Racism in the early 20th century Racism is highly discouraged in modern society as the majority of people and government institutions pass laws to ensure every person is treated equally irrespective of the color of the skin. There was a time when the African-American community were considered to be second-class citizens in America. The essay below analyzes “Song for a Dark Girl” by Langston Hughes and “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker through comparison and contrast to identify the brutality faced by this community. The African American community still faced racial discrimination and violence even after the civil war era. First of all, blacks are seen to suffer from discrimination even after the federal government abolishes slavery within its borders (National archives). For example, the speaker of the poem “Song for a Dark Girl” is quoted saying. “They hung my black young lover” (5) (Bloom 3) while Dee is described as lighter than Maggie as a compliment (Walker &Christian 1). Both remarks reveal the norm that existed during the first half …show more content…
of the 20th century where people were lynched or despised for being dark. Such acts of cruelty exposed the fact that the war was far from over. The difference between these two incidents are the persecutors. The oppressors for the first poem by Langston are the white men from the speaker’s hometown (5) (described as “They”) while the narrator from the “Everyday Use” is the despot. The storyteller elaborates that the community suffered for so long that they started identifying themselves based on skin color. Therefore, racial discrimination was practiced by both races. For instance, Mama, from “Everyday Use”, expresses her displeasure at Hakim-a-barber (Dee’s boyfriend who was Arabic) (Walker & Christian 2). Furthermore, the education system within the country favored Caucasian children as opposed to black ones. Mrs. Johnson (Mama), from Alice Walker’s story, states that she is illiterate. The reason being that she was in second grade when the school closed, and they could not do anything about (Walker & Christian 1). Langston Hughes uses sentences such as “Break the heart of me”(2) and “…black young lover” (3) to show the literacy level of the persona (Bloom 3). Many of the African Americans were below the literacy level and performed strenuous jobs to survive. Nonetheless, there were few of them such as Dee (the narrator’s elder daughter) from “Everyday Use” who were educated and lived a prestigious life (Walker & Christian 1). Consequently, other causes of literacy would be poverty and family issues. Therefore, racial discrimination was merely one of the causes of illiteracy at that time. Another evidence of the deplorable state is the fear observed from the storylines.
Memories of the torture and death as slaves made the characters weak. For example, the mother (Mrs. Johnson) is quoted saying, “Who can even imagine me looking a strange white man in the eye? It seems I have talked to them always with one foot raised in flight, with my head turned in whichever way is farthest from them.” (Walker & Christian 1). More so, the character (Bloom 3) describes the killers of a lover as ‘They” (5). It would indicate that she was afraid of accusing them verbally. The majority of the black community rarely interacted with whites. The fear of abuse haunted them. On the other hand, fear is a state of mind and can only be resolved on a personal level. The government had set legal policies and regulations to defend the rights of this community, hence, no need to fear. They had to learn to live freely just like any other
citizen. Conclusively, racial discrimination and violence existed at the beginning of the last century even after abolishing slavery and racial misconduct. The education system, general attitude, and social variation of different races are the proofs of oppression. A small percentage of the community was able to attend school, but a majority remained untutored due to issues such as poverty and fear of discrimination. In fact, some people ended up dead when they tried to rebel against the system.
African-Americans aged 12 and up are the most victimized group in America. 41.7 over 1,000 of them are victims of violent crimes, compared with whites (36.3 over 1,000). This does not include murder. Back then during the era of the Jim Crow laws, it was even worse. However, during that time period when there were many oppressed blacks, there were many whites who courageously defied against the acts of racism, and proved that the color of your skin should not matter. This essay will compare and contrast two Caucasian characters by the names of Hiram Hillburn (The Mississippi Trial, 1955) and Celia Foote (The Help), who also went against the acts of prejudice.
No matter where one is from or where one finds themselves today, we carry with us in some way or another a specific heritage. Certain events and circumstances can lead to someone trying to forget their heritage or doing everything in their power to preserve that heritage. Alice Walker’s “EveryDay Use” was published in 1973, not long after the civil rights movement, and reflects the struggles of dealing with a heritage that one might not want to remember (Shmoop). Alice Walker is well known as a civil rights and women’s rights activist. Like many of her other works she uses “Everyday Use” to express her feelings on a subject; in this case African American heritage. Through “Everyday Use” it can be seen that Alice Walker has negative feelings about how many African Americans were trying to remove themselves from parts of their African American culture during the time of the short story’s publishment. This idea that Walker was opposed to this “deracinating” of African Americans coming out of the civil rights
In the novel, the author proposes that the African American female slave’s need to overcome three obstacles was what unavoidably separated her from the rest of society; she was black, female, and a slave, in a white male dominating society. The novel “locates black women at the intersection of racial and sexual ideologies and politics (12).” White begins by illustrating the Europeans’ two major stereotypes o...
Violence seems to be quite a common topic in black American literature of the first decades of the 20th century. One major reason for this is probably that it was important for black authors not to be quiet about the injustices being done to them. The violence described in the texts is not only of the physical kind, but also psychological: the constant harassment and terrorising. The ever-present violence had such an effect on the black that they just could not fight back to stop the injustices.
This essay will summarize and reflect upon 5 individuals who were born into, and grew up in the United States of America under slavery. Lucinda Davis, Charity Anderson, Walter Calloway, Fountain Hughes and Richard Toley each have a compelling story to tell about the time when black Americans were not looked at as citizens and were not free to make decisions that were afforded to white Americans. Although their stories are brief and do not reflect all of the daily hardships that were faced by slaves during that time in our Nation’s history, they are, nonetheless, powerful in their message. Fearing above all else a beating that would result from a perceived act of disrespect, the fact that each of these individuals survived is an example of the human spirits desire to survive in the direst of situations and the ability to overcome insurmountable odds.
