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Worksheet
Alistair Cooke’s “A FIREBELL IN THE NIGHT”,
a history of African Americans
Interpretation and Background Information
Alistair Cooke (1908 – 2004) was a British/American journalist and broadcaster.
This series is available as on the DVD format.
The object of this exercise is to provide students with a basic knowledge of African American history by analysing the episode, A Firebell in the Night and to complement this
acquired knowledge with information to be found on pages 254 to 297 in the Diesterweg
edition of A Lesson Before Dying. The following questions are designed to serve this
purpose.
1. Explain the title, A Firebell in the Night.
“...like a firebell in the night...” is a quote from a letter by Thomas Jefferson (1743 – 1826,
main author of the Declaration of Independence and third President of the USA,) to John
Holmes, April 22, 1820. It was his reaction to the Missouri Compromise of 1820 that tried
to preserve the balance of power in Congress between slave and free states. He feared
that some day the United States would be torn apart by the slavery issue.
2. How does Alistair Cooke characterise the last 300 years of African Americans?
(Cooke still used the rather quaint term negro at a time when blacks had already
“The negro is the permanent invalid in American society.” African Americans have always
been at the bottom of the heap, more infant mortality, more unemployment, constantly subject to racist mistreatment, first as slaves and after the Civil War as second-rate
citizens, though he does point out later that African Americans had made enormous
progress in the thirty years up to 1972. He is, of course, referring to the Civil Rights Movement and the civil rights legislation passed by Congress in the late 1960s. Cf. Timeline
pp. 266 – 272 and pp. 294 – 296 in the Diesterweg edition of A Lesson Before Dying.
3. What opening scenes are shown?
First: an African American church service with boisterous singing, very emotional — Religion was the one consolation the white man allowed African Americans.
Then: a shanty on rather scrubby land is shown as representative of “the casualty ward”
of the African American
4. Explain the Thomas Jefferson quote:
[...] The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the
most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and
learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle
to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do. If a parent could find no motive either in his philanthropy
or his self love, for restraining the intemperance of passion towards his slave, it should always be a sufficient one
that his child is present. But generally it is not sufficient. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to the worst of passions, and
thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious pecularities. The
man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. [...] [Notes on
the State of Virginia, 1781]
Though Jefferson himself owned 200 slaves at one point and had a slave as a mistress,
he at least realised how basically evil slavery was because it awakened the lowest instincts: that of a master that has absolute control over his slave.
5. How does Cooke compare the slaves in America and Brazil.
African American slaves had no rights in America, they could not marry, have a permanent family, and unlike Brazilian slaves they had no chance of freedom. They worked in
cotton and tobacco fields.
Numerous pictures are shown of slaves and the way they were treated. Students can
comment on these pictures.
6. What was the “pie in the sky.”
It was the Christian religion with its hope of an afterlife. Negro spirituals often express this
hope and a longing for freedom. Notice later the background music “Go Down Moses”
with its “Let my people go.”
7. What was the facade?
It was the wealth and luxurious houses in the Greek-revival style of the plantation owners
based on “the peculiar institution,” i.e. slave labour.
8. How is the life of slaves described?
no rights, work from morning to night, built their own simple housing,
no secure family structure, could be sold any time: These factors are the root
of the problems of not having a secure family structure, even today. Cf. pp. 332 – 341, A
Lesson Before Dying, Diesterweg — Students should be asked to describe the pictures
shown of slaves.
9. Did the slaves rebel?
Cooke does mention that there were rebellions that were put down, but does not go into
details.
More details can be found on p. 257 (The Turner rebellion of 1831) and pp. 284 – 285.
After these rebellions slaves were oppressed even more by more severe laws.
10. How does Cooke describe his first impressions of African Americans when he
first came to America in the 1930s.
Amazingly, he accepted segregation and the inferior position of African Americans instead of being repelled.
11. Why was slavery so vital.
It provided cheap labour for the cotton and tobacco industry, labour that no white person
was willing to submit to. Cooke does mention that the importation of slaves from Africa
was declared to be illegal by the American Constitution after 1808.
