Paul Laurence Dunbar's Sympathy

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It is safe to say, that the Progressive Period seemingly was enacted to regulate a corrupt government for the people, right? To an extent this was true in the decades just before and after the twentieth century. As stated in our anthology, the Progressive Period wasn’t all that progressive for African Americans it was “more accurately called the Decades of Disappointment” (page 511). Also in our anthology, Paul Laurence Dunbar has a series of his work that represents the emotion-filled hardships African Americans had to face during this time. For example, his poem Sympathy illustrates the persistence of the black community to get their voice heard in regards to receiving justness, and because progressives were focused mainly on the white community,

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