years to come, and forewarns:

We are to be tested in our patience, our forbearance, our perseverance, our power to endure wrong, to withstand temptations, to economize, to acquire and use skill; in our ability to compete, to succeed in commerce, to disregard the superficial for the real, the appearance for the substance, to be great and yet small, learned and yet simple, high and yet the servant of all.

In contrast, Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey (1923) offers an entirely different solution to the problem of inequality. Garvey, a Jamaican-born activist who founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association, believed that true equality for blacks was not likely to be achieved in the United States or any other country that maintained a white majority in its population. For that reason, he calls for African Americans to return to Africa and assert their independence in their respective ancestral lands. His views were controversial; however, his attempt to unite all people of African descent toward a common cause—the redemption of Africa from European colonialism—helped shape the way in which later generations of African Americans viewed themselves as an extension of their African ancestors.

Identity

Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (1952) also expresses doubt about the likelihood of African Americans ever achieving equality in the United States. One of the main themes of the novel is the inability for whites to truly see the black narrator as a person at all—hence the title. For Ellison, however, the situation is hardly "black versus white." Although whites are often depicted as the controlling force, the narrator's greatest immediate conflicts are with other blacks. This is especially well depicted in the "battle royal" sequence, where the narrator must fight other black men while blindfolded—solely for the amusement of white men—before he is given a college scholarship. Later, a black rival calls for the narrator's lynching during a Harlem riot that was secretly instigated by white leaders.

Throughout the novel, the unnamed narrator is on a search for his own identity through various groups, communities, and institutions. It is only when he becomes completely invisible to others—and therefore beyond their reach—that he is able to begin to understand himself. Ellison seems to suggest that such an establishment of personal identity should be the true aspiration of African Americans; that it is only through the establishment of identity that other progress can be made; and that as long as African Americans allow others to determine their identities, true freedom and equality will be hard to achieve.

Opportunity

The characters depicted in the Gwendolyn Brooks poem "We Real Cool" (1966) embrace their collective identity with bravado. The poem summarizes the attitudes, beliefs, and fears of young inner-city pool players—all a part of the repeated collective "we"—with just two dozen words arranged in alliterative three-word sentences. According to their own declarations, the young men spend their time engaging in frivolous activities instead of trying to better themselves. The reason becomes clear in the devastating final sentence of the poem: "We / Die soon." The young men see no future for themselves, and therefore see no reason to prepare for such a future:

Lorraine Hansberry's play A Raisin in the Sun (1959) portrays an African American family in which each member has his or her own idea about the American dream. The title of the play refers to the Langston Hughes poem "Harlem," which posits that the delayed dream may burst rather than shrivel. After the death of her husband, Mama Younger wants to use the life insurance money to move her family from their cramped Chicago apartment and into a house in a respectable neighborhood. Her son, Walter, would rather use the money to start a business he hopes will secure the family's financial future. Daughter Beneatha feels that both Walter and Mama try too hard to live like white Americans; for her, ultimate achievement lies in embracing the family's African roots. All have their dreams challenged: Walter loses much of the insurance money to a con artist; Beneatha is courted by a wealthy black man who she feels has lost himself in the white culture; and after Mama places a down payment on a house in a white neighborhood, a neighbor representing the community offers the Youngers additional money to not move into the area. By taking a stand and moving to their new house, the Youngers know they will face opposition and adversity. However, Hansberry suggests that it is through small struggles such as these that all African Americans move forward toward the dream of equality.

LaVaughn, the fifteen-year-old narrator of Virginia Euwer Wolff's verse novel True Believer (2001), is on a quest to fulfill her potential as well. She is a rarity in her inner-city neighborhood: a student who not only intends to finish high school but also plans on attending college. Though her environment certainly seems to offer more promise than those of Uncle Tom and Ellison's invisible man, her challenges are hardly less daunting. For the African Americans in LaVaughn's community, opportunity remains as rare is it was for the Youngers in 1950s Chicago.

History

Alice Walker's short story "Everyday Use" (1973) explores similar territory, though the work—coming more than a decade after Hansberry's play—turns some earlier notions of heritage and identity upside down. In "Everyday Use," Mama, a simple and hardworking mother, lives on a small farm with her modest and physically scarred daughter Maggie. Both prepare for a visit from Mama's older daughter, the successful, beautiful, and urbane Dee. When Dee arrives, she is wearing a bright African-print dress and informs her mother and sister that she has adopted the name Wangero in place of Dee. She seeks her African heritage, but only in the most superficial and fashionable way; she renounces her given name, which reflects several generations of her family's own personal history, in exchange for an African name that carries no significance to her known ancestors. Similarly, she embraces her American roots only so she can acquire family heirlooms to be displayed as trendy artifacts in her stylish home. Unlike Mama and Maggie, Dee does not consider her heritage a fundamental part of her everyday life.

