AA Lit Exam 1
Some view our sable race with scornful eye, "Their colour is a diabolic die." Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain, May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.
"On Being Brought from Africa to America" by Phillis Wheatley · Speaks of her own enslavement and where she came from · Has many white male signatures in the Front Matter, ALSO she loops Christians and Negroes in to the same boat
Jim Crow stereotype
"slow" plantation stereotype jim crow laws: separate but equal status.
Douglass description of slavery vs. Jacobs -how does Jacobs describe her loss of innocence?
- 6 y/o lost mother - 12 y/o mistress died -15th year- sad epoch- fail things, masters sexual desires -slowly coming to realize that she doesn't have same protection from sexual assault loses faith about protection -patriarchal idea- protection from sexual assault doesn't have privilege or protection that's why she can't live the same life as those white north Christian women. Raised w/ Christian values- diff legal protection- Grandma- values -Quartering their sympathies
Phase 1: loss of innocence (Douglass)
- dehumanization -privilege to know their own age - whites felt threatened -not allowed to have education treated like a horse not a human -an affect of psychological violence- identity withheld- keeping them subdue -physical violence -black repetition- whip, no words, no tears, screamed, whip, remembering it, witnessing it, red, blood, gory, blood-clotted cow-skin, blood stained gate. Witness= participant- didn't stop it Readers= witnesses and participants- act upon change by using power.
social constructionism
- no such thing as essence -nurture, how raised, where raised - Belief that race is: --fluid --impermanent --relational -constructed by society and social reality -benefits whites -stuck with it affects daily life -reaches out socially
"To a Dark Girl" Gwendolyn Bennett
- peer of Hughes -young generation -Harlem Renaissance -older- gaining respect of white audiences -Wayward- willful, disobedient, lither- flexible, graceful -abandon: lack of inhibition or restraint -word choice and form (rhythm, rhyme, stanza breaks, punctuation -queen is not a savage, walks gracefully, not summoned to anyone, obedience broken, admiring body, not lustful, both beautiful inside and out -not jazz -addressing AA female -speaker unknown
Jacobs description vs. Douglass -how does Jacobs describe her resolution to be free?
- told she was master's property - where could she turn to protection? -can't defeat master- made plunge into abyss -protects herself from rape by giving consent- not a morally virtuous trait -her children put their power stronger hold on her- she decided to leave them -protecting seual autonomy and protecting children -only stays in slavery to protect her children -guilty to protect a basic right that should already be protected
Folklore & Ethnic Notions (film watched in class):
-1987 documentary film directed by Marlon Riggs -examines anti-Black stereotypes that permeated popular culture from the ante-bellum period until the advent of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s -takes viewers on a disturbing voyage through American history, tracing for the deep-rooted stereotypes which have fueled anti-Black prejudice→ shows evolution of racial consciousness in the US -exposes and describes common stereotypes→ cartoons, feature films, popular songs, minstrel shows, advertisements, folklore, household artifacts, even children's rhymes
why a ballad for "incident"?
-ABCD -8 syllable lines -shock value -narrating what it feels like -more effective -exposing the word attached to a memory and incident
SJT pseudonym
-Linda Brent -a ficticous name for author of incidents -narrator of incidents -main character of incidents -preface by author- is not fiction- considerate- giving other people fake names to protect them. People assumed the story was fiction but uncovered by researchers. -narrators aren't the same as the authors.
frame narrative
-SJT speech- identity. Embedded in middle- Gage's description of the event. Told for entertainment of whites. -Brer rabbit/Tar baby- frame impacts the story- Uncle Remus frames story.
Du Bois "of Mr. Booker T. Washington"
-Washington is compromising: wants white support, political power, insistence on civil rights, higher ed of negro youth-- results were disenfranchisement of the negro, legal creation of distinct statues of civil inferiority for negros -steady withdrawal of aid from institutions for higher training.
To Washington: education and jobs in exchange for subservience, segregation, and disenfranchisement
-a job> any job, higher class, higher ed -opera house segregated, that's fine, we want to get some power and prepare to exercise these privileges- don't ask yet until you can exercise. -not ready for freedom yet- they need to work their way up from the bottom before demanding -to get little and to earn place and privileges- they have to first show they are loyal
Ida B. Wells
-an extralegal criminalization of blackness - 4,000 AA lynched- 200 per year -white power- no questions -needs to be stamped down- racial hysteria, criminals, birth of a nation.
younger poets 1926 Fire!!!
