Nightjohn (1996)

Visual Parables content ratings:

• Violence: 4/10
• Language: 1/10
• Sex & Nudity: 1/10
• Star Rating: 5 stars

Director/writer Charles Burnett’s adaptation of Gary Paulsen’s award-winning young-adult novel about slavery and literacy is a fine tribute to the freeing power of the latter. Although first aired in 1996 on the Disney Channel, this is no sanitized view of slavery. It fully exposes the brutality required to keep a people in bondage. Scriptwriter Bill Cain pulls no punches.

Some time before the Civil War, on a Southern plantation, twelve-year-old Sarny (Allison Jones) is an orphan cared for by Delie (Lorraine Toussaint). Her enclosed world is opened up when the newly purchased John (Carl Lumbly) is bought by Clel Waller (Beau Bridges) to work in the fields of his plantation. Little does the white slave owner know that he has brought a subversive into his slave pen, a liberator who will pass on the torch of freedom to those being kept in ignorant bondage. We learn that John had been a free Negro who has voluntarily returned to slavery in order to teach others how to read. Harriet Tubman returned South many times to free the bodies of enslaved people; John has returned to free their minds and hearts.

Sarny narrates the story, thus providing the children of a viewing family the vehicle for entering the film. Up until John’s arrival, Sarny’s chief duties had been serving her owners at table, spitting tobacco juice on roses to prevent bugs, and secretly carrying love notes between Waller’s wife, Callie (Kathleen York), and Dr. Chamberlaine (Tom Nowicki) who lives nearby. In exchange for pinches of tobacco, John teaches Sarny the alphabet. He assures her, “Words are freedom. Slavery is made of words: laws, deeds, and passes. You get some words for yourself and you be free.”

But as soon as she traces a letter in the dust, he warns her to erase it. One cannot be too careful. It is against the law for enslaved people to read, and both teacher and learner are punished severely when caught. One of the other slaves called Old Man (Bill Cobbs) testifies to that, having suffered his thumb and forefinger being chopped off as punishment. As Sarny observes, “White folks got all the words, and they mean to keep them.”

Sarny is baptized, and with her new ability, she is able to read a line from Psalm 23 from the Bible that she steals from the library, which belongs to Master Waller’s son, Jeffrey. Most importantly, she learns that the pastor’s sermons, which often emphasize the apostle Paul’s admonition to be submissive, are lies. She reads Exodus 15, the passage upon which the hymn they sing in church – “I Will Sing Unto the Lord” – is based. To her it is a revelation. She declares, “God, he on the side of the slave!” She experiences a glorious moment of discovery and liberation! She also uses her newfound ability to read and write to forge a pass for Outlaw (Gabriel Casseus) to be able to travel to visit his lover Egypt (Monica Ford) on another plantation. The stolen Bible serves as a symbol of freedom in an additional way – Sarny uses a blank endpaper from it for the paper on which to write the pass. On another occasion she is thrilled to read in the big house an account of Nat Turner’s Rebellion.

The story becomes dark when John is found out. When Clel discovers the stolen Bible and tries to learn the identity of the thief, Sarny’s knowledge of the affair between his wife and Dr. Chamberlaine, thanks to her ability to read their correspondence, saves her from the fate of Old Man. I should also mention that when Clel threatens to kill the slaves if they do not give over the name of the Bible thief, Sarny responds that he will not dare to do so. She has read through his accounts, learning the money value of each enslaved person, and also knows that all his wealth is invested in them and the land. Without his slaves to work the land, it would be worthless.

However, Sarny is not safe from being sold, because she now is regarded as troublesome. For her there is no running away to the North, as Outlaw and Egypt had done, but nonetheless, there is a measure of victory. I think you will enjoy the last scene in which she takes up the mantle of John as she is taken away with a new batch of enslaved people. She may be in chains, but like John, her heart and mind are free, and this makes her a dangerous slave wherever she winds up. For her, Jesus’ statement about the truth that makes one free is contained in the revelation gained from being able to read the Bible for herself: “God is on the side of the slaves!”