Thanks so much, Matt, for sharing your superb video! I, too, look forward to using it in the classroom.
Shelley
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Shelley Fisher Fishkin
Joseph S. Atha Professor of Humanities; Professor of English, and Director of American Studies, Stanford University
Mail: Department of English, Bldg. 460, 450 Serra Mall, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-2087
https://english.stanford.edu/people/shelley-fisher-fishkin
On Aug 10, 2020, at 7:18 AM, Matthew Seybold <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
I'm writing an essay about Twain's public fight against racialized police
violence in 1860s San Francisco. I made a very short video version for our
Teachers Institute earlier this Summer: https://youtu.be/5gVlDbX2pcs
I must also recommend Larry Howe's recent, related essay: "Black Lives
Matter at Quarry Farm."
https://marktwainstudies.com/black-lives-matter-at-quarry-farm/
As Twain says, "Let us abolish policemen who carry revolvers and clubs, and
put in a squad of poets armed to the teeth with poems on Spring and love."
- MS
On Mon, Aug 10, 2020 at 9:17 AM Clay Shannon <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
If Alive Today, Would Mark Twain support "Black Lives Matter"?
I believe that he doubtless would.
By exposing the way some white folks thought at the time (mid-1800s) and
place (Mississippi River valley), Mark Twain made the point in "Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn" that Black Lives Matter.
You might even say that is the whole theme of the book. For one example of
that, note this passage from Chapter 33 where Twain, in a tongue-in-cheek
way, underscores the illogical thinking of some white people of the time
and place:
“Now I can have a good look at you; and, laws-a-me, I’ve been hungry for
it a many and a many a time, all these long years, and it’s come at last!
We been expecting you a couple of days and more. What kep’ you?—boat get
aground?”
“Yes’m—she—”
“Don’t say yes’m—say Aunt Sally. Where’d she get aground?”
I didn’t rightly know what to say, because I didn’t know whether the boat
would be coming up the river or down. But I go a good deal on instinct;
and my instinct said she would be coming up—from down towards Orleans. That
didn’t help me much, though; for I didn’t know the names of bars down that
way. I see I’d got to invent a bar, or forget the name of the one we got
aground on—or—Now I struck an idea, and fetched it out:
“It warn’t the grounding—that didn’t keep us back but a little. We blowed
out a cylinder-head.”
“Good gracious! anybody hurt?”
“No’m. Killed a nigger.”
“Well, it’s lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt. Two years ago
last Christmas your uncle Silas was coming up from Newrleans on the old
Lally Rook, and she blowed out a cylinder-head and crippled a man. And I
think he died afterwards. He was a Baptist. Your uncle Silas knowed a
family in Baton Rouge that knowed his people very well. Yes, I remember
now, he did die. Mortification set in, and they had to amputate him. But
it didn’t save him. Yes, it was mortification—that was it. He turned blue
all over, and died in the hope of a glorious resurrection. They say he was
a sight to look at.
- B. Clay Shannon
--
Matt Seybold
Assistant Professor of American Literature & Mark Twain Studies
Elmira College
Editor, MarkTwainStudies.org
MattSeybold.com
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