Freedom’s Story is made possible by a grant from the Wachovia Foundation.
Almost every oral tradition in the world has trickster figures, and African American culture is no exception. Tricksters dominate the folk tradition that peoples of African descent developed in the United States, especially those talesthat were influenced by African folk tradition, landscape, and wildlife. By definition, tricksters are animals or characters who, while ostensibly disadvantaged and weak in a contest of wills, power, and/or resources, succeed in getting the best of their larger, more powerful adversaries. Tricksters achieve their objectives through indirection and mask-wearing, through playing upon the gullibility of their opponents. In other words, tricksters succeed by outsmarting or outthinking their opponents. In executing their actions, they give no thought to right or wrong; indeed, they are amoral. Mostly, they are pictured in contest or quest situations, and they must use their wits to get out of trouble or bring about a particular result. For example, in one African American folktale, Brer Rabbit, the quintessential trickster figure in African American folklore, succeeds in getting Brer Fox to rescue him from a well by asserting that the moon reflected in the water at the bottom of the well is really a block of cheese. Brer Fox jumps into the other water bucket, descends into the well, and, in the process, enables Brer Rabbit to rise to freedom.
Though trickster tales in African American culture are frequently a source of humor, they also contain serious commentary on the inequities of existence in a country where the promises of democracy were denied to a large portion of the citizenry, a pattern that becomes even clearer in the literary adaptations of trickster figures. As black people who were enslaved gained literacy and began to write about their experiences, they incorporated figures from oral tradition into their written creations. In fact, some scholars have argued that the African American oral tradition is the basis for all written literary production by African Americans. To get a sense of this influence and these interconnections, it is necessary to explore the African American oral tradition.
People of African descent who found themselves enslaved in the New World, and specifically on United States soil, were not brought to the West to create poems, plays, short stories, essays, and novels. They were brought for the bodies, their physical labor. Denied access to literacy by law and custom, anything they wanted to retain in the way of cultural creation had to be passed down by word of mouth, or, in terms of crafts, by demonstration and imitation. After long hours of work in cotton and tobacco fields, therefore, blacks would occasionally gather in the evenings for storytelling. Tales they shared during slavery were initially believed to focus almost exclusively on animals. However, as more and more researchers became interested in African American culture after slavery and in the early twentieth century, they discovered a strand of tales that focused on human actors. It is generally believed that enslaved persons did not share with prying researchers the tales containing human characters because the protagonists were primarily tricksters, and the tales showcased actions that allowed those tricksters to get the best of their so-called masters. In some of these instances, as Lawrence W. Levine notes, perhaps the actions of the characters did indeed reflect the actions of those enslaved.
Levine makes clear that there was a short distance between trickster tactics in life and those that constituted the tales black folks created.
Brer Rabbit as the primary African American trickster may have been an adaptation of the African cunnie rabbit, a small deer, and/or of Anansi, the well-known African spider trickster. Animals that appearfrequently in the tales about Brer Rabbit, such as elephants and lions, are also believed to be African transplants, since these animals are not native to the United States. From these adaptations,
The patterns that were set in the oral tradition found their way early into African American literary creations. As early as the 1880s, North Carolina born Charles Waddell Chesnutt realized that he could achieve much as a writer if he imitated the pattern that Harris had set in his Uncle Remus stories. In a series of stories that he finally collected as The Conjure Woman (1899), Chesnutt created Uncle Julius, a raconteur left over from days of slavery, who entertains his white employers with tales of enslavement. These sometimes extranatural tales feature animals and humans who manage frequently to execute trickster tactics and improve their lot. For example, in one tale Julius recounts how an enslaved man is spared being sent from one plantation to another by having his wife, who is a conjure woman, turn him into a tree. The trickery works until a
By allowing Uncle Julius to relate heart-wrenching tales of enslavement to a white couple recently located from the North to the South, Chesnutt is able to offer subtle commentary on the harshness of slavery and suggest the need for current-day democratic fairness even as he entertains his audience with the Aesop’s fable quality of the tales. Julius succeeds in convincing Annie, the wife, of the horrors of slavery even if her husband, John, remains skeptically detached from the emotional truths that underlie the magical workings of the stories. In Chesnutt’s hands, therefore, the trickster figure is one who does political and cultural work. Chesnutt’s hope is that his reading audience will respond to the tales in the way that Annie does—by recognizing that blacks were denied basic human rights and that those rights should certainly be restored in the early twentieth century, the time at which Chesnutt’s reading audience is encountering the tales.
Contemporary with Chesnutt, poet Paul Laurence Dunbar also incorporated trickster ideas and figures into his works. In “An Ante-Bellum Sermon,” for example, he allows a preacher who is delivering a sermon to enslaved persons only through the largesse of the master to adopt the mask-wearing role common to tricksters and deliver a dual message to those enslaved. His audience might rightly interpret his calls for freedom to have present-day relevance—even as he vigorously claims that he is speaking of freedom “in a Bibleistic way.” Overlaying his serious comment with humor, Dunbar makes clear his concern for the plight of black people. In other poems, however, such as “Accountability,” the dominant strand of humorous trickery is more apparent. Both Dunbar and Chesnutt were writing at a time when strictures on black creativity were prominent. Neither dared to indict whites directly for the conditions under which blacks suffered in slavery, during Reconstruction, or in the late nineteenth century. They could, however, imply such responsibility through the development of trickster paradigms.
Ralph Ellison represents the epitome of the practice. In Invisible Man (1952), Ellison illustrates characteristics of the trickster in the narrator’s grandfather, who asserts that, in relation to dealing with whites, one should “overcome ‘em with yeses, undermine ‘em with grins, agree ‘em to death and destruction, let ‘em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open.”2 The implied militancy shocks the narrator and his family, who have all believed that the grandfather was an acquiescing Uncle Tom. It is much later, when the narrator arrives in New York and is used by the Brotherhood, that he begins to understand trickster mentality as a strategy for survival with dignity (what the grandfather employed) as well as a strategy for political intervention (what he attempts when he “grins” and asserts to the leadership of the Brotherhood that all is well in Harlem. In reality, the community is about to explode.).In terms of twentieth century adaptation of trickster figures in African American literary creation, perhaps
In other literary works, trickster strategies border on the con artist tradition when blacks use them against members of their own community. That is essentially what the invisible Willie Harris does to the Younger family in A Raisin in the Sun (1959) when he absconds with the remainder of the ten thousand dollars that they have been awarded from the dead Younger patriarch’s insurance policy. Other works that include such trickery applied against other black people include John Oliver Killens’s The Cotillion or One Good Bull is Half the Herd (1971), which is his take on the pretentiousness of debutante balls in black communities, and Langston Hughes’s “Who’s Passing for Who?,” in which black couples try to determine which one is passing for white. This pattern also includes Ellison’s Rinehart, a trickster of many disguises, including preacher and pimp. By contrast, delightfully humorous cross racial executions of trickster tactics in the literature include William Melvin Kelley’s dem (1969), a reference to white people and a novel in which the white male protagonist is duped by the black man who has co-fathered a set of twins with him (one twin is black and the other white). Another example is Ted Shine’s short play Contribution (1969), about a grandmother who shuffles, grins, and, in her role as maid, serves poisoned cornbread to her white Southern employers. Several of Sterling Brown’s poems, especially those involving Slim Greer, also incorporate trickster figures, and these characters appear in a host of other works by African American writers.
Toni Morrison adapted the figure for inclusion in her novel Love. Adaptation is the appropriate word here, because the trickster turns out to be the narrator of the novel. A tale of too many women loving the same rich and chauvinistic man, who neglects all of them for an elusive true love, two of the women fight to determine which is Bill Cosey’s true heir. This much-revered Bill Cosey is finally revealed to be so wrong-headed in his relationships that “L,” the text’s narrator, brings about his demise. She does so quietly, effectively, in an effort to prevent Cosey from leaving his fortune to the elusive Celestial.Although the circumstances that made the trickster an obvious model for action during the nineteenth century no longer exist, the appeal of the character remains attractive to African American writers in the twenty-first century. As recently as 2005,
“L” shares with Brer Rabbit a desire to level the playing field in the circumstances surrounding her. She also shares his amorality and becomes godlike in her assumption of the right to mete out life and death. And certainly there is a selfishness to what “L,” has done, for the beneficiaries of her largesse are unaware of what she has brought about on their behalf. Her actions also include the unusual dimension of working to achieve an objective more for the benefit of others than for the self. This trait thus makes Morrison’s transformed representation of the trickster paradigm intriguing enough to begin discussion about the extent to which any true trickster pattern holds in twenty-first century African American literature.
Guiding Student Discussion
A starting point might be to get students to understand the difference between conning and con artists versus tricksters and trickery. Con artists can obviously con others who are their intellectual and social equals or perhaps even their superiors. Consider the scam that Paul Newman and Robert Redford execute in the movie The Sting. Certainly someone gets taken, but that taking is not couched in racial terms or in terms of social inequality. Tricksters, on the other hand, often attempt to level the playing field, to reduce the inequity in social and power situations. Persons of lesser social status, such as African Americans during slavery and immediately following, could work indirectly to bring about whatever measure of equality they could manage. A favored enslaved person might, for example, stroke the master’s ego with a compliment in order to get an additional ration of meat or shot of whiskey.
