Crux: NLFD20

A more-recent of example of what Douglass describes here is evident in the song “Mercy, Mercy Me (The Ecology)” by Marvin Gaye, which features despairing lyrics that overlay whispered prayers about environmental degradation. The sweet melody of the song is juxtaposed with the sadness of the words’ meaning, recreating a form of melancholy that may be reminiscent of the singing Douglass recalls.

In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs characterizes enslaved black peoples’ singing with the words “If you were to hear them at such times, you might think they were happy. But can that hour of singing and shouting sustain them through the dreary week, toiling without wages, under constant dread of the lash?”

Robert Stepto contrasts Douglass’s discussion of the sorrow songs with that of Solomon Northup. Stepto writes that while the “demands of audience and authentication” meant that Northup expressed little camaraderie with other enslaved people, Douglass’s initial characterization of the songs as “unmeaning jargon” gives way to his eventual ability to hear them differently. (22-23) Hence, Stepto suggests that Northup’s desire to make a particular impression on his white audience resulted in his characterization of himself as alienated from the people who sang black spirituals. Furthermore, Stepto’s reference to “authentication” suggests that he believed Northup thought any expression of kinship with the singers would make it harder for white readers to believe that he wrote his own tale, as if no one who was capable of writing could find anything of value in the sorrow songs.