Puddn’head Wilson

Dawson’s Landing

P.1: “In 1830 it was a snug little collection of modest one and two-story frame dwellings whose whitewashed exteriors were almost concealed from sight by climbing tangles of rose vines, honeysuckles, and morning-glories.”

“a garden in front fenced with white palings”

“I wish I owned half that dog”

Pudd’nhead: p. 4

black white mulatto

mulatto white quadroon

quadroon white octoroon

octoroon white quintroon

mulatto black Sambo, griffe

sambo black (Mongroon)

mongroon black black

Racial Calculus

“Phipps was designated as ‘black’ in her birth certificate in accordance with a 1790 state law which declared anyone with at least one-thirty-second ‘Negro blood’ to be black” (1).

To “wash the African stain from one’s blood” required…

1796: John Stedman: 1/16 African, or three generations of whites, erased “blackness”

1801: Julien-Joseph Virey: 1/32 still consituted “blackness”

Moreau de Saint-Mery (Santo Domingo): any more than 1/512 African blood constituted “blackness”

Racial Calculus

By the nineteenth century, American law declared that “one drop” of African blood kept a person from being white.

Racial portraits

“Glory”: 34, 41 Codes of behavior: stealing, dueling

(71).

Washing Herman Melville, Moby Dick: “As though a

white man were anything more dignified than a whitewashed negro”

Ralph Waldo Emerson: “We may yet find a rose-water that will wash the negro white”

The Slave’s Friend (abolitionist journal)

“the chestnut has a dark skin…But its kernel is all white and sweet. The apple, though it looks so pretty, has many little black grains at the heart…”

“Now little boys and girls can’t be abolitionists until they get rid of all these black grains in their hearts.”

A Review of The Scarlet Letter

“the language of [Hawthorne], like patent blacking, ‘would not soil the whitest linen,’ and yet the composition itself, would suffice, is well laid on, to Ethiopize the snowiest conscience that ever sat like a swan upon that mirror of heaven, a Christian maiden’s imagination.”

Tombstone inscription, 1780

Here lies the best of slaves Now turning into dust Caesar the Ethiopian craves A place among the just. His faithful soul is fled To realms of heavenly light, And by the blood that Jesus shed Is changed from Black to White.

Pudd’nhead Wilson

“It rained all day long, and rained hard, apparently trying its best to wash that soot-blackened town white, but of course not succeeding” (105).

Passing

Certain clues were asserted to be a means of detecting those suspected of “passing”

--fingernails --whites of the eyes

Pudd’nhead Wilson

Roxy says, “’Ain’t nigger enough in him to show in his finger-nails, en dat takes mighty little—yit dey’s enough to paint his soul’” (87).

“slave and black became synonyms”

After the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, “the presumption was that people with black skins were slaves unless they could prove they were free” (Kenneth Stampp).

Work performed, social status, economic potential came to be defined in terms of color.

The accusations against persons lynched were:

41 per cent for felonious assault 19.2 per cent for rape 6.1 per cent for attempted rape 4.9 per cent for robbery and theft 1.8 per cent for insult to white persons 22.7 per cent for miscellaneous offenses or no

offense at all 11.5 In the last category are all sorts of trivial

“offenses” such as “disputing with a white man,” attempting to register to vote, “unpopularity”, self-defense, testifying against a white man, “asking a white woman in marriage”, and “peeping in a window.”

Still in the 1850s…

When African-Americans wore make-up, it was viewed as an attempt to look “white”

A journal states that these “Beautiful black and brown faces…assume unnatural tints, like the vivid hue of painted corpses”

In the minstrel show white entertainers put on blackface and "imitated" or "caricatured" slaves in the South and ex-slaves in the North.

During MT's times most white commentary on minstrelsy assume its accuracy, its essentially faithful imitation of African-American speech, singing and dancing.

Blackface minstrelsy European immigrants

mocked African-American class pretensions by imitating slaves on stage

These minstrel plays allowed immigrant to learn “white” behavior by mocking and rejecting the other (“black”).

Pudd’nhead Wilson

“The town was bitter against the unfortunates, and for the first few days after the murder they were in constant danger of being lynched” (120-121).

