None Of Us Are Free Analysis

Both Booker T. Washington’s Up from Slavery: Chapter I: “A Slave Among Slaves” and W.E.B. DuBois’s The Souls of Black Folk: Chapter III: “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others” depict the harsh reality of racism that many freed African-American slaves faced during the Reconstruction Era while each offering their own set of solutions to the struggles faced during that period. Washington, as a former slave during his childhood, portrays the harsh reality of racism by first describing his experience and what he remembers of his days as a slave. He begins his autobiography by using his sense of humor to highlight one struggle that many African-Americans had to face, which is not knowing anything about their ancestries. Washington explains that he is “not quite sure of the exact place or exact date of my birth, but at any rate

Though, some individuals simply tend to ignore and hide the reality and the intensity of slavery. Not only Sethe but anyone who has once experienced slavery has to confront the horrors and the memories left behind to move on with their lives. Sethe’s strange origins under these circumstances reflect her psychological and emotional impact and undistinguished relationship with her mother and children by recalling her vile memories. Sethe grows up and experiences childhood on a plantation and gets sold to the Garners at the age of thirteen.

Both King and Douglass were advocating for the same thing: their constitutional sanction of freedom. Both men, in their respective letters touch upon parallel thoughts and beliefs that revolve around the much bigger topic of racial inequality and discrimination. Both men were discriminated against and they talk about their experiences and plight in their very distinctive yet special styles. Born in the year 1817, in an era of open and unashamed slave trade, Frederick Douglass’s story begins as a serf to Mrs. Hugh in the city of Maryland.

Harriet Tubman, a famous abolitionist, once said “I rescued a thousand slaves and I could have rescued a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves”. Many slaves of the 19th century were not able to read or write, and were completely oblivious to natural rights and other political situations happening around them. Alfred M. Green gave a speech in April of 1861 to recruit African American slaves to the army to fight for their freedom. In Green’s speech, he acknowledges the misery African Americans have already been through, points out the flaws in the enemy (the South); and motivates them to participate by using hortatory subjunctives, metaphors, irony, and other rhetorical strategies.

Equiano’s narrative not only opens doors to ending slavery, but gives us some clear insight about the many struggles the slaves endure. “Equaino Olaudah was born in the mid-1700s, in the tribe of Ibo in the village of Essaka (Benin) from the kingdom of Benin which is southeastern Nigeria, West Africa”. According to the author, “Equiano was captured by black slave raider at age 11or 12, then he and his sister were kidnapped. After he and his sister were kidnapped, they were separated, he spent months in the administration of a dark ruler, whose treatment of him was mellow compared and the ruthlessness of the British slave merchants to whom he was sold before long. “He was taken to Barbados in West Indies by the slave merchants, however, he was not sold there, the traders took him to America, he was bought by a Virginia plantation owner in America”.

The years that encompassed the hardships of African Americans during and after the World Wars were depicted almost entirely by the artist Jacob Lawrence. These works of art relayed the difficult process that resulted from being a slave that had been freed at last. One would think that upon reaching freedom living conditions and treatment would change, however the reality was much different. Jacob Lawrence thoroughly pictures the difficult times through his series Migration, which encompasses the journey of men, women, and children reaching ultimate freedom and a better way of life in the north. His art was persistent with this theme from the years 1941 to 1970 and although many perceived his art as a means of protest, his artwork was merely

Olaudah Equiano undergoes multiple traumatic experiences as a slave; based on his experiences he discovers that there are many criticisms against the institution of slavery. From the time Olaudah Equiano was a small child he lived a life as a slave, Equiano along with his sister were kidnapped in Eboe and sold to slave traders. Equiano recounts the horrific experiences he shared with many others, and how he was ultimately stripped of his identity and lost all sense of his past history, culture, and family. Equiano is ultimately writing his stories to share with white European slaveholders, he wanted to show them what he and others like him were facing and why slavery should be abolished. Throughout all of Equianos experiences as a slave he realizes that it is not the practice of slavery that he is critiquing but the institution of it.

This means he has to lie about who he is at times to protect a runaway slave named Jim who Huck is close to. Even though Huck lies to basically everyone he meets in the book, his lies yield different results. Mark Twain uses Huck Finn’s experiences with a woman from St. Petersburg, his Aunt Sally, and Slave Jim throughout the novel to show

Morrison continually fades in back and forth between the characters’ current farmhouse in Ohio and the slavery plantation, ironically called “Sweet Home” that they had escaped eighteen years before the novel opens. The central voice of the novel, Sethe, is someone who had freed herself of Sweet Home physically, but not mentally. Through her experience at the plantation, Sethe is left emotionally scarred from her experience even after its abolishment. In this generation,

Although it accepts some of the faults within humanity, within the poem humanity to retain only the defining qualities of humanity which are negative such as The poem also highlights the wish to be forgiven and to avoid, the unborn child asks for strength against all of which would dissipate his entirety, asking to help keep those things which make him human, so that he may retain his identity. And even though the world is such the child never wishes to be unborn, on the contrary he asks to ‘let them not spill me’. So showing his urge to live. Answer the question The urge to live is also a main theme within the poem Mother in a Refugee Camp.

Frederick Douglass was born a slave in 1817, but soon became one of the biggest names in all of history. By 1838, Frederick Douglass was able to escape slavery and go up North. The citizens of Rochester, New York, where Douglass settled in, asked him to give a speech to celebrate the Fourth of July. He agreed, however, instead of his speech being about celebrating freedom, he spoke about all the hypocrisy being held in the United States. The states represented freedom, and independence, yet there were millions of people being forced into a life of hard labor and no pay, slaves.

The reason racism still exists is because people continue to believe that some races are better than other races: Dred Scott vs Sanford, Plessy vs Ferguson, Shelly vs Kraemer. In the Dred Scott vs Sanford case, Dred Scott and his wife sued for their freedom from slavery. They fought in an 11 year legal struggle just to be free, but lost that battle. As the case was on its way to Supreme Court it grew in significance.

Although, back then was a completely different story. The Interesting Story of the life of Olaudah Equiano by Olaudah Equiano shows not only the struggles of being a newcomer in America, but also the difficulties he had to persevere coming over. Slaves were considered property, and not humans, so they often received harsh treatment which sometimes even were serious injuries or death. “While we forgot our misfortunes in the joy of being together, but even that small comfort was soon to have an end”, Olaudah says and he is one of the many slave siblings that were torn apart by the selling and buying of slaves (Jefferson 57). This had to be devastating for him and his sister because not only are they thousands of miles away from home and family, but they were also torn from the little family they had left.

But I will never understand how someone could physical abuse someone, or work them to their death. Douglass’s story shows how hard it really was to live in this period as an African American, and the fact that he was able to use his paid to push him forward is incredible. I personally would have never been able to endure the life he had and I would have cracked under all of the physical and emotional pain. This autobiography shows the cruel truth to slavery that everyone wants to move on from and forget. But if you do not learn from history it will repeat

During the civil rights movement in the sixities, an organization by the name of NOW or Neighborhood Organized Workers came together and held weekly meetings on how to help the African American community. Nuns and priest were even sometimes jailed because they insisted on helping their brethren in their time of need. In travelling to Stone Street Church, I ventured down Dr. Martin Luther King Ave. This street was originally named after Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy during the Civil War, and known as Davis Avenue. However during the sixties, this was the main area for African American businesses, streets were literally lined with black owned businesses such as Finley Drug and Johnson-Allen Mortuary.