Social Issues In A Red Record, And The New Negro

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Over historical progression, African Americans have faced a surfeit of injustices that are addressed throughout numerous works of literature. One of the most frequently discussed themes in African American literature related to these injustices is social issues in an interracial community. With various literary techniques, the central topic of social issues due to race portrayed. Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s A Red Record and Alain Locke’s The New Negro address the social issues of racial brutality, inferiority and social controversy in an interracial society. Ida B. Wells-Barnett elaborates on the issue of racial brutality in her work A Red Record by expanding upon the cruelty towards the African American community that occurs post-emancipation. She compares and contrasts the past and present states of African American life to highlight the worsened status of racial violence. The issue of brutality is introduced through the subject of victimizations committed by white men and the lack of justice as a result: “… during these years more than ten thousand Negroes have been killed in cold blood, without the formality of judicial trial and legal execution” (Wells-Barnett 672). Wells-Barnett also specifically alludes to a specific yet conspicuous type of violence known as lynching, on several occasions throughout her discussion. Her use of the subject of lynching explicates the degree of injustice African Americans faced during historical periods of discrimination. Literary scholar, Trudier Harris expands upon the discussion of lynching in literature in her critical essay Exorcising Blackness: “The lynching ritual becomes an 'expected ' way …show more content…

In Locke’s work, the speaker explains how the African American citizen is depicted in society during a specific time

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