12. What was ironic about Savannah and the colony of Georgia?
It was founded by James Oglethorpe in 1732 without slavery. What Cooke does not mention is that the first colonists were debtors who were taken out of debtor prison in Great
Britain to start a new life in the New World.
13. Explain the significance of Eli Whitney (1765 – 1825).
Whitney, originally from Massachusetts, was the inventor of the cotton gin, which made
it possible to easily extract seeds from the cotton plant. His invention made it possible to
produce cotton cheaply and helped to firmly establish the slave economy.
Cooke mentions how Whitney came up with the idea of the cotton gin when he observed a cat trying to catch a chicken by stretching its paw through a fence only to catch a
few feathers. Cf. also pp. 283 – 284, bottom in A Lesson Before Dying, Diesterweg
14. What was another important industry requiring the use of slaves?
the boiling of sugar cane into sugar, primarily in Louisiana
15. Explain the significance of the steam engine.
In 1811 the first steam ship sailed upstream on the Mississippi, thereby making the river
a practicable and economic means of transport for the cotton plantations lying along the
Mississippi. New Orleans became an import port for the export of cotton and sugar.
Natchez became the northern most port of call.
16. Who was Frederick Stanton?
He was an Irish immigrant, who was a cotton broker with connections with the cotton
mills of Manchester, England. His plantation house built shortly before the Civil War
(1861– 1865) is typical of the luxurious villas built by wealthy Southerners with a Greekrevival exterior and lugubrious Victorian interior. His wealth stemmed from the labour of
slaves.
17. What was the common feature to be found between Georgia and Louisiana?
slavery
18. What developments took place in the North in the years before the Civil War?
Eli Whitney’s idea of interchangeable parts and the use of the mould hastened the Industrial Revolution’s development in the North: Mass production was possible. The number
of independent farmers increased.
19. And in the South?
Cotton was king: there was little motivation to expand industry because of the availability
of cheap labour through the use of slaves. The slave empire expanded.
20. In the decades before the Civil War there were two streams of settlers moving
into the territories in the west. What problem ensued?
There were clashes between settlers from the South, who wanted to expand slavery, and
those from the North, who were opposed to slavery.
21. Explain the Missouri Compromise of 1820.
As mention above, Thomas Jefferson saw the compromise as the first sign of a serious
and possibly insurmountable conflict of interest between the North and South.
The compromise passed by Congress in 1820 allowed Missouri to enter the Union as a
slave state and at the same time Maine could enter as a free state. However, slavery was
not to be permitted north of the parallel 36°30‘ (a line along the southern border of the
new state of Missouri) in the former Louisiana Territory.
22. What problems evolved with the Mexican War of 1846 – 1848?
At the end of the war new territories were annexed that included California, the
southwest, and Texas.
The question was whether slavery would be extended into these territories.
23. What was the role of Henry Clay (1777 – 1852), “The Great Compromiser?”
He was a nineteenth-century American statesman and orator who represented Kentucky
in both the Senate and the House of Representatives and actively supported and crafted
the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the Compromise of 1850. The latter compromise
found a solution for the newly acquired territories annexed from Mexico after the Mexican
War. California was to be a free state, the new territories in the southwest could decide
for themselves if they wanted to be slave states, Texas was admitted as a slave state,
and the law requiring the return to the South of runaway slaves who had escaped to the
North was strengthened. Slave trade was forbidden in Washington, D. C. Through his
efforts, Henry Clay is credited with delaying the Civil War for more than a decade. Had he
lived longer, he might have prevented the Secession of the South.
