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Keys to the Archive: Miss Jane Pittman

Oprah Links Miss Jane and Obama

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1. Oprah Links Miss Jane and Obama

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1. Oprah Links Miss Jane and Obama
2. Emancipation Proclamation
3. Louisiana Code Noir of 1724
4. Second Wave Ku Klux Klan The parade pictured here contributed to the second, and largest, wave of Ku Klux Klan activity, which emerged in the 1920s. This event took place just outside of Washington D.C. The KKK elected hundreds of officials into every level of government in every region of the United States. They were known as the “Invisible Empire” during this time and worked to terrorize Blacks, Jews, Catholics, and immigrants. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) is an organization founded by a small group of former Confederate soldiers in Pulanski, Tennessee in 1866. Originally the group was created to invoke fear into freed slaves and the white people that helped them, but it expanded into much more. They are known for horrendous acts like the bombing of the church in Birmingham, Alabama that killed four young girls. They are also known for their symbols and strange titles (Grand Duke, Imperial Wizard, Grand Cyclops, etc). The use of these symbols was “to pose as ghosts or ‘spectral’ figures, drawing on then-resonant symbols in folklore to play ‘pranks’ against African Americans and others” (David Cunningham). They used hoods, masks, and burned crosses. The symbol of the burning cross was only added in to their symbols after The Birth of A Nation depicted a cross burning scene and the KKK adopted it to spur membership. Scandals and the rigidity of the KKK caused for membership to have difficulty increasing. However, they remain affiliated with other, similar groups (Neo-Nazis, and other organizations that use the Klan name). Today, though some continue to be blatant in their approach, others try to disguise their racist tactics through rhetoric (“rights for whites”). The KKK continues to be relevant today in many ways including through support of the current president.
5. Loving v. Virginia
6. Creole Slave Owners Creoles of color emerged in antebellum Louisiana as a distinct group of free people who enjoyed some of the same rights as whites, including the right to own slaves. For instance, thirteen members of the Metoyer family collectively owned 215 slaves in Natchitoches Parish. Augustine Metoyer issued this bill of sale, written in French, to M. In. Baptiste Florantin in 1818. The matriarch of the family was notable medic, planter, and business woman Marie Thérèse Metoyer.
7. Great Mississippi Flood of 1927
8. Jackie Robinson Breaks the Color Line
9. Slave Auction
10. Segregated South
11. Beginnings of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
12. Miss Jane Pittman Adaptation Airs
13. Huey P. Long Assassinated
14. Ernest Gaines Born Gaines was born in Oscar, LA on January 15, 1933. He wrote about sitting on the porches of Cherie Quarters as a child, drafting letters for his elders. His exposure to their stories informed much of his writing and provided a link to slavery in the United States. Although his family moved to California when he was a teen, he visited in the 1960s to see his people and take pictures of the area, such as this image of “The Quarters” of Riverlake Plantation. He later described it as “where we lived for five generations.”
15. The Spanish-American War
16. Frederick Douglass's First Speech
17. Marie Laveau Baptismal Certificate Marie Laveau was baptized on September 16, 1801 (no birth certificate exists). Known popularly as “the Voodoo Queen” of New Orleans, she is, arguably, the most famous practitioner of folk magic in American history. She was born at the end of Spanish control of Louisiana, shortly before the Louisiana Purchase, which explains why her baptismal certificate appears in Spanish. Her entry appears at the top of the page, under entry 320.
18. Student Protests at Southern University
19. Plessy v. Ferguson
20. Booker T. Washington
21. The Confessions of Nat Turner William Styron’s 1967 novel The Confessions of Nat Turner initiated the genre of neo-slave narrative. Styron, a white author, came in for criticism because the novel perpetuated racial stereotypes, sparking controversy about how to represent slavery in literature. Some scholars read Miss Jane Pittman, along with contemporaries such as Roots, as a response to Styron’s vision of kindly slaveowners and a blundering revolutionary.
22. Reconstruction Ends
23. Brown v. Board of Education

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Reception By Kiley Brinkman

Reception here refers to how a literary work of art is received by society and culture over time. Since The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman was published in 1971, it has been made into a movie on television, aired on CBS and has influenced pop culture and art alike. One of the biggest achievements of Ernest Gaines's literary career was being featured on Oprah's book club. Another big moment would come a little later in his career. At a ceremony in Washington D.C., President Barack Obama presented Gaines with the 2012 National Medal of Arts award.

Oprah's influential book club featured Gaines's A Lesson Before Dying in 1997. A decade later, she used a reference to The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman to celebrate Obama's political achievements while campaigning in several different states. She argued that Obama was “the One," comparing him to the character of Jimmy who became a Civil Rights leader in the novel's final section. Oprah referenced Cicely Tyson as well, alluding to the movie adaptation of the novel. Professor of African American literature Riche Richardson reflected on these evocations of Gaines, writing, “I began to meditate on the profundity with which Oprah has engaged Gaines’s fiction elsewhere in her discourse, most notably in endorsing the Obama campaign, a moment that beckoned me back to Gaines’s The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” (482). Everyone is familiar with Oprah’s popular television show, in which "everyone gets a prize." Oprah emphasized, in her own way, through citing both the novel and the movie, that Obama is “the One” for everybody. This is proof of how much of an impact the novel has had on our society and culture over the years. Oprah comparing Obama to Jimmy as “the One” lifted a community up and gave voice to those who were silenced in the past. Through her comparison, Oprah links Gaines's writing to our first black president—an achievement many ancestors of enslaved people did not expect to see during their lifetimes.

The novel has been taught at different schools across the country. That is an important part of the impact Miss Jane Pittman, her story, and Gaines have had over the years. The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman has been required reading for students at different grade levels, but not without controversy. In 2006, teachers at a school in Puyallup, WA protested the teaching of this novel due to implied violence and racial slurs, deeming it inappropriate for students in the eighth grade. They were unsure young teens could handle the adult situations in this story. They decided to settle this with the school board in a vote, as to whether the novel would remain part of the curriculum. According to an article from The News Tribune on December 5th, 2006, the result was in favor of keeping the novel as required reading. The article states, “The Puyallup School Board voted 5-0 Monday night to uphold an earlier decision by a district committee requiring eighth-graders to read the novel” (A01). The “n-word” was especially a concern, but with proper guidance and education on the history and usage of this particular word, it was concluded that students will have a better understanding of racism. For teachers in favor of students reading the novel, one reason is the opportunity for them to both gain access and understanding of minority or multicultural studies in school.

Collections at the Ernest J. Gaines Center suggest the novel was also taught at an elementary school in Louisiana. The archival materials contain a teacher's syllabus and guide with tests and student artwork. Images of the artwork below show visual representations from the novel, depicting certain scenes like Miss Jane with her oak tree, and even a few drawings of Gaines himself. The student artwork comes from Mrs. Slaughter's fourth grade class at Walnut Hills Elementary in Baton Rouge. The students' different visual interpretations hint at what they learned about the novel.

Overall, even though this is a work of fiction, it represents real lives from an earlier time in American history. It dramatizes the experience of slavery and its aftermath. We may wish these things never happened, but Gaines's work keeps the memory of our traumatic history alive. Visual art, poems, novels, and other art forms can go even further to help us make sense of that history. The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman shows how a literary work can impact film, politics, and pop culture for generations to come.