According to the Tuskegee Institute figures, between the years 1882 and 1951, 4,730 people were lynched in the United States: 3,437 Negro and 1,293 white.

The largest number of lynchings occurred in 1892. Of the 230 persons lynched that year, 161 were Negroes and sixty-nine whites.

Ida B. Wells

In 1892, when lynching reached high-water mark, there were 241 persons lynched. The entire number is divided among the following States:

Alabama......... 22 Montana.......... 4 Arkansas........ 25 New York......... 1 California...... 3 North Carolina... 5 Florida......... 11 North Dakota..... 1 Georgia......... 17 Ohio............. 3 Idaho........... 8 South Carolina... 5 Illinois........ 1 Tennessee........ 28 Kansas.......... 3 Texas............ 15 Kentucky........ 9 Virginia......... 7 Louisiana....... 29 West Virginia.... 5 Maryland........ 1 Wyoming.......... 9 Mississippi..... 16 Arizona Ter...... 3 Missouri........ 6 Oklahoma......... 2

Of this number, 160 were of negro descent. Four of them were lynched in New York, Ohio, and Kansas; the remainder were murdered in the

Ida B. Wells

South. Five of this number were females. The charges for which they were lynched cover a wide range. They are as follows:

Rape.................. 46 Attempted rape...... 11 Murder................ 58 Suspected robbery... 4 Rioting............... 3 Larceny............. 1 Race Prejudice........ 6 Self-defense........ 1 No cause given........ 4 Insulting women.... 2 Incendiarism.......... 6 Desperadoes......... 6 Robbery............... 6 Fraud............... 1 Assault and battery... 1 Attempted murder....

2 No offense stated, boy and girl.............. 2

http://withoutsanctuary.org/main.html

Other jokes

“Ownership” Roxy: self-sale papers Will Twins: “ours” 34 Roxy: bank money Theft: knife Tom: slave=no prison

Clothing

Babies Tom and the “old deformed negro bell

ringer” (27) Tom’s disguise as a girl (gender is

essential even if race isn’t). Roxy’s disguise as a man.

"Pudd'nhead Wilson" is more than stupid. So far as it has appeared -- to the end of the second installment, that is -- it is at once malicious and misleading.Right here I wish to ask why it is that the Southern man who has an honest and decent pride in the fact that he comes of good stock fares so ill at the hands of certain literary gentlemen? Last of all, Mark Twain has set himself the task of showing how impossible it is for a man to have a great-grandfather and, at the same time, any regard for the Decalogue.It is built around the exchange of two children, born the same day, to one father. One his wife's son; the other, his slave's. After a while, her master (as is the custom of Virginia gentlemen in the hands of high literary persons), for some biding fault, sells all the other house servants, though as a mark of magnanimity he sells them at home instead of sending them down the river. The life-likeness of this part will be apparent to every ex-slave owner, especially to such as remember how far beyond rubies was in those days the price of a thoroughly excellent servant. Setting wholly aside the human affection that often subsisted between white and black, few men were so foolish as to inconvenience themselves by entire change of menege, without the most imperative necessity for such a proceeding. All that is, however, beside the mark. It is more than a little amusing, though, to one who knows experimentally the autocracy of a "black mammy," to read how Roxy, after the exchange, was surprised to see how steadily and surely the awe which had kept her tongue reverent, her manner humble towards her young master, was transferring itself to her speech and manner toward the usurper. Roxy must have been a mighty exceptional character if she did not spank her charges with natural and noble impartiality, whether they were white or black.She had christened her own child "Valet de Chambre -- no surname. Slaves hadn't the privilege." That is some more news to us who owned them, and who keep lively memories of their pride in their surnames; and how tenaciously, after freedom came, they clung to the appellations whereunto they felt themselves born. In founding their families under the new conditions, it was often laughable to see the leaning to aristocracy. In more than one case within my own knowledge, negroes abandoned the names of the living masters, in favor of that of the master's grandfather from whom they were inherited and to whose family they leaned because of is greater distinction. Truly, if they had had no privilege of surnames, there must have been confusion worse confounded in the era '65.Time and patience fell alike in bringing to book all such matters here set down. Suffice it to say that, first to last, the whole recital is unveracious. I make, here and now, my protest against this injustice.           Martha McCulloch Williams