Scholar W.E.B. DuBois once said, “When you have mastered numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading books, you will be reading meanings” (Brainyquote). Learning was more than just reading numbers and books, it was about understanding them and being able to apply the knowledge that one gained from reading. As the co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored people and first African American to earn his Ph.D. from…
W.E.B. Du Bois was an American civil rights activist, sociologist, and scholar who dealt with sociological problems and events that proposed the issue of seeking equality between blacks and whites and justice for the African American race. He fought to enhance education, occupation and most of all freedom for blacks during his reign. The influence of the Plessy vs. Ferguson case inspired him to discuss racism in America. This case involved Mr. Homer Plessy, a man who appeared to be white, but…
spearheaded by Martin Luther King Jr., Ella Baker, and Malcolm X, was reaching its climax. However, in this state of metamorphosis the African-American faced another predicament. Acclaimed sociologist and civil rights activist W. E. B. Du Bois called this Double Consciousness. Du Bois was able to amalgamate Western European philosophy during his time studying in Berlin to identify this dilemma. He probed, “It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at…
Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun (1959) is set in Chicago’s Southside and many social issues of the 1950’s are the themes of this play. This essay is about one of the major themes in the play, racism, and how the Younger family, a poor black family, experienced and resisted the racism in their society. The members of the Younger family had to deal with discrimination in the housing industry, their home and their jobs. In, A Raisin in the Sun, the Younger family bought a house in a…
An Artists’ Influence Artists write about what they know; they pull feelings from their heart and their songs relay what the artists’ emotions, whether it be of their hometown, their high school crush, or their experiences. Many artists that came to fame during the twentieth century have a fair share of experiences they share with us in the form of their songs. The twentieth century is comprised of the institution of slavery and its effects, war, gender norms, discrimination based on nationality…
In the novel The Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison, the narrator is on a journey towards finding his identity as a black man in America at a time where black people were oppressed by whites, during the civil rights movement. This journey in the novel is one of education and development, we see how the narrator develops while trying to find his identity and how he deals with his experiences that affect him in different ways. The notion of invisibility and furthermore the motifs of blindness and…
Three Messages From Hughes Four Poems An Evaluation of Langston Hughes Rivers, Too, Dream, and Refugee A critical point in the history of the United States was a Harlem Renaissance, a birth of an outpouring of musical and writing skills, mainly among African Americans. This movement is believed to have had a significant impact on the acceptance of African Americans and their ideas and skills. Argued to be one of the most influential writers during this movement, was poet Langston Hughes. After…
Question 1: Hughes’ poems (1902-1967) do not just reveal the pain and suffering of his people but they also illustrate racial pride and dignity. Discuss this statement with reference to any four of his selected poems. Primarily recognized as a prominent literary figure during the Harlem Renaissance period, James Mercer Langston Hughes firmly believes that poetry should be direct and comprehensible as the messages in it could be explicitly conveyed to the readers. He became the voice of the…
Double-Consciousness The concept of “Double-Consciousness” is typically known for being a common experience among the black community in America. When broken down, double-consciousness can be explained as the feeling of one’s identity, but split into different parts, instead of one whole identity. Dubois’ explanation of this concept is “One ever feels his two-ness,--an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two reconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged…
In a time when African Americans lacked civil rights, W.E.B Dubois aimed to improve the lives of African Americans by giving readers more insight on these issues in his novel, The Souls of Black Folk. The book includes African American discrimination and events in history where discrimination took place from DuBois point of view. He believed that lack of civil rights ruined many people’s lives and the way to solve that was through education. Dubois was someone who tried to fix what was ruining…