Name:

Course:

Tutor:

Date of Submission:

Slavery

The play Joe Turner’s Come and Gone by August Wilson is set in a 1911 boarding house in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The boarding house is a waystation for black people freeing the rural south into the industrialized north. The south is characterized by slavery in its different forms and unfriendly economic and civil environments while the north is famous for its intense manufacturing activities. The African Americans, that dominate the play, are fleeing the south in search of better lives and to re-establish themselves in the new society post the civil war. Being entangled in their past experiences of slavery, African Americans are facing difficulties in searching for their identities and in integrating socially, politically and economically into the new society. Particularly, they are being faced with new challenges that threaten to dim their economic prospects in the new environment. The boarding house in Pittsburgh is owned by a comparatively successful African American named Seth and his wife Bertha. Seth inherited the house from his father who was a free Northern man. Seth and Bertha are in the Kitchen, watching in disapproval as Bynum makes a religious ritual using pigeons. Bynum is a religiously obsessed fellow who believes such rituals are solutions to many life problems. Seth also makes a fortune as a smith making pans and pots that he sells to a white man Selig who also doubles up as a people finder.

The abolishment of slavery and involuntary servitude through the ratification of the 13th amendment came in as good news for the African Americans. However, the abolishment of slavery created a shortage of labor making reconstruction difficult and firms faced huge losses in revenue due to low productivity. To sustain the labor supply, authorities came up with the convict leasing and the peonage systems. In the convict leasing system, prisons created large pools of felons that were then leased out to become laborers in private enterprises. To maintain a steady supply of the prisoners, states passed draconian criminal laws targeting the black community. Misdemeanor offenses such as burglary and larceny were turned into felonies that attracted exaggerated fines and months in custody. On the other hand, peonage was a debt servitude system. Workers were forced to work for those they were indebted to as a way of settling the amount due. The convict leasing and the peonage systems were a lucrative business for they provided cheap labor to industries while the prisons and state governments earned substantial revenue (See Black See Power n.p). However, these experiences created psychological scars that would affect the African Americans in their later life. In essence, the experiences either directly or indirectly affected the ability of African Americans to integrate economically through religious interference, inability to move freely, inability to access credit and fear of taking risks, separation of families and creation of unfriendly business environments.

To begin with, the African Americans face challenges in establishing themselves economically due to the inability to access credit and lack of courage to make risky economic decisions. Although Seth is relatively successful as an African American in the north, he has been struggling to obtain financing to fuel his ambitions of becoming an entrepreneur. Seth possesses hands-on skills as a smith who makes pans and pots and he wishes to establish a small shop. Despite slavery having supposedly come to an end, there is still a lot of distrust among the races. There is still a lot of uninformed judgment amongst the people with the blacks being viewed as low-end citizens that cannot sustain any economic venture. The judgmental nature of the people is exemplified by Seth and Ruben’s judgment of Herald Loomis as a scary person and potentially dangerous. That kind of mistrust may be among the reasons why the northerners were hesitant to offer credit to the African American migrants. Seth, therefore, survives by relying on a white middleman named Selig to supply him with raw materials and to buy the finished wares for resale. By setting up a small shop, Seth would be able to expand his productivity and widen the market for his wares while eliminating the need for using Selig as an intermediary.

Secondly, African Americans are in fear of making risky business decisions that could be their only way to economic breakthrough. That is clearly seen in the case of Seth, who is torn between maintaining his economic status quo or taking a risk that could help them grow. Having struggled to find a financier for his business, Seth finally receives a deal that he considers too risky. The loan offer requires him to give out the boarding house as collateral, a risk that Seth is unwilling to take. In the reconstruction era, African Americans had bitter experiences with taking loans as they easily led them to become peons. The peonage system was a form of debt slavery whereby a person would be enslaved by another as a way of settling a debt that had been extended to them. The debts came in many forms with the sharecropping loan system being the most common scheme. At times, the rich whites would claim false debts with the assistance of the corrupt legal system. Due to such experiences, the African Americans developed a phobia for conditional debts as it triggers the painful experiences of the peonage system. That could explain why Seth becomes reluctant to take the loan offer since he fears to lose the boarding house in the event, he is unable to settle the debt.

