The setting for this interview with Mamie McFadden was done in her home at 10786 S. Peoria, Chicago, Illinois. The house is a brick cottage with a concrete based metal rail porch. Mrs. McFadden welcomed me at the door and mentioned that her cleaning lady had recently departed and that she was excited to do this interview. Walking in the door at 12:30 in the afternoon, I was greeted with the aroma of cooking cabbage from the rear kitchen area. The living room, where the interview would take place, appeared to stop in time. There was no doubt that this home was decorated in the prime of her life during the 1970s. The orange plastered walls contrasted with the crème ceiling, along with the square tiled mirrors on the south wall, took me back to the days when I was a little boy and my aunt had a similar styled living room. It occurred to me that most African American women, not only share a sisterhood in trials and tribulations, but also in taste and decorations.
Mrs. McFadden stands at 5’2”with slightly hunched shoulders. She is caramel-skinned with brown eyes and weighs about 120 pounds. She is a survivor of two bouts of cancer and was recently released to return to her duties as a Sunday School Teacher. She is a widow, whose husband passed in 1994. She wears a brown contemporary wig and dresses more modern than most women her age.
I began the interview asking “When were you born?” Her response was “September 30, 1940.” She continued with a big smile on her face saying, “I am 71 years old.” My mind immediately went back to the 1940s and the conditions that many African Americans were facing during the Great Depression and World War II. Mrs. McFadden told me she was born in Milledgeville, Georgia. She repeated it with pride, sp...
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...ls the times she was victimized by prejudice individuals. She seems relieved in her smile when she speaks of the bonds between her and her siblings, and even a few white neighbors she called brother and friends. She is still close to her family as they all reunite every Thanksgiving in Georgia. She travels to the South, sometime traveling to the South by train, but as I sat with her I could see she took many trips to the South while sitting in her living room. Upon ending this interview, I was sure she had much more to say.
Works Cited
Hurston, Z. N. (1995). Their Eyes Were Watching God. In Zora Neale Hurston: Novels and Stories (pp. 173-334). New York: Literary Classics of the United States.
McFadden, M. (2012, February 10). Recalling Life. (E. D. Jr., Interviewer)
Verner, B. (1994, June 12). The Power and Glory of Africana Womanism. The Chicago Tribune.
“We Shall Overcome” was a popular song of comfort and strength during the civil rights movement; it was a rallying cry for many black people who had experienced the racial injustices of the south. The song instilled hope that one day they would “overcome” the overt and institutional racism preventing them from possessing the same rights as white citizens. Anne Moody describes several instances when this song helped uplift her through the low points of her life as a black woman growing up in Mississippi in the 1950s and early 1960s. By the end of her autobiography “Coming Of Age In Mississippi” (1968), she saw a stream of excessive and unending violence perpetrated by white people and the crippling effects of poverty on the black people of
The social, cultural and political history of America as it affects the life course of American citizens became very real to us as the Delany sisters, Sadie and Bessie, recounted their life course spanning a century of living in their book "Having Our Say." The Delany sisters’ lives covered the period of their childhood in Raleigh, North Carolina, after the "Surrender" to their adult lives in Harlem, New York City during the roaring twenties, to a quiet retirement in suburban, New York City, as self-styled "maiden ladies." At the ages of 102 and 104, these ladies have lived long enough to look back over a century of their existence and appreciate the value of a good family life and companionship, also to have the last laugh that in spite of all their struggles with racism, sexism, political and economic changes they triumphed (Having Our Say).
The title of this book comes from the inspiring words spoken by Sojourner Truth at the 1851, nine years prior to the Civil War at a Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. In Deborah Grays White, Ar’n’t I a woman her aim was to enrich the knowledge of antebellum black women and culture to show an unwritten side of history of the American black woman. Being an African- American and being a woman, these are the two principle struggles thrown at the black woman during and after slavery in the United States. Efforts were made by White scholars in 1985 to have a focus on the female slave experience. Deborah Gray White explains her view by categorizing the hardships and interactions between the female slave and the environment in which the slave was born. She starts with the mythology of the female slave by using mythologies such as Jezebel or Mammy, a picture that was painted of false images created by whites in the south. She then moves to differences between male and female slavery the harsh life cycle, the created network among the female community, customs for slave families and the trip from slavery to freedom, as well as differences between the female slave and the white woman, showing that there is more history than myth. (White, 5) Thus, bringing forth the light to the hardships and harassment that the black woman faced in the Antebellum South.