-burn up old, dead, conventional negro -published work without cultural recognition -artists provided an outlet for publication -didn't want white standards -older worried about reputation and bad stereotypes -challenging sexual constraints of whites
cult of true womanhood
-idea about womanhood- standards -women should be pure, pieous, religious, domestic, and submissive to males. --Jacobs says this is only for white women. blacks don't have the same rights as women- they have more privileges. Ex: you can't judge Jacob's purity when white men exploit them.
Atlanta Compromise controlling metaphor -Booker T/Washington -Cast your bucket down
-cast your bucket down where you are -put down ego and pride- both whites and blacks need help -2 different audiences -both what they need to do -black community can provide wealth and resources and so can whites- mutual benefits. -blacks are bettering their condition in a foreign land , stay here with whites and cultivate friendly relations. Vocational jobs set your sites lower. That's where oppourtunities are. -don't hire white workers because they will demand better pay- hire blacks and they are good at working and have been slaves. -casting down aspirations -playing idea immigrants/foreigners are weird- just take blacks -playing into their fears -you want loyal sambos what you had before- willingly do what used to do- will be a loyal, happy, worker. -opportunity to work is better than desegregation.
Ida B Wells: A Red Record (1895)
-crime to not have jobs -not giving people jobs- arresting AA -prison populations- rented on cheap labor becomes a source of profit for the state, lynching is not invoked to punish crime but color -educated white power belie the record- higher education- lying about blacks in leadership and power -blacks need to have a voice- whites should not be talking for them
Langston Hughes poem: "I too" NOT A SONNET.
-free verse and jazz -no consistent rhyme -rhythm -stanza or line length; modernist movement- challenging poetic forms
can't force people to have social interactions
-natural/social diff- cannot separate property& privilege -right of action or of inheritance is property -plessy not lawfully entitled to reputation of being a white man -legal distinctions of who's white and who's black.
Du Bois: The Veil -controlling metaphor
-not a slave but a loss of innocence -becoming aware he is black -being a "problem" -major crisis= racial divide and how to deal with it -he is the problem- blaming shift-turning the tables on race problem- they make black people the problem. Problem of the color line- segregation. -white girl refuses his card with a glance- she doesn't have to say anything and he knows.
Dunbar: Debating dialet
-poems about equal measure -debating dialect- majors and minors -standard verse- not especially notable- Howells -humor and dialect poems- vistas into the simple joyous nature of his race (Howells)- Sambo stereotype -Johnson- write dialect- way of getting audience/published- giving people what they want
New women
-rejects cult of true womanhood- desire for economic, social, sexual, political independence -suffrage movement -rise of drinking, smoking, sex-having, short skirt wearing, jazz playing women
Claude Mckay 1919 "The White House"
-shakespearean sonnet -14 lines -"ABAB CDCD EFEF GG" - volta-turning point before 3rd quatrain or before couplet "Oh"- experience internally -inviolate free, safe from injury, violation
Niagara, NAACP, WEB Dubois
-shifts problem whites don't have to share blacks have to earn privileges -pessimistic spectators
Ida B. Wells- Niagra
-whites will never say blacks earned it -proven yourself only servants can enter a white car -afford it and can't even enter it. whites don't want blacks to have any higher power.
Four Phases of a slave narrative
1. loss of innocence, dehumanization 2. resolve to free oneself 3. pivotal moment, escape 4. success, join cause for abolition
Historical contexts: 13th, 14th & 15th Amendments, Reconstruction, Nadir, Jim Crow, Dyer Bill, Plessy vs. Ferguson
13th: abolition of slavery 14th: Equal protection 15th:Voting Rights
what is a white man
1910 1/4; 1910 1/16th; 1924 no trace whatsoever only caucasian blood more restricted definitions of what is white- clear privilege attached to white skin- Charles Chesnut classified himself black/self-identified as black.
