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White Honor, Black Humor, and the Making of a Southern Style

White Honor, Black Humor, and the Making of a Southern Style Johanna Nicol Shields Southern Cultures, Volume 1, Number 4, Summer 1995, pp. 420-430 (Article) Published by The University of North Carolina Press DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/scu.1995.0033 For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/423676/summary Access provided at 18 Feb 2020 16:54 GMT from JHU Libraries Frontispiece from Widow Rugby's Husband, by Captain Simon Suggs. White Honor, Black Humor, and the Making of a Southern Style Johanna Nicol Shields Nothing about the South is harder to fathom than how European and African American traditions mixed in the lives of nineteenth-century people. Although some black and white southerners have flatly denied cross-cultural influences, even those who want to find connections must dig deeply for evidence.1 In what follows, I suggest we mine a neglected source—southwestern humor—because I believe that slaves helped to inspire it when, by acting out the trickster style from their African heritage, they subverted white honor. Humorists copied, exagger- ated, and published these curious exchanges between power and wit, tainting them with racism while capturing them in form. Understanding the dynamics of this influence requires reading blatantly offensive stories like the one printed here; but with that forewarning I offer an example of how an African American spirit lives beneath the http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Southern Cultures University of North Carolina Press

White Honor, Black Humor, and the Making of a Southern Style

Shields, Johanna Nicol.
Southern Cultures , Volume 1 (4) – Jan 4, 2012
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Publisher
University of North Carolina Press
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of the American South.
ISSN
1534-1488

Abstract

Johanna Nicol Shields Southern Cultures, Volume 1, Number 4, Summer 1995, pp. 420-430 (Article) Published by The University of North Carolina Press DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/scu.1995.0033 For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/423676/summary Access provided at 18 Feb 2020 16:54 GMT from JHU Libraries Frontispiece from Widow Rugby's Husband, by Captain Simon Suggs. White Honor, Black Humor, and the Making of a Southern Style Johanna Nicol Shields Nothing about the South is harder to fathom than how European and African American traditions mixed in the lives of nineteenth-century people. Although some black and white southerners have flatly denied cross-cultural influences, even those who want to find connections must dig deeply for evidence.1 In what follows, I suggest we mine a neglected source—southwestern humor—because I believe that slaves helped to inspire it when, by acting out the trickster style from their African heritage, they subverted white honor. Humorists copied, exagger- ated, and published these curious exchanges between power and wit, tainting them with racism while capturing them in form. Understanding the dynamics of this influence requires reading blatantly offensive stories like the one printed here; but with that forewarning I offer an example of how an African American spirit lives beneath the

Journal

Southern Cultures – University of North Carolina Press

Published: Jan 4, 2012

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