24. Who was John Brown?
John Brown (1800 – 1859) was a fanatical American abolitionist, who advocated and
practiced armed insurrection as a means to end all slavery. He led the Pottawatomie
Massacre in 1856 in Bleeding Kansas and became famous with his unsuccessful raid at
Harpers Ferry in 1859, whose aim was to start a liberation movement. He was tried for
treason against the state of Virginia and murder and hanged. The Harpers Ferry raid in
1859 increased tensions between the North and South. Ironically, it was Robert E. Lee
who led the military expedition against the Harper Ferry raid. (not mentioned by Cooke)
Notice the song “John Brown’s Body” sung to “Gloria, Gloria, Alleluia.”
25. Explain the Dred Scott Decision of 1857.
It was a Supreme Court decision that further angered anti-slave sentiment in the North.
The court ruled that blacks were not citizens and were no more than property with no legal rights. They could be treated by their white masters as they saw fit. What’s interesting
is that Cooke does not mention the anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin that appeared
in 1850 and quickly became a best-seller.
26. What does April 12, 1861 mark?
It marks the beginning of the Civil War when Confederate (Southern) soldiers fired on Fort
Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, which was being held by a Union garrison.
27. What advantages did the North have?
The North had much more heavy industry, a greater population, and a larger system of
railroads, whereas the South was largely agricultural, dependent on the export of cotton,
had a smaller population, and a smaller system of railroads with many different gauges.
The South, however, had a greater number of seasoned and capable generals, and
soldiers that were experienced horsemen. The South had only to prove that it could not
be subdued. Southerners were initially more motivated as they were fighting on their own
homeland and, of course, they knew the countryside intimately. For these reasons the
South could prolong the war until 1865.
28. What medical progress was made?
Chloroform began to be widely used as an anaesthetic. Knowledge about neurology was
gained.
Lincoln did not permit supplying the Southern army with chloroform.
It might be pointed out that hygiene was generally very poor and that antiseptics were
largely unknown. Doctors were not aware of the cause of infections until the 1870s.
29. Alistair Cooke mentions a number of bloody battles, e.g. Shiloh, Antietam, and
Gettysburg that today are peaceful fields with historical markers. Give the details.
The Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee (April 1862) was the bloodiest battle in American history
up to that time. The Confederate army was defeated.
What he doesn’t mention is that the battle of Antietam, Maryland in 1862 convinced the
British that the South could not win the war and gave Lincoln the confidence to declare
The Emancipation Declaration, effective January 1, 1863. It freed all slaves in states that
were in rebellion against the Union.
The Battle of Gettysburg June/July 1863 was the last attempt on the part of the South
to invade the North and the last major offensive action. It marked the turning of the tide in
the Civil War. There was then little hope the South could win the war. Alistair Cooke also
speaks of Lincoln’s famous speech several months later: On November 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln spoke at the dedication ceremonies for the national cemetery created at the
Gettysburg battlefield. His Gettysburg Address, though largely ignored at the time, defined the aims of the war and called for a “new birth of freedom.”
Cf. to the Gettysburg Address on pp. 330 – 331in A Lesson Before Dying, Diesterweg.
Students should note the biblical influences: the use of alliteration and polysydeton. The
Gettysburg Address can also be compared with Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream”
speech 100 years later, cf. pp. 323 – 329. Both speeches are today considered an excellently crafted expression of American ideals.
30. Why did Robert E. Lee (1807 – 1870) decide to fight for the South?
He felt his first loyalty was to his state Virginia, which seceded from the Union and joined
the Confederacy. Alistair Cooke’s portrayal of Lee is not quite correct. Lee saw the evils
of slavery, but was not for its immediate abolition. Ironically, Lee expressed the belief that
the people of Virginia should decide the fate of their state much as Lincoln expressed
the belief that the United States would continue as a “government of the people, by the
people, for the people...” in his Gettysburg Address of 1863.
Here we have a moral dilemma: what if a majority supports a government that allows
an immoral system such as slavery?
31. What was done with Lee’s mansion?
It was confiscated by the American government and the grounds in front of it were turned
into a military cemetery. The graves of John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert Kennedy
can be found there.
Arlington Cemetery, as it is called, is still used to bury American soldiers killed in action.