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1990.
and the academic endeavour, to illuminate the experiences of African American women and to theorize from the materiality of their lives to broader issues of political economy, family, representation and transformation” (Mullings, page xi)
Hurston, Zora N. Their Eyes Were Watching God: A Novel. New York: Harper Perennial, 2006. Print.
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God: A Novel. New York: Perennial Library, 1990. Print.
Growing up as the young child of sharecroppers in Mississippi, Essie Mae Moody experienced and observed the social and economic deprivation of Southern Blacks. As a young girl Essie Mae and her family struggled to survive, often by the table scraps of the white families her mother worked for. Knowing little other than the squalor of their living conditions, she realizes this disparity while living in a two-room house off the Johnson’s property, whom her mother worked for, watching the white children play, “Here they were playing in a house that was nicer than any house I could have dreamed of”(p. 33). Additionally, the segregated school she attends was a “one room rotten wood building.” (p. 14), but Essie Mae manages to get straight A’s while caring for her younger sibli...
Warren, Nagucyalti. "Black Girls and Native Sons: Female Images in Selected Works by Richard Wright." Richard Wright - Myths and Realities. Ed. C. James Trotman. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1988.
Although there were numerous efforts to attain full equality between blacks and whites during the Civil Rights Movement, many of them were in vain because of racial distinctions, white oppression, and prejudice. Anne Moody’s Coming of Age in Mississippi recounts her experiences as a child growing up in Centreville, Mississippi. She describes how growing up in Mississippi in a poor black family changed her views of race and equality, and the events that took place that changed her life forever. She begins her story at the tender age of 4, and describes how her home life changed drastically with the divorce of her parents, the loss of her home, and the constant shuffle from shack to shack as her mother tried to keep food on the table with the meager pay she earned from the numerous, mostly domestic, jobs she took. On most days, life was hard for Anne, and as she got older she struggled to understand why they were living in such poverty when the white people her mother worked for had so many nice things, and could eat more than bread and beans for dinner. It was because of this excessive poverty that Anne had to go into the workforce at such an early age, and learn what it meant to have and hold a job in order to provide her family. Anne learned very young that survival was all about working hard, though she didn’t understand the imbalance between the work she was doing and the compensation she received in return.
Each of these letters provides details about the lives of middle-class married African American women living in the Upper South in the early twentieth century. By looking at these documents along with the finding aids that explain the collections they are a part of one could get a good sense of what life was like for a fictional woman of similar circumstances.
For Anne Moody, what were some of the most difficult obstacles to black progress—both within and outside of the African-American community—in the Jim Crow South? What degree of success did she and others achieve in addressing those obstacles? What was her perspective on her own past and future, and on the past and future of her country, by the book’s end?
The twentieth century was a time of tremendous change that commenced with WWI and the Great Depression. While WWI brought countless deaths, the Great Depression affected both urban and rural Americans. Yet, underlying these devastating events was the abuse of black Americans. Both whites and blacks had to cope with the major occurrences of the time, but blacks also faced strife from whites themselves. During the early part of the twentieth century, white Americans Russell Baker and Mildred Armstrong Kalish gained kindred attributes from their families, especially in comparison to that of Richard Wright, a black American. The key differences between the experience of whites and blacks can be found within the mentality of the family, the extent to which they were influenced by their families in their respective lives, and the shielding from the outside world, or lack thereof, by their families. Through the compelling narrations of these three authors, readers can glimpse into this racially divided world from the perspective of individuals who actually lived through it.
...nspired to make a change that she knew that nothing could stop her, not even her family. In a way, she seemed to want to prove that she could rise above the rest. She refused to let fear eat at her and inflict in her the weakness that poisoned her family. As a child she was a witness to too much violence and pain and much too often she could feel the hopelessness that many African Americans felt. She was set in her beliefs to make choices freely and help others like herself do so as well.
Many African American men and women have been characterized as a group of significant individuals who help to exemplify the importance of the black community. They have illustrated their optimistic views and aspects in a various amount of ways contributing to the reconstruction of African Americans with desire and integrity. Though many allegations may have derived against a large amount of these individuals, Crystal Bird Fauset, Jacob Lawrence, and Mary Lucinda Dawson opportunistic actions conveys their demonstration to improve not only themselves but also their ancestors too. Throughout their marvelous journeys, they intend to garnish economic, political, and social conditions with dignity and devotion while witnessing the rise of African Americans. The objective of this research paper is to demonstrate the lives of a selected group of African American people and their attributions to the black community.