Last Thursday our fairy tale class had the privilege of hearing a lecture from Dr. Johnson-Ross about the African American story telling tradition. She provided the class with many historical facts and mentioned bits of history I had never heard before, leaving me with a feeling that I didn’t know as much about American history as I had thought. She placed a lot of emphasis on The Brownies Book and created a comparison to the magazine Highlights that I used to read quite frequently as a child. The Brownies Book was written between January 1920 – December 1921, and it used folk tales, games, and songs aimed to help support African Americans through the times of segregation. The tales in this book included fairy tales from all around the world. A lot of the stories focused primarily upon animals as being the main characters which is unlike the European fairy tales we have read in class that are largely focused on humans. Dr. Johnson-Ross additionally addressed a story by the name of The People Could Fly. She showed us a power point that included many pages from the book and it showed people being told they could fly and then they would fly away and escape slavery. The idea behind this story is that if you believe you can achieve. This is a very meaningful message and was very appropriate for the time period it was wrote in. Overall, I found Dr. Johnson-Ross’s presentation to be very emotional and historical. It was an interesting lecture that included many key underrated pieces of American history and showed how fairy tales can be used to educate and encourage the concepts of freedom and opportunity.
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