Dyer Bill
1918 anti-lynching measure sponsored by Leonidas Dyers a bill introduced in 1922 that wanted lynching to be a federal crime but was unable to be passed due to Southern Democrats filibustering it
cultural pluralism
2 cultural products to suggest this idea claiming both are at the same level of importance- minority groups participate fully in the dominant society, yet maintain their cultural differences. -minority should have some rights -recognition: acknowledgement of something, someone's existence, validity, or legality. -co-worker in kingdom of culture -not giving up either identities.
fugitive slave
A law that made it a crime to help runaway slaves; allowed for the arrest of escaped slaves in areas where slavery was illegal and required their return to slaveholders
refrain
A line or set of lines repeated several times over the course of a poem. Repeated at intervals for emphasis -AABBA; AABc; AABBAc- slant rhyme
Atlanta Compromise
An 1895 address by Booker T. Washington that urged whites and African Americans to work together for the progress of all. Delivered at the Cotton States Exposition in Atlanta, the speech was widely interpreted as approving racial segregation.
Euphemism
An indirect, less offensive way of saying something that is considered unpleasant -a word or phrase open to 2 different ways of interpreting -thinking still too indecent for the older generations- more risque
Joel Chandler Harris
Author of Uncle Remus, which portrayed the slave society of the antebellum years as a harmonious world marketed by engaging dialect and close emotional bonds between the races. Wonderful Tar Baby Story.
Julius Lester
Brer rabbit tricks Brer Fox Again -difference in dialect Joel- stronger dialect how black speech is written. Pioneers dialect exaggerated way of fundamental difference between white and black speech- saying he is uneducated and lesser than white frame of story changed exploitation- packaging AA up for his own profit. Remus has nothing but pleasant memories of the discipline of slavery. Expression of nostalgia of slavery.
connections to we wear the mask
Douglass- singing and imagine happiness lies Washington- love doing stuff for whites=lie Folktales- trickster figure- power of the mask- we sounds like WEB Du Bois (veil)
Definition and examples of a trickster figure
Enslaved man subversing white power (master)- master sees him as an idiot -believing they are dumb and just pla fool v. being fooled- Deer Hunting story (1935) -enslaved man and master- wants him to kill a deer- deer goes by and he does nothing. All he saw was "a white man with chairs on his head" -white man thinks he's too stupid to k now what a deer is -mercy on the deer- refusal= disobeyal- defiance without getting reprimanded -Bre'er Rabbit (weak)- animals and characters weak but somehow succeed in getting best of powerful adversaries- weak/trickster making fool of lions - takes entail humerous/serious subversion of white power yielded over AA preserved orally
Douglass reading the front piece.
Famous white authors- an illustration/portrait- authenticate writer of texts with real experiences of slavery. -William Lloyd Garrison- white abolitionist Douglass apologizeing for himself and his 'ignorance'. white man saying he's great- refuting common image- narrating transition. Defensive white leader - threat to white power. Appease eloquent but slightly subservient reassuring that Douglass is not a threat- soften the blow.
Phyllis Wheatley
First published African-American female poet. She learned English and Latin- poetry while enslaved her audience has a deeply held stereotype that AA are stupid no one believed it was possible- read to see if it was true. TJ said blacks can mimic but they are not capable of art like the whites- not a threat to whites.
Great Migration
Movement of African Americans from the South to the North for jobs 1.6 million. -contributing factors: violence, disenfranchisement, decreasing agricultural work, Increasing industrial demand, encouragement from black press and black intelligentsia
Richard Bruce Nugent
Smoke, Lilies, and Jade -gay sex -queer community -visible Harlem Renaissance was just as gay as it was black
Primitivism
The doctrine that supposedly primitive peoples- because they had remained closer to nature and had been less subject to the influences of society- were nobler than civilized peoples.
addressee
The primary audience for poem's speaker -public address- public/private prayer -poem for insiders- feeling of community
Archetype
Typical character seems to represent universal patterns/template for writers to draw on- models transformed
Blackface Minstrelsy
Whites put makeup on their faces and body and perform and use dialect to mock and make stay in place "blackness" - 1820s-mid 20th century. Visible scars of slavery- dehumanizing.
