Promised Land by John Parker - Book Report/Review Example

Book Review: Parker, John. His Promised Land: The Autobiography of John P. Parker, Former Slave and Conductor on the Underground Railroad. New York: W W Norton, 1996. Web Introduction This paper reviews His Promised Land, John Parker’s autobiography. Parker was born to a slave mother and a white father in 1827 in Norfolk, Virginia. At the age of eight, Parker was separated from his mother and forced to walk to Richmond where, at a slave market, he was sold to a doctor from Mobile, Alabama(Parker 5). Even though the law forbade slaves from being educated, Parker’s master’s family taught him how to read and write. In 1845, Parker bought his freedom for $1800, having earned the money from his work in two of his doctor master’s iron foundries and odd jobs. Having become a free man, Parker joined the Underground Railroad Movement. The members of the movement, mostly conductors in the Underground Railroad, helped escaping slaves get further North where they could enjoy freedom; some of them opted to go as far as Canada. At great risk, Parker personally guided hundreds of slaves to freedom; slave owners had placed a $1,000 bounty on his head(Parker 15). Journalist Frank Moody Gregg interviewed Parker in the 1880s as part of his investigation into the Railroad Movement(Parker 23). Gregg never published his manuscript. It was the historian Stuart Seely Sprague who stumbled upon Gregg’s notes and manuscript in the archives of Duke University. Sprague edited and had the memoir published. His Promised Land is useful in the study of African-American history in general and the slave trade in particular as it gives a more accurate, verified account of the slave trade (Lucas 191). While the slave trade had been the subject of several earlier works, these were exaggerated and inconsistent in detail. The earlier works included The Underground Railroad of 1860 by William Still and the 1898 The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom by William Siebert. The Place of the Book in American History Parkers autobiography relates to the period of African-American history known as the antebellum period(Lucas 192). This was the period roughly between 1789 and 1849. In the aftermath of independence, slavery became more rooted in the southern states while the northern states embarked on abolishing it. Pennsylvania was the first state, 1780, to enact an Act that provided for the gradual abolition of slavery. During this period, some developments shaped views on slavery. Key among them was the Haiti Revolution, the only revolt staged by slaves and led to an independent country. Following this event, many slave owners in the Caribbean fled to the United States out of fear, thereby increasing the population of slaves and slave owners in the United States. In this period also, between 1840 and 1860, abolitionists emerged in Britain and the US and launched campaigns against slavery. Blacks were the most vocal abolitionists, although the movement attracted whites also (Parker 100) Themes The main theme of His Promised Land is the enslavement of African Americans(Parker 2). As noted earlier, the slavery dates back to the colonial days when British imperial companies imported African slaves from West Africa to work on their sugarcane plantations in the Caribbean Islands. Later, some of these slaves were exported further north into present-day United States where they worked on cotton and sugarcane plantations. Another theme is the inequality that existed between the North and the South of the United States at the height of slavery. While African-Americans in the North were free, their counterparts in the South were not, a situation that led the American Civil War. To a lesser extent, the book is also about the way slave masters related with their slaves and how that shaped the role of former slaves in the abolitionist movement. While most relations were characterized with brutality, Parker found favor with his master’s household. As a result, they taught him how to read and write. Later, after he secured his freedom, Parker’s literacy enhanced his active role in the abolitionist movement. Critical Evaluation of the Book Date The timing of Parker’s autobiography is important in two ways. First, the memoir from which the book was published was written in the 1880s at the height of the so-called Underground Railroad Movement(Lucas 192). That way, the intricate details of the movement were captured as they unfolded. The time lapse between the 1880s when the memoir was written and 1998 when they were published was helpful in reducing the subjectivity that would have existed had the autobiography been published in the heat of the moment. Author The fact that Parker authored the memoir while Sprague edited it renders the book more credible. The authorship of Parker can be argued to be credible because he had experienced both sides of slavery: first as a slave then as an abolitionist (Lucas 1). His memoir from which the book was published is largely considered a more accurate account of the Underground Railroad Movement than earlier accounts that are believed to be exaggerated. However, one might question the objectivity of the memoir given that it was authored