African American Struggle

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The African American Struggle
No group in American history has been more subjugated than the African American people. The most common thread in our history is the mistreatment and hardship of African Americans. There is a tendency for the sorrow and strife this injustice causes to be woven into the music of this resilient group. They utilize the medium of song to tell their story, either to help them cope with their reality or educate those around them. Throughout American history the struggle of the African American people is echoed all over.
Between 1910 to 1970 six million blacks moved out of the rural Southern United States to the Urban Northeast, Midwest,and West. This movement has been christened The Great Migration. “Drawn like moths
Segregation was the new form of slavery that emerged after the Civil War, now African Americans weren’t slaves, they were second class citizens. “An insulated border, In between the bright lights, And the far unlit unknown”(Subdivisions) this line has imagery that draws an allusion to segregation. There’s an “insulated border” separating the “bright lights”, or white part of town from the “far unlit unknown”, the African American communities where the white folk would never dare to go. The whole idea of segregation was separate but equal, but no two people can be equal if they are separated, because simple fact that they need to be apart shows there is inequality. Segregation was brought about because of the ideology the whites where the superior race, and African Americans were inherently inferior, which is so ridiculous and only came about so slave owners could try and somehow justify slavery. This all proves that sprawled all over American history is the white peoples atrocious treatment of colored
During this time, “Nowhere [was] the dreamer or the misfit so alone”(Subdivisions). The quintessential dreamer was Martin Luther King, the man who lead the Civil Rights movement. The misfit was the black American, as that’s how they were treated in society and what made the Civil Rights movement so necessary. The Civil Rights movement got momentum when the Supreme Court struck down the “separate but equal” doctrine in 1954. The movement achieved great things during its most powerful moment such as the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1968. Even so this has not ended the pattern of African American struggle present in the tapestry of our

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