Jacobs describes her escape as
a perilous passage- submitting to sexual and immoral affair- more freedom, she got to choose something. Coerced choice. The loophole of retreat: oppressive, humble, dark, cramped, chose this rather than being a slave- loophold retreat escape/evasion. She hid in her attic for 7 years Preparations for escape: even with blessed prospect of freedom- sad leaving grandma and kids Free at last- bill of sale- words struck her like a blow- sold at last to NY. Not really freedom- she can't have her family. Shouldn't have to be bought to be free. In order to be free she had to admit she was property. Dream isn't realized- still no property, no money, constraint on freedom. Still is dependent on Mrs. Bruce- bound, serving, kept- economically dependent.
epigraphs
a short quotation or saying at the beginning of a book or chapter, intended to suggest its theme
Du Bois
advocates for common schools and training but insists demand to train best of the youth to be leaders, teachers, and professionals. Training in higher ed- values education as a pathway to greater freedom but defines differently. --more radical --right to vote --civic equality --education of youth according to ability not going to get rights eventually if you don't fight for them.
Modernism
aesthetic reaction -a self-conscious starting fresh- break with traditional aesthetic styles and forms -free verse, jazz, poetry
prefaces
an introduction to a book
Jezebel stereotype
animal-like sexuality, promiscuous, seductive, manipulative, untrustworthy. -what interest do they serve? --black women opposite to white women- can't exist in white society b/c of diff values- shifts blame to black women about sexually luring white men.
dedication
author states in honor of whom book was written
Harlem Renaissance
new negro movement 1917-1935 Northern cities- sites of black artistic production. -NY, Harlem, Chicago, Detroit, Washington, Baltimore -aims to uplift race through art -music/jazz/blues- writing poetry/fiction/drama -visual and performing arts
Mammy stereotype
defends slavery: fat, black, happily obedient to whites, singing, loyal, protective of big house, antithesis of white women -bandana, stripped of sexual attention -controller, women strong, asexual, ugly, overweight, loyal to white homes, domineering in relation to black men
Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric
dehumanized, perpetuates violence, circulation, gesture of respect, images made by people attended, trophies, souvenirs, postcards, evidence of white political power. Can do whatever to blacks anti-lynching articles- torturing looking at articles
Invocation 1929
dirtier than you expect -use of death and love way -out of womanhood -sex out of marriage -gets portrayed like scarlet letter -embrace of metaphor bring it on -brief loss of consciousness- orgasm
Washington and the Tuskegee Institute
enormous effort to open schools for free blacks -Hampton Institute in VA- 1881- vocational school in AL. trains students to enter a 2,000 a year labor market/trade (not higher ed skills) fundraising efforts with white philanthropists. 2 million free, but still dependent financially on whites.
pluralist
equal but different -not true, imagined Western countries were more evolved -primitive is a threat to west -art history/Picasso savage -Africa still imagined as a sacred place- inspired -"to be" the primitive subject AA artists found themselves to be getting in touch with savage roots -love Africa but you are still lower
Essentialism
essence is prior to existence and experience -nature -biology and social environment -fixed -permanent -stable -biological reality -Africa fixed in his blood relationship -skill analysis and characteristics ideas strongly held
Intersectionality
examines how race, gender, class, and nationality mutually construct one another -experiences shape one another. -each street is apart of one's identity. (accident- when there is oppression or harm or violence; traffic= discrimination)
Double Consciousness (DuBois)
experience of knowing two worlds at once; the dominant culture and the minority one- one being American an one being African American- two identities. A gift- gifted with a second sight. Sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others -twoness: an American and a negro. national identity- American- wants to be a part of democracy- but being black pushes to second class.
Freedom vs. agency
freedom: the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice/action. agency: one's independent capability or ability to act on one's will. When does she become free? When does she exert her own agency? Ex: she sleeps with her master Mr.Sands to avoid being raped by Mr.Flint? When she hides in the attic? When she travels by boat to the north? when freedom is bought for her?
allusion
passing reference or indirect mention to a subject matter
"Sambo" stereotype
happy laughing black man- fine with institution on slavery- loves it.
Frontmatter
hiding identity- no image and authenticity
frontispieces
illustration facing title page- portrait
Zip Coon stereotype
image of free black man trying to imitate the whites. Won't perform acceptably.
