“Shall we beguile their limbs with mellow flute, / Not always bend to some more subtle brute; / We were not made eternally to weep.” (Cullen) A majority of the African American culture had been enslaved in the South until the Civil War. After the end of slavery, the emancipated group began to strive for political equality, beginning the first in a long series of events that would ultimately end in the Harlem Renaissance, the period of time when a large majority of African American’s moved to the urban areas of the Northeast and Midwest United States. From the very beginning there was a notable difference between the black neighborhoods and the white neighborhoods, and this difference sparked an incredulous influx of literature and art. This material was often times reflections of both universal human longings as well as direct portrayals of the African American Community. Gwendolyn Brooks’ text The Explorer and Robert Hayden’s text Frederick Douglass are reflections of both the archetypal idea of universal human want, and the social interpretation of strictly African American culture.
The social view of The Explorer allows for a very vast look into the lives of African American’s living in urban areas in the mid twentieth century. There was, and still is, a very distinct cultural separation between the lives of the colored and white communities within the United States. This separation is so great in fact, that the two communities lead lives that were almost polar opposites during this time period. Andrew Wiese describes this development best when he states “Race and class emerged in the form of devastating material and spatial inequality – differences marked on bodies and inscribed in the land: sun-leathered skin and bent postur...
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...something that will always remain an awful issue, it has paved the way for some absolutely incredible literature and art, which definitely displays the potential for change, someday, at least.
Works Cited
Cullen, Countee. "From the Dark Tower." Prentice-Hall Literature. the American Experience. Grade 11. Comp. Prentice-Hall Literature. 2nd ed. N.p.: Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 2002. 926. Print.
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999. Print.
Hanh, Thích. The Art of Power. New York: HarperOne, 2007. Print.
Hughes, Langston. "Refugee in America." Prentice-Hall Literature. the American Experience. Grade 11. Comp. Prentice-Hall Literature. 2nd ed. N.p.: Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 2002. 907. Print.
Wiese, Andrew. Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2004. Print.
There has been much debate over the Negro during the Harlem Renaissance. Two philosophers have created their own interpretations of the Negro during this Period. In Alain Locke’s essay, The New Negro, he distinguishes the difference of the “old” and “new” Negro, while in Langston Hughes essay, When the Negro Was in Vogue, looks at the circumstances of the “new” Negro from a more critical perspective.
Harlem soon became known as the “capital of black America” as the amount of blacks in this community was very substantial. Many of the inhabitants of this area were artists, entrepreneurs and black advocates with the urge to showcase their abilities and talents. The ...
Hines, Ellen, and Hines, William, and Stanley, Harrold. The African American Odyssey. Fifth Edition. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2008. Print.
Boston: G.K. Hall, 1999. Foner, Philip S. The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, Volume II Pre-Civil War Decade. 1850 - 1860 -. NY: International Publishers Co., Inc., 1950.
The city is best known for its large size, population, and diversity of businesses, ideas, and peoples. Various factors, such as the impact of industrialization and the emergence of new technologies, as well as the impact of various social and political movements throughout US history have augmented these three factors, with the scale, population, and diversity of the American city even larger than before. In their respective works The Souls of Black Folk and The Cosmopolitan Canopy, W.E.B. DuBois and Elijah Anderson address the issue of interracial interactions in the city, and their implications on the development of equity and civility. In both The Souls of Black Folk and The Cosmopolitan Canopy, DuBois and Anderson agree that the creation
I am going to focus on the narratives of Frederick Douglass and Linda Brent as examples of a refusal of racial ideologies and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin as an example of replicating (although attempting to refute) racial ideologies of the day. Douglass’s Narrative and Brent’s Incidents follow them from ignorance to knowledge; knowledge and freedom gained through their own doing. I think that Stowe is in a way both trying to write an anti-slavery novel, however, I can’t see her as anti-racist because Romantic Racialism is what grounds her arguments. In all three, I am going to prove that the relationship between and the representations of the body and the mind are what either refuse or support racial ideologies of the nineteenth century.
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The African-American Years: Chronologies of American History and Experience. Ed. Gabriel Burns Stepto. New York: Charles Scribner 's Sons, 2003.
