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. In the beginning of the poem, the …show more content…
He has shed his nonviolent nature on this subject. Turning to aggression, he writes about the lynching of blacks and how the truth of history was changed. He laments the history of blacks, and how their story, a ghost story, is being forgotten in the past where no one looks. Even Hayes had forgotten the truth that blacks were in the confederacy. This fact reveals that even Hayes has forgotten the truth. Hayes wrote that blacks have “lightening struck a window on the courthouse he’s been haunting ever since” (39-40). This statement suggests that injustice happened many years ago and conveys his disagreement with the handyman. He demands that he handyman be haunted by this history. In the next stanza, he wrote “your presence is requested tonight”. In doing so, he revealed that this story is no longer about justice. Rather, he wants the haunting of injustice to fill the handyman's life. Hayes says he’s a reasonable man, but revenge is on his mind, and his use of reason may be questionable. The authors intention is to amplify the fact that racism still exists in the world today. Throughout the poem, Hayes writes about how the confederates are wrong and that racism still exists. An example of this is “The handyman's insistence that there were brigades of black confederates… is the opposite of history”(13-15). Another example of this is “across our post racial country. Last night I watched several hours of television
‘Fire in a canebrake’ is quite a scorcher by Laura Wexler and which focuses on the last mass lynching which occurred in the American Deep South, the one in the heartland of rural Georgia, precisely Walton County, Georgia on 25th July, 1946, less than a year after the Second World War. Wexler narrates the story of the four black sharecroppers who met their end ‘at the hand of person’s unknown’ when an undisclosed number of white men simply shot the blacks to death. The author concentrates on the way the evidence was collected in those eerie post war times and how the FBI was actually involved in the case, but how nothing came of their extensive investigations.
As I gazed across the book isles and leaned over carefully to pick one up out of the old dusty vaults of the library, a familiar object caught my eye in the poetry section. A picture in time stood still on this book, of two African American men both holding guitars. I immediately was attracted to this book of poems. For the Confederate Dead, by Kevin Young, is what it read on the front in cursive lettering. I turned to the back of the book and “Jazz“, and “blues” popped out of the paper back book and into my brain. Sometimes you can judge a book by it’s cover, I thought. Kevin Young’s For the Confederate Dead is a book of poems influenced by blues and jazz in the deep rural parts of the south.
Four black sharecroppers (Roger Malcom, Dorothy Malcom, George Dorsey and Mae Murray Dorsey) are brutally murdered by a group of white people. The murders attracted national attention, but the community was not willing to get involved. The community was not fazed by these brutal murders but, by the fact that this incident got national attention. They were even more astounded that the rest of the nation even cared. In this book Laura Wexler shows just how deep racism goes. After reading the book I discovered that Fire in a Canebrake has three major themes involving racism. The first is that racism obstructs progression. The second is history repeats itself. The last theme is that racism can obscure the truth. This lynching, in particular, marks a turning point in the history of race relations and the governments’ involvement in civil rights. In the end this case still remains unsolved. No concept of the
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.
Southern Horror s: Lynch Law in All Its Phases by Ida B. Wells took me on a journey through our nations violent past. This book voices how strong the practice of lynching is sewn into the fabric of America and expresses the elevated severity of this issue; she also includes pages of graphic stories detailing lynching in the South. Wells examined the many cases of lynching based on “rape of white women” and concluded that rape was just an excuse to shadow white’s real reasons for this type of execution. It was black’s economic progress that threatened white’s ideas about black inferiority. In the South Reconstruction laws often conflicted with real Southern racism. Before I give it to you straight, let me take you on a journey through Ida’s
The poem, “My Great-Grandfather’s Slaves” by Wendell Berry, illustrates the guilt felt for the sins of a man’s ancestors. The poem details the horror for the speaker’s ancestors involvement in slavery and transitions from sympathy for the slaves to feeling enslaved by his guilt. Berry uses anaphora, motif, and irony, to express the speaker’s guilt and provide a powerful atmosphere to the poem.
