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In Lawrence W. Levine's text, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom (1977, 2007), there is a chapter called "The Meaning of Slave Tales." In that chapter he included narratives concerning the ancient Biblical mark said to be given to Cain and Ham (Genesis 4:1-16 and Genesis 9:20-27). The twist in the slave narratives was that the mark was white skin. For centuries, from cultural tradition and a rationalization for white superiority, there has been an insistence that the mark was black skin. An inevitable matrix of racial myths has continued because of this constructed vilification. For thousands of years, ecclesiastical and academic scholars as well as myriad others have wrestled with the hidden definition of the curse. The questions remain: What does it mean to be black, brown, yellow, or white? The consequences have differed. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City, Utah), has often been accused of being racist because of the beliefs of some members of the church. No revelations or prophetic explanation of the "mark" has ever been officially given, nor has any official explanation of the 1978 announcement that granted the church priesthood to black members of the church.
An anathema according to The American Heritage Dictionary, Second College Edition, a noun, is "1. A formal ecclesiastical ban, curse, or excommunication. 2. A vehement denunciation, curse. 3. One that is cursed or damned. 4. One that is greatly reviled or loathed" (107).
Folklore, as an academic discipline, probes into the expressed culture of people over time and place. The American Folklore Society has posted a list of definitions collected by the University of Missouri on its website: "Folklore is a broad field of study that concerns itself with the ways in which people make meaning in their lives. There are many definitions of folklore; one of the definitions we like here at Mizzou is Dan Ben Amo's: 'Folklore is artistic communication in small groups'" (What is Folklore? http://folklore.missouri.edu/whatis.htmn.
In the fall of 2012,1 was assigned to teach a graduate class in African American Folklore in the English Department of Brigham Young University. Lawrence Levine's Black Culture and Black Consciousness was one of the books I choose to...