What is the story of Miss Jane Pittman?

What is the story of Miss Jane Pittman?

Beginning during the racial turmoil of 1960s Louisiana, 110-year-old ex-slave Jane Pittman (Cicely Tyson) grants an interview to a persistent journalist and relates the remarkable story of her life. Orphaned early, she toils on a plantation until a chance meeting with a white Union soldier named Brown changes her outlook. Jane’s emancipation marks only the beginning of an arduous and heartbreaking odyssey, framed by the horrors of slavery and the justice of the civil rights movement.The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman / Film synopsis

Why is Jane Pittman important?

When she was more than 100 years old, Pittman made an important stand for the rights of Blacks by drinking from a “Whites Only” fountain in the courthouse at Bayonne. Pittman lived to be 110 years old. She lived through the war and Reconstruction.

Was there really a Miss Jane Pittman?

While the creative or fictional dimension is widely accepted as part of personal narrative and life story, in the novel, of course, Miss Jane herself is part of the fictional creation and not based on any one real person. Literature in the United States lists Jane Pittman in the author index.

What was Miss Jane suffering from?

genital birth defect
Miss Jane is based on Brad Watson’s great-aunt’s life. She, like the central character in his novel, suffered from a genital birth defect.

What is the significance of Miss Jane’s drinking from the fountain?

Talking about the Miss Jane Pittman Drinking Fountain, Midge informed reporters that “[Miss Jane’s] story fit right into our project. . . She took that drink–the fountain will symbolize humanity, liberty, and equality” (article in Gaines’ papers).

Is Jane Pittman a true story?

It was later adapted for a television movie in 1974 starring Cicely Tyson and won nine Emmy Awards. Gaines would later say that the fictional Jane Pittman was modeled after his disabled great-aunt, Augustine Jefferson, who could not walk, but was strong enough to raise a family.

Why was The Autobiography of Jane Pittman banned?

In Conroe, Tex., copies of “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,” African American writer Ernest Gaines’s stirring 1971 novel about a feisty black woman’s rise from slavery to activism, have been removed from a seventh-grade class focused on “prejudice reduction.” Because black folks objected to it.

What happens at the end of Miss Jane Pittman?

In the final chapter of the book, Jane describes a boy named Jimmy Aaron, whom the whole plantation hopes will become the “one” who will save them all. Eventually, Jimmy gets involved in the civil rights movement.

Is there a movie of the autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman?

For the TV film, see The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (film). The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman is a 1971 novel by Ernest J. Gaines. The story depicts the struggles of African Americans as seen through the eyes of the narrator, a woman named Jane Pittman.

What is the plot of Jane Pittman?

The story depicts the struggles of African Americans as seen through the eyes of the narrator, a woman named Jane Pittman. She tells of the major events of her life from the time she was a young slave girl in the American South at the end of the Civil War. The novel was dramatized in a TV movie in 1974, starring Cicely Tyson.

What do the geographic boundaries symbolize in the autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman?

Jeannine Johnson. But the geographic boundaries of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman also symbolize the novel’s interest in community. In the introduction, the author proposes that the life story of an individual is also the life story of a community and vice versa. And if Jane’s history is Louisiana’s history,…

How did Jane Pittman become a model for Gaines?

She became the model for many of the women in Gaines’s novels, such as the title character of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, whose faith and self-sacrifice would enable the next generation to have a better life. At the age of fifteen, Gaines was taken by his mother and stepfather to Vallejo, California.