Stereotypes Of African Americans In The 1900's

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Recommended: African American stereotypes in films today

During the late 1800’s and the early 1900’s, African Americans worked and fought to receive what they deserved, civil rights, political power and basically freedom from stereotypes. There were several leaders who helped forge the path to start the movement, including W.E.B Dubois, Oscar Micheaux, and Marcus Garvey. W.E.B Dubois was adamant on creating black culture without having a white culture influence. He believed that 1900 was a great time to reverse stereotypes against African Americans. Dubois also was a co-founder of the NAACP and a leader in the black literary movement. Oscar Micheaux used film to portray the brutality that whites had against blacks. Marcus Garvey led a movement to unite all blacks, regardless of where you are from, because they are all descendants of Africa. These people established 3 of the 5 social institutions, education through the literary movement, media through Oscar’s movies, and family through Garvey’s movement. With these social institutions being set up, it helped forge the path for Black Freedom. …show more content…

Race is a defining factor when one talks about culture. In the 1900’s, race would define someone before even talking to him or her, and it still does in modern society. Media portrayed blacks to be the lowest social class who were on welfare, or pictured a black individual heavily involved with drugs. Higginbotham had 3 interrelated strategies of understanding race; Define the construction and tech of race, expose the role of race as a metalanguage, and recognize race as providing sites of dialogic exchange and contestation. With these strategies, one could break down a culture and expose how race affects

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