466 Gaines, Ernest J.
the individual story that is the life of the brave and
ethical Miss Jane Pittman who, at the tender age
of 10, has the profound insight that we cannot “let
what happened yesterday stop us today.” Renamed
Jane by a Union soldier from Ohio, after his own
daughter Jane Brown, Miss Jane searches for the
meaning of freedom as she carves out a life for
herself as a free individual, a difficult task given the
soul-depleting ideology of slavery that continues to
enslave people’s minds. However, forced to rely at a
very young age on only herself, Miss Jane constructs
a belief system that grows out of her 110 years of
life experience.
Su Senapati
community in The Autobiography of Miss
Jane Pittman
Ernest P. Gaines in The Autobiography of Miss Jane
Pittman reveals the strong communal bond of fellow
responsibility that exists in the black community as
he explores the problems of engendering African-
American leaders and the need for understanding
between blacks and whites during important junc-
tures in time. After the Emancipation Proclamation,
the newly freed slaves charted out new paths and
constructed new paradigms to improve their lives.
However, the deep divide between blacks and whites
and traditional and progressive ideas unleashed
uncertainty and violence, making the reconstruction
of the South a harrowing process. Progress was slow
since racist ideology first had to be erased from both
white and black consciousness for equitable laws to
be created and transformed into social reality. To
achieve this end, Gaines deems education, time, and
community to be essential.
Furthermore, Gaines’s unwavering belief in the
black community’s ability to rise like the proverbial
phoenix is revealed through the creation of his pro-
tagonist, Miss Jane Pittman, who from the age of
10 willingly abandons the security of the familiar
to courageously tread uncharted territories. When
Jimmy the chosen “One” is frustrated by his failure
to inspire ex-slaves to join the Civil Rights move-
ment, Miss Pittman reminds him that downtrodden
and enslaved people need time to develop fortitude
to recognize and fight their wretchedness and that
it is not the individual leader that fails but rather the
community that succeeds. She tells Jimmy, “People
and time bring forth leaders... leaders don’t bring
forth people.” Moreover, so strong is Gaines’s faith
in the community that he narrates the autobiogra-
phy of the remarkable Miss Jane Pittman through
the communal voice of African Americans.
Miss Pittman’s belief that leaders evolve natu-
rally from within the community over a period of
time is validated by the examples of Big Laura,
Ned Douglas, Jimmy Aaron, and finally Miss Jane
Pittman herself. However, since community leaders
seek radical change by teaching the disenfranchised
to think for themselves, they are perceived as threats
and killed by the powerful, only to be replaced by
others who take on their roles or continue their
progressive work. Big Laura, because of her size,
strength, and quiet fortitude, innocuously slips into
the role of leading two dozen freed slaves away from
servitude, but while she succeeds in maintaining
order within the traveling group she fails to stave
off attacks by Confederate soldiers. Her orphaned,
infant son, Ned, also grows up to be a leader, but
he too is assassinated for daring to educate poor
blacks. Nonetheless, when Ned is killed the work
of educating blacks is continued: A school is built
and children educated through the collective effort
of the community. Yet his death creates such a
vacuum and the community is so in need of a
leader that when Jimmy is born, he is nominated
as the “One.” But instead of spiritually leading the
people, he leads them politically. But he too is assas-
sinated and the 110–year-old Miss Pittman, who
has shied away from leadership roles, openly defies
Robert Samson and leads the protest march Jimmy
had planned, becoming the wise icon of African-
American solidarity that Jimmy had envisioned.
Thus the 10-year-old child Jane, who without any
qualms took on the responsibility of protecting the
infant Ned, bringing him to safety and mothering
and raising him to be a leader, embodies not only
the solidarity of the black community but also the
heroic qualities of a new kind of leader for the
community.
However, while the bonds within the black
community are strong and people nonchalantly and
without fanfare take on responsibilities of caring for
and nurturing those in need, the bonds with whites