A DRAMATIC ANALYSIS OF PHILLIS WHEATLEY, MARTIN LUTHER KING JR, AND ALBERT B. CLEAGE JR, ROLE IN NONVIOLENCE FOR SOCIAL CHANGE

Abstract

Since the beginning of the slave regime, African American interpreters have turned to the Bible define meaning and to address the brutality of racism that their communities faced. Central to that search for meaning has been the book of Exodus as read through a continually adapting Black religious imagination. This thesis takes up an allegorical approach to the book of exodus interpreted through experiences of African American struggles for freedom. I argue that such a reading offers new understandings of the exodus narrative and the work done by the African American religious imagination. The thesis turns to the poems of Phillis Wheatley, the reformist sermons of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the more strident sermons of Albert B. Cleage, Jr. The interpretive work of these three figures serves as interpretive lenses over three eras, namely, the slave regime, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Black Power Movement. Each offers a different subversive politics in the struggle for Black freedom. For each, I show that the interpretive work reveals how African American religious imagination adapts and constructs new meanings for Exodus and for Black life to meet the challenges presented by a perpetually shifting political economy.