The Explorer By Gwendolyn Brooks Summary

In the mid twentieth century America went through a time of civil inequality. This inequality was aimed mostly towards the African Americans or blacks. There were boycotts, sit in’s, and protests left and right. One exemplary example of this was a woman by the name of Rosa Parks who refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white person. Another person who is recognized greatly is Martin Luther King Jr. He was a man of vision; his vision was a world in which blacks and whites can live together in peace without color coordinated water fountains and bathrooms. Henry David Thoreau once said, “The greatest country, the richest country, is not that which has the most capitalists, monopolists, immense grabbings, vast fortunes, with its sad, sad soil of extreme, degrading, damning poverty, but the land in which there are the most homesteads, freeholds — where wealth does not show such contrasts high and low, where all men have enough — a modest living— and no man is made possessor beyond the sane and beautiful necessities.” Many authors also had their moment of fame during this time as well. The Explorer by Gwendolyn Brooks and Fredrick Douglas by Robert Hayden convey certain messages of African American struggles and also a universal human longing. To begin, The Explorer by Gwendolyn Brooks conveys a certain image of black suffrage. For example …show more content…
Two different authors with their only similarity being the time they grew up in wrote such radical pieces that mean so much and beg for a change. This change that they want is very simple and practical. It can be as simple as taking down the sign that separates their seats and water. Nothing more than what most people had, and yet many opposed to give them that. Segregation was a dark and scary time for our country. Yet, it is still a problem in modern times about sixty years