The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines ****

Ernest J. Gaines’s TheAutobiography of Miss Jane Pittman spans 100 years from Miss Jane’s childhood as a slave on a Louisiana plantation to the Civil Rights era of the 1960s. Through the Civil War, reconstruction, and Jim Crow, Miss Jane survives the everyday deprivation and abuse of Black life in Louisiana. She does this with dignity and optimism. Her story ends with the murder of The One who was leading the people to a protest. The protest goes ahead: “Just a little piece of him is dead,” I said. “The rest of him is waiting for us in Bayonne.” Miss Jane is optimistic to the end, ignorant of what will happen after the 1960s, and the need for Black Lives Matter fifty years later. I found the book’s celebration of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement as a turning point sad.

The book includes a wealth of historical detail as a backdrop to Miss Jane’s life in Louisiana. It follows the middle road, not whitewashing the treatment of Blacks living in Louisiana following reconstruction, but also not focusing on the horrific abuse of murder, lynching, and terror. Black people are murdered and raped, but Miss Jane’s memories are dominated by water fountains, restrooms, the lack of schools, and opportunities. Her narrative of 100 years of non-lethal indignities and deprivations wears on the reader's soul and shows the depth of injustice. I found this to be the strength of the book.

However, from the perspective of the 21^st century, I found Jane’s acceptance and optimism, profoundly sad. The failure of reconstruction, the short attention span of the North, and the lack of political will that allowed Jim Crow, and the Ku Klux Klan in the late 19^th century are still true today. Miss Jane could live to 175 and the book would not be much different.

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