Summary Of My Dungeon Shook By James Baldwin

“My Dungeon Shook” is a long letter written by James Baldwin to his nephew James, one hundred years after the Emancipation. Baldwin’s letter expresses great resentment towards what he calls the “innocents”, or white Americans. He views freedom as something that is still not gained. Still, a hundred years after this freedom was given, they are under the oppression of the countrymen. He tells James, “You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason.” He goes on to say how this oppression is part of the white man’s identity, as steadfast as a law of nature. He feels there is no way to enact change unless “we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it.” To him freedom is something the white man is withholding, and too stubborn to let go of,
Lydia Bixby, a mother of 5 boys whose lives were lost in the Civil War. The letter is no more than 4 sentences, yet it gives a sharp glimpse into the past. In the letter, he uses the word “altar” to describe freedom, defining it as a place of sacrifice. The 5 deaths of the boy were a cost of freedom. If the boys were white, this could prompt the question “Was freedom created by the efforts of the white man or by the tribulations of the black?” Freedom was something slaves all needed and wanted, but without the efforts of the whites, it wouldn’t have come to fruition. This is not to discredit the work and hardship faced by African Americans, but there needs to be some respect put toward those white men who died for the wellbeing of the people who resent them. The letter gives the perspective of freedom that is most overlooked, that the efforts put into the foundation came off the backs of good white men. The two letters contrast in many ways. One written near the end of the Civil War, the other 100 years