Reconciling the Schism: The Black Literary Tradition with the Black Liberation Movements (2016)

Undergraduates: Ishmael Bishop, Orisanmi Burton

Faculty Advisor: GerShun Avilez
Department: English & Comparative Literature

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"Black Lives Matter is a unique contribution that goes beyond extrajudicial killings of black people by police and vigilantes." So stated Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza in "A Herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement", published by the Feminist Wire in October 2014. Initially this research proposed to examine the panoply of police and surveillance culture in African American literature and generalize how authors chose to incorporate state and non-state violence into their respective works. Unable to draw such a conclusion, this research broadens its approach to go beyond the mundane killing of black people by police and vigilantes to rethink the quotidian condition of 19th and 20th century blackness. Rather than making a final point on one form of blackness or resistance to violence, this research applies theories of afro-pessimism and anti-black racism to six novels (spanning the late 19th c. to the end latter half of the 20th c.) and two slave narratives written before 1900. After a rigorous inquiry, this research discusses how scholars and activists might consider the experiences, symbols and themes of African American literature and apply these ideas to present day Black Lives Matter organizing.