It is also necessary to delineate between mask-wearing and uncle tomming in connection with tricksters and trickery. True tricksters manipulate the mask, as the Invisible Man’s grandfather did. They are in control of that manipulation, and they never forget that their motives and objectives are antithetical to those of the persons against whom their trickery is directed. Uncle Toms, however, do not separate themselves from the mask or from the society of which they are a part. Their objectives are commensurate with those of the prevailing society or power structure within which they exist. During slavery, an Uncle Tom might have offered heartfelt praise to his master, reported to his master on the transgressions of blacks around him, and believed that slavery was generally the correct place on the scale of being for blacks to exist. It is therefore an insult to call someone an Uncle Tom, whereas the tactics of tricksters have historically been applauded. In each case, you might ask your students to consider what the trickster or the Uncle Tom gains through his actions. To whose benefit do those gains accrue? What are the consequences of the gains? What moral issues arise as a result of the trickery?
An early short story that your students will certainly enjoy is Charles Waddell Chesnutt’s “The Passing of Grandison” (1899) (In The Wife of His Youth and other Stories of the Color Line). In it, a faithful retainer during slavery earns the trust of his master sufficiently to enable him to escape from slavery and to return later and carry several members of his family away with him. By playing to what his master expects of those enslaved and living out those expectations precisely, Grandison is able to carry out a scheme that costs his master thousands upon thousands of dollars. Have your students examine the story carefully to determine what patterns of interaction during slavery have enabled Grandison to succeed at what he attempts. How does he live up to his master’s expectations? What enables him to lay the groundwork to achieve his escape and those of his family members? How is the master complicit in Grandison’s escape? What, in other words, are the master’s shortcomings in his perceptions of what enslaved persons will and will not do? What prevailing notions about slavery may have influenced the master’s attitudes? What, ultimately, does Chesnutt hope to achieve in the late nineteenth century with this tale of escape from slavery in the early nineteenth century? Why is a trickster strategy more effective in his achieving his purpose?
A more contemporary short story employing trickster tactics in Alice Walker’s “The Revenge of Hannah Kemhuff,” which appeared in In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women (1973). There are two levels of trickster activity in this story about a black woman’s revenge against a white woman. The first appears in the frame story, the one in which Tante Rosie, a conjure woman, tricks people in her community into thinking she has extranatural powers by simply keeping files on all of them. The second occurs in the inner story, about Hannah Kemhuff and how, as a result of white Sarah Holley denying Hannah’s family food during the Great Depression, Hannah’s husband leaves her, her children die of starvation, and she is reduced to a life of prostitution. Tante Rosie “casts a spell” on Sarah Holley on behalf of Hannah Kemhuff, and the woman dies. The story provides wonderful opportunities to explore the amorality inherent in trickster tactics, for, though Mrs. Kemhuff professes to be a devout Christian, she “prays” fervently for the demise of Sarah Holley (Walker even incorporates the curse prayer directly from Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men, a 1935 collection of folklore and conjuration).
Pairing Chesnutt and Walker will allow students to engage in discussion along several lines. They might begin by considering how the two stories show changes in literary representations of trickster figures from the late nineteenth century to the last quarter of the twentieth century. What are the differences in portrayal? How do Chesnutt’s objectives align with Walker’s objectives? Indeed, are Walker’s objectives in the story entirely clear? Who benefits from the trickster’s activity in each story? Is one beneficiary more valuable than the other? What about the tone of the stories? Chesnutt deals with the very serious subject of slavery in what could be considered a lighthearted way, while Walker is simultaneously playful and somber. What roles do trickster strategies play in achieving these tones? Do you come away from Walker’s story with as complete a sense of conclusion of the issues as you do with Chesnutt’s story? Why, finally, is it appropriate to place “casts a spell” in quotation marks in discussing Walker’s story and what happens to Sarah Holley?
One possible controversy surrounding the trickster is obviously the clash between amorality and the presumed morality practiced by people who ostensibly embraced Christianity, as the majority of African Americans did. How could black people adhere to subversive tactics and not create a morality that was counter to the one in which they professed belief? John W. Roberts, in From Trickster to Badman: The Black Folk Hero in Slavery and Freedom (1989), does an excellent job of treating this question in relation to Christian blacks who, during slavery, offered wholehearted support to warrior models such as Joshua and, after slavery, offered equally wholehearted support to trickster models such as Railroad Bill. Morris Slater, aka Railroad Bill, reputedly killed a white policeman in Alabama in self-defense in 1893. He then escaped, stole from the railroads, and passed the stolen goods on to needy African Americans who lived along the railroad tracks. African Americans celebrated his trickster exploits and considered him a heroic figure. As Roberts points out at the beginning of his text, “We often use the term ‘hero’ as if it denoted a universally recognized character type, and the concept of ‘heroism’ as if it referred to a generally accepted behavioral category. In reality, figures (both real and mythic) and actions dubbed heroic in one context or by one group of people may be viewed as ordinary or even criminal in another context or by other groups, or even by the same ones at different times.”3 The complexity of responses to real or presumed heroic actions, therefore, makes clear the flexibility in morality that governs such responses. Listeners to and believers in such figures and tales allow a space for approval of the actions of characters within the tales without countering their own ontological beliefs.
In a different context, the notion of heroism in trickster tactics is what engages Roger D. Abrahams in his explorations of the toasts (long narrative poems) and stories that black men in Philadelphia used to entertain themselves in the 1960s. Many of the narratives in Deep Down in the Jungle: Negro Narrative Folklore from the Streets of Philadelphia (1970) focus on less than savory characters getting the best of their adversaries through playing the role of the trickster. These include such selections as “The Signifying Monkey” as well as some versions of “Staggolee.” Toasts that focus on pimps and prostitutes also rely occasionally on trickster tactics. Students might consider, therefore, what happens to a character or a literary form that can be both positive and negative and what results obtain in either case. Again, the purposes to which the tactics are put are crucial. Also, how can entertainment (laughter) as an outcome guide the use of trickster dynamics?
As scholars have interpreted trickster figures in tales that were circulated during slavery, some have questioned the approach that posits trickster actions having meaning in the real historical world. Were black raconteurs during slavery really trying to reflect the actions of black and whites, or were they simply creating entertaining narratives? Bernard W. Wolfe is one scholar who believes firmly that the actions of animals in African American trickster tales are intended to represent the actions of human beings. In “Uncle Remus & the Malevolent Rabbit,” Wolfe identifies quests for food, interracial sex, and cross-racial social relationship as the primary objectives in the majority of tricksters tales.4 Since these were some of the key things that whites denied to blacks during and after slavery, Wolfe argues that the folktales are a way for blacks to turn the world upside down. If Brer Rabbit is shut out of the larder and smokehouse during slavery, then he will take what he needs to be hale and hearty. Wolfe comments: “The world, in Brer Rabbit’s wary eyes, is a jungle. Life is a battle-unto-the-death for food, sex, power, prestige, a battle without rules. There is only one reality in this life: who is on top?” (530). Similarly, while black males could not compete for the hands of white women, Brer Rabbit is able to trick his competition (ostensibly the white man) into allowing him to use him as a riding horse as he comes up to a porch to court Miss Sophronie. Wolfe reads the Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit escapades as a quest for what he calls a “communal meal,” a symbol that all is well socially between the races in the South. Since such harmony is obviously not the case, then the trickster tactics and violent domination will continue in the guise of fanciful entertainment.
Other commentators on tricksters in folklore as well as tricksters in African American literature include Alan Dundes, ed., Mother Wit from the Laughing Barrel: Readings in the Interpretation of Afro-American Folklore (1973), Lawrence W. Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom (1977), and Daryl Cumber Dance, Shuckin’ and Jivin’: Folklore from Contemporary Black Americans (1978) as well as her From My People: 400 Years of African American Folklore (2002). Henry Louis Gates, Jr. provides an extensive exploration of the trickster’s influence on African American literature in The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism (1988); he offers particularly expansive commentary on the works of Zora Neale Hurston.
1Lawrence W. Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought From Slavery to Freedom (New York: Oxford, 1977), 122. Levine draws his information from a variety of sources that he cites in the text. In Kindred, Dana tries to use her intelligence to get Rufus to change his slaveholding ways.
2 Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (New York: Vintage, 1952), 16.
3John W. Roberts, From Trickster to Badman: The Black Folk Hero in Slavery and Freedom (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), 1.
4Bernard Wolfe, "Uncle Remus & the Malevolent Rabbit" in Alan Dundes, ed., Mother Wit from the Laughing Barrel: Readings in the Interpretation of Afro-American Folklore (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973), 524-540.


A heliograph (helios (Greek: ἥλιος), meaning "sun", and graphein (γράφειν), meaning "write") is a wireless telegraph that signals by flashes of sunlight (generally using Morse code) reflected by a mirror. The flashes are produced by momentarily pivoting the mirror, or by interrupting the beam with a shutter. The heliograph was a simple but effective instrument for instantaneous optical communication over long distances during the late 19th and early 20th century. Its main uses were military, survey and forest protection work. Heliographs were standard issue in the British and Australian armies until the 1960s, and were used by the Pakistani army as late as 1975.
