Protest Poetry Essay

When examining modern music and poetry, there is a common theme between the two especially when adding in the element of protest poetry. Artists such as Beyonce and Kendrick Lamar more recently pushing for change and calling awareness to the issues surrounding their communities, very closely relates to the protest poetry written in the 20th century. They both have the same agenda and address the same issues even though the way and tone in which it’s delivered differs from one another. Poets Claude McKay , Margaret Walker and maya Angelou use their position as a writer to speak on issues with the system but not as bluntly because of the time period and censorship.
In Margaret Walker’s protest poem, “For My People” she speaks on the time were her people were slaves, “For my people everywhere singing their slave songs repeatedly...praying their prayers nightly to an unknown god, bending their knees humbly to an unseen power” but then goes on a the end of the poem to say, “Let the new earth rise. Let another be born. Let a bloody peace be written in the sky...Let a race of man now rise and take control” (Walker). Throughout her poem she talks about the injustices that were done to her people, from slavery to racism, but ends on a more hopeful not, to bring them up from the ground. When comparing this to Kendrick Lamar’s “ The Blacker the Berry” the theme between the two are very similar to one another. In one of the repeating versus the featured artist, Assassin asserts, “I said they treat me like a slave, came black...And man a say they put me in a chain, cah’ we black. Imagine now, big gold chain full of rocks How you see the whip, left scars pon’ me back, But now we have …show more content…
Protest poets specifically is closely similar to artists, such as Beyonce and Kendrick Lamar, now speaking on issues involving social change and the recognition of black people in