Literary Figures
In 1858, before this American author was known as an author, his brother Henry was taken to Memphis, Tennessee, after a steamship explosion on the Mississippi River.
Who is/was Mark Twain/Samuel Clemens?
Oral stories that show an identity of cleverness and resilience.
What are African American Folktales?
Birds, wings and feathers.
What are some symbols of flying, freedom, faith, and hope?
A slang term for hangover.
What is katzenjammer?
Wealthy Antebellum slave trader and Confederate General who became the first Gran Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
Who is/was Nathan Bedford Forrest?
The first African American and second American woman to publish a book (1773).
Who is poet Phillis Wheatley?
The wise and amazing African Empress who asked difficult questions of King Solomon.
Who is/was Makeda, also known as the Queen of Sheba or Queen of Ethiopia?
1. Celestial body symbolizing female empowerment.
2. A symbol for showing us life's direction or navigating our way.
1. What is the moon?
2. What is the North Star (Polaris)?
A saying for drinking a small amount of whatever one got drunk on to feel better the next morning.
What is "a little hair of the dog that bit you"?
Signed the Indian Removal Act (1830) and made many other moves to displace indigenous and people of color from their homes to populate the U.S. with white people.
Who is/was President Andrew Jackson?
He served in an Indiana regiment in the Civil War and later wrote The Devil’s Dictionary.
Who is/was Ambrose Bierce?
A method some enslaved people used to get married.
What is jumping over a broomstick?
Decay and haunting of Southern plantations.
What is a Southern Gothic element to show the racism of plantations?
A phrase using the medieval word "hangdog" that might have been perpetuated (and I am speculating here) by the following practice of some plantation owners:
Dogs not wanted on plantations were hanged, a practice George Washington, among others, used.
According to Mary V. Thompson writing for PBS Frontline in "The Private Life of George Washington's Slaves": "Thomas Jefferson, on at least one occasion, ordered the destruction of all dogs belonging to his slaves, while permitting his overseer to retain a pair for his own use. At least one of the condemned dogs was hung as a disciplinary warning to the Monticello slaves."
What is "hangdog expression"?
Songs sung as symbols of faith, community, sadness, the desire for freedom, and a protest of oppression.
What are African American Spirituals?
This man worked tirelessly for African American rights and women's rights. He wrote in Chapter 6 of the narrative of his life (1845): “Though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read." His second book was My Bondage and My Freedom (1855)
Who is/was Frederick Douglass?
King of Ethiopia Menelik I, the son of wise ones Queen Makeda and King Solomon, is said to have taken this to the Ethiopian city Axum.
What is the Ark of the Covenant?
Two symbols of the "fairy godmother" in Wild Conviction.
There is possibly a third.
Who are GrandMama and Grandma Ghost?
Who is Miss Summer?
The inequitable belief from wealthy plantation owner Senator James Henry Hammond that “lower classes” must do the work so “higher classes” can move civilization forward.
What is the mudsill theory?
Considered themselves chivalrous lords in the fashion of Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott and believed that others were to do their bidding as serfs and slaves.
Who were the wealthy Southern plantation owners?
The Poet who wrote:
“‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers” (1861).
Who is/was Emily Dickinson?
Known as the Moses of her people, she escaped slavery and made 19 trips back to the South to help others to freedom, never losing a “passenger.” Also known as the first African American woman to serve in the military.
Who is/was Harriet Tubman?
Celestial phenomenon that could symbolize the loss of power by terrible dominators or evil events leading to an apocalypse or possibly a new beginning.
What is a total eclipse?
Guzunder. (guzunder the bed/goes under the bed)
What was a slang term for a chamber pot that fit under/"goes under" the bed?
Though cotton became the dominant cash crop in Antebellum America, it was the related domestic (meaning within the U.S. nation) owning and trade of African American people that became the largest financial asset in the U.S., turning America into a leader in the global economy due to owning people. Though the cause was America enslaving people for profit, there is a "myth" of rationalization that the cause was what technological invention in 1793?
What was the cotton gin? (Which was not the cause. Technology aids in production but does not cause a country to enslave and continue to enslave people.)