4. The Double Life of Superimposition: W.E.B. Du Bois’s Black Christ Cycle

2019 ◽  
pp. 134-175
Keyword(s):  
Black Christ

scholarly journals John Brown's Spirit: The Abolitionist Aesthetic of Emancipatory Martyrdom in Early Antilynching Protest Literature

2015 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 305-321 ◽  
Author(s):  
ZOE TRODD
Keyword(s):  
Frederick Douglass ◽  
James Weldon Johnson ◽  
Black Educators ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Protest Literature ◽  
Ritual Violence ◽  
White Writers ◽  
Walter White ◽  
John Brown ◽  
Black Christ

Before his execution in 1859, the radical abolitionist John Brown wrote a series of prison letters that – along with his death itself – helped to cement the abolitionist aesthetic of emancipatory martyrdom. This article charts the adaptation of that aesthetic in antilynching protest literature during the decades that followed. It reveals Brown's own presence in antilynching speeches, sermons, articles, and fiction, and the endurance of the emancipatory martyr symbol that he helped to inaugurate. Between the 1880s and the 1920s, black and white writers imagined lynching's ritual violence as a crucifixion and drew upon the John Brown aesthetic of emancipatory martyrdom, including Frederick Douglass, Stephen Graham, James Weldon Johnson, Walter White, black Baptist ministers, and black educators and journalists. Fusing martyrdom and messianism, these antilynching writers made the black Christ of their texts an avenging liberatory angel. The testamentary body of this messianic martyr figure marks the nation for violent retribution. Turning the black Christ into a Brown-like prophetic sign of God's vengeful judgment, antilynching writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries warned of disaster, demanded a change of course, challenged white southern notions of redemption, and insisted that African Americans must reemancipate themselves and redeem the nation.

The Black Christ

2010 ◽  
pp. 410-426
Author(s):  
Kelly Brown Douglas ◽  
Delbert Burkett
Keyword(s):  
Black Christ

Where the Black Christ Suffers and the Politics of Black Tragic Space in Chicago

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kymberly N. Pinder
Keyword(s):  
Black Church ◽  
Gospel Music ◽  
Black Churches ◽  
Baptist Church ◽  
Primary Documents ◽  
Integral Role ◽  
Historic Landmark ◽  
Black Christ

This conclusion reflects on the conflation of empathetic realism and tragic space inside and outside black churches in Chicago. It examines complex issues of ownership, displacement, and tragedy that make the black church fulfill many needs regarding refuge and racial affirmation. It considers various sites of black tragedy in Chicago, citing as an example Pilgrim Baptist Church which burned to the ground on January 7, 2006, resulting in the loss of historically significant murals, a historic landmark, and many primary documents concerning the birth of gospel music. The author places this loss in the context of “tragic tourism,” arguing that it is part of a lineage of “tragic Black spaces” in Chicago that also connect to other such sites across the country and across history. She notes that many black churches have been set on fire due to racial intimidation. She ends the discussion by emphasizing the integral role of black suffering in the activation of empathy and the diverse and shifting publics for its imagery.

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