The New Negro

still noticeable at the end of this poem, by the description of a dream in which the race roles seem to have exchanged. Wealthy African-Americans are sitting on their verandas, watching white servants work in the cotton plantations. Furthermore the new political leaders are vigorously proclaimed:eventually even being capable of seizing power and reigning over the US. Beside of the African-American dream Hughes also presents the white nightmare, expressing the force emanating from the “Black…

In the book "Black Like Me", John Griffin experiences the society changes during the time he was black from the times when he was white. Griffin explains that while in New Orleans, he comes to realize the many social struggles that blacks have on an every day basis. These include finding a bathroom for people of color, walking down the street and hearing the word "nigger", or even getting refused to be served just because…

On September 9th, 2017 I saw the show “The Magic Negro and Other Blackness” performed by Mark Kendall. The show depicts the struggles of what black actors/actresses have to struggle with whether that be their history to getting parts in shows. Mark brought life to the show by making it humorous and adding a layer of making it somewhat comfortable for all audiences to experience and have a laugh. He also brought the audience closer by using the audience members to help him relay his message and…

career resurgence in the '80s. A staunch Civil Rights activist, she was known for tunes like "Mississippi Goddam". By the mid-1960s, Simone became known as the voice of the Civil Rights Movement. She wrote and sung a song named "Mississippi Goddam" at New York City’s Carnegie Hall in response to the 1963 assassination of Medgar Evers and the Birmingham church bombing that killed four young African-American girls. Listening to the song, it seems like Evers’s murder could have been a breaking…

The Possessive Investment in Whiteness will be used to show the racial oppression of African American females. Portrayed as sexual deviants, bad Black mothers, and drug addicted mothers that are punished by racist drug policies following the introduction of crack cocaine to inner-city communities. These racial policies of oppression imposed on African American women are documented in Dorothy E. Roberts’s “Punishing Drug Addicts Who Have Babies: Women of Color, Equality, and The Right of Privacy”…

and celebration. Because of this, a time of fun, art, and music was born; we call this era The Harlem Renaissance” (“African Americans in the Harlem Ren” 1). This movement took place during the 1920’s to the mid 30’s. Many black landed in Manhattan, New York around 1918. In the 1920’s, Harlem was ethnically intense with cultural empowerment that promoted artists, musicians, poets, and writers, just to name a few aptitudes. The Harlem Renaissance was…

The black man has rights and privileges in Mexico that the world must respect, and I will not clean my hands by accepting membership into that association which seeks to enslave my fellow man. I trust the American Negro will not weaken, but will fight for his rights until the judgment day. It is questionable whether Diaz uttered the statement above, or supported a judge’s decision to execute a white man for killing a black man. Both stories overlook important…

political and legal power where only held temporarily. New laws, such as the Mississippi Black Codes, promoted racial segregation and enforced a new labor system— specifically targeting freedmen, blacks, and mulattos—that was far worse than slavery was prior to the Civil War (Sage), (Blackmon). After the war, the Southern economy took a turn for the worst. Many cotton fields were…

a white woman has as much chance of being hit by lightning as she does being raped by a Negro. Nevertheless, the fear of Negro sexual predators was dominant amongst southern whites and was used for the justification of not allowing Negroes on beaches or anywhere near the proximity of a white woman. Whilst hitchhiking with a white man, which incidentally is something Williams states is too dangerous for a Negro to do, Griffin is pummeled about questions of his sex life. He is asked if he has been…

the late 1960s. During the mid-1900s came about companies that promoted positivity in the black community, especially advertising companies. A shift came during the 1940s and early 1950s, a few magazines became the hallmarks in the black community, Negro Digest (1942) Ebony magazine (1945) and JET magazine (1951). I remember growing up seeing these magazines piled up in black-owned establishments in the 1990s. These magazines were the pinnacle of "Black Love" or "Self-Love". They served a…