There were many heliograph types. Most heliographs were variants of the British Army Mance Mark V version (Fig.1). It used a mirror with a small unsilvered spot in the centre. The sender aligned the heliograph to the target by looking at the reflected target in the mirror and moving their head until the target was hidden by the unsilvered spot. Keeping their head still, they then adjusted the aiming rod so its cross wires bisected the target. They then turned up the sighting vane, which covered the cross wires with a diagram of a cross, and aligned the mirror with the tangent and elevation screws so the small shadow that was the reflection of the unsilvered spot hole was on the cross target. This indicated that the sunbeam was pointing at the target. The flashes were produced by a keying mechanism that tilted the mirror up a few degrees at the push of a lever at the back of the instrument. If the sun was in front of the sender, its rays were reflected directly from this mirror to the receiving station. If the sun was behind the sender, the sighting rod was replaced by a second mirror, to capture the sunlight from the main mirror and reflect it to the receiving station. The U. S. Signal Corps heliograph mirror did not tilt. This type produced flashes by a shutter mounted on a second tripod (Fig 4).
The heliograph had some great advantages. It allowed long distance communication without a fixed infrastructure, though it could also be linked to make a fixed network extending for hundreds of miles, as in the fort-to-fort network used for the Geronimo campaign. It was very portable, did not require any power source, and was relatively secure since it was invisible to those not near the axis of operation, and the beam was very narrow, spreading only 50 feet per mile of range. However, anyone in the beam with the correct knowledge could intercept signals without being detected. In the Boer War, where both sides used heliographs, tubes were sometimes used to decrease the dispersion of the beam. In some other circumstances, though, a narrow beam made it difficult to stay aligned with a moving target, as when communicating from shore to a moving ship, so the British issued a dispersing lens to broaden the heliograph beam from its natural diameter of 0.5 degrees to 15 degrees.
The distance that heliograph signals could be seen depended on the clarity of the sky and the size of the mirrors used. A clear line of sight was required, and since the Earth's surface is curved, the highest convenient points were used. Under ordinary conditions, a flash could be seen 30 miles (48 km) with the naked eye, and much farther with a telescope. The maximum range was considered to be 10 miles for each inch of mirror diameter. Mirrors ranged from 1.5 inches to 12 inches or more. The record distance was established by a detachment of U.S. signal sergeants by the inter-operation of stations on Mount Ellen, Utah, and Mount Uncompahgre, Colorado, 183 miles (295 km) apart on September 17, 1894, with Signal Corps heliographs carrying mirrors only 8 inches square.
The German professor Carl Friedrich Gauss of the University of Göttingen developed and used a predecessor of the heliograph (the heliotrope) in 1821. His device directed a controlled beam of sunlight to a distant station to be used as a marker for geodetic survey work, and was suggested as a means of telegraphic communications. This is the first reliably documented heliographic device, despite much speculation about possible ancient incidents of sun-flash signalling, and the documented existence of other forms of ancient optical telegraphy.
For example, one author in 1919 chose to "hazard the theory" that the mainland signals Roman emperor Tiberius watched for from Capri were mirror flashes, but admitted "there are no references in ancient writings to the use of signaling by mirrors", and that the documented means of ancient long-range visual telecommunications was by beacon fires and beacon smoke, not mirrors.
Similarly, the story that a shield was used as a heliograph at the Battle of Marathon is a modern myth, originating in the 1800s. Herodotus never mentioned any flash. What Herodotus did write was that someone was accused of having arranged to "hold up a shield as a signal". Suspicion grew in the 1900s that the flash theory was implausible. The conclusion after testing the theory was "Nobody flashed a shield at the Battle of Marathon".
In a letter dated 3 June 1778, John Norris, High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire, England, notes: "Did this day heliograph intelligence from Dr [Benjamin] Franklin in Paris to Wycombe". However, there is little evidence that "heliograph" here is other than a misspelling of "holograph". The term "heliograph" for solar telegraphy did not enter the English language until the 1870s—even the word "telegraphy" was not coined until the 1790s.
Henry Christopher Mance (1840–1926), of the British Government Persian Gulf Telegraph Department, developed the first widely accepted heliograph about 1869 while stationed at Karachi, in the Bombay Presidency in British India. Mance was familiar with heliotropes by their use for the Great India Survey. The Mance Heliograph was operated easily by one man, and since it weighed about seven pounds, the operator could readily carry the device and its tripod. The British Army tested the heliograph in India at a range of 35 miles with favorable results. During the Jowaki Afridi expedition sent by the British-Indian government in 1877, the heliograph was first tested in war.
The simple and effective instrument that Mance invented was to be an important part of military communications for more than 60 years. The usefulness of heliographs was limited to daytimes with strong sunlight, but they were the most powerful type of visual signalling device known. In pre-radio times heliography was often the only means of communication that could span ranges of as much as 100 miles with a lightweight portable instrument.
In the United States military, by mid-1878, Colonel Nelson A. Miles had established a line of heliographs connecting Fort Keogh and Fort Custer, Montana, a distance of 140 miles. In 1886, General Nelson A. Miles set up a network of 27 heliograph stations in Arizona and New Mexico during the hunt for Geronimo.In 1890, Major W. J. Volkmar of the US Army demonstrated in Arizona and New Mexico the possibility of performing communication by heliograph over a heliograph network aggregating 2,000 miles in length. The network of communication begun by General Miles in 1886, and continued by Lieutenant W. A. Glassford, was perfected in 1889 at ranges of 85, 88, 95, and 125 miles over a rugged and broken country, which was the stronghold of the Apache and other hostile Indian tribes.
By 1887, heliographs in use included not only the British Mance and Begbie heliographs, but also the American Grugan, Garner and Pursell heliographs. The Grugan and Pursell heliographs used shutters, and the others used movable mirrors operated by a finger key. The Mance, Grugan and Pursell heliographs used two tripods, and the others one. The signals could either be momentary flashes, or momentary obscurations. In 1888, the US Signal Service reviewed all of these devices, as well as the Finley Helio-Telegraph, and finding none completely suitable, developed the US Signal Service heliograph, a two-tripod, shutter-based machine of 13 7/8 lb. total weight, and ordered 100 for a total cost of $4,205. In 1893, the number of heliographs manufactured for the US Signal Service was 133.
The heyday of the heliograph was probably the Second Boer War in South Africa, where it was much used by both the British and the Boers. The terrain and climate, as well as the nature of the campaign, made heliography a logical choice. For night communications, the British used some large Aldis lamps, brought inland on railroad cars, and equipped with leaf-type shutters for keying a beam of light into dots and dashes. During the early stages of the war, the British garrisons were besieged in Kimberley, Ladysmith, and Mafeking. With land telegraph lines cut, the only contact with the outside world was via light-beam communication, helio by day, and Aldis lamps at night.
In 1909, the use of heliography for forestry protection was introduced in the United States. By 1920 such use was widespread in the US and beginning in Canada, and the heliograph was regarded as "next to the telephone, the most useful communication device that is at present available for forest-protection services". D.P. Godwin of the US Forestry Service invented a very portable (4.5 lb) heliograph of the single-tripod, shutter plus mirror type for forestry use.
Immediately prior to the outbreak of World War I, the cavalry regiments of the Russian Imperial Army were still being trained in heliograph communications to augment the efficiency of their scouting and reporting roles. The Red Army during the Russian Civil War made use of a series of heliograph stations to disseminate intelligence efficiently about basmachi rebel movements in Turkestan in 1926.
During World War II, South African and Australian forces used the heliograph against German forces in Libya and Egypt in 1941 and 1942.
The heliograph remained standard equipment for military signallers in the Australian and British armies until the 1940s, where it was considered a "low probability of intercept" type of communication. The Canadian Army was the last major army to have the heliograph as an issue item. By the time the mirror instruments were retired, they were seldom used for signalling. However, as recently as the 1980s, heliographs were used by Afghan forces during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Signal mirrors are still included in survival kits for emergency signaling to search and rescue aircraft.
Most heliographs of the 19th and 20th century were completely manual. The steps of aligning the heliograph on the target, co-aligning the reflected sunbeam with the heliograph, maintaining the sunbeam alignment as the sun moved, transcribing the message into flashes, modulating the sunbeam into those flashes, detecting the flashes at the receiving end, and transcribing the flashes into the message, were all manual steps. One notable exception – many French heliographs used clockwork heliostats to automatically steer out the sun's motion. By 1884, all active units of the "Mangin apparatus" (a dual-mode French military field optical telegraph that could use either lantern or sunlight) were equipped with clockwork heliostats. The Mangin apparatus with heliostat was still in service in 1917. Proposals to automate both the modulation of the sunbeam (by clockwork) and the detection (by electrical selenium photodetectors, or photographic means) date back to at least 1882. In 1961, the US Air Force was working on a space heliograph to signal between satellites
In May 2012, "Solar Beacon" robotic mirrors designed at UC Berkeley were mounted on the towers of the Golden Gate bridge, and a web site set up where the public could schedule times for the mirrors to signal with sun-flashes, entering the time and their latitude, longitude and altitude. The solar beacons were later moved to Sather Tower at UC Berkeley. By June 2012, the public could specify a "custom show" of up to 32 "on" or "off" periods of 4 seconds each, permitting the transmission of a few characters of Morse Code. The designer described the Solar Beacon as a "heliostat", not a "heliograph".