Both Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes were great writers but their attitudes towards their personal experience as an African American differed in many ways. These differences can be attributed to various reasons that range from gender to life experience but even though they had different perceptions regarding the African American experience, they both shared one common goal, racial equality through art. To accurately delve into the minds of the writers’ one must first consider authors background such as their childhood experience, education, as well their early adulthood to truly understand how it affected their writing in terms the similarities and differences of the voice and themes used with the works “How it Feels to be Colored Me” by Hurston and Hughes’ “The Negro Mother”. The importance of these factors directly correlate to how each author came to find their literary inspiration and voice that attributed to their works.
The civil rights movement may have technically ended in the nineteen sixties, but America is still feeling the adverse effects of this dark time in history today. African Americans were the group of people most affected by the Civil Rights Act and continue to be today. Great pain and suffering, though, usually amounts to great literature. This period in American history was no exception. Langston Hughes was a prolific writer before, during, and after the Civil Rights Act and produced many classic poems for African American literature. Hughes uses theme, point of view, and historical context in his poems “I, Too” and “Theme for English B” to expand the views on African American culture to his audience members.
Since the beginning, the United States` government, racial slavery had conquered various American identities. “Racism sprung early colonial times due the slavery riot incidence misinterpretations, leading full men, women, and children racial slavery of all different ethnic backgrounds” (Hooker 1). African-Americans held a life long work and Caribbean island shipment originating and affective progression to American colonies. “An importation of 4,000,000 Negroes were held in bondage by Southern planters” (Webstine).Advanced time went, and Northern states nurtured a rapid industrial revolution; Factory introduction, machines, and hired workers replaced any agricultural need of existing slaves. Southern states, however, maintained their original work, continuing the previous circular agricultural system. This suited the firm economic foundation of United States government. However, even continuing economic growth, some Americans still recognized moral rights. The moving disagreement era, America’s Antebellum period grew a deep internal struggle within the American society’s families. “Abolitionists, anti-racial discrimination groups, demanded an end to dehumanized labor treatment in the Southern states” (James 94). However, during this time, women discrimination was also another hot topic taking place. These movements pursued, and women joined numerous groups, and became more society perceived, standing with the thousands African-Americans, immigration workers, and women’s rights, demanding their societal rights. One particular woman advocating her own level in society, gender, race, and all, bringing her standing beliefs was Sojourner Truth. A former run away slave, Sojourner Truth, who originally contemplated no Ameri...
In the early 1920's, many generational Americans had moderately racist views on the "new immigrants," those being predominantly from Southern and Eastern Europe. Americans showed hatred for different races, incompatibility with religion, fear of race mixing, and fear of a revolution from other races. At the time, people believed the Nordic race was supreme.
The interaction between African American and White differed in every aspect especially toward social problems. Social interaction between these two groups was unequal. African American experienced racial discrimination. This struggle can be best described in “Cora Unashamed.” “Cora Unashamed” by Langston Hughes effectively portrays the inequality between African America...
Langston Hughes (1902-1967), one of the most prominent figures in the world of Harlem, has come to be an African American poet as well as a legend of a variety of fields such as music, children's literature and journalism. Through his poetry, plays, short stories, novels, autobiographies, children's books, newspaper columns, Negro histories, edited anthologies, and other works, Hughes is considered a voice of the African-American people and a prime example of the magnificence of the Harlem Renaissance who promoted equality, condemned racism and injustice that the Negro society endured, and left behind a precious literary and enduring legacy for the future generations. In an endeavor to explore why and to what extent his poetry has still been read and used in modern days, I've found no African American writer has ever been an extreme inspiration to all audiences of every ethnic society as much as Langston Hughes was. More than 30 years after his death, the works of Hughes continue to appear, extensively used in the world of literature, education, filming and music, and is still relevant as an evidence of his nationwide and worldwide popularity in the present days.
One of the main fears that was presented throughout the book was how the people had to worry about the safety of their black bodies. But by becoming aware of themselves, of their governemnt, and history, eventually came as sense of freedom.
During a freedom march on May 29, 1964 in Canton, Mississippi a boy by the name of McKinley Hamilton was brutally beaten by police to the point of unconsciousness. One of the witnesses of this event, and the author of the autobiography which this paper is written in response to, was Anne (Essie Mae) Moody. This event was just one of a long line of violent experiences of Moody’s life; experiences that ranged from her own physical domestic abuse to emotional and psychological damage encountered daily in a racist, divided South. In her autobiography Moody not only discusses in detail the abuses in her life, but also her responses and actions to resist them. The reader can track her progression in these strategies throughout the various stages of her life; from innocent childhood, to adolescence at which time her views from a sheltered childhood began to unravel and finally in adulthood when she took it upon herself to fight back against racial prejudice.
The second decade of the Twentieth Century was a time of deep divide within The United States. While the 1920’s were commonly called “the roaring twenties” with American wealth doubling during the decade, Babe Ruth and the golden age of Baseball taking the nation by storm, and various revolutions in the American social experience, with women and men now socializing together in illegal “speakeasys”. Around the world economies were booming after the First World War, and revolution in countries like Russia were on the near future horizon. For how robust both America and the world was feeling at the time, great divides held the nation back. The nations colored population was still not receiving the rights they deserved as Plessy v Ferguson and
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.