Because I still have The Wire on the brain I thought Idris Elba might make a good Martin Delany.
Not bad, you think?
Re-reading Blake is painfully slow but there's too much stuff to ignore. It's fascinating the way in which Delany's back to Africa emigration rhetoric echoes both Clarkson and Equiano in both the potential for Africa to yield riches outside of slavery and in terms of emigrated blacks as "raw material" for new nation builders. What's really strange is how he remains so pro-Christian, even to the point of denigrating native Africans, despite his contempt for the role for prayer over action in some abolitionist circles. A fascinating man, Martin Delany.
Once again it's shaming to realize how much I've pushed aside in just this one decade (1850-1860). Both Levine and Sundquist write about the desire of many in both the North and South to annex Cuba for it's sugar supply. For the South, this is also part of what fuels their push to extend slavery into the Western Territories. Turn the Gulf of Mexico into a sort of miniature version of the Atlantic Triangle (Sundquist, Empire and Slavery in American Literature 1820-1865), even to the point of wanting to reopen the Transatlantic slave trade. Delany's staging a rebellion there is both a reflection of abolitionist anxieties over what the annexation could mean for the extension of slavery in the States, and a strange sort of reenactment of the Haitian revolution.
Thinking about anxieties over Cuba really clarifies why Haiti might be on people's tongues for reasons other than insurrection. I'm thinking of taking a look at Life and Times next to get more of a sense of Douglass's own thoughts on both Haiti and Cuba next.