Counter Cullen
incident: an occurrence often unpleasant; a minor event connected to something big and more important -ballad -ABCB -like a nursery rhyme -old v. child self -gaining understanding and second sight. only memory remains -8 y/o called n-word - means everything about future- insecurities
constraint/fear your of consequences
lie in order to not get physically hurt, lying in order to get a job. -desire to say something that would cement a friendship -saying something to get white benefits
To washington cont'd
lift people up and out of slavery -agitation of questions, of social equality, progress and enjoyment will come- must be a result of constant struggle rather than artificial forcing. -stay in place, kind, work hard,
phase 2: resolve to free oneself -psych and physical
literacy as freedom -teach to read- would unfit him to be a slave- they can't have this skill- get what they're denied of willing to die in order to be free, resistance with words blows or both- calling upon Americans to no longer endure. Abolitionist movement- civil war. He's committed to bring an end to slavery. --Force as freedom: battle with Mr.Covey. Turning point, rekindled expiring embers of freedom- own manhood.
stream-of-conciousness technique
literary style associated with modernism -in which characters thoughts/feelings depicted in unintempted often unorganized and unpunctuated flow of words -fully represent interior life
How do they feel about Mr.Ryder?
looked like old plantation life- sees through lens of blackface
Phase 3: the success of the escape/the actual escape
most dramatic- doesn't say how he got out- not to state all facts -slavery still exists in narrative- doesn't tell facts so escape route won't be shot down protect actual people who helped. -slaveholders= ignorant of the means adopted by a slave -refusal to tell who helped him escape= he is alone responsible- protecting other people 1881- Good luck rather than bravery -friends- fake ID- conductor not good at spotting- in order escape- has to be willing to die and leave behind everyone he knew choice due to pure luck.
old negro
myth, stock figure, historical fiction, something kept down, protective, social mimicry, forced upon adverse circumstances of dependence -sambo stereotype/mask- image/fantasy had to live under
The wife of His youth 1899
narrator- what is a black man? blue veins? how do we know? establish/maintain social standards among a people whose social condition was exclusive- only light-skins welcome to -"though possessing a longer/more pretentious name they think too highly of themselves using own language against them". criticizing/sarcastic
dialect- robinson anti-slavery bugle vs. Gage Narrative of Sojourner Truth
news, given closer to date/proximity, closer to what happened. How do you remember 12 years before? wants to get attention. Early years- low old- learned English at 7 Southern dialcet- taking unfair advantage of her and exaggerate her expressions- SJT was actually dutch. --why Gage version? Expected and feels right- engrained- stereotype of Southern accent widely accepted a story within a story- frame/outside describes/draws attention to moment of narrating, speaking, writing, or remembering.
"How it feels to be colored me" Zora Neale Hurston
not a tragedy to be colored -no separate feeling about being an American citizen and colored- too bad for you- you are missing out -"I too" is similar -double-consciousness -done with feeling less than
frontispiece: (which texts use them, who wrote them, why)
portraits of author present -Douglass- most photographed- 160 unique portraits.
Brute Stereotype- post-slavery
power- saying offense/criminals- get away with it. Acceptable methods of social control because animalistic justifies violence against black people. -serves previous slave owners -uncontrolled, savage, wild. -inventing the excuse of black rapist- race outlaws
colorism
prejudicial or preferential treatment of same race people based solely on their color.
criminalization
preserving white supremacy and white power raised to be terrified of blacks. Used woman as an excuse for lynching. They made it a crime to not have a job so many AA's went to jail. Prison populations rented on cheap labor- educated whites belie the record- higher ed- lying about blacks in leadership in power. --blacks need a voice- whites cannot be their voice.
epigraph
quotation that suggests theme of book -Brown Madonna dedication- whites need know a black person actually wrote the book
nadir
retaliation (1878-1915) lowest point- what's lower than slavery? poll taxes, literacy tests, intimidation, disenfranchise voters.
Speaker/Voice/Persona
role or voice assumed by poet in a given poem - the "I" or "we" -project fictional space we=AA; wearing mask of stereotypes
new negro
shaking off psych of limitation and implied inferiority. Self-expression and self-determination moving forward under control- largely his own objectives- taking mask/veil off being who they really are- cultural identity -develop an image for yourself -agency-deciding for yourself
The veil
shut off/ and out from their world by a vast veil- racial identity. Color is only on the surface, covers up who he really is. -legal boundary -one way to look- no one can see in -isolation feeling -seeing all of the stereotypes -attached to the veil- two identities
Historical contexts: Cult of True Womanhood, Fugitive Slave Laws, Prefaces, epigraphs, frontispieces (which texts use them, who wrote them, why)Four phases of the slave narrative; literacy vs. force; freedom vs. agency
slave narratives
Reading word choice and punctuation
slavery good- saving souls- Christian. endorsing view that Africa is filled with barbaric heathens- moral, ignorance, darkness. sable= color black, valuable fir, quality- many commas to change meaning. Christians and negroes are both grouped- both are sinners. Went along with stereotypes to get published, risky critique, ambiguity- plausible deniability. Legible to two different audiences Trickster- loyal happy slave but actually subversive.
