In the 1940's white people were clearly the majority and superior race. Whites looked down on all other races, especially blacks. This superiority had been going on for hundreds of years and was never challenged until the 1950's and 1960's. During this time period there were many civil rights movements led by Communists and other groups who believed in racial equality. Martin Luther King, Jr. was the most famous spokesman and adamant believer in racial equality.
The helm of all white supremacist groups was in Chicago. They targeted many pro-integration groups. Most of these white supremacist groups were located in the Marquette Manor, Chicago Lawn, West Lawn, and Gage Park neighborhoods of Chicago. During the 1960's civil rights movements, these areas were a main target. These efforts were not successfully completed in the Marquette Park area until the 1980's when integration slowly began to happen by a few blacks, arabs, and hispanics moving into the area. Most of the white residents kept quiet until the mid-80's. Then the anti-segregation groups formed a coalition and used scape-goating against the blacks to magnify the discrimination in this area. The magnification of this problem did not help matters at all. It caused assaults on blacks and firebombings of colored homes.
Whites hated blacks in the 60's and 70's because they felt that they were inferior to them and that they were supposed to be segregated. Blacks hated the whites for making them feel inferior and having more opportunities than what they had.
The book Native Son is about the segregation of blacks and whites in the 1940's. Bigger, the main character of this book, killed a white girl and was sentenced to the death penalty for it. The white prosecutors in the book tried to pin many other crimes on him such as rape, burglary, and other murders.
Even though Bigger did rob some people and kill his black girlfriend he was not tried for these crimes because in that day and time the white majority did not care about what happened to black people as long as they did not do anything to hurt or interfere with a white's life. The death penalty probably would not have been pursued if the murderer of Mary Dalton would have been white. Since Bigger is black he is greatly hated and despised in this book. Mobs were formed outside of the courthouse during Bigger's trial because of the hate the
The theme that Native Son author Richard Wright puts in this story is that the white community makes Bigger act the way he does, that through the communities actions, Bigger does all the things he is accused of doing. The theme that I present is that Bigger only acts the way that he did because of the influences that the white community has had on him accepted by everyone. When Bigger gets the acceptance and love he has always wanted, he acts like he does not know what to do, because really, he does not. In Native Son, Bigger uses his instincts and acts like the white people around him have formed him to act. They way that he has been formed to act is to not trust anyone. Bigger gets the acceptance and love he wanted from Mary and Jan, but he still hates them and when they try to really get to know him, he ends up hurting them. He is scared of them simply because he has never experienced these feelings before, and it brings attention to him from himself and others. Once Bigger accidentally kills Mary, he feels for the first time in his life that he is a person and that he has done something that somebody will recognize, but unfortunately it is murder. When Mrs. Dalton walks in and is about to tell Mary good night, Bigger becomes scared stiff with fear that he will be caught committing a crime, let alone rape. If Mrs. Dalton finds out he is in there he will be caught so he tries to cover it up and accidentally kills Mary. The police ask why he did not just tell Mrs. Dalton that he was in the room, Bigger replies and says he was filled with so much fear that he did not know what else to do and that he did not mean to kill Mary. He was so scared of getting caught or doing something wrong that he just tried to cover it up. This is one of the things that white people have been teaching him since he can remember. The white people have been teaching him to just cover things up by how the whites act to the blacks. If a white man does something bad to a black man the white man just covers it up a little and everything goes back to normal.
Just as Max did in defending Bigger during his trial and inevitable conviction, Wright uses Bigger as an example for how African Americans have been treated. True, the vast majority of African Americans do not commit the awful crimes which Bigger has committed, but the crimes themselves, and in fact the details of Bigger's life are not really that important in the scheme of thin...
After World War II, “ A wind is rising, a wind of determination by the have-nots of the world to share the benefit of the freedom and prosperity” which had been kept “exclusively from them” (Takaki, p.p. 383), and people of color in United States, especially the black people, who had been degraded and unfairly treated for centuries, had realized that they did as hard as whites did for the winning of the war, so they should receive the same treatments as whites had. Civil rights movement emerged, with thousands of activists who were willing to scarify everything for Black peoples’ civil rights, such as Rosa Parks, who refused to give her seat to a white man in a segregated bus and
It was not until the modern civil rights movement of the 1940s, ‘50s, and ‘60s, a period that some call the Second that these discriminatory laws and practices finally began to give way. During this period, African Americans and their allies finally confronted long-standing oppression, injustices, and prejudices as a unified movement for integration instead it became a total liberation and identity movement.
Animal Symbolism in Native Son by Richard Wright. Two rats and a cat are used as symbols in Richard Wright's Native Son. The rats, one found in an alley and the other in Bigger's apartment, symbolize Bigger. Mrs. Dalton's white cat represents white society, which often takes the form of a singular character.
