No one knows at this time why she changed her name to Henrietta later in life. She was born in Roanoke Virginia. Her family was extremely poor and life was not easy for the Lacks family. After, Henrietta’s mothers died while giving birth to her tenth child, the family then moved to a tobacco farm in Clover, Virginia. The children were then disbursed throughout the family and Henrietta was sent to live with her grandfather, Tommy Lacks, on the farm, who was caring at the time for her older cousin David Day Lacks.
The Black Arts Movement proved to be a very pivotal, and much needed moment in African-American literature to disrupt a past tradition of humble, prim, “decorous ambassadors” African-American novelist have been categorized as (Wright 1403). During the movement a shift occurred in the perspectives and understanding of African-American novelists and poets. The conscience of the those in literature seemed to have been awakened as they became aware of their social responsibility and influence in the African-American community. The range of the views held by those of the Black Arts Movement varied significantly from the social function of African-American art to a more narrow perspective of what it means to be a black individual and or writer. A great deal of the work created at this time was very opinionated and designed to empower and uplift African-Americans.
The Souls Of Black Folks by W. E. B. Du Bois The Souls of Black Folks by W. E. B. Du Bois is a text published to explain a series of events to inform many people about the many unexplainable ways of African Americans. This story is of the coming of the strong African American race . This story is the explanation of many not easily described discrepancies between African Americans and White Americans.
Over the course of the century chronicling the helm of slavery, the emancipation, and the push for civil, equal, and human rights, black literary scholars have pressed to have their voice heard in the midst a country that would dare classify a black as a second class citizen. Often, literary modes of communication were employed to accomplish just that. Black scholars used the often little education they received to produce a body of works that would seek to beckon the cause of freedom and help blacks tarry through the cruelties, inadequacies, and inconveniences of their oppressed condition. To capture the black experience in America was one of the sole aims of black literature. However, we as scholars of these bodies of works today are often unsure as to whether or not we can indeed coin the phrase “Black Literature” or, in this case, “Black poetry”.
The young girl then moved to Vicksburg to live with her sister Louvinia and to work as a housemaid. She worked hard from the time she was very young, was extremely poor, and had little opportunity to get an education. In order to escape the terrible environment created by Louvinia's husband, Sarah married Moses McWilliams when she was only fourteen years old. At eighteen she gave birth to a daughter she named Lelia. Two years later her husband died.
Teacher Anne Sullivan Macy By: Helen Keller Year of Publication: 1955 Anne Sullivan Macy Anne Sullivan Macy was born on April 4, 1866 in Feeding Hills, Massachusetts. Her parents were poor Irish immigrants. Anne had trouble with her eyes her whole life. When Anne was eight years old her mother died and two years later her father left. Anne’s younger sister went to live with relatives and Anne and her younger brother Jimmie were sent to the State Infirmary, the almshouse at Tewksbury.
Emily Bronte was born in Thornton on July 30, 1818 and later moved with her family to Haworth, an isolated village on the moors. Her mother, Maria Branwell, died when she was only three years old, leaving Emily and her five siblings, Maria, Elizabeth, and Charlotte, Anne, and Branwell to the care of the dead woman’s sister. Emily, Maria, Elizabeth, and Charlotte were sent to Cowan, a boarding school, in 1824. The next year while at school Maria and Elizabeth came home to die of tuberculosis, and the other two sisters were also sent home. Both spent the next six years at home, where they picked up what education they could.
She then had two younger sisters, Emily born in 1818 and the youngest Anne born in 1820. Just a year after they had moved to the Personage at Haworth in 1820 Charlotte’s mother died in 1821 and their mother’s sister Elizabeth Branwell came to live with them. The oldest child at this time was only seven years old and the six small children took comfort in each other. In July 1824 the two older girls, Maria and Elizabeth, were sent away to school at Cowen Bridge and Charlotte and Emily followed months later. The place was cold and damp and had been set up by a clergyman to provide cheap education to poor clergyman’s daughters.
Douglass born February, 1818 in Maryland was born into slavery than taken at a young age, from his mother to live with his maternal grandmother. At age seven he was sent with his master, Aaron Anthony, to Wye House plantation until Anthony’s death. Douglass was given to Lucretia Auld than to Auld’s brother in law, Hugh, in Baltimore. Auld’s wife taught Douglass alphabet. These similarities between the two are where the line is drawn after this the experiences they had with slavery were poles apart.
Andrew Jackson was born on March 15, 1767, in the Waxhaw settlement on the western frontier of South Carolina. He was born into a poor family. Jackson was the third child of Scotch-Irish parents. His father, who was also named Andrew, died in a logging accident just a few days before the birth of his third son and future president. After her husband’s death, Jackson’s mother, Elizabeth Hutchinson Jackson, raised her three sons at the home of one of her sisters.