Natasha Trethewey’s “Incident” and Claude McKay’s “The Lynching” are both written about hate crimes. “Incident” is the generational retelling of the author’s family that witnessed a cross burning on their lawn, as a warning, with unsettling images of the aftermath as well as hints of fear permanently embedded in the family’s memory. Each time it is retold, the experience becomes more dauntingly descriptive. “The Lynching” illustrates the picture of a grim and saddening sight of a malicious lynching in which a burned body hangs in front of a crowd of spectators. The author describes how the victim finds peace through his terrible death, but also how the spectators engage in cruel sinful celebration. John W. Phillips vividly describes actual …show more content…
Trethewey’s depiction of looking “at the cross trussed like a Christmas tree” (6, 9) and the men “white as angels in their gowns” (10, 13) are examples of religious symbols. Trethewey used similes behind the repetitive use of religious symbols to convey the important details and different variations of the story. The cross is being lit up like a Christmas tree portrays the roots of the Christmas holiday tracing back to the birth of Christ compared to the KKK claiming to be a Christian organization. McKay uses a spiritual tone in the beginning of “The Lynching” to describe the spirit escaping the hatred through death when he states “His spirit is smoke ascended to high heaven” (1). The smoke from the lynching is the religious symbol for his soul leaving. McKay voices God in the next line to show the full spiritual tone by stating “His father, by the cruelest way of pain / Had bidden him to his bosom once again” (2, 3), therefore God took the victim’s soul back from which it came. Moreover, the perpetrator and the spectators will not repent from taking part in the sin of lynching and therefore “The awful sin remained still unforgiven” (4). The next three lines elude the possibility that the victim may have been using the North Star to physically break free of slavery and yet his fate ended through spiritual escape. “All night a bright and solitary star / (Perchance the one …show more content…
Through the process of writing this paper, I discovered that much research was needed to unveil some of the immediate vagueness of the poems. Phillips, Oliver and De Atires’ research coincides with both poems and we see that the norms of hate in society change and are always different. Oliver’s journal ties in the overall theme of each poem and further demonstrates how violence is forever evolving in society. When I first read both poems, there was no immediate understanding of the connection except that a crime of hate had occurred. Upon further analysis of each poem, I began to have a clearer understanding concerning the hidden meanings and comparisons that go beyond the imagination. Both poets open my eyes on cultural racism through imagery and help me understand the general concepts conveyed through their creative writing. Phillip’s book examining the cross-burning ceremony, brings clarity and understanding to the different religious symbols and their significance in our society. In McKay’s poem, he indirectly describes a man using the North Star to escape slavery and hatred through death. He creates a beautiful image of Fate taking the man’s soul and finally having peace. While analyzing why these cruel acts that were committed, I have become more hopeful that our society will prevail in stomping out racism. In Trethewey’s poem,
On August 11-12 of 2017, white nationalist filled the streets of charlottesville and opposed anyone who stood in their way.The poem ”Black Confederate Ghost Story” by Terrance Hayes describes how racism existed in the past and how its presence is seen in significant events around the world today. Throughout this poem, Hayes develops a belief that the confederates deserve to be haunted. In the first part of the poem, the author emphasises himself as a peaceful racially motivated protester, but as the story progresses, his hatred and revenge comes into play. The author’s growing hatred and need for vengeance manifests as the poem progresses revealing the fact that racism exists in the world's present society.
On August 28, 1955, fourteen year old Emmett Till was beaten, tortured and shot. Then with barbed wire wrapped around his neck and tied to a large fan, his body was discarded into the Tallahatchi River. What was young Emmett’s offense that brought on this heinous reaction of two grown white men? When he went into a store to buy some bubblegum he allegedly whistled at a white female store clerk, who happened to be the store owner’s wife. That is the story of the end of Emmett Till’s life. Lynchings, beatings and cross-burning had been happening in the United States for years. But it was not until this young boy suffered an appalling murder in Mississippi that the eyes of a nation were irrevocably opened to the ongoing horrors of racism in the South. It sparked the beginning of a flourish of both national and international media coverage of the Civil Rights violations in America.