Thirdly, African Americans are still being faced with a difficult economic environment that makes it difficult for them to grow. Similar to the era of the convict leasing system, the African Americans are still not allowed to move freely. In the play, Wilson provides an account of a young boarder named Jeremy that spent the overnight in jail having been arrested due to vagrancy. That indicates that the draconian laws established in the reconstruction period were still effective and they sought to limit the movement of the African Americans. Practically, it would be almost impossible for a person to grow economically if their movements are restricted. In addition to the inability to move freely, African Americans are also facing cases of economic dishonesty and exploitation. Although Seth and Selig seem to have a good business relationship, Wilson exemplifies the exploitation in the business dealings when Selig supplies fewer sheet metals than Seth had paid for. When Seth raises concern that the sheet metals were falling short in number, Selig pretends to be engaged in something else saying, “Wait a minute, Seth, Bynum’s telling me about the secret of life” (Wilson np). Similarly, Jeremy is a talented guitarist and Bynum believes he could make a fortune by joining the local guitar competition. Jeremy joins the competition for a few nights but he eventually gets fired for failing to pay the white bosses the extortion fee they were asking for. Such unfriendly environments make it difficult for African Americans to thrive since they do not get their fair share of the spoils.

In addition, African Americans are still entangled in their past cultural and religious practices and that distracts them from keeping up the pace with the fast-growing economic-oriented society. They are facing difficulties integrating their traditional religious practices acquired in the south with the new Christian beliefs being practiced in the north. While the northerners and civilized migrants like Seth are busy into meaningful economic activities, religiosity intertwines the African Americans claiming much of their time. Bynum is the perfect example of an African American tied up by religiosity and spends considerable time performing religious rituals using pigeons. Bynum believes that religious rituals are the secret to life and that they were a solution to all the life challenges. As much as religion could be important in quenching the spiritual thirst, taking too much time on it could prevent a person from realizing that economic challenges can only be solved through engagement in business or employment. Furthermore, Bynum spends a lot of money on buying pigeons that he uses for the rituals. The pigeon selling business is so lucrative that Ruben fails to honor his late friend Eugene’s promise that he sets off the pigeons. Instead, Ruben continues selling them to Bynum for his regular rituals.

Lastly, the separation of families that resulted from slavery also makes it difficult for African Americans to integrate economically into the new society. The families spend a lot of time and resources looking for their loved ones, with the hope of forming reunions. Herald Loomis and his daughter Zonia have been traveling far and wide looking for his wife Martha Loomis. Herald says that they have “Come from all over. Whichever way the road take us that’s the way we go” (Wilson n.p). After Herald was abducted and enslaved by Joe Turner, Martha Loomis left Zonia with her parents and set off to look for employment opportunities in the north. To add to the amount of time they spent looking for Martha, Herald has no choice but to pay Selig to find Martha on their behalf. Wilson suggests that there were more African Americans that came searching for their loved ones and Selig made a good fortune as a “first class people finder” (Wilson n.p). The time and resources that the African Americans spent on finding their loved ones could have been used in seeking employment or working to earn a living.

More than a century after abolishment of slavery, studies and surveys suggest that it could still be present but in less blatant forms. The best example of a new form of slavery is presented in Whitney Benns American Slavery Reinvented, where she cites cases of involuntary servitude in the prison systems. The Angola state prison enrolls prisoners for prison industry, a form of employment where they work in large farms for negligible pay. Benns further establishes that the participation of prisoners in the servitude is not voluntary as prisoners that express resistance are often threatened with punishment. That is one of the many cases of modern-day slavery that replicates the reconstruction period’s convict leasing system.

In conclusion, it is notable that the history of slavery negatively affected the African Americans’ ability to integrate economically in society. The influences of the convict leasing and the peonage system are still sound in Wilson’s play, that is set several decades after the abolishment of slavery. Several factors particularly inhibit the African Americans from making economic breakthroughs in the new society. The factors include mistrust and identity crisis that prevents them from accessing credit, religious obsession, unfriendly business environments characterized by extortion and exploitation, restriction of movement and separation of families. Additionally, it is important to note that even in modern society, cases of slavery and related schemes still exist.

 

Works Cited

Benns, Whitney. “American Slavery, Reinvented”. The Atlantic, 2015, https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/prison-labor-in-america/406177.

See Black See Power. “Slavery by Another Name”. YouTube, 2014, https://youtu.be/UcCxsLDma2o.

Wilson, August. “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone”. F01.Justanswer.com, 1911, https://f01.justanswer.com/e0dsVAG2/JOETURNER%27SCOMEANDGONE_75826.pf.