THEMATIZING THE BELOVED COMMUNITY: ECHOES OF MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. IN BEBE MOORE CAMPBELL'S YOUR BLUES AIN'T LIKE MINE

Abstract

Inspired by the historic lynching of Emmett Till, Bebe Moore Campbell's 1992 novel Your Blues Ain't Like Mine portrays the fictional lynching of Armstrong Todd in Mississippi in 1955 and traces its repercussions across several decades. Campbell is interested less in recounting the particulars of the Till lynching than in thematizing Martin Luther King Jr.'s philosophy of the "beloved community," a religious and social ideal that epitomized the goals of the civil rights movement during much of the 1950s and 1960s. Like King, Campbell attacks institutional racism and economic injustice as barriers to an inclusive human community, yet unlike King, she also considers the destructive effects of gender oppression. Despite the hurdles facing the characters, the novel celebrates the potential for individual and societal transformation and imagines interpersonal alliances that transcend race, class, and gender.