“The most exciting attractions are between opposites that never meet.” -Andy Warhol. Opposites are exciting. When positive and negative spaces collide, new ways to look at art formulate. When left and right sides of the aisle combine in the chambers of Congress, revolutionary new laws are passed. When the dead meet the living, zombies rise from the grave, a subject so captivating, it has formed its own subgenre in all kinds of mediums. In writing, these opposites take a few forms. In African American author and poet, Audre Lorde’s narrative, The Fourth of July, a stunning display of juxtaposition helps the reader understand how Audre Lorde felt during her fateful trip to Washington D.C. and her argument that racism is a prevalent issue, despite
In Audre Lorde’s bildungsroman essay “The Fourth of July” (1997), she recalls her family’s trip to the nation’s capital that represented the end of her childhood ignorance by being exposed to the harsh reality of racialization in the mid 1900s. Lorde explains that her parents are to blame for shaping her skewed perception of America by shamefully dismissing frequent acts of racism. Utilizing copious examples of her family being negatively affected by racism, Lorde expresses her anger towards her parents’ refusal to address the blatant, humiliating acts of discrimination in order to emphasize her confusion as to why objecting to racism is a taboo. Lorde’s use of a transformational tone of excitement to anger, and dramatic irony allows those
Detrimental stereotypes of minorities affect everyone today as they did during the antebellum period. Walker’s subject matter reminds people of this, as does her symbolic use of stark black and white. Her work shocks. It disgusts. The important part is: her work elicits a reaction from the viewer; it reminds them of a dark time in history and represents that time in the most fantastically nightmarish way possible. In her own words, Walker has said, “I didn’t want a completely passive viewer, I wanted to make work where the viewer wouldn’t walk away; he would either giggle nervously, get pulled into history, into fiction, into something totally demeaning and possibly very beautiful”. Certainly, her usage of controversial cultural signifiers serve not only to remind the viewer of the way blacks were viewed, but that they were cast in that image by people like the viewer. Thus, the viewer is implicated in the injustices within her work. In a way, the scenes she creates are a subversive display of the slim power of slave over owner, of woman over man, of viewed over
Another example of Hughes’s constant struggles with racism and his inner and thoughtful response to that is clearly seen when he recalls being denied the right to sit at the same table. His point of view identifies that he was not able to sit at the table because he was an African-American. Yet, he remains very optimistic in not letting his misfortune please what is considered the “white-man” in the poem. Langston Hughes’s states,
Racism and slavery will forever stay written in our history books. There are thousands of books, articles, encyclopedias, and short stories that try to depict it, even until now. Rarely some can barely come close to describe the feelings and emotions felt during that era. One of those heart opening stories is “Désirée’s Baby”; a short story that speaks about a conflicted family living in that tense era. The setting of the story helps create tension because it talks about the post-civil war era, the tension in the divided country and the small town that enhanced discrimination.
Racism and discrimination are problems many African Americans had to face in the 1940s; Hughes uses this aspect as the major theme in his poem “Ballad of the Landlord.” It is apparent that the tenant is discriminated against by the landlord, the police and the newspaper. For example, the newspaper shows only one side of the issue especially in the headline: “MAN THREATENS LANDLORD” (31). The tenant’s reasons for threatening the landlord were valid, although not legal, because the landlord treated the tenant unfairly by not fixing the house the tenant was renting. The tenant was angry, as expected, because the landlord was being prejudice against the tenant and refusing to fix his living conditions. The landlord would possibly have fixed the house if the tenant were white, and all problems could have been avoided had race issues not be...
...is presented in a way that “blacks or whites can draw admonition from the subject” (1) . Another perspective from Revell is that the poem presents itself in terms of passionate personal regret. Revell believes that Dunbar felt guilty because he allowed himself to be bound to the “ plantation lifestyle” (1). The plantation life style internal anguish and agony the blacks went through as slaves. Some blacks have moved on from it, but some continue to use slavery as an excuse to not progress in life. It should be noted that Revell draws the most attention to the middle of the poem. The poem itself is masked because it never specifically says who its linked too, even though most would infer that it is linked to the black race. Revell concludes that Dunbar left aside the preconceived image of what it meant to be black in America, and spoke “only from his heart” (1) .
Analyzing the poem’s title sets a somber, yet prideful tone for this poem. The fact that the title does not say “I Speak of Rivers,” but instead, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” (1) shows that he is not only a Negro, but that he is not one specific Negro, but in his first person commentary, he is speaking for all Negroes. However, he is not just speaking for any Negroes. Considering the allusions to “Mississippi” (9) and “Abe Lincoln” (9) are not only to Negroes but also to America, confirms that Hughes is talking for all African Americans. This poem is a proclamation on the whole of African American history as it has grown and flourished along the rivers which gave life to these people.
Towards the middle of the poem the realist in Hughes comes out. He goes into the doubts that most African Americans had at the time. He says, "Down South in Dixie only train I sees got a Jim Crow car set aside for me." Another interesting technique he adds is when he capitalizes the "WHITE FOLKS ONLY" and "FOR COLORED" signs. He either does this to draw attention to the cause, or to try and know what it feels like to have these signs sticking in your face. He specifically mentions Birmingham, Mississippi, and Georgia during the poem. These were key cities that were into segregation of the South. "When it stops in Mississippi will it be made plain everybody's got a right to board the freedom train." Hughes almost is becoming a little agitated in the poem when he refers to these cities, especially when he is talking about Birmingham. "The Birmingham station's marked COLORED and WHITE, the white folks go left, the colored go right." In this part of the poem, he is questioning whether or not this Freedom Train is too good to be true. He sounds like he doubts a little of what this Freedom Train is all about. He knows there is a train, but there have been a lot of promises before that were not fulfilled, he does not want to get his hopes up before he finds out more about this train.