Overcoming Adversity In Margaret Walker's For My People

Margaret Walker’s “For My People” uses imagery to illustrate the possibility of an optimistic future for blacks in America; regardless of the adversity faced throughout the history of their existence in the United States. The poem is written in a free verse format with each stanza starting off with “for my people” alluding to blacks as the audience. The beginning of the poem reveals blacks in America as a group of people that survived a perilous time because they worked hard and latched on to religious faith. The overall theme of the poem suggests adversity occurs at different stages in a black persons’ life. However, blacks have found ways to overcome their adversity in order to find happiness. Walker alludes that blacks’ strength to overcome adversity is key in creating a new world. A world …show more content…
“For My People” has a reoccurring theme of blacks overcoming adversity. Overcoming adversity is also a common theme in Richard Wright’s “The Ethics of Jim Crow”. Walker’s poem and Wright’s autobiography exemplifies the notion that colored are victims to a system that constantly mistreats them. “For My People” demonstrates how colored people are victims of the system as early as childhood because at school children “discovered [they] were black and poor and small and different” (Walker, 320). The system used the school as institution to remind blacks that their lives were less valuable than their peers. This is also present in the “Ethics of Jim Crow” when the police officer assaults a colored woman and “pulled his gun and asked: Nigger, don’t yuh like it” (Wright, 139). According to the Pew Research Center, blacks have always been the victims of this system “from the courtroom to the classroom to the voting booth, blacks are consistently more likely than whites to say blacks in their community are treated less fairly by key institutions”