There was a lot of segregation between black and white people. There were different schools, water fountains, libraries, etc. Black people were thought of to be less than white people, and for this they were treated horribly. Most of them worked for white families, whether it was in their fields, or inside taking care of the children and housework. There were people like Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks fighting for equal rights for all people no matter what race they are. Even with all of the protests and speeches, most white people didn’t realize how much of a problem it was for a long time. It slowly got better and better, but the world is still not
In Darryl Pinckney’s discerning critical essay, “Richard Wright: The Unnatural History of a Native Son,” Pinckney states that all of Wright’s books contain the themes of violence, inhumanity, rage, and fear. Wright writes about these themes because he expresses, in his books, his convictions about his own struggles with racial oppression, the “brutal realities of his early life.” Pinckney claims that Wright’s works are unique for Wright’s works did not attempt to incite whites to acknowledge blacks. Wright does not write to preach that blacks are equal to whites. The characters in Wright’s works, including Bigger Thomas from Native Son, are not all pure in heart; the characters have psychological burdens and act upon their burdens. For instance, Bigger Thomas, long under racial oppression, accidentally suffocates Mary Dalton in her room for fear that he will be discriminated against and charged with the rape of Mary Dalton. Also, according to Pinckney, although the characters of Wright’s books are under these psychological burdens, they always have “futile hopes [and] desires.” At the end of Native Son, Bigger is enlightened by the way his lawyer Max treats him, with the respect of a human being. Bigger then desires nothing but to live, but he has been sentenced to death.
Maybe this hatred for the Negroes wasn't hatred after all, but brought about. about by fear of the. As slavery had been abolished, black people were
During the 1940’s the nation began to accept and adore athletes such as Jackie Robinson when he broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball. Also the Army was integrating all races within the military. These events began to stir the modern civil rights movement. In consequence, tensions began to rise within the races, especially in the Deep South.
Throughout the book, the one argument she is constantly supporting is the idea that young black boys, in their early teens, are arrested and put through the criminal justice system in a new age version of lynch-mob justice. The alleged crimes of these young black boys receive much media fanfare, but when they are cleared of any wrong-doing nothing is said about it in the media. She makes her arguments by using the story of Little B as a frame for her thesis. By taking his story and stripping away the prosecution's rush to judgment in the investigation and trial, he used the words of drug dealers awaiting sentencing and addicts, such as Little B's mother, to ramrod through a conviction in which there was no physical evidence connecting the boy to the killing. To supplement the frame, she recaps high-profile cases of young black children being arrested and charged for crimes despite evidence to the contrary.
The most significant event that led up to the way that blacks of the time were treated was the Civil War. Even though it was not solely fought to end slavery it left a bitter taste in the mouths of all southerners. Until the war the black race was seen solely as another object for the more prosperous whites in the south to own. After the war the southerners could not handle the fact that the blacks were also people. This led to the horrible way they were treated.
Bigger embodies one of humankind’s greatest tragedies of how mass oppression permeates all aspects of the lives of the oppressed and the oppressor, creating a world of misunderstanding, ignorance, and suffering. The novel is loaded with a plethora of images of a hostile white world. Wright shows how white racism affects the behavior, feelings, and thoughts of Bigger. “Everytime I think about it, I feel like somebody’s poking a red-hot iron down my throat. We live here and they live there.
Intro: Summary, Thesis, Highlighting main points (Text to Text, Text to Self and Text to World) The tale of Native Son by Richard Wright follows the story of a young man by the name of Bigger Thomas who lives in the 1930’s. In the beginning of the story, we meet Bigger a young, angry frustrated black man who lives with his mother, brother and sister in a cramped apartment in New York. The story is narrated in a limited third-person voice that focuses on Bigger Thomas’s thoughts and feelings. The story is told almost exclusively from Bigger’s perspective. In recent years, the
The simplest method Wright uses to produce sympathy is the portrayal of the hatred and intolerance shown toward Thomas as a black criminal. This first occurs when Bigger is immediately suspected as being involved in Mary Dalton’s disappearance. Mr. Britten suspects that Bigger is guilty and only ceases his attacks when Bigger casts enough suspicion on Jan to convince Mr. Dalton. Britten explains, "To me, a nigger’s a nigger" (Wright 154). Because of Bigger’s blackness, it is immediately assumed that he is responsible in some capacity. This assumption causes the reader to sympathize with Bigger. While only a kidnapping or possible murder are being investigated, once Bigger is fingered as the culprit, the newspapers say the incident is "possibly a sex crime" (228). Eleven pages later, Wright depicts bold black headlines proclaiming a "rapist" (239) on the loose. Wright evokes compassion for Bigger, knowing that he is this time unjustly accused. The reader is greatly moved when Chicago’s citizens direct all their racial hatred directly at Bigger. The shouts "Kill him! Lynch him! That black sonofabitch! Kill that black ape!" (253) immediately after his capture encourage a concern for Bigger’s well-being. Wright intends for the reader to extend this fear for the safety of Bigger toward the entire black community. The reader’s sympathy is further encouraged when the reader remembers that all this hatred has been spurred by an accident.
In his novel, Native Son, Richard Wright favors short, simple, blunt sentences that help maintain the quick narrative pace of the novel, at least in the first two books. For example, in the following passage: "He licked his lips; he was thirsty. He looked at his watch; it was ten past eight. He would go to the kitchen and get a drink of water and then drive the car out of the garage. " Wright's imagery is often brutal and elemental, as seen in his frequently repeated references to fire, snow, and Mary's bloody head.