The downgrading of African Americans to certain neighborhoods continues today. The phrase of a not interested neighborhood followed by a shift in the urban community and disturbance of the minority has made it hard for African Americans to launch themselves, have fairness, and try to break out into a housing neighborhood. If they have a reason to relocate, Caucasians who support open housing laws, but become uncomfortable and relocate if they are contact with a rise of the African American population in their own neighborhood most likely, settle the neighborhoods they have transfer. This motion creates a tremendously increase of an African American neighborhood, and then shift in the urban community begins an alternative. All of these slight prejudiced procedures leave a metropolitan African American population with few options. It forces them to remain in non-advanced neighborhoods with rising crime, gang activity, and...
In the short story “Everyday Use,” Alice Walker explored the results of the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation in African American society during the early 1900s. The “Reconstruction Era” marked a time when the United States, especially African American sects, sought to start over again from the aftermath (PBS, 2004). In the allegorical short story, Dee, or “Wangero,” watches the old family dwelling burn until the last dingy gray board lay in ruin--she showed relief (Walker, 1337).
Many African American men and women have been characterized as a group of significant individuals who help to exemplify the importance of the black community. They have illustrated their optimistic views and aspects in a various amount of ways contributing to the reconstruction of African Americans with desire and integrity. Though many allegations may have derived against a large amount of these individuals, Crystal Bird Fauset, Jacob Lawrence, and Mary Lucinda Dawson opportunistic actions conveys their demonstration to improve not only themselves but also their ancestors too. Throughout their marvelous journeys, they intend to garnish economic, political, and social conditions with dignity and devotion while witnessing the rise of African Americans. The objective of this research paper is to demonstrate the lives of a selected group of African American people and their attributions to the black community.
The influence of Fredrick Douglass and his struggle for emancipation will always be a source of inspiration. Douglass’ history, as articulated in The Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, has a remained an influential element on those seeking liberation from oppression and has maintained a tangible position in African-American popular culture. Douglass demonstrates the availability of counter hegemonic ideologies but also provides a guide to achieving corporeal and racial agency. For Douglass, one avenue of liberation was reading. While a close reading of his narrative also suggests music was a fundamental component of his circumstances.
Analyzing the narrative of Harriet Jacobs through the lens of The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du bois provides an insight into two periods of 19th century American history--the peak of slavery in the South and Reconstruction--and how the former influenced the attitudes present in the latter. The Reconstruction period features Negro men and women desperately trying to distance themselves from a past of brutal hardships that tainted their souls and livelihoods. W.E.B. Du bois addresses the black man 's hesitating, powerless, and self-deprecating nature and the narrative of Harriet Jacobs demonstrates that the institution of slavery was instrumental in fostering this attitude.
The Harlem Renaissance refers to a prolific period of unique works of African-American expression from about the end of World War I to the beginning of the Great Depression. Although it is most commonly associated with the literary works produced during those years, the Harlem Renaissance was much more than a literary movement; similarly, it was not simply a reaction against and criticism of racism. The Harlem Renaissance inspired, cultivated, and, most importantly, legitimated the very idea of an African-American cultural consciousness. Concerned with a wide range of issues and possessing different interpretations and solutions of these issues affecting the Black population, the writers, artists, performers and musicians of the Harlem Renaissance had one important commonality: "they dealt with Black life from a Black perspective." This included the use of Black folklore in fiction, the use of African-inspired iconography in visual arts, and the introduction of jazz to the North.[i] In order to fully understand the lasting legacies of the Harlem Renaissance, it is important to examine the key events that led to its beginnings as well as the diversity of influences that flourished during its time.
Writing around the same time period as Phillips, though from the obverse vantage, was Richard Wright. Wright’s essay, “The Inheritors of Slavery,” was not presented at the American Historical Society’s annual meeting. His piece is not festooned with foot-notes or carefully sourced. It was written only about a decade after Phillips’s, and meant to be published as a complement to a series of Farm Credit Administration photographs of black Americans. Wright was not an academic writing for an audience of his peers; he was a novelist acceding to a request from a publisher. His essay is naturally of a more literary bent than Phillips’s, and, because he was a black man writing ...