July Fourth, 2020 is marked by national tragedy and longing for repair. Interpretations of US history and our standing in the world are responding to images of the death of George Floyd. The nation’s responsibilities are called out through acts of civil disobedience. I respond as I write and revise my fiction, including the chapter “Awaken the Nation” about a Fourth of July declamation at the female academy. I continue to intensify and diversity my characters’ responses to injustice. In the scenes I described here, one response is disruption and the other is mercy.
“What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”
Reaching for authenticity as I wrote the Fourth of July chapter, I used Frederick Douglass’s famous speech. This year, the speech has been interpreted anew, read with understanding and passion by his descendants. It is deeply moving and prophetic in light of the difficulties we face.
Frederick Douglass’s descendants read his Fourth of July Speech
Douglass gave his famous Fourth of July oration to the Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society of Rochester in 1852: “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”
This July, I began a revision of the Fourth of July scene. Now my use of the speech is both empowered and problematic considering its fame. First, the dates do not align. My fictional scene is earlier than the date of the speech. There could be addtional concerns about how I extracted lines from the speech and how I gave those lines to several characters. This enables multiple interpretations of lines that are well known and loved. My next revision will probably eliminate or adapt the language of the Douglass speech.
Listen to the revised draft of the protest speech declaimed. It is influenced by the Douglass speech, but does not refer to it or quote from it. I thank many writing colleagues at the Berkeley Writers Circle and Taj Johns for their advice.
Awaken the Nation
“For it is not light that’s needed, but fire!”
“A little light will burn forever, not the whole fire.”
The Compromise has a series of scenes of an Independence Day celebration at the fictional Columbian Female Academy. The Great Fourth of July Declamation is meant to express patiotism, showcase skills of oration, and teach friendly competition to young women. “Silly romantic gibberish” is prohibited, and the teachers try to teach morality when the competition turns mean-spirited. I could not resist showing how clever and devious young women can be when thus constrained.
Scarlett Grundy, age 17, is eager to shake things up among the competition attendees. Wealthy and white, Scarlett is interested in pushing boundaries. She is active in the local anti-slavery society, and she has romantic fascination with Otis, which is taboo. In fact, anti-micegenation laws would have made that union illegal in Missouri until June 1967. When her classmates expect to dramatize (rather ridiculously) parts of the Tennnyson poem, Scarlett stages her protest against slavery. What follows is the original draft of the speech which incorporates lines from Douglass’s famous speech.
Scarlett declaims Douglass instead of Tennyson and is punished for her willfulness.
She said, “Look around you.” She pointed to the proud mothers. “You succeeded. Today you reap the fruit of your American success.” There was applause. “I begin with a simple question. What is the Fourth of July to those who have been excluded? What, to enslaved Americans, is your Fourth of July?”
There was startled silence in the parlor. Scarlett stepped forward and pointed to the back of the house where Hester was cleaning. “To them, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity--.’
Mrs. Grundy, Scarlett’s mother, bounded forward more quickly than anyone expected, but Scarlett continued to speak as her mother seized her and dragged her through the parlor towards the foyer. The ladies moved aside in horror as Scarlett cried out. “Bombast, fraud, deception! The hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed! For it is not light that is needed, but fire!” Shrill with anger, she continued as her mother pulled her to the front door. “Awaken your conscience to the worst crime ever committed to the American people!”
Ironically, Scarlett’s speech is the deception, and it is interpreted justly by her detractor, Lydia, as bombast and fraud. The school directors punish Scarlett, though nominally, for breaking the rules. Scarlett’s knowledge and her right to speak are contested.
Eliza said, “Miss Scarlett paid a penalty for breaking the rules. She had to sit with a book on her head facing the cuckoo clock for two hours.”
“Only two hours looking at a clock?" cried Lydia. "Nothing more? Fraud and deceiver, she swindled the whole affair and there was no Greek chorus as we’d planned!”
“She apologized to the directors,” said Eliza sweetly. “They accepted it, and the book gave her a headache. That’s all.”
Lydia flounced out of the kitchen saying, “Bombast. Fraud. Deception!”
Hester is toiling in the kitchen waiting for the day she can marry Otis, but she will have the last word. This serves my thematic interests nicely. Fire and bombast are not solutions to running a democracy or a marriage.
