iness" (367). With slavery came a fence of ignorance towards African-Americans. The contempt Douglass expresses clearly depicts the difference between the thought patterns of people in the south as compared to the somewhat nave thinking of the north. Douglass makes it sound as if there is a line or fence that ran right across the country where the people on the side seemed to be uneducated about what was happening south of them. The spirituals which Douglass detested so much can also be looked at when using fences to describe the history of African-Americans."Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" is a spiritual that leaves its meaning up for interpretation, but still makes the point that slaves wanted to cross into a free society. The first way one may interpret this spiritual is by saying it is describing slaves being taken away via the underground railroad to safety. It is written, "[t]ell all my friends I’m coming too" (371), so perhaps those who were singing want to join their friends in safety. The slaves are saying they want to break away from restraint and go to where they can be free. They would then be crossing over the fences of supreme oppression to a place were where they can live according to their own idea. The second interpretation prompted by the line, "A band of angles coming after me" (371) lends itself to the idea that the slaves are singing about being taken to heaven. Although freedom to the north and death are different ideas when looked at initially, both are conceptually similar in this instance. Death would mean freed from slavery just as an escape would. This way of looking at the spiritual is very grim, but still holds up the idea that the slaves wanted to be in a place other than where they were being held. They were being restrained and wanted something new, something better. The slaves wanted to escape the walls of slavery, no matter what the circumstance.August Wilson’s depiction of African-American life i...