Erigeron heliographis is a rare species of flowering plant in the aster family known by the common name Heliograph Peak fleabane. It is endemic to Arizona, where it occurs only in the Pinaleno Mountains in Graham County.This perennial herb grows a few centimeters tall from a taproot and caudex. The rough-haired leaves are linear or lance-shaped and 1 to 4 centimeters long. The flower head contains 20 to 23 white ray florets 5 to 8 millimeters long.This plant is known from two peaks in the Pinaleno Mountains of Arizona. It occurs at an elevation between 8500 and 10,400 feet, growing in rocky, forested habitat.Forgotten Futures
Forgotten Futures is a role-playing game created by Marcus Rowland to allow people to play in settings inspired by Victorian and Edwardian science fiction and fantasy (i.e., steampunk). Most of its releases begin with these stories then add background material to explain the settings (often as alternate worlds, whose history diverges from our own), adventures, and other game material.Gauribidanur Radio Observatory
The Gauribidanur Radio Observatory is a radio telescope observatory located at Gauribidanur, near Bengaluru. It is operated jointly by Raman Research Institute and the Indian Institute of Astrophysics. The observatory has been in operation since 1976.Harquahala Mountains
The Harquahala Mountains (Yavapai: ʼHakhe:la) are the highest mountain range in southwestern Arizona, United States and are located southwest of the towns of Aguila and Wenden. The name originated from the Yavapai 'ʼHakhe:la", which means "running water". The range is oriented from northeast to southwest and is approximately 32 km long and 20 km at its widest point. At the northeast are two prominent peaks, Eagle Eye Peak and Eagle Eye Mountain. One has a natural opening or bridge through it appearing as an eye high up, and is the namesake for the peaks and Aguila (Spanish for eagle). The highest point, Harquahala Peak, rises to 5,681 ft (1,732 m). Socorro Peak, 3270 ft (1,134 m), is at the southwest end of the range.
The very windy summit can be reached via a rough, 4-wheel drive road. This high point was used by the U.S. Army in the 1880s as a heliograph station. Then in 1920 a Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory was constructed on this summit and operated for five years before being relocated to Table Mountain Observatory, near Wrightwood, California. Its purpose was to study variations in the solar output as a possible factor in climate prediction.
Designated in 1990, the 22,880-acre (93 km2) the Harquahala Mountain Wilderness lies to the north and east of the summit at 33°49′40″N 113°17′52″W on the Maricopa / La Paz county line.
At the southwest end of the mountain range, there are gypsum mines and in the past there were extensive mines for gold and silver.Heliograph (disambiguation)
Heliograph is a word derived from helios (Greek Ἥλιος / ἥλιος "sun") and graphein (γραφειν "to write"). It has several uses:
the heliograph, a device used for optical signalling
a type of sunshine recorder
a solar telescope, a telescope especially adapted for viewing the surface of the sun
heliography, the photographic process used to make the earliest known permanent photograph from natureHeliography
Heliography (in French, héliographie) is the photographic process invented by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce around 1822, which he used to make the earliest known surviving photograph from nature, View from the Window at Le Gras (1826 or 1827). The process used Bitumen of Judea, a naturally occurring asphalt, as a coating on glass or metal. It hardened in proportion to its exposure to light. When the plate was washed with oil of lavender, only the hardened areas remained.
The word has also been used to refer to other phenomena: for description of the sun (cf. geography), for photography in general, for signalling by heliograph (a device less commonly called a heliotrope or helio-telegraph), and for photography of the sun.The abbreviations héliog. or héliogr., found on old reproductions, may stand for the French word héliogravure, and can then refer to any form of photogravure.Henry Christopher Mance
Sir Henry Christopher Mance, (6 September 1840 – 21 April 1926) was a British electrical engineer who was president of the Institution of Electrical Engineers. He was knighted for developing the heliograph.Born in Exeter, he was educated privately.
He joined the Persian Gulf Telegraph Department in 1863, and was employed on the laying of the first Persian Gulf submarine communications cable. In 1879, he was appointed electrician to the Department, which position he held throughout his working life. An inventive man, he was responsible for a number of important developments in the field of cable laying, testing and usage.
In 1869 he invented the heliograph, a wireless solar telegraph that signals by flashes of sunlight using Morse code reflected by a mirror. The flashes were produced by momentarily pivoting the mirror. Frustrated by Government lack of interest, he sent a number of his instruments to Lord Roberts for use during the second Afghan War, where the practical value of the invention was realised. It was subsequently adopted by military services worldwide and was still being used in World War II.
He was Vice-President of the Institution of Electrical Engineers from 1892 to 1896 and elected President in 1897. He was also a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers and the Physical Society.
He retired in 1885 but continued his interest in Electrical Engineering as Chairman of the Oxford Electric Company and board member of several other electrical companies. Practically blind for the last 10 years of his life, he learned to read Braille.
He was created a C.I.E. in 1883 and made a Knight Bachelor in 1885.He died in 1926. He had married Annie Sayer in 1874, and had three sons and two daughters. One son was Brigadier-General Henry Osborne Mance.List of peaks named Signal
A signal mountain or signal peak is a mountain suited to sending and receiving visual signals, either from its topographic prominence and isolation or from being located where signal communications are most needed. For example, Tennessee's Signal Mountain was used by Native Americans to send fire and smoke signals across the Tennessee Valley. It was also used by the Union Army as a visual communications station during the American Civil War. Mount Lassic in California has low prominence but is also known as Signal Peak due to the heliograph station that was located on this peak around 1900. And the highest peak in the Pine Valley Range, Utah's Signal Peak, is "supposedly named because of its use in World War II when beacons were placed on the mountain to guide airplanes at night."Marcus Rowland (author)
Marcus L. Rowland (born 1953) is an English retired laboratory technician and an important figure in gaming, particularly with regard to games with Victorian era content.Morse Code (horse)
Morse Code (foaled 1929) was a British Thoroughbred racehorse who won the 1938 Cheltenham Gold Cup. His Gold Cup victory was achieved at the expense of Golden Miller, who was attempting to win the race for the sixth time. He had previously won the Grand Annual Chase and went on to finish second when odds-on favourite for the Gold Cup in 1939.Mount Ellen (Utah)
Mount Ellen is a mountain located in Garfield County, Utah. The high point of Mount Ellen's North Summit Ridge is the highest point in the Henry Mountains; it is also the highest point in Garfield County. It can be reached by a short hike from an unpaved road. These mountains were the last to be surveyed by the USGS in the lower 48 states. The mountain can be seen from as far as Mount Peale in the La Sal Mountains of eastern Utah.
Mount Ellen is an ultra prominent peak, meaning that it has more than 1,500 metres (4,921 ft) of topographic prominence, standing out considerably from nearby mountains. It stands in the watershed of the Fremont River, which together with Muddy Creek forms the Dirty Devil River, which drains into the Colorado River, and ultimately into the Gulf of California in Mexico.
The Paiute name for Mount Ellen was Un tar re. It was also referred to as First Mountain. After climbing to the summit in June 1872, Almon Harris Thompson named it for his wife Ellen. Ellen Powell Thompson was also the sister of explorer John Wesley Powell.Over several days beginning on September 10th, 1895 a detachment of the U.S. Army Signal Corps established the world heliograph record from stations atop Mount Ellen, Utah and Mount Uncompahgre, Colorado. The record for visual signalling was established utilizing mirrors 8 inches across and telescopes. The flashing signals communicated over a distance of 183 miles.Nançay Radio Observatory
The Nançay Radio Observatory or Nançay Radioastronomy Facility' includes a number of radio telescopes:
The Nançay radio telescope
the Radio Heliograph, a T-shaped array (1.6 km by 1.25 km) composed of 47 antennas operating between frequencies of 150 and 450 MHz;
the Decametric Array composed of 144 spiral antenna operating between wavelengths of 3 m and 30 m;
the Radio Frequency Monitoring Antenna, mounted on a tower 22 metres above the ground, and observing at regular intervals each day on two frequency bands between 100 and 500 MHz and between 1 and 4 GHz.
the CODALEMA project, dedicated to the study of cosmic rays;
an international LOFAR station (named FR606), along with NenuFAR - a LOFAR Super Station with an extended low frequency range, capable of also operating in standalone mode;
one of the two experimental EMBRACE (Electronic MultiBeam Radio Astronomy ConcEpt) phased array telescopes, part of the Research and Development program for the Phase 2 of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project.Optical communication
Optical communication, also known as optical telecommunication, is communication at a distance using light to carry information. It can be performed visually or by using electronic devices. The earliest basic forms of optical communication date back several millennia, while the earliest electrical device created to do so was the photophone, invented in 1880.
An optical communication system uses a transmitter, which encodes a message into an optical signal, a channel, which carries the signal to its destination, and a receiver, which reproduces the message from the received optical signal. When electronic equipment is not employed the 'receiver' is a person visually observing and interpreting a signal, which may be either simple (such as the presence of a beacon fire) or complex (such as lights using color codes or flashed in a Morse code sequence).
