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The recently freed African Americans plead to receive citizenship and equal rights, they expected to be treated as any other human being. After many years of slavery, the African Americans were finally freed from slavery by president Lincoln. Many of them were granted freedom for serving loyally in the Union army, along with certain rights, such as the right to buy land. The freed slaves were then allowed to purchase land, and received help from the government in the form of establishments such as Freedman’s Bureau and Freedmen’s Aid Society. The former slaves were now allowed to attend certain churches, schools, and were also allowed to socialize in public, although only in certain places.
African Americans for years fought their rights as citizens in the United States. Many others fought for their own rights as well including women and other minority races. While a historian believes that African Americans did nothing to fight for their freedom, I believe with full confidence that the African Americans were the most instrumental part in doing so, but I also believe that they received some help from Whites. To begin, the map in Document A shows where slavery was outlawed and how.
African Americans living in the Pacific Northwest from the late 19th century to the end of the 20th century faced much discrimination that stemmed from the prominent racist attitudes held by others. In the mid to late 19th century, exclusion laws were put in place to limit their migration to certain areas because white settlers did not want African Americans to live near them. Then, they were denied employment opportunities and even subject to violent harassment. Later in the 20th century, red-line districts existed that sustained racial segregation in cities. These were related to the discriminatory practice and laws that allowed there to be a lack of civil rights for African Americans.
No one should be ashamed for the way they are born, but people bully people into believing it’s their fault for being a certain race, sexuality, gender, or something else others label human beings. Though there are many subjects of conversation on the topics of equality, race is one of the most influential disagreements in history. From the beginning of time African Americans have been discriminated against by being forced into labor, not having equal rights as white males, and not even being considered citizens of the United States. This is truly one of the darkest times in American history. Now, how were African Americans affected by the acts of society throughout the Colonial Period through Reconstruction?
The African Americans had a big impact on the Civil War. They had to have all of these laws and papers wrote because of the slavery deal. They had the role of the debate for slavery. They were the slaves and they wanted to have their freedom. The Declaration of Independence said that, “All men are created equal”, but the slaves were not free.
Why did we use Africans? One reason the colonists turned to using africans to work on their plantations is because after native americans became close to europeans they got diseases and it was killing off some of their population. When the native american population was decreasing they needed more people to work for them so they started using Africans. The middle passage was when colonists sailed across the Atlantic ocean and packed slaves into cargo ships. Another reason they used slaves is because Africans came from a very hot place so when it was hot where the colonists live they could work longer because they were used to the heat beating down on them.
The Reconstruction Amendments established rights for African Americans that led to negative responses from white southerners. The establishment of slavery is one that was in effect for 245 years. Nevertheless, social advancements that were contributed from the 13, 14, and 15 amendments allowed for many new opportunities for African Americans. These were the first amendments made to the constitution in 60 years and are important because they mark the beginning of the Reconstruction of the Sought post Civil War. These legislatures carried with them many positive and negative responses from the citizens.
As an African American citizen, I am deeply impacted by the current events. It is another example of how African Americans are treated in a country we built. I believe officers still carry stereotypes society has created among the race. I also believe training is lacking within the Police Department. What surprised me the most, was how quick the investigation and invasion of Micah Xavier Johnson’s home was completed.
Names have always held power in literature; whether it is the defeated giant Polyphemus cursing Odysseus due to him pridefully announcing his name or how the true name of the Hebrew god was considered so potent that the word was forbidden. In fact, names were given power in tales dating all the way back to the 24th century B.C.E. when the goddess Isis became as strong as the sun god Ra after tricking him into revealing his true name. And in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, names have a much stronger cultural significance; and in the case of the character known as “Beloved”, her name is essentially her whole existence. Morrison shows the true power a name holds in African American literature through the character known as “Beloved”, as her role in the story becomes defined by the name she is given and changes in the final moments of the chapter.
What does it mean to be African American? A question almost always asked to the African American population. Due to our history we’ve always had to prove a point or defend ourselves to others whom do not understand the position that was forced upon us. In present society African Americans have struggles just for being a certain ethnicity that we can not control. Therefore, what does it mean to be an African in America?
As an African-American man, I found hardship in my country. Each day, I hear about how African-American men are killing each other on the streets, causing violence and war against the communities. Thinking about racial tolerance, racial groups are segregated in Chicago neighborhoods. The system that I perceive a man from another race is the fear and terror of negative criticism. I am grateful that I never lived in a community where people attack me because of race.
To be specific, she situates the imminent feminist struggle by highlighting the legacy of slavery among black people, and black women in particular. “Black women bore the terrible burden of equality in oppression” (Davis). Due to her race, her writing focuses on what she understood and ideas that are relevant to black females. Conversely, since white men used black women in domestic labor and forcefully rape these individuals. These men used this powerful weapon to remind black women of their female and vulnerability.
In Toni Morrison’s novel, Sula, Morrison utilizes the racist incidents within the Bottom to illustrate the submissive, degrading, and foolish influence of racist America on African Americans, while still successfully capturing the dignity and sense of community of the African Americans, ultimately demonstrating the stupidity of racism. Morrison first depicts African Americans as wanting to conform and assimilate into the white American culture through Helene’s Wright behavior towards her daughter, Nel Wright. By disliking Nel’s physical appearance, Helene represents the discrimination many African Americans have against their heritage and roots; therefore, she submits to the racism. The stupidity also becomes apparent because of Morrison’s
Afro-American women writers present how racism permeates the innermost recesses of the mind and heart of the blacks and affects even the most intimate human relationships. While depicting the corrosive impact of racism from social as well as psychological perspectives, they highlight the human cost black people have to pay in terms of their personal relationships, particularly the one between mother and daughter. Women novelists’ treatment of motherhood brings out black mothers’ pressures and challenges for survival and also reveals their different strategies and mechanisms to deal with these challenges. Along with this, the challenges black mothers have to face in dealing with their adolescent daughters, who suffer due to racism and are heavily influenced by the dominant value system, are also underlined by these writers. They portray how a black mother teaches her daughter to negotiate the hostile, wider world, and prepares her to face the problems and challenges boldly and confidently.
She was influenced by the ideologies of women’s liberation movements and she speaks as a Black woman in a world that still undervalues the voice of the Black woman. Her novels especially lend themselves to feminist readings because of the ways in which they challenge the cultural norms of gender, slavery, race, and class. In addition to that, Morrison novels discuss the experiences of the oppressed black minorities in isolated communities. The dominant white culture disables the development of healthy African-American women self image and also she pictures the harsh conditions of black women, without separating them from the oppressed situation of the whole minority. In fact, slavery is an ancient and heinous institution which had adverse effects on the sufferers at both the physical as well as psychological levels.
