All Gods Chillen Had
Wings
is an African-American tale belonging to the larger Flying Africanof the
nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Since most of these narratives were first
orally
transmitted by plantation slaves, they differ in their telling. The
version I am referencing can
be found in Virginia Hamiltons The
People Could Fly: American Black
Folktales. It can also be found
href="http://www.whittedq.weebly.com/uploads/3/5/4/2/3542765/aa_folktale.pdf">here.
Before we unpack the folktale, understanding its historical context is useful.
As you
probably already know, the black slaves forced to work in the
plantations of the American South
under sub-human conditions, were torn away
from African countries as diverse as the (now)
Democratic Republic of Congo,
Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, and many others.
Thus, the
Africans belonged to different ethnic groups and tribes, each with their own
rich cultural heritage and language. Many times, Africans on slave ships and plantations
could
not even understand each others dialects. Furthermore, families were
separated in the slave
trade and different members sold off to different
plantations. Once out of Africa, the Africans
were clubbed under the
derogatory racial marker Negros. Isolated from their cultural and
familial
ties, stories and songs became the primary way for the captured Africans to forge
new
bonds with each other and to preserve a common African identity. As time
went on, this became an
African American identity, based on their unique
challenges and experiences in the American
South.
One of
the motifs of this folklore was the flying African, where
sometimes
individuals, and often groups, gained flight to escape their oppressive overseers.
In
some tales the people transform into birds, in others they fly away "like
birds;" and
in some they head to the sky while in others, they fly back to
Africa. While some scholars read
these folktales as afor the power of the
human spirit to rise in the face of adversity, others
say the folktale may be
referring to the flight of runaway slaves, and others who managed to
overthrow the yoke of slavery through luck, ingenuity, and/or education.
Yet
another reading respects the assertion of the tellers that the
Africans actually flew. In
Chillen for instance, the speaker explicitly says
the man he himself heard the tale from was
there at the time and saw the
Africans fly away with their women and children. While it is true
the
Africans actually did not magically fly away, this last reading respects the power of
faith
as well as non-Western systems of common-sense.
Indeed, in Chillen and
other folk tales, the Africans chant
something specific before flying away. In Chillen, the
old man who is the
leader of the group that flies away made a sign in the masters face and
cried, €˜Kuli-ba! Kuli-ba! I dont know what that means." Other folk tales
report
similar-sounding words, which scholars like Winifred Vass have traced
to words from the Bantu
language. Thus, the slaves are performing a ritual
that enables flight as a part of their system
of rationale. Therefore,
interpreting this solely as metaphor and wishful thinking may be
reductive.
To come to your specific question, it is very interesting
to note
the way the folktale opens (emphasis mine):
Once all
Africans
could fly like birds, but owing to their many
transgressions, their wings
were taken away. There remained, here and there, in the sea islands
and
out-of-the-way places in the low country, some who had been overlooked and had retained
the
power of flight, though they looked like other men.
In
the beginning the people are Africans, imbued
with racial and geographical dignity, and blessed
with the power of flight.
Because the folktale needs to provide an answer for why some of the
people
are removed from Africa and flight, it includes the line owing to their many
transgressions, or sins. The sea islands and out-of-the-way places refers to tidal and
barrier
islands off the Atlantic coast of America, belonging to the states of
South Carolina, Georgia,
and Florida. Thus, the dislocation of the Africans
is rooted to very specific places. In Africa,
they are Africans; once
dislocated they are forced to wear another label.
In
the
third paragraph of the story itself, the term Negros is casually introduced for the
first
time.
One day, when all the
worn-out Negroes were dead of
overwork, he bought, of a broker in the town, a
company of native Africans just brought into the
country and put them at once
to work in the cottonfield.
Note the
striking way the Negros are juxtaposed with the native Africans. Slavery,
subjugation, and so much overwork that it kills the people, transforms them from the
Africans of
the opening lines to Negros, their state in America. The change
symbolizes both their change of
circumstance, as well as the prejudice and
dehumanization they have had to face in the new world
because of their racial
identity. In contrast, those fresh from Africa are native Africans,
because
they still retain their cultural memory and identity.
Significantly,
it is this group, which still remembers the
knowledge-systems of the homeland, that starts the
flight away from the cruel
overseer in their cotton plantation. As the overseer repeatedly hits
a new
mother, slowed down because of her physical condition, she turns to an old man in
the
group.
She spoke to an old man near
her, the oldest man of
them all, tall and strong, with a forked beard. He
replied, but the driver could not understand
what they said. Their talk was
strange to him.
Their
shared language
as well as the young woman referring to the old man later as Daddy, indicate
this is a family who has not yet been separated. Thus, the cultural African ties are
strong
between them. After the overseer lashes at her a few more times, the
young woman is told by the
old man that the time has come, and away she flies
like a bird. Soon, another man flies away,
and then another, till:
The old man...said something
loudly to all the
Negroes in the field, the new Negroes and the old Negroes. And as he spoke to
them, they all remembered what they had forgotten and recalled the power which once had
been
theirs. Then all the Negroes, old and new, stood up together. The old
man raised his hands, and
they all leaped up into the air with a great shout
and in a moment were gone, flying, like a
flock of crows, over the field,
over the fence, and over the top of the wood, and behind them
flew the old
man.
Thus, the Negros "old and
new"
remember their African roots and inherent power of flight. In coming together,
the
peoples from different African cultures and races reclaim their power.
This can be read as a
metaphor for the importance of proudly owning their
African identity.
Some
critics have read the flight in
Chillen as a metaphor for suicide, and indeed, suicide
sometimes
can be an act of defiance and resistance; but I think the
flight
in Chillen has multiple meanings. One of them is the flight from being
African to Negro to
back.
href="http://www.whittedq.weebly.com/uploads/3/5/4/2/3542765/aa_folktale.pdf">http://www.whittedq.weebly.com/uploads/3/5/4/2/3542765/aa...
href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5d2e/d5e4b7ecc3bc86e4f0be4b9a3b3bf0b7d986.pdf">https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5d2e/d5e4b7ecc3bc86e4f0b...
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