The Divine Comedy in depopulated African American culture

In the early 1800's the Divine Comedy arrived in the African-American culture as means of cultural, political, and social influence that led to the discovery of numerous relationships between the history of the "new world" and that of the Florentine poet.
 
The moment when African-American culture meets Dante dates back to 1828, when in Cincinnati there was a chamber of horrors dedicated to the three Dante's circles inside a wax museum was set up. The exhibition shortly thereafter would become a point of attraction in the years before the Civil War .

A bond easier “to do than to say" is one between the two cultures when you consider how they were rooted in the traditions of African Americans and the abolitionist movement in the Protestant religion. Dante also had been considered the antipope for excellence by the Anglican Church and the Lutheran Reformation.

The poetry of Dante had also caught the attention of the Italian Risorgimento who will redeem success among American abolitionists during the 1800’s.
Consider that Martin Luther was thought of by the American Protestant  as a version of "Dante" who, through his Bible, allowed the spread of the word of God, just as he did with his epic poem Dante. The Divine Comedy for Protestants was an instrument of expression of the hellish condition black man in a "white" society.

In this context, a key figure is Cordelia Ray, a writer of a poem dedicated to the Florentine poet Dante. It looks in the eyes of Ray as a writer and intellectual politician who fights against discrimination and the denial of fundamental human rights.

Poet Cordelia Ray.

It’s in those years that the Harlem Renaissance starts growing; the movement of migration of the 20s that sees thousands of African-Americans in the South and West head to NY  and form a small black middle class. This was possible only thanks to the cultural heritage of Europe, which began to be considered the most effective means of emancipation.

Three years ago, a book came out through the academic Looney known as, “In Freedom Readers: the African American Reception of Dante Alighieri and the Divine Comedy”. Within the book there are are reviews of all the workds that have been inspired by Dante’s point of reference for the mterc and the moral, demonstating how the Diving Comedy influenced the African-American Culture.

William Wells Brown is considered the first African-American writer of novels. In his “Clotelle”, 1864, Dante is presented both as a poet of love as an exile and a pilgrim. The protagonist Jerome follows his example, sharing with the great poet the frustration for the unfortunate political events. In fact, Brown published his novel in London where he was self-exiled. The complaint policy will be an integral part of his work.

"Clotelle", a novel by William Wells Brown.

Alongside with the literature, in 1944 there will be the film by the independent filmmaker Spencer Williams, the first to debut in the big screen as an actor with his “Go Down, Death !”, Cinematographic reproduction of the 1911 Italian film, “Inferno” by Padoan and Bertolini. Here the Divine Comedy is "revisited", in fact the key cosmological infernal segregation experienced by the protagonist Jim Bottoms follows the logic that coordinates the moral cosmology of Dante.

The search for identity, a place in society, and then deal with the language problems that ensue, is the subject of Ralph Waldo Ellison novel “Invisible Man”, 1952. Here Dante is a "white" and his testimony to the moral engaging and "working" together with whites and blacks. Here Looney mainly focuses on the problem of language, identifying how this follows the flow of migration from Europe to North America and from South to North of the United States, thus leading to the formation of a British colonial influenced by African dialects, a sort of "American vernacular".

"The Invisible Man" by author Ralph Waldo Ellison.

In “The System of Dante 's Hell”, written by Amiri Baraka in 1965 the structure of Dante's hell is used to play hell on earth inhabited by blacks because the white devils advocate for segregation of the Thirties and Forties and Fifties racial system of the Seventy. For Baraka, Dante's Inferno is none other than the mental state of blacks who are forced to become invisible in a world of white, feeling "foreign" in what unfortunately has become their land.
But it is possible to delete an identity?