'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 ...

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...

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...

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...

"Smoke Signals" In the movie, Smoke Signals, two men from the Coeur d'Alene Indian Reservation, take a journey to Arizona. The trip turns into a philosophical journey as much as a physical one, encountering odd ball characters and discovering poetic messages at the end of the road. Th...

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 ...

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...

Plessy v. Ferguson This was a petition filed in the supreme court of Louisiana in 1896, by Homer Plessy, the plaintiff. He filed this petition against the Honorable John H. Ferguson, judge of The petitioner was a citizen of the United States and a descent meaning he had b...

The first story takes place in Los-Angeles where Jim Losey is a Police officer who struggles with his own existence as a low-paid worker. He has his own concept of fighting the crime and he is a person who is a bit powerful, hiding behind a badge that hide a real prejudiced person. We b...

Maya Angelou was born on April 4th, 1928 in St. Louis Missouri to Vivian Baxter and Bailey Johnson. Her real name was Marquerite Johnson. She later adopted "Maya" as a nickname from her brother Bailey Jr., which means "my sister." After her parents divorced when she was three...

Life for Blacks after the Civil War Life for African Americans after the Civil War was filled with joy and fear. As being former slaves, some had learned to expect hostility from white people and they did not presume it would instantly disappear. Even though the slaves were free, it was not a ju...

In 1923 in the state of Florida a black town, Rosewood, was burnt down to ashes. Rosewood was a place that the blacks owned and paid taxes on; it was a place that they called home. It was burnt down all because of a lie made by a white woman saying she was raped by a black man, or in her words a &...