Kevin Young’s For the Confederate Dead

In this paper, I propose that the history and development of southern folk music may serve as an important vehicle for examining and elaborating the dynamics of southern race relations. I am not suggesting a causal relationship; merely an interactional one. Both southern race relations and southern music are reflections of the social structure of the rural south. In the structurally segregated south, black and white musical traditions display the same divergences and convergences which have historically characterized black/white relations. This is not a lyrical analysis; rather, it is a socio-historical analysis of regional popular culture which focuses upon the interaction between two important features of that culture: race and music.

Percival Everett’s “The Appropriation of Cultures” (2004), demonstrates the power of a symbol and the meanings that it can carry. In the story, Daniel Barkley is a highly accomplished African American man who graduated from Brown and frequently plays guitar near the campus of The University of South Carolina. From the beginning of the story, Barkley exposes a distinct independent personality that isn’t afraid to break stereotypes or labels. The first scene describes an instance in a bar where white fraternity boys were challenging Barkley to play ‘Dixie’ for them. Instead of refusing, like most would have done, he instead begins to play and take ownership of the song. Later in the story, Barkley decides to purchase a truck with a giant confederate flag decal in the back. Despite the strange stares and confusion

A person cannot change their body; therefore, they cannot change the color of their skin. Trethewey uses phrases like “cold lips stitched shut”, “expression of grief”, “language of blood”, and “muck of ancestry” in order to describe the constant verbal abuse and ignorant insults she received due to the nature of her genetics. The words of the body, which describe her physical features, are paired with the negatively connotated words to compare racism in the 70s and 80s with current racism in America. In comparison, Trethewey dissects the issue of racism by describing the lack of monuments for black soldiers as disrespect. In the poem “Pilgrimage”, Trethewey describes the lack of memorials for the Native Guard in Mississippi as a clear sign of Southern racism. Mississippi is “a graveyard for skeletons of sunken riverboats”, “hollowed by a web of caves . . . like catacombs.” The city floods with the soldiers from the Civil War, but the bodies are “stone, white marble, on Confederate Avenue.” The soldiers honored in Mississippi are Confederate generals and colonels. Mississippi distinctly decided against recognizing and celebrating one of the first all-Black regiments for the Union, the Native

Throughout Tony Horwitz’s novel Confederates in the Attic an overarching theme of Southern Pride occurs. Tony gets first-hand experiences of what southern heritage means through a cross-country road trip visiting historic sights and meeting locals. Tony meets people from every walk of life and is open to their stories and historical information. He meets people who have been oppressed and the oppressors themselves. Many people show their pride through commemorating the past, in the south this often means commemorating the Civil War. Pride is coupled with the ways men and women choose to honor the Civil War, and the rift it has caused within racial tensions.

During the civil rights era in America’s history, racial segregation was at its peak. Regardless of the changes that were being made in favor of the African American population, racial tension, discrimination, and violence were still found among the people of America, specifically in the South. Within this time period, there were strict regulations on the African Americans and they had very limited rights. Many of them turned to writing to express the grief that accompanied the discrimination. According to the article “In Memoriam: Dudley Felker Randall (1914-2000)”, Dudley Randall was one of the notable African American poets that lived throughout this trying time in America’s history. His poem “Ballad of Birmingham,” written in 1969 expresses

The Civil War divided the United States, which most people try to forget. Although Americans would like to pretend that slavery and inequality never happened in the United States, the unjust actions continue as a part of history and are represented from “ the fields of cotton, hallowed ground- as slave legend goes-each boll holding the ghosts of generations” according to Trethewey’s poem “South” (45). Each boll holds a spirit which represents the black people who had to endure the hardships of slavery. Together they help create the United States historical identity. While she visited her parent’s home state of Mississippi, she visits museums about the civil war and stays in an old fashioned inn that had probably been around since the civil war. In her poem “Pilgrimage” Trethewey is deep in sleep at the inn “the ghost of history lies down beside me, rolls over, pins me beneath a heavy arm” (20). The ghost is trying to show Tretheway that she is a part of the history that she observed earlier in the day. Although she may sometimes try to hide that part of her identity, the ghost reminds her that she cannot hide from her family’s history in Mississippi. Ironically, in “Native Guard”, Trethewey uses the term “phantom

When discussing the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance, due to the strength of their relationship, one must look at Blues and Jazz. Many viewed this genre as a voice for the black communities and as “the New Negro poets expressed a deep pride in being Black” (Smith, 1983, p. 37) it is easy to see how this influenced their poetry. The main theme of Blues were the troubles of life and finding an escape, and this underlying dissatisfaction was incorporated into poetry as a response to many of the injustices present. For example, a clear example of this is Langston Hughes’ Homesick Blues which uses many of the key techniques from Blues songs, such as short lines to create urgency. The poem discusses the effect of prejudices and injustices on the black communities, especially when it comes to finding a home and an identity. There is a subtle, irregular rhyme scheme from words such as “sun… done” (Ramazani, 1994, pp. 152-3) which strengthens the influence. The dull, full rhymes create a sense of dissatisfaction and boredom, as if the speaker has given up on life. Hughes similarly uses many colloquialism and phonetics, which were common in Blues songs, such as “De Railroad Bridge/ a sad song in de air” (Ramazani, 1994, pp. 152-3), which furthers racial pride and identity, present in Blues and Harlem Renaissance poetry. However, perhaps the strongest example of how the Blues genre infl...

