The Posthumous Journal of Dangerfield Newby

soulbrotherv2:

The Real Django:

This is the actual man on which the movie D’Jango is loosely based.  His name is Dangerfield Newby, and he was a member of the John Brown party. It is conjectured that he joined to save his wife Harriet and children who were being held as slaves; however, their owner refused to sell them to Newby.

Their love story was very real, and you all should check out their narrative and love letters.

Post idea and commentary framework via iRock JAZZ.

[And here, Newby speaks:]

Professor Chambers queried me about the moving light picture “Django Unchained,” it being said I had firsthand times-ten the experience in this affair so chronicled, even to the point of taking up arms with Reverend Brown and dying so famously. My reply was thus:

“It was as the fables on the white man’s prim stage were, or the lurid stories around our cookfires— whimsy and adventure, profound and profane. Accordingly, I took neither umbrage or offense to this moving light picture, though I will say my Harriet was more a jewel to the eye and hot coal to the heart than any of the dusky women portrayed, including Madamoiselle Washington. Now, as for what was real, we must bear witness to these simple truths of America at that setting: The West, whither settled at the red man’s elimination, or wild, was dirty and primitive. The East was dirty and modern. And slavery was much more terrifying than Maestro Tarantino’s vision, for it was banal in its evil, and steeped not in savage desire and appetites, but in the hypocrisy of America’s own stage play’s setting—that of freedom, of public policy, of private rights.”

—D.N.