From the top of the cemetery you can see Washington, D.C and in the distance the Lincoln Memorial. In a sense Lincoln and Lee were direct opponents in the Civil War.
32. How was Lincoln judged in his lifetime?
He was much hated, but became a saint after his assassination.
33. What were the main rhetorical influences on Lincoln’s later speeches?
They were Shakespeare, the Bible, and Robert Burns.
Students should also notice the biblical influences in Martin Luther King’s speeches.
34. What were the results of the war?
The South was completely devastated, in some places even worse than Germany after
World War Two. Alistair Cooke mentions General Sherman’s (1820 – 1891) march to the
Atlantic that destroyed everything in its way. It was an example of total war.
35. What had many Northern politicians considered doing when the Civil War was
concluded?
They had considered punishing leading generals such as Robert E. Lee and politicians
such as the President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, in trials similar to the Nuremberg Trials after World War Two.
36. What happened in the South after the Civil War?
Alistair Cooke very scantily depicts the period after the Civil War, implying that there were
no competent Black politicians, and does not even mention the name of this important
period: The Reconstruction Era. A more balanced analysis of this period of American history can be found in more recent research.
Notice the Thomas Nast (German/American political cartoonist, 1840 – 1902) cartoon with
the subtitle “Of course, he wants to vote fer Democratic ticket.” that depicts a Black man
being threatened from both sides by Southerners before putting his ballot in the ballot
box. Why would the political cartoon have to be in and after 1870? Answer: In 1870 the
15th Amendment was ratified, granting freedmen the right to vote. It should be noted that
the Democratic party in the South was dominated by the ante bellum white power elite
that sought to restrict the civil rights of the former slaves. The Republican party, with its
greatest influence in the North, pursued the policy of restructuring Southern society and
improving the lot of Blacks for approximately 20 years after the Civil War.
“Of course, he wants to vote fer Democratic ticket.”
“You’re for us, sir, ain’t you? Say, yes, or I’ll blow yer head off.”
37. How does this cartoon depict the former
slaves?
Increasing white supremacist groups such as
The White League and the Ku Klux Klan terrorised former slaves to the point that
they could no longer exercise their rights according to the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments and
were not much better off than before the Civil
War. With the withdrawal of all Federal troops after 1877 the fate of Blacks was sealed for nearly
80 years.
Thomas Nast, “The White League and the Ku Klux Klan Worse
than Slavery,” cartoon from Harpers Weekly 1874
38. How are Black politicians portrayed here?
It’s a rather racist portrayal that
makes Blacks look like buffoons that
cannot conduct a civilised debate
while the whites look on in amusement and Columbia (a symbol of the
USA) in the background tries to bring
order to the session.
The cartoon reflects much of public
opinion at the beginning of the 1870s:
that the Reconstruction experiment
was a failure. Cf. pp. 286 – 290 for a
summary of The Reconstruction Era
in A Lesson Before Dying, Diesterweg.
“Colored Rule in Reconstructed State” Thomas
Nast cartoon from Harper‘s Weekly 1874
“The Emancipation of the Negroes, January 1863 – The Past and The Future” by Thomas Nast.
This is the version published in 1865.
39. Comment on the above cartoon “The Emancipation of the Negroes, January
1863 –The Past and The Future.”
It is not at all racist. It shows a Black family, looking very much middle-class. Notice the
boy with a book. The left shows the past, including scenes of runaway slaves, families
being sold at an auction, slaves being whipped and branded. On the right is the future:
former slaves going to public (segregated?) school and being paid for their work. Notice
the church steeple in the background. Students should comment on how much of this
rosy future came to pass. Columbia as the symbol of the United States reigns supreme at
the very top of the picture.
(Whites in the North and South became less concerned about improving the lot of Blacks
after the end of The Reconstruction Era in 1877 when the former white elites returned to
power in all the states of the former Confederacy after Federal troops were withdrawn
from the South in a political deal.)
Why is Lincoln in the picture? He initiated the Emancipation Proclamation as of January 1,
1863 and has been since known as “The Great Emancipator.”
