
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass and Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe are two incredibly famous pieces of literature, both of which are focused on black history in the nineteenth century in the United States. “Black Power” is a widely acclaimed speech, orated by Stokely Carmichael, and was given in 1966. In the span of 100 years, black history was saturated with enormous events that changed black lives in the United States forever. The nineteenth century texts support arguments claimed by Carmichael, and these arguments and issues overlapped over this 100-year time span to create multiple links and relations in the black community. 

The Narrative of The Life of Frederick Douglass brings into sharp focus the impact of racism in the United States. Douglas’s autobiography vividly describes how black people were abused by white people who held authoritative social, political and economic power. The Narrative highlights how slavery corrupted America’s cultural values creating the basis of racism. These points are delivered through personalized, highly detailed stories from Douglass’s point of view. His experiences with slavery, abuse, ostracism, and neglect demonstrate the impact of racism in the United States. 

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass expanded my understanding of  “Black Power,” a speech given by Stokely Carmichael. “Black Power” emphasizes that an individual’s belief in non-violent protests can be altered into the belief that it is a “psychological struggle” for black liberation. This “struggle” was put upon black people by white people who are either ignorant to the reality of racism or they fully believe that they have and should control black people. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass changed my perspective on “Black Power” because it shows how history evolved from Douglass’s time to the time when “Black Power” was delivered. Douglas’s Narrative changed my perspective of the “psychological struggle” in Carmichael’s speech by illuminating how the effects of slavery were still present in society in Carmichael’s time. Realizing society’s stagnant nature and slow pace of change in regards to racism altered my perspective on “Black Power”. There were significant events in history when each of these pieces was created. When Douglass wrote his book, slavery was in full effect in the South, with freedom beyond the reach of most blacks and could only be obtained in the North. Black people had no rights and were treated worse than second-class citizens. By the time “Black Power” was written and delivered, slavery had been outlawed but its effects were far from gone across the United States with the Civil Rights Movement a major turning point in the 1960’s. Black people were considered free, but had little political power or social and economic opportunities. As a result, they were protesting, both violently and non-violently, to become full fledge citizens with all of the rights and opportunities that white people enjoy. Another example of a point in The Narrative of Life of Frederick Douglass that changed my perspective on “Black Power” is that views on violence can be changed depending on a person’s knowledge. In Douglass’s narrative, he describes that the lack of knowledge that a person has can completely change the person’s life regardless of race. For white people, ignorance and arrogance can determine someone else’s knowledge and opportunities. For black people, ignorance and arrogance determines their knowledge and opportunities. It is important to see events through the eyes of black Americans in order to understand the motivation to write The Narrative and similar books, as well as to give speeches such as “Black Power.” 

Another historical text that emphasizes the main points in “Black Power” is Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Uncle Tom’s Cabin takes place back in the pre-Civil War South, when slavery was still legal. Stowe tries to show the horrors black people experienced: cruelty, separation from family, beatings, and humiliation. The novel follows two slaves, Uncle Tom and Harry, and their faith, long-suffering lives, and strong wills to protect their families. This novel is considered one of the main causes of the Civil War and is also one of the most powerful anti-slavery texts from the nineteenth century. 

Uncle Tom’s Cabin was written as a response to the Compromise of 1850, a law that angered Stowe to the point of writing this piece. She believed the country was requiring her complicity in a system she thought was unjust and immoral. She was also breaking the law and rebelled against the government by hiding runaways. The Compromise of 1850 provided for the seizure and return of runaway slaves who escaped from one state into another or into a federal territory. This allowed for whites to claim that any black person, freed or not, was a fugitive and that person would automatically be put into slavery. The law said that the slave trade would end, but not slavery. So by allowing for whites to claim anybody was a fugitive actually allowed for a different type of slave trade to occur. Uncle Tom’s Cabin has undertones of this law taking affect due to Stowe’s frustrations with her country and the people in charge of it. 

The Compromise, along with the other events of discrimination, is a key point in how Uncle Tom’s Cabin relates to “Black Power”. “Black Power” is given during a time of turmoil and unrest. Jim Crow Laws, laws that mandated segregation with little to no government funding for blacks, had just been outlawed. The speech was given less than twelve years after these laws were banned and less than one year after blacks were given the right to vote. With so much disorder happening in the United States and at such an absolutely slow pace, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a predecessor for Carmichael’s message and by reading both, Stowe’s explicit detailing of how blacks were treated eerily similar to the complaints and call for justice in “Black Power”.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin changed my perspective on Black Power because in “Black Power”, Carmichael gave his stereotype-shattering speech in front of a group of white, middle-class college students. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was intended mostly for whites to learn about the humiliating and dehumanizing ways black people were being treated. Stowe’s depictions and stories emphasized what Carmichael’s speech is mostly about: whites must not be ignorant of societal issues that they have created, inflated, and uplifted in their country and must help to change their civilization’s standards of power and who is in charge of everyone’s power. Uncle Tom’s Cabin’s approach to who decides the amount of power one person has over another emphasized Carmichael’s stance of how the United States is everyone’s country, not just whites, and everyone can decide what they want to do in their country because they are free citizens. 

Uncle Tom’s Cabin received backlash over the stereotypical names and descriptions of characters. This connects to one of “Black Power’s” statements that society tends to turn their focus onto the wrong issues. Instead of people focusing on racial issues displayed in Stowe’s work, people aimed their focus at how repugnant and distasteful Stowe was with the names and adjectives used to portray the cast. This is ironic considering the very people who were lashing out at her were the very people who insinuated, created, and emphasized those same stereotypes. This links to “Black Power” because Carmichael’s speech was given negative attention due to who and where he was giving this presentation, by those who were not there and did not witness his oration, thus putting the emphasis on where the speech was given and not what the speech’s main argumentative points were about.

Both Stowe and Carmichael created their literary pieces during times of unrest between blacks and whites in the United States. Both were influenced to write by the very laws that wanted to take away rights and did for a certain period of time. With having both of the pieces being created so far apart (about 102 years) but have such significant overlaps in themes changed my perspective on both pieces because even though blacks got more rights, like voting, the same major issues are incredibly evident. This is something that both Douglass’s and Stowe’s writings accentuated in “Black Power”: all were written about blacks being mistreated and were described by using specific examples of discrimination. The highly detailed stories of Douglass being a slave and Stowe saving slaves are all significant to “Black Power’s” message that all are created equally and should be treated equally.