Many writers begin writing and showing literary talent when they are young. Paul Laurence Dunbar, born and raised in Dayton, Ohio, was already editor of a newspaper and had had two of his poems published in the local newspaper before he’d graduated from high school. His classmate, Orville Wright, printed The Tattler which Dunbar edited and published for the local African American community. After graduating from high school, he was forced to get a job as an elevator operator which allowed him spare time for writing. He finally gained recognition outside of Dayton when, in 1892, he was invited to address the Western Association of Writers and met James Newton Matthews who praised his work in a letter to an Illinois newspaper. In 1892, he decided to publish his first book of poems entitled Oak and Ivy and four years later his second book of poems Majors and Minors was published. People began to see him as a symbol for his race, and he was thought of artistically as “a happy-go-lucky, singing, shuffling, banjo-picking being… in a log cabin amid fields of cotton” (Dunbar, AAW 2). Dunbar’s poems, written alternately in literary and dialect English, are about love, death, music, laughter, human frailty, and though Dunbar tried to mute themes of social protest, social commentary on racial themes is present in his poetry.

...is presented in a way that “blacks or whites can draw admonition from the subject” (1) . Another perspective from Revell is that the poem presents itself in terms of passionate personal regret. Revell believes that Dunbar felt guilty because he allowed himself to be bound to the “ plantation lifestyle” (1). The plantation life style internal anguish and agony the blacks went through as slaves. Some blacks have moved on from it, but some continue to use slavery as an excuse to not progress in life. It should be noted that Revell draws the most attention to the middle of the poem. The poem itself is masked because it never specifically says who its linked too, even though most would infer that it is linked to the black race. Revell concludes that Dunbar left aside the preconceived image of what it meant to be black in America, and spoke “only from his heart” (1) .

“The real war will never get in the books” Walt Whitman, who had volunteered as a nurse in army hospitals, famously claimed in Specimen Days (1892) (Whitman). The American Civil War represents a decisive and far-reaching turning point in the development of the United States as a nation. But how much of the “real war” can actually be conveyed via literary narrative? The gruesome experiences of the soldiers and the aftermath of battle? What about the establishment of a national identity and the transformation or disintegration of national ideals and ideology? Writers such as Ambrose Bierce, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Francis Lieber, or Henry W. Bellows did attempt to provide representations of war experiences and provide interpretations of the conflict. Mid 19th-century American nationalism tended to employ literature as a means of sustaining national ideals, evoke patriotic feeling and provide meaning in the face of unprecedented human tragedies. A comparison between two essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne that appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in 1862 can provide an assessment of the role of literature during the war. These texts have been chosen not as a comprehensive representation of political, social or perhaps aesthetic attitudes regarding the Civil War and its meanings, but rather as an indication of the various, often contradictory, responses the war provoked. A close reading of the essays will enhance our understanding not only of public interpretations of the Northern war aims, but also the conflicting views on national promise and idealized hopes for the future along with the notion of national crisis – or a possible crisis in art and representation.

David Chinitz points out that Hughes was the first writer to “capture the quality of genuine blues in performance while [their] remaining effective as poems” (Chinitz, 177). Patterson noted that some have seen “paucity of meaning” in Hughes use of “simple form and language.” without realizing that “black poetry on the whole must be heard, rather than read silently, for one to realize its emotional scope.”

What This Cruel War Was Over evaluates the American Civil War through the eyes of both northern and southern soldiers. By examining the conflict through this lens, Chandra Manning delivers a narrative with intricacies that explore an in-depth perspective to a greater degree than other authors have in the past. Revealing how men thought about slavery and the Civil War frames her book, and the examples she utilizes to fulfill her goal in arguing her thesis conveys an original body of work. Additionally, several of the concepts established in the author’s book are also discussed through various methods in other books.

There was a time in which we were not slaves; that is not where our history begins. Before Africans were forced into slavery, we had a rich culture consisting of talented artists, musicians, dancers and most importantly storytellers. The storyteller or the griot is an African historian responsible for preserving the traditions of their people through historical narratives, praise songs and dances. Although the reciting of our stories began long ago, it wasn’t until the 18th century in which African American literature would be published. In the 1760’s, Phillis Wheatley, a young girl kidnapped from West Africa and enslaved by a Bostonian slave owner, published her first work of poetry at the age of 12. She didn’t typically write about slavery and racism, but her work reflected her life as an educated and privileged girl living in Boston. Literature from past to present often reflects the experiences we have encountered throughout history whether subliminal or intentional. The writings do not always reflect oppression and just like other cultures we have a myriad of stories to tell...

My 1st book of poetry – Good Times, published in 1969 was names as one of the 10 best books of the year by the New York times in 1969, and talked about the small joys of being an African-American family in poverty. In this selection, I had a special writing style, and I removed all punctuation and Capitalization from my poems while only using simple words and short phrases. I used this style to write my poems to focus the reader’s attention on the importance of the words that I used and their meaning.

Have you ever wondered how people felt and thought about the past generations? Well, James Weldon Johnson and Claude McKay wrote their own poems to express their feelings and knowledge. Johnson was inspired by African-Americans and their literary achievement. McKay dealt with racism and wrote his poem to refuse to die. In both poems, “My City” and “If We Must Die”, have several similarities and differences throughout, especially within the themes, literary devices, and author’s purpose.