Professor Katherine Bassard has published a new essay, “The King James Bible and African American literature,” in a new collection, The King James Bible after 400 Years (Cambridge UP, 2010).
The essay focuses attention on the use of the King James Bible to unite races and times. Bassard begins by noting the parallel between Barak Obama’s use of the Lincoln Bible for his swearing-in ceremony in 2009 and Sojourner Truth’s visit to the White House in 1864 when she praised the KJB that had been given to Lincoln by the colored people of Baltimore. She goes on to recount black writers during the intervening time who have used the KJB to unite rather than divide races and time periods in America.