Since the beginning of time, African Americans were seen as less than human. As time went on things changed. For example the Emancipation Proclamation, passed in 1863, declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free." Even after 100 years, things were not any better. Jim Crow Laws stopped the entrance of African Americans into classrooms, bathrooms, theaters, train cars, legislatures, and juries. The pressure of civil disobedience and nonviolent protests such as the Montgomery Boycott, the march from Selma to Birmingham, Freedom Summer, and many other pivotal events, the federal government was forced to make headway into a new social environment with the passing of the Voting Rights
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In the 1950s and 1960s, black women were fighting for more than their rights as African Americans, but also as women. They had to fight to be seen as equal to others of the opposite and the same race. Even though there was no recognition, it did not phase woman of color from making their mark as prominent as they could, Women such as activists, Dorothy Height and Anna Arnold Hedgeman, both National Council of Negro Women members who raised concerns regarding women's participation in the March with Bayard Rustin of SCLC (cds.library.brown.edu), actors with the like of Eartha Kitt, singers, Aretha Franklin and Nina Simone, and prolific writers like Phillis Wheatley and women who were all of these things like Maya Angelou, used their talents to bring light to women of color and the oppression that is faced by them on a daily basis. In the poem “Still I Rise”, Maya Angelou uses strong descriptive words, repetition, and the experiences of her life to encourage a message of hope in the lives of oppressed people that it is possible to be something more and to make a difference in the …show more content…
Louis, Missouri. At the age of three, her parents divorced and she was sent to live with her grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. Being in the south, she experienced the legal discrimination outside of the home and her own abuse on the inside of her home. When she was eight, she was molested by her mother’s boyfriend and was determined to keep it a secret, only confiding in her brother. When it was reveal to her family what had happened, her uncles beat the culprit to death. Frightened by the power of her own tongue, Angelou chose not to speak for the next five years (www.biography.com). Writing and recording poetry in the silence and privacy of her room. In 1940, she moved to Los Angeles with her mother and began dancing and auditioning for professional theater. Her dreams were halted by the pregnancy of her son and at the age of 16 she took on the life as a single mother. Angelou then moved to San Diego where she began working as a nightclub waitress, tangling with drugs, prostitution, and dancing and singing in a strip club where she got her stage name Maya Angelou. Although she started in the worst places you could imagine, she did not stay there. Her performing career flourished so much that she toured Europe with a production of the opera Porgy and Bess in 1954 and 1955. She studied modern dance with Martha Graham, danced with Alvin
In the 1950s and 1960s, black women were fighting for more than their rights as African Americans, but also as women. They had to fight to be seen as equal to others of the opposite and the same race. Even though there was no recognition, it did not phase woman of color from making their mark as prominent as they could, Women such as activists, Dorothy Height and Anna Arnold Hedgeman, both National Council of Negro Women members who raised concerns regarding women's participation in the March with Bayard Rustin of SCLC (cds.library.brown.edu), actors with the like of Eartha Kitt, singers, Aretha Franklin and Nina Simone, and prolific writers like Phillis Wheatley and women who were all of these things like Maya Angelou, used their talents to bring light to women of color and the oppression that is faced by them on a daily basis. In the poem “Still I Rise”, Maya Angelou uses strong descriptive words, repetition, and the experiences of her life to encourage a message of hope in the lives of oppressed people that it is possible to be something more and to make a difference in the …show more content…
Louis, Missouri. At the age of three, her parents divorced and she was sent to live with her grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. Being in the south, she experienced the legal discrimination outside of the home and her own abuse on the inside of her home. When she was eight, she was molested by her mother’s boyfriend and was determined to keep it a secret, only confiding in her brother. When it was reveal to her family what had happened, her uncles beat the culprit to death. Frightened by the power of her own tongue, Angelou chose not to speak for the next five years (www.biography.com). Writing and recording poetry in the silence and privacy of her room. In 1940, she moved to Los Angeles with her mother and began dancing and auditioning for professional theater. Her dreams were halted by the pregnancy of her son and at the age of 16 she took on the life as a single mother. Angelou then moved to San Diego where she began working as a nightclub waitress, tangling with drugs, prostitution, and dancing and singing in a strip club where she got her stage name Maya Angelou. Although she started in the worst places you could imagine, she did not stay there. Her performing career flourished so much that she toured Europe with a production of the opera Porgy and Bess in 1954 and 1955. She studied modern dance with Martha Graham, danced with Alvin