In her Fire in a Canebrake, Laura Wexler describes an important event in mid-twentieth century American race relations, long ago relegated to the closet of American consciousness. In so doing, Wexler not only skillfully describes the event—the Moore’s Ford lynching of 1946—but incorporates it into our understanding of the present world and past by retaining the complexities of doubt and deception that surrounded the event when it occurred, and which still confound it in historical records. By skillfully navigating these currents of deceit, too, Wexler is not only able to portray them to the reader in full form, but also historicize this muddled record in the context of certain larger historical truths. In this fashion, and by refusing to cede to a desire for closure by drawing easy but inherently flawed conclusions regarding the individuals directly responsible for the 1946 lynching, Wexler demonstrates that she is more interested in a larger historical picture than the single event to which she dedicates her text. And, in so doing, she rebukes the doubts of those who question the importance of “bringing up” the lynching, lending powerful motivation and purpose to her writing that sustains her narrative, and the audience’s attention to it.
Tragedy has the ability to simultaneously bring people together and push them apart. Judith Cofer, the writer of “American History,” explores the theme of tragedy when she dwells upon the day when tragedy struck the lives of many. In her essay, she remembers the day former President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. Numerous people in her community are devastated by JFK’s unexpected death because they can relate to the fact that he stood for equality of culture, race, and gender. However, Cofer lacks the understanding of JFK’s goal, so her mother tries to expose the truth of her identity to her. Although Cofer’s mother wants to protect her, evidence from the text proves that unraveling the truth of racial prejudice is agonizing and
Racial discrimination has been an issue among different cultural groups, ethnic races and many religions. It is an issue that has stopped people from becoming well diversitized and embracing multiculturalism, especially during the olden days where slavery and wars were a huge part of the world. Racism has created a separation between people, causing many dilemmas’ to arise. This problem has been seen and touched upon throughout many works of literature and verbal presentations. A discourse on racial discrimination will be used to exemplify how individuals abuse their rights, categorize humans and ill treat others through an exploration of the texts in, Snow Falling On Cedars and The Book of Negroes. These novels have given an insight of the discrimination between different classes of people and the unfavorability of one’s kind.
In the poem “Power” written by Audre Lorde, she drew a picture based on an actual event and her’s personal reaction, which she recorded in her journal. While her driving, Lorde heard a radio broadcast announcing that a white policeman who had shot and killed a black ten years old. She was so furious and shocked. And the writer felt that the sky turned red, that she had to park the car before she drove it into a wall. Then and there, she inscribed her feelings of outrage over the decision of the jury of eleven white men and one black woman. Through this poem, she tries to “make power out of hatred and destruction,” to heal her “dying soon with kisses.” Yet she cannot help expressing her rage at the policeman’s comment, offered in his own defense, that “I didn’t notice the size or nothing else/only the color.”
Maureen O 'Hara once said “In the beginning it was all black and white.”.This reflects on an essential point: all colors-all people- might be understood within these two colors. In the poem “Ballad of Birmingham”, by Dudley Randall, a mother tries to keep her daughter out of harm 's way from cruel white racists. Failing tragically, and results in the only thing left of her daughter, a white shoe. The speakers are the mother and daughter. Randall uses fearful imagery with intention to show how cruel the racists are. The symbolism used in the poem aims to cover what is primarily the cause of fear: color. At last he uses an unforeseen synecdoche as a way to portray the daughter. The poem embarks on an eye opening journey with fearful imagery, symbolism, unforeseen synecdoche, and irony to show how white supremacy prevails over society.
The occurrence of the Duluth Lynchings in 1920 had a big impact, not only on the Duluthians, but people in the surrounding cities. Blacks and Whites were both impacted in different ways based on their position in society. Strong racial hatred and prejudice were already very apparent in society in the early 1900’s making the rape of a White woman by Black men a catalyst to the lynchings. By the reaction of the white Duluthians of the alleged rape of a White woman, the outcome for the Black men was highly anticipated.