Free-space optical communication has been deployed in space, while terrestrial forms are naturally limited by geography, weather and the availability of light. This article provides a basic introduction to different forms of optical communication.Pinaleño Mountains
The Pinaleño Mountains (in Yavapai: Walkame – "pine mountains" or in Western Apache: Dził Nnilchí' Diyiléé - ″pine-burdened mountain″), are a remote mountain range in southeastern Arizona, near Safford (Ichʼįʼ Nahiłtį́į́), Arizona. The mountains have over 7,000 feet (2,100 m) of vertical relief, more than any other range in the state. The mountains are surrounded by the Sonoran-Chihuahuan Desert. Subalpine forests cover the higher elevations. According to The Nature Conservancy, they traverse five ecological communities and contain "the highest diversity of habitats of any mountain range in North America." The highest point is Mount Graham (Western Apache: Dził Nchaa Sí'an - ″Big Seated Mountain″) at 10,720 feet (3,267 m). Locals often refer to the whole mountain range as "Mount Graham", in which case the peak is referred to as "High Peak". The mountains cover 300 square miles (780 km2) and are part of the Coronado National Forest, Safford ranger district.
The Pinaleño/Pinal Band (Spanish term: ″Pinery People″, Western Apache: Tiis Ebah Nnee - ″Cottonwoods Gray in the Rocks People″) of the San Carlos Apache (Tsékʼáádn - ″Metate People″), one of the subgroups of the Western Apache people and their kin and close allies, the Hwaalkamvepaya/Walkamepa Band ("Pine Mountains People") of the Guwevkabaya/Kwevkepaya ("Southern People"), one of the three Yavapai regional groupings were either named after the Pinaleño Mountains or the mountains were named after them (both people used this range as primary source for pine nuts, which have long been a staple food for many Native American tribes).
The mountains are a Madrean sky island range that is typical of southern Arizona, specifically south-central Arizona, and especially the complete southeastern quadrant of Arizona, from Tucson, and Globe to Nogales, Douglas, and the Chiricahuas. Sky island ranges are mountains isolated by desert valleys. The deserts, as well as differences in elevation, prevent flora and fauna from traveling to or from nearby ecosystems. As a result, the mountain ecosystems are isolated, and distinct sub-species can develop. This is similar to what Charles Darwin discovered with species he collected from different islands in the Galápagos, a discovery that played a major role in his theory of natural selection. The Mount Graham red squirrel is an isolated population of red squirrels and possibly a sub-species as well.
Safford and Willcox, Arizona are the nearest towns to the Pinaleños.Solar telescope
A solar telescope is a special purpose telescope used to observe the Sun. Solar telescopes usually detect light with wavelengths in, or not far outside, the visible spectrum. Obsolete names for Sun telescopes include heliograph and photoheliograph.Sunshine recorder
A sunshine recorder is a device that records the amount of sunshine at a given location or region at any time. The results provide information about the weather and climate as well as the temperature of a geographical area. This information is useful in meteorology, science, agriculture, tourism, and other fields. It has also been called a heliograph.
There are two basic types of sunshine recorders. One type uses the sun itself as a time-scale for the sunshine readings. The other type uses some form of clock for the time scale.
Older recorders required a human observer to interpret the results; recorded results might differ among observers. Modern sunshine recorders use electronics and computers for precise data that do not depend on a human interpreter. Newer recorders can also measure the global and diffuse radiation.Telegraphy
Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of textual messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas pigeon post is not. Ancient signalling systems, although sometimes quite extensive and sophisticated as in China, were generally not capable of transmitting arbitrary text messages. Possible messages were fixed and predetermined and such systems are thus not true telegraphs.
The earliest true telegraph put into widespread use was the optical telegraph of Claude Chappe, invented in the late eighteenth century. The system was extensively used in France, and European countries controlled by France, during the Napoleonic era. The electric telegraph started to replace the optical telegraph in the mid-nineteenth century. It was first taken up in Britain in the form of the Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph, initally used mostly as an aid to railway signalling. This was quickly followed by a different system developed in the United States by Samuel Morse. The electric telegraph was slower to develop in France due to the established optical telegraph system, but an electrical telegraph was put into use with a code compatible with the Chappe optical telegraph. The Morse system was adopted as the international standard in 1865, using a modified Morse code developed in Germany.
The heliograph is a telegraph system using reflected sunlight for signalling. It was mainly used in areas where the electrical telegraph had not been established and generally uses the same code. The most extensive heliograph network established was in Arizona and New Mexico during the Apache Wars. The heliograph was standard military equipment as late as World War II. Wireless telegraphy developed in the early twentieth century. Wireless telegraphy became important for maritime use, and was a competitor to electrical telegraphy using submarine telegraph cables in international communications.
Telegrams became a popular means of sending messages once telegraph prices had fallen sufficiently. Traffic was became high enough to spur the development of automated systems – teleprinters and punched tape transmission. These systems led to new telegraph codes, starting with the Baudot code. However, telegrams were never able to compete with the letter post on price, and competition from the telephone, which removed their speed advantage, drove the telegraph into decline from 1920 onwards. The few remaining telegraph applications were largely taken over by alternatives on the internet towards the end of the twenty-first century.Warrior Princess
Warrior Princess may refer to:
"Warrior Princess", the 2014 Mongolian hit film about the life of Queen Anu
Xena: Warrior Princess, a 1995-2001 American television series
"The Warrior Princess" (Hercules: The Legendary Journeys), an episode of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys
Xena: Warrior Princess (comics)
X-wing Rogue Squadron: The Warrior Princess, a 1996 story arc of the X-wing: Rogue Squadron comics series
Diana: Warrior Princess, a 2003 roleplaying game by Heliograph Incorporated
Warrior Princess: A U.S. Navy SEAL's Journey to Coming out Transgender, a 2013 memoir of Kristin Beck, a former United States Navy SEAL who came out as a trans woman
nickname of English professional kickboxer Ruqsana Begum (born 1983)
|Other writing systems|
in Morse code


by Lynne R. Dorfman and Rose Cappelli
Writing is used across the day to make thinking visible and deepen understanding of complex concepts. It is a way for students to think, reflect on their learning, and find the best way to organize their thoughts in order to be able to share them effectively with others. When we write we often are trying to incorporate new
learning into existing schema. The process of planning, drafting, revising, editing, and rewriting gives our students the time they need to accommodate new knowledge, classifying it in a way that will help their brain remember, store, and retrieve it. Authors help their readers do all these things by intentionally choosing the appropriate organizational structures to frame their writing. Writers and readers co-construct knowledge, discovering the writing and reading processes that work for them to create and comprehend informational texts.
A Rationale for Informational Writing Across the Curriculum
In their book Pathways to the Common Core Calkins, Ehrenworth, and Lehman discuss this process as well as the importance of being able to use it across the day.
“…not only will they [writers] need to do all this within a writing workshop,
where the focus is on developing skills as writers, but they’ll also have to
transfer these skills to the content areas doing this work on the run, quickly,
in the service of discipline-based learning. (p. 143).
We use informational writing across the curriculum to answer essential questions or offer an explanation, as well as to examine events and processes that affect our lives. Informational writing is much more than creating animal or state reports. In the age of Common Core, our thinking must evolve to include new approaches for delivering information that a target audience wants to read. The Common Core recognizes the need for a writing process, but also challenges writers to look beyond the ordinary and find opportunities for experimenting with new organizational scaffolds.
Common Core Writing Anchor 5 states:
Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach. (CCSS 2010, 18)
Today through the use of the internet we have information at our fingertips. Print is everywhere. But what makes it interesting? What makes a reader want to look further? Writers need to find unique ways of presenting information that will invite participation and transaction with text.
Organizational Scaffolds in Informational Writing
By introducing different scaffolds throughout a semester or school year, teachers can help students make informed decisions about what organizational global structure (scaffold) would work best for any given piece. Within the informational text students may also make use of many organizational patterns such as problem/solution, cause/effect, compare/contrast, time sequencing, and definition/description. These patterns can change from one paragraph to the next.
“The Common Core asks teachers and students to turn informational texts – their own and those written by others – inside out so as to study the designs that undergird the texts, noting the parts and the ways that the different parts have been brought together.” (Calkins et. al, 147). By using a mentor text and engaging in a close read, students can discover how an author puts a text together. It’s like watching a building being raised and seeing the underlying structure that supports the walls, windows, doors, and roof. The organizational scaffold that students can discover will inform their decisions about how they organize their writing in a meaningful, logical way.
The Repeated Introductory Phrase
“When I was young in the mountains…” is the dependent clause that begins many pages of author Cynthia Rylant’s children’s book, also the title of her well known memoir. After the first read to simply enjoy the wonderful words and images that appear in this text, a reader will notice that this clause only starts a sentence that begins a new vignette. Each slice of life – whether it is about Grandfather returning from a day in the coal mines; dinner and a trip to the outhouse; walking to the swimming hole; or pumping water, heating it, and taking a bath – each tiny story begins with this phrase. Readers can understand that the writer is sending a clear message to expect a new facet of life in Appalachia.
Rylant uses a repeated refrain in her book In November. Consider these words:
In November, some birds move away and some birds stay. The air is
full of good-byes and well-wishes. The birds who are leaving look very serious.
