Black Voices and White Scripts: Education, Colonization and the Problems of Authenticity

This talk traces the influence of the American Colonization Society on the curriculum of New York African Free School to chart the relationship between white schoolmasters who were in favor of colonization, black parents who protested vigorously against it, and black children caught between the two as they performed skits written by the white schoolmaster for mixed-race audiences. Against this backdrop, Duane turns to the careers of the schools alumni, some of whom supported black emigration and colonization to ask new questions about early black abolitionists, and their relationship to often-paternalistic white patrons. More broadly, she suggests that looking at the juvenilia of the first generation of the black elite offers a new opportunity to revisit old questions for both literary scholars and historians: how, if at all, can we engage the words of those speaking through scripts written by those in power? What are the stakes in identifying an authentic minority voice, and what are the costs?