This poem is both disturbing to the author, Abel Meeropol and to many of us. In this case I believe that most who have seen the images have been haunted for a day or two and wish that none of that (racism) had happened in America. During that time Racism hit America very badly, Americans hurt the colored people, they hanged them, and let their innocent blood stain every little leaf and root, not to mention that they left their bodies to rot and left it so the trees can let go of them and make of them a strange fruit. With this in mind we can all learn that racism was highly common in the “old” days but I believe that we should all appreciate that it is not highly common right now and if it’s still around in some cities/countries/states then they should read /listen to this poem and learn more about it so people can understand the horrifying meaning in racism. This Author, Abel Meeropol was very successful in achieving his goal from this message to point out that racism was stopped and that racism or discrimination won't be acceptable in
To analyze Hughes’s poem thoroughly, by using Eliot’s argumentative essay, we must first identify the poem’s speaker and what is symbolic about the speaker? The title (“The Negro Speaks Of Rivers”) of the poem would hint off the speaker’s racial identity, as the word Negro represents the African-American race not only in a universal manner, but in it’s own individual sphere. T.S. Eliot’s essay, mentions that “every nation, every race, has not its own creative, but its own critical turn of mind”(549). In another sense, different societies have their own characteristics, however, with a racial mixture, shadowed elements can be formed. If one were to analyze in between the lines of Eliot’s essay and Hughes’s poem, he...
“Slim in Hell” by Sterling Brown written in 1932 and “Power” by Audre Lorde written over forty years later, are protest poems looking at, and attacking, the problem of racism through the use of imagery, structure, and tone. Through their different uses of imagery and structure, they create their respective tones and take their respective (and different) approaches towards this problem of racism
Lynching was frequently committed as a public display of cruelty toward African Americans in the South. “The Haunted Oak” is a poem in which Paul Laurence Dunbar, the poet, presents a well-known unjust act that was enjoyed by Whites in the late 1890s. In the poem the Dunbar introduces a theme of lynching .He also uses descriptions that appeals to the reader’s sense of hearing, seeing and touch. Throughout the poem Dunbar uses personification as well to convey what was seen, He does this by allowing the Oak tree to tell the story of what took place through its eyes and to explain what caused it to wither away.
The instances of violence in these passages are reactions to the conditions of everyday black life. In Gwendolyn Bennett’s poem “Hatred,” she addresses the suppressed anger and hatred that the speaker, who undoubtedly speaks for much of the black population, wishes to be able to express through violence, but is barred from such reactionary behavior because of the construction of American society. In Jean Toomer’s short prose passage “Carma” the violence is in a domestic context. Bane’s murder of the man in the search party occurs because he believes that he slept with his wife Carma. The use of elements of nature is also approached differently, especially that of pine. While Bennett refers to pine trees as a symbol of upstanding pride and dignity, Toomer sees the pine needles for what they are—pine needles, but an important part of the Southern identity.
Over the course of the century chronicling the helm of slavery, the emancipation, and the push for civil, equal, and human rights, black literary scholars have pressed to have their voice heard in the midst a country that would dare classify a black as a second class citizen. Often, literary modes of communication were employed to accomplish just that. Black scholars used the often little education they received to produce a body of works that would seek to beckon the cause of freedom and help blacks tarry through the cruelties, inadequacies, and inconveniences of their oppressed condition. To capture the black experience in America was one of the sole aims of black literature. However, we as scholars of these bodies of works today are often unsure as to whether or not we can indeed coin the phrase “Black Literature” or, in this case, “Black poetry”. Is there such a thing? If so, how do we define the term, and what body of writing can we use to determine the validity of the definition. Such is the aim of this essay because we can indeed call a poem “Black”. We can define “Black poetry” as a body of writing written by an African-American in the United States that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of an experience or set of experiences inextricably linked to black people, characterizes a furious call or pursuit of freedom, and attempts to capture the black condition in a language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm. An examination of several works of poetry by various Black scholars should suffice to prove that the definition does hold and that “Black Poetry” is a term that we can use.
...ites a short 33-line poem that simply shows the barriers between races in the time period when racism was still openly practiced through segregation and discrimination. The poem captures the African American tenant’s frustrations towards the landlord as well as the racism shown by the landlord. The poem is a great illustration of the time period, and it shows how relevant discrimination was in everyday life in the nineteen-forties. It is important for the author to use the selected literary devices to help better illustrate his point. Each literary device in the poem helps exemplify the author’s intent: to increase awareness of the racism in the society in the time period.