I said, “Scarlett’s Fourth of July fireworks. Do you agree, it's not light that’s needed, but fire?”
She said, “A little light will burn forever, not the whole fire. Grown women know that.”
The long haul of service and devotion may be better than fierce moments of conviction. And like always, both stories may be true.
In these scenes and many others, I satirize a great American institution we all know: school. The competition has ridiculous rules, costumes that don’t fit, adolescent meanness, galantry, prizes, folly, and wry commentary. To write the satirical elements I draw on my childhood. My mother, an elementary school teacher, put on annual events featuring marches across the schoolyard and song and dance numbers in the auditorium. I remember helping her cut out costumes for her class of five-year-olds: 30 child-size ice-cream cones from butcher paper, 30 green flags for Earth Day, and 15 Peter Penguin suits. My mother was a good dancer, often in the style of Isadora Duncan. She must have seen vaudville numbers. She was a tap dancer and had a teacher’s voice that could fill the big tent as well as a schoolyard.
In my childhood, the Pledge of Allegience was recited daily and children wearing special whote gloves were assigned to help raise and lower the US flag. The kids on my street put on a parade each July Fourth. We dressed up our horses and dogs and wore circus costumes. The parade ended with a talent show and barbacue in a neighbor’s yard. One year, I was Isadora Duncan draped in cheesecloth and ribbons.
Watch a video of dance in the style of Isadora Duncan from the 1970s.
A government by the people can go in strange directions despite our good intentions. Teachers know this! Maintaining an environment for learning with nurturance for individuals and respect for knowledge can require Herculean effort. A healthy environment for citizenship requires even more. Teachings without cunning or subtlety are much needed, then as now.
Lady Liberty
A second event structures “Awaken the Nation.” The competition is judged by visiting dignitaries and prizes are presented to the two winners. The awards are one dollar seated liberty coins donated by Rose’s mother, so her daughter descends the stairs in the coveted costume with the long sash. Things do not go well.
I saw what happened, but wished I hadn’t. Rose descended the stairs and entered the parlor. As she proceeded to the mantle, two girls whispered loudly “Mousy-mouse” and stepped on her sash, which was pulled down to her knees. Because Rose held the top of her dress in one hand and the prizes in the other, she could not pull up the sash. Anguished, she stood in the middle of the parlor and started to shake with dread. About half the girls put their hands over their mouths and gasped in unison, “Oh, no!”
But Rose stands for Libertas, the personification of liberty and personal freedom.
Starr stands for human decency and love of country.
In the current draft, Thomas Starr King is visiting the school with his father to judge the competition. He later became the abolitionist minister famous in California history. He steps up to help Rose. It may appear as stock chivalry, a young man saves a young woman from embarassment. But Rose stands for Libertas, the personification of liberty and personal freedom. We know the ubiqutous female form garbed in ancient robes. She is our Statue of Liberty. Her image promotes the idea of a civilization rooted in democracy and dedicated to freedom. Though Rose is a small and frightened fourteen-year-old girl in an oversized gown, Starr stands for human decency and love of country. He literally kneels to repair the harm done to her.
During the last verse, “I love thy rocks and rills. Thy woods and templed hills,” the handsome young Starr kept Rose’s gaze while he lowered to one knee. He pressed the sash down to her feet. With her hand in his, Rose stepped out of the sash. Starr rose to his feet and handed the sash to her. She looped it over her head.
They all sang the last line. “My heart with rapture thrills, like that above.” The rescue took less than a minute. As the final chords faded, Starr returned to his seat and Rose was in tears with happiness and relief.
He literally kneels to repair the harm done to her.
Kneeling
If only more of us could kneel down in the street or on the playing field and not on the throat of a man. A search for images of kneeling revealed much about the gesture’s meaning and more about the viral image of George Floyd’s death. Focusing on the gesture reveals the depth of insult to our humanity.
We kneel in supplication to god, to the crown, and to a lover. We kneel for direction, for mercy, for a blessing, and for admittance. And we lower our head without protection to offer our strength to a cause greater than ourselves. Sometimes it is simply to tie a shoe. One of my favorites is a statue on the UC Berkeley campus. A football player kneels to bind the injury of his teammate. He kneels simply to repair the harm done.