How it feels to be colored me
social constructionism -depends on social context and environment -tempural- sometimes I feel black and sometimes I don't -sharp white background, primitive fury, jungle, performing to certain ideas - even when moving to social change we have lived with the idea of racial difference for so long -little girl- realizing racism
jazz
subset of free verse- uses repetition developed by AA- Hughes mimics sounds of jazz -unexpected/off -beat rhythms -feel of improv -effort to reclaim heritage -honor artistic output -allusion- indirect references to another work- famous wait whitman poem "I Hear America Singing" written in response to all white poem- I am American
Ellipsis
three periods (...) indicating the omission of words in a thought or quotation -ambiguity -interior life - indicates something left unsaid -up for the reader to decide what it is- ambiguity
Rondeau form
three stanza poems with only 2 end rhymes. where the opening line becomes the refrain
Shakespearean sonnet
unstressed, stressed, penta: five; 14 lines; 3 quatrains (4 lines), 1 couplet 2 lines
spectacle
unusual, impressive, shocking public display (or entertainment) attached to violence
witnessing
to see an event or crime and be able to say legally/publicly that it happened -white bond- community= spectacle -saying crime is committed- can testify it happened- walter white NAACP- legislation to stop: witness -white power, black degradation, supremacy people never pause to find out about lives of those who were lynched desensitize/dehumanization -defense/evidence -numbing to spectacle of black death
controlling metaphor wearing the mask
wearing mask of stereotypes (Ex: sambo- grin, lies, hides cheeks and eyes).
Emphasis on people/crowd in lynching photo
who did it not the people killed but the people who committed their crime normal photo- they look happy pointing up bonding with each other- increasingly horrified
Stereotype (Richard Dyer definition)
widely held, fixed, oversimplified image, idea of particular type of person or thing- people who have less power -role of stereotypes: ordering/understanding short-cut that expresses our value/beliefs -who controls and defines? -what interests do they serve?
Sojourner Truth Speech
women's rights convention, reprinted same year of anti-slavery bugle- new perspective- black, former enslaved, talks about both experiences -men have privileges and I do not because of my race- why can't she be treated like a normal woman? abolitionist- white women are protected and not allowed to work, so why does she have to work? she is equally capable as men. Calls out both women and abolitionists. Making same intervention- concise- reporting.
Slowly from her seat in the corner rose ***, who, till now, had scarcely lifted her head. 'Don't let her speak!' gasped half a dozen in my ear. She moved slowly and solemnly to the front, laid her old bonnet at her feet, and turned her great, speaking eyes to me. There was a hissing sound of disapprobation above and below. I rose and announced '***,' and begged the audience to keep silence for a few moments. The tumult subsided at once, and every eye was fixed on this almost Amazon form, which stood nearly six feet high, head erect, and eye piercing the upper air, like one in a dream. At her first word, there was a profound hush. She spoke in deep tones, which, though not loud, reached every ear in the house, and away through the throng at the doors and windows..."
· "Ar'n't I a Woman?" Speech written in The Narrative of Sojourner Truth By Sojourner Truth · delivered in 1851- Reconstruction, but published in 1878 · 2 versions of it · uses a frame narrative
He now becomes a conscious contributor and lays aside the status of a beneficiary and ward for that of a collaborator and participant in American civilization. The great social gain in this is the releasing of our talented group from the arid fields of controversy and debate to the productive fields of creative expression. The especially cultural recognition they win should in turn prove the key to that revaluation of the Negro which must precede or accompany any considerable further betterment of race relationships.
· "Enter the New Negro" by Alain Locke (1925) · "Enter the New Negro" by Alain Locke (1925) · published during the Harlem Renaissance · About not forgetting where they came from but re-establishing themselves · Includes an epigraph, frontispiece, and dedication that reflect this message
I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes, But I laugh, And eat well, And grow strong.