We are often too quick to introduce students to a scaffold and have them try it out without first reflecting on the author’s intended purpose. We find students writing their versions of Rylant’s text using the repeated introductory phrase to begin each sentence. Instead, if we spend time examining the text with students, we can help them discover that Rylant only uses the phrase “In November…” to introduce a new idea. The sentences that do not use the phrase provide details. This text helps students understand that it’s not about the number of ideas in a text, but rather how each idea is developed through elaboration – examples, description, explanations, and anecdotes.
The repeated introductory phrase is a scaffold that is used by many authors. In Up North at the Cabin, Marsha Wilson Chall strings together a series of vignettes that reveal something about herself through her childhood memories of summers spent on a lake.
Up north at the cabin, I am a smart angler. Grandpa tries pink spinners,
leeches, and dragonflies – but I know what fish like. I bait my hook with
peanut-butter-and-worm sandwiches, then jig my line and wait.
Eileen Spinelli moves the reader through an autumn day in I Know It’s Autumn. With each new time period we read, “I know it’s autumn when…”
In both Miss Moore Thought Otherwise by Jan Pinborough and The Tree Lady by H. Joseph Hopkins, picture book biographies, the authors use a repeated sentence or variation of it to show the forward thinking of the women – Anne Caroll Moore and Kate Sessions.
Unique Constructions Can Be Imitated
How to Be by Lisa Brown presents a unique scaffold that can be used at all grade levels across the curriculum. Students will discover that the text is written like an essay or poem of advice. Each sentence begins with a verb that illustrates a unique quality about the subject. A similar scaffold can be found in “Things to Do If You Are a Pencil” by Elaine Magliaro and “Things to Do If You Are the Sun” by Bobbi Katz. These poems can be found in Falling Down the Page: A Book of List Poems edited by Georgia Heard.
Taylor, a first grade student, initially wrote a “How to Be” piece about herself and was able to transfer the use of the scaffold to write about whales in a science unit later that same year.
“How to Be Taylor”
- Eat ice-cream.
- Play with your dolls.
- Like to watch Cartoon Network.
- Pretend to be able to see animals underwater.
- Float on your back.
- That’s how to be Taylor!
“How to Be a Whale”
- Eat krill.
- Play, jump, and leap in the water.
- Behave like an acrobat.
- Communicate with clicks.
- Migrate to look for food.
- That’s how to be a whale!
You can see that Taylor was able to find the right verb to communicate her ideas and understanding about whales. From her writing we can learn what she thinks is important about whales (and about herself).
Questions to Focus the Reader
All good research uses a central or essential question that peaks the curiosity of the researcher. A question scaffold will help students find out what they want to know about instead of finding the answers to questions their teachers may pose. There are several variations to a question scaffold. Susan Stockdale uses a basic question-answer scaffold around a central theme in her book Nature’s Paintbrush: The Patterns and Colors Around You. Her first question, “Have you ever noticed the patterns and colors on plants and animals?” serves as an introduction for her text. In subsequent pages she asks a related question and provides a concise answer.
In Looking Closely Inside the Garden, Frank Serafini uses a series of close-up photographs of nature to help students imagine what they are seeing. His central question, What do you see? Is followed by two possibilities that peak curiosity.
Look very closely.
What do you see?
A stained glass window?
A jigsaw puzzle?
The final question, What could it be? is followed by the answer and a detailed explanation on the following page. In this example the answer is a monarch butterfly. Steve Jenkins uses the question format in his book Creature Features: 25 Animals Explain Why They Look the Way They Do. This book explores unusual physical animal characteristics. Each question is posed in a letter format and answered in first person prose by the animal:
Dear sun bear:
Why is your tongue so long?
I love to eat ants and termites. With my long tongue, I can reach into their nests
and slurp them up.
This interesting pairing of photography, art, and informational writing in both Serafini’s and Jenkins’ books provides a new approach that is highly motivating for students who consider themselves artists and appreciate an additional lens to add to their writing endeavors. Like scientists, students can pose questions and observe the world around them to notice something extraordinary.
In one fifth grade classroom students were examining books by Sneed B. Collard III in preparation for an author visit. In thinking about the kind of structure Collard uses to deliver information, the students discovered that in many of Collard’s books there is an underlying question that leads to a general observation and focus. For example, in Leaving Home, Collard explores how the young of different animal species leave the parents.
Sooner or later, we all leave home.
Some of us walk.
Some of us crawl.
Some of us fly.
And some of us swim.
The book continues in this manner, and on each page there is a paragraph that gives an example of an animal that behaves in that manner accompanied by a detailed explanation. He uses this same structure in some of his other books such as Teeth, Wings, and Animals Asleep. The students also looked at books by other authors who use this type of structure including Melissa Stewart’s A Place for Birds, A Place for Butterflies, and A Place for Frogs and Dianna Hutts Aston’s A Seed Is Sleepy, An Egg Is Quiet, and A Butterfly Is Patient.
The students decided that perhaps they could use these books as mentor texts and create a class book that uses the same structure. As Collard did in Leaving Home, they wanted to explore something that was common to all animals. The subject of food came up, and through discussion they agreed that their research would focus on what and how animals eat. First, they did a lot of reading in books and on the internet. Some had a particular animal in mind, while others were more open in their approach. The students discovered that some animals eat alone, while others eat in groups and that some animals swallow their food, while others chew. They discussed all of their findings in small groups as well as whole group, then each student decided on what page they would write for their class book, All Animals Eat, imitating the structure of Collard’s Leaving Home – a general statement with an example and a paragraph of explanation.
One of the fifth grade Common Core State Standards for informational writing asks students to provide a general observation and focus for a topic, develop it with facts and ideas, and provide a conclusion (20). Without realizing it, this fifth grade class was working towards meeting that important standard.
Persona Writing: Delivering Information Through Many Voices
Sometimes an author chooses to organize an informational text in the many voices of an era – a particular time and place of importance or interest. Persona writing can establish an intimacy with the reader almost immediately. In Colonial Voices: Hear Them Speak, Kay Winters offers a collection of poems in the many voices of the Boston colonists that lived during the time of the American Revolution. She did not choose to represent famous people. Instead, her voices represent ordinary people and their various occupations written as first person accounts – the clockmaker, the tavern keeper, the milliner, etc. From her poems we get an inside view of both Loyalist and Patriot perspectives. Winters includes additional information about the various occupations as historical notes at the back of her book. She repeats this structure in other books such as Voices of Ancient Egypt and Voices from the Oregon Trail. Students may notice that often authors will repeat an organizational structure that works well for them. When a writer discovers the best organizational scaffold for a text, he will also know that he has found a way to keep his topic fresh and unique for his readers.
Persona writing for informational texts can take many forms. Molly Bang writes in the voice of our sun in her book My Light, and G. Brian Karas writes in the voice of the ocean in Atlantic. Poets such as Douglas Florian and Joyce Sidman use this persona structure, too, to impart information in an interesting way. Students can find ways to use the scaffold in Turn of the Century: Eleven Centuries of Children and Change by Ellen Jackson. In this book Jackson writes in the persona of eleven children from centuries ranging from 1000 A.D. to 2000 A.D. She shows us a day in the life of different children and couples this short narrative with some facts about life during that century. For example, we learn that Alice, a ten-year-old chamber maid living in the year 1400, was not able to read or write. In the list of facts about the year 1400, we learn that girls as well as boys were sent out to work at an early age.
Persona writing can be used across the curriculum. Instead of writing the “traditional” president reports, students could imitate the organizational structure from Turn of the Century to write in the voice of the president they are researching. They might choose to write in the president’s voice as a child, a young adult, and as the nation’s president. The list of facts could represent key events that happened in the country or around the world during the time in which the president lived or lives. In science, students could become various plants or animals from the rainforest and describe their place in the ecosystem. The facts could include information about how serious the threat of extinction is for each plant or animal and detailed information about its actual size and location in the world.
By studying mentor texts students can gain proficiency and acquire a multitude of organizational scaffolds to help them synthesize information from complex texts and make it their own. The scaffold is like the glue that holds everything together. Scaffolds enable students to think and write about information and use their writing processes and what they know about good writing to convey their ideas to a target audience.
The Common Core State Standards brought attention to informational writing. The standards ask students to put forth the same energy and stylistic consideration for composing informational writing as they do for narrative writing. But as teachers, we can’t let standards be the focus of our writing instruction and practices. In his book In the Best Interest of Students, Kelly Gallagher reminds us that in this climate of standards- based instruction, it is important to keep best practice in the foreground of writing instruction.
The teaching of writing should never be seen as an activity to be
“fit in” around the standards. Writing instruction should be a
nonnegotiable, core value in any classroom, and teachers should not
have to be concerned with fitting it in. The question, “How do you fit in
writing instruction around the new standards?” is the wrong question.
The correct question should be, “How do you fit in all of the standards
around your writing instruction?” (7)
Teaching students about organizational scaffolds can go a long way toward helping students deliver information to their readers in unique and powerful ways. This kind of teaching requires a shift in thinking away from using the five paragraph essay for every informational piece we write. Studying global structures will provide both choice and challenge, two ingredients for effective instruction and meaningful, lasting learning. When we create classroom environments that include high-quality mentor texts and allow students to participate in an inquiry approach, they can discover new ways to organize their writing across the content areas.
We know that students become better writers of nonfiction
because they try out new things and take responsible risks (try
or imitate the writing techniques in mentor texts that they are
capable of doing with a little practice and guidance). It is only
through risk taking and experimentation that our writers will
continue to grow and become better writers tomorrow than
they are today (Dorfman and Cappelli, 5).