40. Comment on the last scenes of A Firebell in the Night.
It shows a shanty where African Americans live in poverty, perhaps to show the continuing low position of African Americans in society. Nearby are the ruins of a former plantation owner’s mansion.Only the Roman columns are left as a symbol of a once glorious but
never to be regained past.
41. Students can now go on to complete the history of African Americans up to the
present time by consulting the introduction and pp. 254 – 297 in A Lesson Before
Dying, Diesterweg.
Important facts that could be listed:
After the Reconstruction Era African Americans were restricted in their civil rights, more
so in the South, by Jim Crow laws and court decisions. African American were also terrorised by the Ku Klux Klan and lynchings well into the 20th century. The Supreme Court
decision of 1896, Plessy v. Ferguson made segregation legal with the principle of “equal
but separate.” This doctrine would be overthrown by the Supreme Court in Brown v.
Board of Education in 1954, thus giving further impetus to the Civil Rights Movement of
the 1950s and 60s. African Americans began migrating to the Middle West and Chicago
in large numbers from 1879 – 1881 to escape intolerable conditions in the South. “The
Great Migration” (1916 – 1919) witnessed the movement of 500,000 African Americans to
the North to find a better life and better jobs. From 1941 to 1960 another massive wave
of African Americans moved to the larger cities, with more than half settling in the Pacific
states.
These migrations were accompanied by numerous race riots, notably in Atlanta in 1906,
in Chicago in 1919, in Harlem in 1935, in Harlem, Mobile, Alabama, and Detroit in 1943,
1965 in Watts, California, in Cleveland, Newark, Detroit, and Washington, D.C. in 1968,
Philadelphia and New Orleans in 1970, and Los Angeles in 1992.
Two strands of political movement developed: that of Brooker T. Washington, who believed African Americans should first seek economic progress and only slowly seek
political equality, and W. E. B. Du Bois, who sought immediate full citizenship for African
Americans and the abolition of all racial distinctions. Parallels can be found in the more
moderate demands of Martin Luther King and the more radical agitation of Malcolm X
during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 60s.
Obviously, The Civil Rights Movement, will be the centre of attention. It is suggested
that pp. 266 to 272 and pp. 294 to 296 in A Lesson Before Dying, Diesterweg be closely
examined. A Lesson Before Dying marks the first beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement, whereas Black Like Me describes the situation of African Americans just before
the most momentous events of the movement.
And finally, this comment about the present situation of African Americans.
[...] racism, poverty and militarism [...] remain profound challenges [in spite of the election of Barack Obama]. The
gap between the rich and poor has reached Depression-era standards. Corporate CEOs now make nearly 400
times the average worker. African Americans earn less, die earlier and are imprisoned at disproportionate rates
than whites. Even in the Age of Obama, young black men are more likely to be locked up than graduate from
college, and the leading cause of death for black men under 30 is homicide. The tragedy of Hurricane Katrina
exposed in stark and shameful ways America‘s enduring racial and class inequalities. Our government has spent
more than $1 trillion on the Iraq war even as our inner cities crumble and 40 million Americans live in poverty.
A new report from the Center for American Progress, The State of Minorities in the New Economy, shows how
African American and Latinos are falling even further behind during the economic downturn. It‘s said that when
America sneezes, black America catches a cold. While the poverty rate among whites was 8.6 percent in 2008,
24.7 percent of blacks lived in poverty. In December of 2009, the unemployment rate for white men over 20 was
9.3 percent, while 16.6 percent of black men were without work.
[...] African-Americans have now displaced Latinos as the racial group with the lowest home ownership rates.
in Martin Luther King‘s Other Dream: Economic justice for All by John Gehring, Jan.
15, 2010, Washington Post
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2010/01/martin_luther_kings_
other_dream_economic_justice_for_all.html
© 2010 Rudolph F. Rau and Diesterweg Verlag - all rights reserved, copies must show the source,
for classroom use only