Negro

A Negro spiritual is a type of religious song originating among Black slaves in the American south. They are African-American spirituals that emerged from a mixture of the brutal institution of slavery, Christian influences, and African culture. There was a joy of love, mercy, grace, judgment, etc. among the themes enfolded throughout the songs. The Negro spiritual that caught my attention would be “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands”. This song is simple but has a powerful truth. This song…

African American student ask me in Spanish class why Spanish uses the word “negro” for black. The first time this happened I remember the student insisting that “negro” was an English word and was used to identify her and her people, a.k.a African Americans. This was a teachable moment where I explained that during slavery, slave owners chose to identify slaves as separate beings from themselves so they were named "negros” or “darkies”, to identify them as somehow different if not lesser beings.…

Among one of his earliest empirical studies in sociology was The Philadelphia Negro, published in 1899. In this research, Du Bois studies the urban lifestyle in America. His is a classical work of urban ethnography and urban ecology. Other historians identify the work as a definitive study of racial relations at that time. In his letter of credentials, Du Bois revealed that he intended to conduct research on the living conditions and social setting of the colored people that lived in the Seventh…

about Daniel Patrick Moynihan and the life he lived. As an adviser to President Nixon, Moynihan promoted a guaranteed minimum income for all families, in part to help unravel the “tangle of pathology” he had famously diagnosed in his report on “The Negro Family” in 1969. He gave a speech calling for liberals and conservatives to unite “to preserve democratic institutions from the looming forces of the authoritarian left and right”, which landed him the job as Nixon’s advisor. Influenced greatly…

between being American and a Negro, describing it as “two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings”(p. 25). His wish is to have these two titles merge as one, not to assimilate to either individually, because by doing so cast out the other, but to become “both a Negro and an American” (p. 25). DuBois explains how slaves were so anxious for emancipation, very so that “few men ever worshipped freedom with half such questioning faith as did the American Negro” (p. 26). Though, after forty…

about the wages they were being paid. Not only were African Americans striking but also whites as well. Blacks came together to form a union called NNC (National Negro Congress). NNC goal was not only to make it where wages were equal but to also make it where whites respected blacks as workers and citizens. The Great Depression caused the negro cultural workers to work at starvation levels. Black men who obtained skilled work in the steel mills were at risk of losing their jobs to white men…

Carter G. Woodson was born on December 19, 1875 in New Canton, Virginia. He died at the age of 74 on April 3, 1950. In 1916, Woodson founded The Journal of Negro History. He also began the tradition of recognizing Black History Month, which started off as Negro History Week. Because he created this month, Carter received the nickname "The Father of Black History". While attending Kentucky’s Berea College in 1903, Carter earned an undergraduate degree. He also received another undergraduate…

the incorporation of Jim Crow throughout the course of this novel. Jim Crow is an unspoken system of laws and rules that cast discrimination upon blacks for the color of their skin. People thought these rules were needed because they felt that the Negros were not equal to the whites and that they needed to be kept in line. Some of these laws…

The film "The Negro Soldier 1944" contributes to the history and culture, in which the film makers aim was to influence African American men and women to help America in the war against Germany and Japan, at a time when the United States Army was still actively engaged in segregation in the military. The film starts out in a large church, the preacher talks about some of the achievements made by African American, like Joe Louis and Jesse Owens during the Olympic games in Berlin, and "Joe…

Set in the 1940’s, Toni Morrison’s novel “The Bluest Eye” is a tale of Pecola, a young Negro girl shunned by society for being ugly due to her skin colour and appearance. Morrison explores life in America during the late 60s and early 70s in which American culture was influenced predominantly by the white race. Using a creative approach, Toni Morrison explores the white ideal that the Negro population strives to attain to shed light on an arguably different kind of racism. Through the use of…