'Double Consciousness' in The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man While Johnson was a highly celebrated and versatile literary figure, his most well known work is The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man. Even though this title suggests that this work was his story, it was actually a...

Some Americans will give the African American talents, a full service uplift or let them pass as being white and they will have no limitations on their talents. Seeing them as being white brings no racism into play. Therefore, racism is just an act of cruelty that hurts the African American societ...

Former Senator Bob Dole once said of affirmative action, "Our country is no longer the land of opportunity but a pie chart, where jobs and other benefits are often awarded not because of hard work or merit, but because of someone's biology" (www.washingtonpost.com). Why should we...

Amy Goldich In his Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man, James Weldon Johnson explores the meaning of "passing" in an American society. The reader never learns the name of the narrator in the novel, but you learn that it's of little importance. The crisis throughout the novel centers on the ...

To clearly assess the view of Du Bois' essential points of disagreement with Washington, today's reader must consider Washington as one of the disenfranchised whom he spoke for. Du Bois declared that the appeal of Washington's program was aimed at enterprising national leaders...

James Weldon Johnson James Weldon Johnson was born in Jacksonville, Florida on June 17, 1871. He was the second of three children. Johnson was an American author, lawyer, and diplomat. He was educated at Atlanta and Columbia universities. In 1898 he became the first black lawyer admitted to the ba...

Not to long ago the American Political system under went a major transition. One of the many controversies that are still shadowing this transition is the acts or misacts of the former President. Just recently he announced that he had chosen a location in Harlem to be used as his post-presidentia...

Not to long ago the American Political system under went a major transition. One of the many controversies that are still shadowing this transition is the acts or misacts of the former President. Just recently he announced that he had chosen a location in Harlem to be used as his post-presidentia...

Jack Johnson Breaking Barriers Arthur John (Jack) Johnson (1878 -1946) was the first black, and first Texan, to win the heavyweight boxing championship of the world. Johnson was born in Galveston on March 31, 1878. He was the second of six children of Henry and Tiny Johnson. Henry was a fo...

The Life of Booker T. Washington Booker T. Washington was a great influence for the black community. The efforts this man put to become such a wonderful leader were incredible. Booker T. Washington was a man that started up from scratch. He grew up as a Black slave, who did not have much ch...

Free At Last African-Americans were enslaved for over 200 years. While enslaved many were beaten to death. Their children were taken from them, and their daughters raped. They finally gained their freedom, at least that's what they thought. They were still being stigmatized for what they were...

The article, "The Negro's Civil War in Tennessee, 1861-1865" by Bobby L. Lovett, was published in "The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 61, No. 1" (Jan. 1976). In the article, Lovett writes about the contributions of black Tennesseans during the Civil War in obtaining their freedom - under some o...

Unwanted Integration In the early 1950's, racial segregation in public schools was the standard across America. Although all the schools in a given district were supposed to be equal, most black schools were greatly inferior to their white equal. The Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education d...

The Birth of a Nation: Does the Portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan In this controversial 1915 film compare to documented history of the organization? D.W. Griffith was raised in South Carolina by his father who was an ex-confederate soldier. Griffith was raised to believe that father's views on ...

What does freedom mean to you? To most people freedom is part of their everyday lives, it is the knowing that you can go out to public places and not be threatened. The basic rights that we take for granted today, like for example freedom of speech and the right to bare arms, were merely dreams to...

During the second inaugral on march 4th 1865 president Abraham Lincoln called for Americans to loose their hatred to one another and to become charitable in order to be firm in seing that the rights that God put in store for each of us are seen in the right way. He called fo...

In The Destructors the Wormsley Common Gang lashes out in a terrible manner. The gang starts off as a few young boys looking for ways to occupy themselves. At first the activities that they part in are illegal, but not hateful or mean spirited. The boys would do meaningless things like steal bus ...

Fredrick Douglass The Hypocrisy of American Slavery "The white man's happiness cannot be purchased by the black man's misery." -Fredrick Douglass, The North Star His point was clear, all those years ago. As Fredrick Douglass presented his thoughts in front of the citizens ...

Life in Black and White, is a great book about the Southern society in the antebellum period focussing on the daily life in Loundoun County, Virginia, tracing the lives of all classes and cultures. For years, many historians have argued that most slave families in the American antebellum south w...

Elements of the supernatural pervade Toni Morrison's novel, Beloved. These elements include evidence of African-American folklore and tradition in the everyday lives of the inhabitants of 124 Bluestone Road. Beloved's character is another obvious use of the supernatural: she is a ghost for part of...

Toni Morrison's novel "Beloved" is set in a time when slavery was supposed to be finished and over with after the Civil War. The newly freed slaves were depending on the Constitution to give them the rights that every man is born with, but daily life for the ex-slaves continued to be a struggle. Thi...

Three Reactions to the Plessy v. Ferguson case, 1896. The Plessy v. Ferguson case, of 1896, was a major step in the racial equality struggle of the United States of America. With what looked like it could be a step in the right direction to take this case to the Supreme Court, the decision was...

In Beloved, Toni Morrison sets the novel after the end of the civil war where slaves were freed by Emancipation. There are several power relationships that Morrison links together to show the aftermath of the civil war from the black point of view. The key relationships Morrison focuses on are maste...

What is a slave? A slave is a tool, a total servant, and a possession. Being a possession, a slave is required to total obedience to a master who has the power to do anything to a slave. The so-called "freeman" really is a slave. Freedom means, to carry out ones own choices, actions wi...

Malcom X and his article titled "My First Conk" say that black men conked their hairs to unify their existence in the society of white people. This was never done to truly satisfy a personal desire. Conking was a popular procedure done in black males to straighten their hair in 1940&apo...