Decency's Requirements

Abstract

Decency's Requirements Koritha Mitchell (bio) Reading Frederick Douglass's "Slavery" took me back to my earliest archival experiences. I was the first in my family to graduate from college, so my being in and successfully navigating a doctoral program was already a feat. I was excited to have access to yet another new frontier: I had secured opportunities to enter Howard University's Moorland-Spingarn Research Center and the Schomburg reading rooms at the New York Public Library. These experiences made me grateful that I had landed in English rather than history. When reading archival documents, I could not rid myself of the feeling that I was violating people's privacy, and I didn't like that feeling. However, I could see that the work I cherished emerged from such "violations." I have always preferred historically grounded literary and cultural criticism; I don't see much value in research that disregards material realities. So, I understood that if historians let feeling like they were violating a respected person's privacy stop them, they would not have sifted through the information that positioned them to produce the books and articles on which I relied to do historically informed work. "Slavery" was not included in the compilations of Douglass's writing edited by Philip Foner and by John Blassingame, so it remained available for Leslie Leonard's "rediscovery and publication" (357). Leonard's meticulous editing involves preservation of manuscript features, including Douglass's revisions, so having it in the world will allow scholars to offer analysis of various kinds. For example, some will place "Slavery" in conversation with other works, and some will draw [End Page 29] meaning from the editing decisions Douglass had made. Having the piece published will no doubt prove generative. Still, I cannot help but think about the substantial amount of Douglass's writing that circulates in the "finished" state that he signed off on before it entered the world. To have work that was not in that state circulate nevertheless??? That's not something I would be thrilled about, speaking as someone with both published writing and writing that isn't yet ready for publication. Should such considerations even enter scholars' minds when there's an opportunity to create their own finished product??? I can imagine arguments for why we should consider these issues, and I recognize countless incentives for not asking such questions. Leonard's introduction highlights how relevant "Slavery" is to our current historical moment, and I could not agree more. It resonates powerfully, given the ongoing attacks on Nikole Hannah-Jones's 1619 Project and the hysteria around what is disingenuously being called "critical race theory" in K–12 education. And that's to say nothing of the ever-present hostility in the higher education sector. This semester, when I started one of my classes with a land acknowledgement, a student walked out decisively and dropped the course. I appreciated that student's clarity. People who have no patience for the contributions of BIPOC scholars and artists have long understood what I wish more "good" and "decent" folk would realize—namely, there are far more proactive stances that must be taken than there is "middle ground." Editing Frances Harper's Iola Leroy a few years ago made me face how secular this church girl became during graduate school, so I now notice my temptation to overlook religion in Black-authored texts. That may be why I found Douglass's discussion of Christianity striking, especially in a piece that resonates with our current moment. He is unequivocal: "When the Church was asked to preach and pray for the abolition of slavery, it told us with an air of extreme piety that God would abolish slavery in His own good time." He continues, "However earnest these people were to cooperate with God in putting down other sins and violations …, they were not prepared to be his agents and coworkers for the liberation of the [enslaved]" (391). As a member of a marginalized group who studies violence, I am convinced that many Americans want me to experience—not simply study—the levels of hostility that characterized the lynching era, the 1890s through the 1930s. Given Douglass...