Alliteration In John Angelou's Million Man March Poem

Angelou also argues through repetition and alliteration that, even though the battle for racial equality has been fought for centuries, injustice is still commonplace in the modern world in “Million Man March Poem”. By repeating phrases at the end of the poem, she creates a list of actions to be done before racism can end. The wording turns the poem into a rhythmic chant:

Clap hands, let us come together and reveal our hearts

Let us come together and revise our spirits,

Let us come together and cleanse our souls, Clap hands, let’s leave the preening

And stop impostering our own history. (“Million Man March Poem” 40-44).

The repetition of the phrase “Let us come together”, though it has a positive connotation, creates the feeling that there

This stanza of the poem is joyful, but the reader cannot help but feel that there is so much to be done before the injustice ends. When Angelou mentions that African Americans need to “stop impostering [their] own history”, she means that they must accept the past and learn from it, not attempt to hide it. Earlier in the poem, Angelou uses alliteration to add rhythm to the poem, pairing it with the dark subject matter she describes. The narrator takes the form of a slave hundreds of years ago and describes a scene “under a dead blue sky on a distant beach, / [in which she] was dragged by [her] braids just beyond [her family’s] reach” (“Million Man March Poem” 10-12). Angelou alternates the hard sound of “B’s” with the consonant sound of “D’s”, giving the poem a heavy rhythm. This strong, dark pulse, meant to emphasize the importance of her diction, was characteristic of African American literature during the Civil Rights Movement (“African American Literature” 1). At the Million Man

Her vivid images juxtapose the struggles of the past with those of the present, providing a connection between the two. For example, the description of a woman “in Virginia tobacco fields, / leaning [...] into the palms of her chained hands” is compared with the modern picture of a woman “stand[ing] / before the abortion clinic, / confounded by the lack of choices” (“Our Grandmothers” 29-34, 99-101). Angelou uses the two images of injustice from vastly different time periods to show how oppression of African Americans, specifically women, has continued to dominate society. The poem is a “catalyst for deep understanding of the pain her people have endured” over many years (“Our Grandmothers”, 2011, 1). Placed in the era of American history in which slavery was rampant in the South, Angelou paints a picture of one of her ancestors being chained in tobacco fields. Because Angelou was raised by her grandmother, she developed a substantial amount of respect for her relatives and learned that she must continue the fight for equality that they began (“Maya Angelou Biography” 2). She also describes an image of an African American woman in a modern society that is not offering her everything that she needs, specifically abortion rights. This image is likely a reflection of her life. Being a pregnant teenager with