Power to Undo Sin: Race, History and Literary Blackness in Rilla Askew's Fire in Beulah, The

In Juneteenth, Ellison's white supremacist character, Senator Sunraider and African- American, Rev. Hickman, embody the question of whether politics or religion can be a means to liberation. Raised to be the spiritual son of Rev. Hickman, Senator Sunraider (as a child he was known as Bliss) has left his spiritual grounding in the Oklahoma soil to realize his personal quest to become a senator of a northeastern state. In the process, his identity has changed from that of an innocent boy in an intimate, fatherly relationship with Hickman to a bigot who manipulates race issues to secure his political stature. Hickman's congregation nurtured the senator and provided a place where the boy preacher developed his spirituality and oratory abilities, apparently to follow in his "father's" footsteps. Ellison's story, then, allegorizes this broken, family tragedy, as years later, Hickman sits by the dying senator's bed. Much of the bedside dialogue and revealed memory in the novel displays Hickman's belated attempt to help the wayward Senator recover his sense of true identity. Hickman believes that one's identity is a composition of place and soul. He recognizes that his beloved Bliss has grown into an unlovely racist, who in the process, has denied his spiritual and geographical roots. Ellison's story, however, suggests the tragic futility of evading history both on a personal and societal level. In other words, one's spirituality is intricately linked with the place of origin. In the black experience, the oppression one endures ironically creates the graceful energy to overcome it. The aging minister contemplates the implications of misguided souls and lost identities:

After having been born so close to the time of whips and cold iron shackles we could fly up here in an airplane-which is like the promise of a miracle fulfilled-Which is no longer miraculous-but still there on the bed lies the old abiding mystery in its latest form and still mysterious. Why 'm I here, Master? Why? And how is it that a man [Sunraider] like him, who has learned so much and gone so far, never learned the simple fact that it takes two to make a bargain or to bury a hatchet, or even to forget words uttered in dedication and taken deep into the heart and made sanctified by suffering? Blood spilled in violence doesn't just dry and drift away in the wind, no! It cries out for restitution, redemption. (Ellison 1999, 271)

Ellison depicts a man who crossed racial barriers for the sake of political expediency, and in the process, he has denied the truth of himself and betrayed the righteousness of the African American cause. Finally, Ellison suggests that restitution and redemption are the vital elements missing from Senator Sunraider's life, which is to say that spiritual qualitites are essential to black liberation and potential harmony between the races.

Askew, like Ellison, connects an honest implementation of Christianity with the hope for racial toleration. Moreover, both authors depict the truest expressions of Christian virtue within their African-American characters whose endurance of racial intolerance justifies their esteemed places in the novels.