African Americans Wear The Mask: Justice And Freedom

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Justice and freedom play a huge role in the unit as it gave African Americans still suffering from racial oppression and violence a voice to air the injustices they were facing. It also gave them an opportunity to show that even though they were free from slavery policies like “separate but equal” were used to create a new type of slavery. You can see this in the poem “We Wear the Mask” even though they were free from slavery African American still had to wear a metaphorical mask to cover the anger and sadness they felt over the policy of “separate but equal” and the lynchings of innocent African Americans that were occurring. Dunbar also uses imagery when he says things such as: “bleeding hearts”, “tortured souls”, “tears and sighs” to give

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