by a party interested in the movement. Perhaps the account would have been more accurate had it been written by a disinterested third party. Nonetheless, the benefit of first-hand knowledge cannot be denied. Audience Like earlier abolitionists, Parker addresses himself to the black American community. This move must have been informed by Parker’s personal experience, most slaves who managed to escape did so by themselves(Parker 98). In situations where they got help from abolitionists, the latter were mostly local African-American abolitionists; in a way, whites were largely disinterested in the freedom of enslaved blacks. This view contradicts the one that had been circulated earlier that through the Underground Railroad movement, whites played a major role in the abolition movement. Scholarly Reviews of the Book Article 1 In his review, Lucas Marion of The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society reviews the book favorably. Lucas claims that, to date, much of the story of the Underground Railroad movement is surrounded by controversy. The majority of early writers on the subject presented an elaborate system in which white conductors aided fleeing slaves reach states in the North and Canada where they would be free from slavery(Lucas 191). It was Larry Gara’s 1961 work The Liberty Line: The Legend of the Underground Railroad that made the understanding of the movement clearer. Among other things, the book presented, in greater detail, the roles played by whites and blacks in the movement. Gara posits that accounts of an “underground railroad” running all the way from the farthest ends of the South to Canada, and along which white conductors moved escaping slaves from one safe house to the next until they reached safety, are highly exaggerated. Gara concluded that the majority of slaves who managed to escape did so on their own(Lucas 191). Where contact was established later in the free states, it was usually with local black participants in the abolitionist movement. Article 2 Slave masters often treated their slaves no different from their animals. Parker was no exception. Despite the favor he had before his doctor master, leading him to receive an education even though law forbade it, Parker noted that his fellow blacks were sold to masters in the South in the same manner the masters’ mules were sold in the market places. He perceived himself as an animal worth $2,000 (Parker 41). In the end, he secured his freedom for slightly less: $1,800. Such resentment made better positioned former slave abolitionists such as Parker the most vocal in the abolition movement(Hribal 23). Comparison with a Similar Book In the fall of 2007, four undergraduate students of Harvard University came together to investigate the historical connections between the University and slavery(Beckert and Stevens 3). This was a unique academic undertaking. Founded in 1636, Harvard University was the pioneer institution of higher learning in pre-independence America. Unfortunately, the findings of this interesting study are dismal. All the researchers were able to report was that at the height of post-independence slavery, Harvard University was silent on the matter despite its growing influential position. Instead, the researchers believed, the university benefited from slave labor and the products of that labor. However, there is no compelling evidence to back these claims. Nonetheless, the research is an invitation to historians to investigate the role institutions of higher learning in slavery in the United States. Lesson Learned In reviewing the book, I have learned some lessons. Whereas there are several accounts of the Underground Railroad Movements, they are not necessarily accurate(Lucas 191). Many of those accounts present an elaborate system in which black and white abolitionists used the railroad to transport escaping slaves from South to the North and Canada. As demonstrated by Parker and confirmed by Gara, the majority of slaves who successfully escaped did so through their efforts. For the few who managed to secure the help of abolitionists, the abolitionists were predominantly black. Another lesson is that the majority of the former slaves who joined the abolitionist movement were those that enjoyed favor in the hands of their masters and as a result, were better placed than their colleagues. However, a good number of them used their relatively advantaged positions to advocate the freedom of their fellow blacks. For instance, Parker took advantage of his literacy and iron foundry skills to advance the abolitionist movement. Works Cited Beckert, Sven and Katherine Stevens. Harvard and Slavery: Seeking a Forgotten History. Cambridge: Sven Beckert and Katherine Stevens, 2011. Web. Hribal, Jason. "Animals are Part of the Working Class Reviewed." Borderlands11.2(2012): 1-37. Web. Lucas, Marion. "His Promised Land: The Autobiography of John P. Parker, Former Slave and Conductor in the Underground Railroad by Stuart Seely Sprague." The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society95.2(1997): 191-193. Web. Parker, John. His Promised Land: The Autobiography of John P. Parker, Former Slave and Conductor on the Underground Railroad. New York: W W Norton, 1996. Web. Read More