After undertaking a search for his own heritage, author Alex Haley created a fictionalized version of his family's history based on oral and historical accounts. The resulting book, Roots: The Saga of an American Family (1976), is a two-century chronicle of the African American experience from the perspective of Haley's ancestors. Roots represents the realization of a dream held by many African Americans: the desire to discover one's place in both American society and human society as a whole. The book's enormous success also helped create an appreciation among white readers of the long struggle endured by African Americans in search of equality. Although the historical accuracy of some elements of Haley's novel have been called into question—most notably the facts surrounding the Gambian patriarch Kunta Kinte—its power as an agent for social awareness are undisputed.

Dignity

In Ernest Gaines's A Lesson Before Dying (1993), elderly matrons Miss Emma and Tante Lou have a simpler dream: They want Emma's godson Jefferson, who awaits execution for a murder he did not commit, to discover that he is worthy of dignity and self-respect before he dies. The novel takes place in Louisiana in the 1940s, where the idea of equal justice is almost unfathomable to the black residents. Rather than defend Jefferson with facts and truth, his lawyer simply tries to keep the young man alive by convincing the white jurors that Jefferson is like a hog—not aware, and not even worth the trouble of killing. In jail, Jefferson begins to see himself as no better than an animal. Grant, the plantation schoolteacher, works to convince Jefferson that he is indeed a man, and tells Jefferson:

I want you to show them the difference between what they think you are and what you can be. To them, you're nothing but another nigger—no dignity, no heart, no love for your people. You can prove them wrong.

By asserting his humanity before he is executed, Jefferson fulfills his potential and becomes an example for other African Americans who have become convinced that they are somehow less than human. In the end, Jefferson teaches as much as he learns.

Aaron McGruder's comic strip The Boondocks—the first several years of which are collected in the book A Right to Be Hostile (2003)—is in many ways a spiritual successor to Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. In The Boondocks, the Freeman family—a retired middle-class black man and his two grandsons—move from the inner city to a large house in the suburbs. For the grandfather, much like Mama Younger, this is the achievement of the American dream: a beautiful house in a peaceful neighborhood, and the perfect place to raise children. For his grandsons, the black radical Huey and the wannabe thug Riley, however, it is the worst situation imaginable: They feel completely cut off from the excitement and cultural stimulation of their former urban neighborhood and their culture. Their idea of the American dream is the opposite of their grandfather's. The fact that the strip is a funny cartoon centered on children has not dampened controversy about the characters' opinions and observations: The strip is often moved to newspapers' editorial pages or dropped altogether when topics become particularly charged.

Conclusion

The American dream means different things to different people. Literature representing the African American perspective is as diverse as the people it attempts to speak to and speak for. The enduring themes of justice and identity are a fundamental part of nearly every American group's attempt to construct its own archetypal version of an ideal existence. The unique experience of having literally been denied personhood for centuries weights the literature of the African American dream with tragedy, while having demanded and won the recognition, assertion, and celebration of individual human dignity buoys the canon with triumph. The voices that make up the chorus of the literature of the African American dream echo with one refrain: The dream is overdue and can no longer be deferred.

SOURCES

Brooks, Gwendloyn, "We Real Cool," Blacks, Third World Press, 1987, p. 331; originally published in The Bean Eaters, Harper, 1960.

Equiano, Olaudah, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, printed by the author, 1789, www.gutenberg.org/files/15399/15399-h/15399-h.htm (August 22, 2006).

Gaines, Ernest J., A Lesson Before Dying, Knopf, 1993; reprint, Vintage, 1997, p. 191.

Hansberry, Lorraine, A Raisin in the Sun, Random House, 1959; reprint, Vintage Books, 1988, pp. 45-46.

Hughes, Langston, "Harlem," Montage of a Dream Deferred originally published in 1951, reprinted in The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, edited by Arnold Rampersad, Alfred A. Knopf, 1994, p. 426.

Washington, Booker T., Up From Slavery: An Autobiography, Doubleday and Company, 1901, p. 300, reprinted on Documenting the American South, docsouth. unc.edu/washington/washing.html, (August 22, 2006).