Author Eudora Welty Describes Unjust Treatment of African American Women

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Recommended: African American women during the civil rights movement

Author Eudora Welty Describes Unjust Treatment of African American Women

On the fifteenth of September 1963, a white man was seen setting a box beneath the steps of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The contents of the box: 122 sticks of dynamite. Minutes later, the makeshift bomb exploded, killing four young African American girls and injuring twenty-three other people. The white man, Robert Chambliss, paid a one hundred dollar fine for possessing dynamite without a permit. He was found not guilty of murder, and the case was added to a long list of "unsolved" bombings, police killings, and other acts of violence against the African American community.

This was the world in which Eudora Welty wrote. A native of the South, Welty witnessed racism and anti-Black violence-such as the infamous Birmingham Bombing-first hand. She saw the innocent injured and slain because of the color of their skin. She watched as Black men struggled and finally gained equality -and as Black women failed to be equal within the walls of their own homes. And was Eudora Welty silent? Or did she speak out against these wrongs? Critics accused Welty of ignoring politics in her work. "Some have questioned her ... failure to lobby for the rights of blacks" (Ealy). However, Welty's portrayal of African American women in her stories highlights her belief that they were trapped in a world of injustice-a society controlled by whites and a culture dominated by men. Eudora Welty speaks through two characters, Phoenix and Livvie, and their dealings with different types of authority.

Welty emphasizes the hopeless situation of African American women through her characters' encounters with the authority of nature. She creates a wor...

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Eudora Welty was not silent when it came to social issues. In her own, sometimes-quiet ways, she fought discrimination and racism and inequality. She voiced her opinions and beliefs. Her stories can speak loudly of the injustices of a tainted society, but these protests are only heard by those who immerse themselves in her work, by those who reach beneath the surface to find the true meaning of the subtle events that comprise her stories.

Works Cited

1. Ealy, Charles. "Eudora Welty Last Survivor of the Southern Renaissance." Dallas Morning News July 24, 2001.

2. Williams, Maxine. "Why Women's Liberation is Important to Black Women." The Millianton July 3, 1970.

3. Newman, Pamela. "Take a Good Look At Our Problems." The Millianton October 30, 1970.

4. Welty, Eudora. Thirteen Stories by Eudora Welty. Orlando: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1965.

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