Aston, D. H. (2006). An egg is quiet. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books.
________________. (2011). A butterfly is patient. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books
________________. (2014). A seed is sleepy. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books.
Bang, M. (2004). My light. New York: Scholastic.
Brown, L. (2006). How to be. New York: HarperCollins.
Calkins, L., Ehrenworth, M., & Lehman, L. (2012). Pathways to the common core.
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Chall, M. W. (1992). Up north at the cabin. New York: William Morrow and Co., Inc.
Collard III, S. B. (2001). Wings. Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge.
_______________. (2002). Leaving home. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books
for Young Readers.
_______________. (2004). Animals Asleep. New York: Houghton Mifflin Books for
_______________. (2008). Teeth. Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge.
Dorfman, L. R., & Cappelli, R. (2009). Nonfiction mentor texts: Teaching information
writing through children’s literature, K-8. Portland, ME: Stenhouse.
Gallagher, K. (2015). In the best interest of students: Staying true to what works in the
ELA classroom. Portland, ME: Stenhouse.
Hopkins, H. J. (2013). The tree lady: The true story of how one tree-loving woman
changed a city forever. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Jackson, E. (1998). Turn of the century: Eleven centuries of children and change.
Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge.
Jenkins, S. (2014). Creature features: 25 animals explain why they look the way they
- New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books for Young Readers.
Karas, G. B. (2002). Atlantic. New York: Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers.
Katz, B. (2009). “Things to do If you are the sun.” In Falling down the page: A book of
list poems, ed. Georgia Heard. New York: Roaring Book Press.
Magliaro, E. (2009). “Things to do if you are a pencil.” In Falling down the page: A book
of list poems, ed. Georgia Heard. New York: Roaring Book Press.
National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) & Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). (2010). Common core state standards for English language arts and literacy in history/social studies, science, and technical subjects.
Washington, DC: NGA Center and CCSSO.
Pinborough, J. (2013). Miss moore thought otherwise: How anne carroll moore created
libraries for children. New York: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children.
Rylant, C. (1993) When I was young in the mountains. New York: Puffin Books.
_____________. (2000). In november. New York: Harcourt, Inc.
Spinelli, E. (2004). I know it’s autumn. New York: Harper Collins.
Stewart, M. (2009). A place for birds. Atlanta, GA: Peachtree.
_____________. (2010). A place for frogs. Atlanta, GA: Peachtree.
_____________. (2011). A place for butterflies. Atlanta, GA: Peachtree.
Stockdale, S. (1999). Nature’s paintbrush: The patterns and colors around you. New
York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.
Winters, K. (2003). Voices of ancient egypt. Washington, DC: National Geographic.
__________.( 2008). Colonial voices: Hear them speak. New York: Penguin.
__________. (2014). Voices from the oregon trail. New York: Penguin.


Cotton is King: The Antebellum South, 1800–1860
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
- Discuss the similarities and differences in the lives of slaves and free blacks
- Describe the independent culture and customs that slaves developed
In addition to cotton, the great commodity of the antebellum South was human chattel. Slavery was the cornerstone of the southern economy. By 1850, about 3.2 million slaves labored in the United States, 1.8 million of whom worked in the cotton fields. Slaves faced arbitrary power abuses from whites; they coped by creating family and community networks. Storytelling, song, and Christianity also provided solace and allowed slaves to develop their own interpretations of their condition.
LIFE AS A SLAVE
Southern whites frequently relied upon the idea of paternalism—the premise that white slaveholders acted in the best interests of slaves, taking responsibility for their care, feeding, discipline, and even their Christian morality—to justify the existence of slavery. This grossly misrepresented the reality of slavery, which was, by any measure, a dehumanizing, traumatizing, and horrifying human disaster and crime against humanity. Nevertheless, slaves were hardly passive victims of their conditions; they sought and found myriad ways to resist their shackles and develop their own communities and cultures.
Slaves often used the notion of paternalism to their advantage, finding opportunities within this system to engage in acts of resistance and win a degree of freedom and autonomy. For example, some slaves played into their masters’ racism by hiding their intelligence and feigning childishness and ignorance. The slaves could then slow down the workday and sabotage the system in small ways by “accidentally” breaking tools, for example; the master, seeing his slaves as unsophisticated and childlike, would believe these incidents were accidents rather than rebellions. Some slaves engaged in more dramatic forms of resistance, such as poisoning their masters slowly. Other slaves reported rebellious slaves to their masters, hoping to gain preferential treatment. Slaves who informed their masters about planned slave rebellions could often expect the slaveholder’s gratitude and, perhaps, more lenient treatment. Such expectations were always tempered by the individual personality and caprice of the master.
Slaveholders used both psychological coercion and physical violence to prevent slaves from disobeying their wishes. Often, the most efficient way to discipline slaves was to threaten to sell them. The lash, while the most common form of punishment, was effective but not efficient; whippings sometimes left slaves incapacitated or even dead. Slave masters also used punishment gear like neck braces, balls and chains, leg irons, and paddles with holes to produce blood blisters. Slaves lived in constant terror of both physical violence and separation from family and friends ([link]).
Under southern law, slaves could not marry. Nonetheless, some slaveholders allowed marriages to promote the birth of children and to foster harmony on plantations. Some masters even forced certain slaves to form unions, anticipating the birth of more children (and consequently greater profits) from them. Masters sometimes allowed slaves to choose their own partners, but they could also veto a match. Slave couples always faced the prospect of being sold away from each other, and, once they had children, the horrifying reality that their children could be sold and sent away at any time.
Browse a collection of first-hand narratives of slaves and former slaves at the National Humanities Center to learn more about the experience of slavery.
Slave parents had to show their children the best way to survive under slavery. This meant teaching them to be discreet, submissive, and guarded around whites. Parents also taught their children through the stories they told. Popular stories among slaves included tales of tricksters, sly slaves, or animals like Brer Rabbit, who outwitted their antagonists ([link]). Such stories provided comfort in humor and conveyed the slaves’ sense of the wrongs of slavery. Slaves’ work songs commented on the harshness of their life and often had double meanings—a literal meaning that whites would not find offensive and a deeper meaning for slaves.
African beliefs, including ideas about the spiritual world and the importance of African healers, survived in the South as well. Whites who became aware of non-Christian rituals among slaves labeled such practices as witchcraft. Among Africans, however, the rituals and use of various plants by respected slave healers created connections between the African past and the American South while also providing a sense of community and identity for slaves. Other African customs, including traditional naming patterns, the making of baskets, and the cultivation of certain native African plants that had been brought to the New World, also endured.
Many slaves embraced Christianity. Their masters emphasized a scriptural message of obedience to whites and a better day awaiting slaves in heaven, but slaves focused on the uplifting message of being freed from bondage.
The styles of worship in the Methodist and Baptist churches, which emphasized emotional responses to scripture, attracted slaves to those traditions and inspired some to become preachers. Spiritual songs that referenced the Exodus (the biblical account of the Hebrews’ escape from slavery in Egypt), such as “Roll, Jordan, Roll,” allowed slaves to freely express messages of hope, struggle, and overcoming adversity ([link]).
What imagery might the Jordan River suggest to slaves working in the Deep South? What lyrics in this song suggest redemption and a better world ahead?
Listen to a rendition of “Roll, Jordan, Roll” from the movie based on Solomon Northup’s memoir and life.
THE FREE BLACK POPULATION
Complicating the picture of the antebellum South was the existence of a large free black population. In fact, more free blacks lived in the South than in the North; roughly 261,000 lived in slave states, while 226,000 lived in northern states without slavery. Most free blacks did not live in the Lower, or Deep South: the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas. Instead, the largest number lived in the upper southern states of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and later Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, and the District of Columbia.
Part of the reason for the large number of free blacks living in slave states were the many instances of manumission—the formal granting of freedom to slaves—that occurred as a result of the Revolution, when many slaveholders put into action the ideal that “all men are created equal” and freed their slaves. The transition in the Upper South to the staple crop of wheat, which did not require large numbers of slaves to produce, also spurred manumissions. Another large group of free blacks in the South had been free residents of Louisiana before the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, while still other free blacks came from Cuba and Haiti.
Most free blacks in the South lived in cities, and a majority of free blacks were lighter-skinned women, a reflection of the interracial unions that formed between white men and black women. Everywhere in the United States blackness had come to be associated with slavery, the station at the bottom of the social ladder. Both whites and those with African ancestry tended to delineate varying degrees of lightness in skin color in a social hierarchy. In the slaveholding South, different names described one’s distance from blackness or whiteness: mulattos (those with one black and one white parent), quadroons (those with one black grandparent), and octoroons (those with one black great-grandparent) ([link]). Lighter-skinned blacks often looked down on their darker counterparts, an indication of the ways in which both whites and blacks internalized the racism of the age.
Some free blacks in the South owned slaves of their own. Andrew Durnford, for example, was born in New Orleans in 1800, three years before the Louisiana Purchase. His father was white, and his mother was a free black. Durnford became an American citizen after the Louisiana Purchase, rising to prominence as a Louisiana sugar planter and slaveholder. William Ellison, another free black who amassed great wealth and power in the South, was born a slave in 1790 in South Carolina. After buying his freedom and that of his wife and daughter, he proceeded to purchase his own slaves, whom he then put to work manufacturing cotton gins. By the eve of the Civil War, Ellison had become one of the richest and largest slaveholders in the entire state.