· "I too, sing America." by Langston Hughes · modernist movement- challenging poetic formsing of certain words in passage · free verse and jazz , no consistent rhyme, rhythm, stanza or line length -
After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. · "Of Our Spiritual Striv
· "Of Our Spiritual Strivings" from The Souls Of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois · Published in 1903- Reconstruction to New Negro Renaissance · Controlling metaphor= the veil · Uses double consciousness, cultural pluralism and recognition are wanted from Du Bois
To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition in a foreign land or who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the Southern white man, who is their next-door neighbor, I would say, 'Cast down your bucket where you are' - cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded. Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in the professions. And in this connection it is well to bear in mind that whatever other sins the South may be called to bear, when it comes to business, pure and simple, it is in the South that the Negro is given a man's chance in the commercial world, and in nothing is this Exposition more eloquent than in emphasizing this chance.
· "The Atlanta Exposition Address" from Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington · published in 1901- Reconstruction · uses the controlling metaphor= the bucket
One of the most promising of the young Negro poets said to me once, "I want to be a poet—not a Negro poet," meaning, I believe, "I want to write like a white poet"; meaning subconsciously, "I would like to be a white poet"; meaning behind that, "I would like to be white." And I was sorry the young man said that, for no great poet has ever been afraid of being himself. And I doubted then that, with his desire to run away spiritually from his race, this boy would ever be a great poet. But this is the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America—this urge within the race toward whiteness, the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible.
· "The Negro Artist & the Racial Mountain", by Langston Hughes · Published during Modernism period · "I want to be a poet-- not a Negro poet" · uses controlling metaphor of a racial mountain, during this time lingering stereotypes were still present
When they intentionally, maliciously and constantly belie the record and bolster up these falsehoods by the words of legislators, preachers, governors and bishops, then the Negro must give to the world his side of the awful story.
· "The Red Record" by Ida B Wells (1895)
When they intentionally, maliciously and constantly belie the record and bolster up these falsehoods by the words of legislators, preachers, governors and bishops, then the Negro must give to the world his side of the awful story.
· "The Red Record" by Ida B Wells (1895) · published during Nadir time · Talks about the criminalization of blackness and the excuses Whites gave for three eras · Historically significant in that during this time lynching was at a high, 3959 African Americans were lynched
WE wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,— This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, And mouth with myriad subtleties.
· "We Wear the Mask" by Paul Laurence Dunbar · Published during Harlem Renaissance · Speaks about the facade many African Americans were said to be wearing, addressing the stereotype of the Happy Sambo, and how the inner pain is present and real · Rondeau poem, written in standard English
So I was sold at last! A human being sold in the free city of New York! The bill of sale is on record, and future generations will learn from it that women were articles of traffic in New York, late in the nineteenth century of the Christian religion.
· Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs · Published in 1861- Civil War · Autobiography of Harriet Jacobs of which she is mostly likely speaking to women and northerners · Uses pseudonym (Linda Brent) and epigraph
I have often been awakened at the dawn of day by the most heartrending shrieks of an own aunt of mine, whom he used to tie up to a joist, and whip upon her naked back till she was literally covered with blood. No words, no tears, no prayers, from his gory victim, seemed to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose. The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped the longest. He would whip her to make her scream, and whip her to make her hush; and not until overcome by fatigue, would he cease to swing the blood-clotted cowskin. I remember the first time I ever witnessed this horrible exhibition. I was quite a child, but I will remember it. I never shall forget it whilst I remember any thing. It was the first of a long series of such outrages, of which I was doomed to be a witness and a participant. It struck me with awful force. It was the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery, through which I was about to pass. It was a most terrible spectacle. I wish I could commit to paper the feelings with which I beheld it.
· Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave by Frederick Douglass · Published in 1845- Civil war into Reconstruction · Uses a frontispiece and the Four phases of the slave narrative
"I have no race prejudice," he would say, "but we people of mixed blood are ground between the upper and the nether millstone. Our fate lies between absorption by the white race and extinction in the black. The one doesn't want us yet, but may take us in time. The other would welcome us, but it would be for us a backward step. 'With malice towards none, with charity for all,' we must do the best we can for ourselves and those who are to follow us. Self-preservation is the first law of nature."
· The Wife of His Youth, by Charles Chestnutt, published in (1899) -narrator: an unnamed 3rd person · blue vein society: purpose was to establish & maintain correct standards for unlimited room for improvement, group of elites · allusion: Mr. Ryder's thoughts on race -colorism: prejudical/preferential treatment of same race people based solely on their color