The phenomenon of free blacks amassing large fortunes within a slave society predicated on racial difference, however, was exceedingly rare. Most free blacks in the South lived under the specter of slavery and faced many obstacles. Beginning in the early nineteenth century, southern states increasingly made manumission of slaves illegal. They also devised laws that divested free blacks of their rights, such as the right to testify against whites in court or the right to seek employment where they pleased. Interestingly, it was in the upper southern states that such laws were the harshest. In Virginia, for example, legislators made efforts to require free blacks to leave the state. In parts of the Deep South, free blacks were able to maintain their rights more easily. The difference in treatment between free blacks in the Deep South and those in the Upper South, historians have surmised, came down to economics. In the Deep South, slavery as an institution was strong and profitable. In the Upper South, the opposite was true. The anxiety of this economic uncertainty manifested in the form of harsh laws that targeted free blacks.
Slaves resisted their enslavement in small ways every day, but this resistance did not usually translate into mass uprisings. Slaves understood that the chances of ending slavery through rebellion were slim and would likely result in massive retaliation; many also feared the risk that participating in such actions would pose to themselves and their families. White slaveholders, however, constantly feared uprisings and took drastic steps, including torture and mutilation, whenever they believed that rebellions might be simmering. Gripped by the fear of insurrection, whites often imagined revolts to be in the works even when no uprising actually happened.
At least two major slave uprisings did occur in the antebellum South. In 1811, a major rebellion broke out in the sugar parishes of the booming territory of Louisiana. Inspired by the successful overthrow of the white planter class in Haiti, Louisiana slaves took up arms against planters. Perhaps as many five hundred slaves joined the rebellion, led by Charles Deslondes, a mixed-race slave driver on a sugar plantation owned by Manuel Andry.
The revolt began in January 1811 on Andry’s plantation. Deslondes and other slaves attacked the Andry household, where they killed the slave master’s son (although Andry himself escaped). The rebels then began traveling toward New Orleans, armed with weapons gathered at Andry’s plantation. Whites mobilized to stop the rebellion, but not before Deslondes and the other rebelling slaves set fire to three plantations and killed numerous whites. A small white force led by Andry ultimately captured Deslondes, whose body was mutilated and burned following his execution. Other slave rebels were beheaded, and their heads placed on pikes along the Mississippi River.
The second rebellion, led by the slave Nat Turner, occurred in 1831 in Southampton County, Virginia. Turner had suffered not only from personal enslavement, but also from the additional trauma of having his wife sold away from him. Bolstered by Christianity, Turner became convinced that like Christ, he should lay down his life to end slavery. Mustering his relatives and friends, he began the rebellion August 22, killing scores of whites in the county. Whites mobilized quickly and within forty-eight hours had brought the rebellion to an end. Shocked by Nat Turner’s Rebellion, Virginia’s state legislature considered ending slavery in the state in order to provide greater security. In the end, legislators decided slavery would remain and that their state would continue to play a key role in the domestic slave trade.
As discussed above, after centuries of slave trade with West Africa, Congress banned the further importation of slaves beginning in 1808. The domestic slave trade then expanded rapidly. As the cotton trade grew in size and importance, so did the domestic slave trade; the cultivation of cotton gave new life and importance to slavery, increasing the value of slaves. To meet the South’s fierce demand for labor, American smugglers illegally transferred slaves through Florida and later through Texas. Many more slaves arrived illegally from Cuba; indeed, Cubans relied on the smuggling of slaves to prop up their finances. The largest number of slaves after 1808, however, came from the massive, legal internal slave market in which slave states in the Upper South sold enslaved men, women, and children to states in the Lower South. For slaves, the domestic trade presented the full horrors of slavery as children were ripped from their mothers and fathers and families destroyed, creating heartbreak and alienation.
Some slaveholders sought to increase the number of slave children by placing male slaves with fertile female slaves, and slave masters routinely raped their female slaves. The resulting births played an important role in slavery’s expansion in the first half of the nineteenth century, as many slave children were born as a result of rape. One account written by a slave named William J. Anderson captures the horror of sexual exploitation in the antebellum South. Anderson wrote about how a Mississippi slaveholder
divested a poor female slave of all wearing apparel, tied her down to stakes, and whipped her with a handsaw until he broke it over her naked body. In process of time he ravished [raped] her person, and became the father of a child by her. Besides, he always kept a colored Miss in the house with him. This is another curse of Slavery—concubinage and illegitimate connections—which is carried on to an alarming extent in the far South. A poor slave man who lives close by his wife, is permitted to visit her but very seldom, and other men, both white and colored, cohabit with her. It is undoubtedly the worst place of incest and bigamy in the world. A white man thinks nothing of putting a colored man out to carry the fore row [front row in field work], and carry on the same sport with the colored man’s wife at the same time.
Anderson, a devout Christian, recognized and explains in his narrative that one of the evils of slavery is the way it undermines the family. Anderson was not the only critic of slavery to emphasize this point. Frederick Douglass, a Maryland slave who escaped to the North in 1838, elaborated on this dimension of slavery in his 1845 narrative. He recounted how slave masters had to sell their own children whom they had with slave women to appease the white wives who despised their offspring.
The selling of slaves was a major business enterprise in the antebellum South, representing a key part of the economy. White men invested substantial sums in slaves, carefully calculating the annual returns they could expect from a slave as well as the possibility of greater profits through natural increase. The domestic slave trade was highly visible, and like the infamous Middle Passage that brought captive Africans to the Americas, it constituted an equally disruptive and horrifying journey now called the second middle passage. Between 1820 and 1860, white American traders sold a million or more slaves in the domestic slave market. Groups of slaves were transported by ship from places like Virginia, a state that specialized in raising slaves for sale, to New Orleans, where they were sold to planters in the Mississippi Valley. Other slaves made the overland trek from older states like North Carolina to new and booming Deep South states like Alabama.
New Orleans had the largest slave market in the United States ([link]). Slaveholders brought their slaves there from the East (Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas) and the West (Tennessee and Kentucky) to be sold for work in the Mississippi Valley. The slave trade benefited whites in the Chesapeake and Carolinas, providing them with extra income: A healthy young male slave in the 1850s could be sold for 30,000 in 2014 dollars), and a planter who could sell ten such slaves collected a windfall.
In fact, by the 1850s, the demand for slaves reached an all-time high, and prices therefore doubled. A slave who would have sold for 800 in the 1850s. The high price of slaves in the 1850s and the inability of natural increase to satisfy demands led some southerners to demand the reopening of the international slave trade, a movement that caused a rift between the Upper South and the Lower South. Whites in the Upper South who sold slaves to their counterparts in the Lower South worried that reopening the trade would lower prices and therefore hurt their profits.
A slave named John Brown lived in Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia before he escaped and moved to England. While there, he dictated his autobiography to someone at the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, who published it in 1855.
I really thought my mother would have died of grief at being obliged to leave her two children, her mother, and her relations behind. But it was of no use lamenting, the few things we had were put together that night, and we completed our preparations for being parted for life by kissing one another over and over again, and saying good bye till some of us little ones fell asleep. . . . And here I may as well tell what kind of man our new master was. He was of small stature, and thin, but very strong. He had sandy hair, a very red face, and chewed tobacco. His countenance had a very cruel expression, and his disposition was a match for it. He was, indeed, a very bad man, and used to flog us dreadfully. He would make his slaves work on one meal a day, until quite night, and after supper, set them to burn brush or spin cotton. We worked from four in the morning till twelve before we broke our fast, and from that time till eleven or twelve at night . . . we labored eighteen hours a day.
—John Brown, Slave Life in Georgia: A Narrative of the Life, Sufferings, and Escape of John Brown, A Fugitive Slave, Now in England, 1855
What features of the domestic slave trade does Brown’s narrative illuminate? Why do you think he brought his story to an antislavery society? How do you think people responded to this narrative?
Read through several narratives at “Born in Slavery,” part of the American Memory collection at the Library of Congress. Do these narratives have anything in common? What differences can you find between them?
Slave labor in the antebellum South generated great wealth for plantation owners. Slaves, in contrast, endured daily traumas as the human property of masters. Slaves resisted their condition in a variety of ways, and many found some solace in Christianity and the communities they created in the slave quarters. While some free blacks achieved economic prosperity and even became slaveholders themselves, the vast majority found themselves restricted by the same white-supremacist assumptions upon which the institution of slavery was based.
Under the law in the antebellum South, slaves were ________.
How did both slaveholders and slaves use the concept of paternalism to their advantage?
Southern whites often used paternalism to justify the institution of slavery, arguing that slaves, like children, needed the care, feeding, discipline, and moral and religious education that they could provide. Slaves often used this misguided notion to their advantage: By feigning ignorance and playing into slaveholders’ paternalistic perceptions of them, slaves found opportunities to resist their condition and gain a degree of freedom and autonomy.
- the premise that southern white slaveholders acted in the best interests of their slaves
- second middle passage
- the internal forced migration of slaves to the South and West in the United States