Examining the role that religion played in the African-American community, primarily pre-civil war, can be a difficult task due to the limited amount of evidence available.1 While it is a common notion that slavery life was embedded with Christian ideals, a Christian-like ideology is likely more accurate.2 Syncretism occurred with the combining of African tradition and Christian principles to create an African-American spirituality specific to its people. ... This conglomeration of ideals to form an authentic African-American spirituality with Christian and African overtones has been descri...

• Word Count: 1954
• Approx Pages: 8
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

She made her film debut around 1914 with a comedy titled Coon Town Suffragettes, which "dealt with a group of bossy mammy washerwomen who organize a militant movement to keep their good-for-nothing husbands at home But the militancy of the washerwoman served as a primer for the mammy roles Hattie McDaniel was to perfect in the 1930's" (Bogle 9). ... If the black man were attracted to the white woman, it was not because she was a symbol of power or an ideal of the oppressor, but rather because of his innate animalism (Bogle 14). ...

• Word Count: 1938
• Approx Pages: 8
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

The dilemma of all enslaved women was the conflict between virtuous, womanly ideals and the sexual exploitation mentioned above. ... One of the main virtues of "The Cult of True Womanhood" was submissiveness either to husband, father or guardian, but in order for a slave woman to remain "pure", which is another virtue of the cult, she would have to resist her master, a thing that contradicted the virtue of submissiveness. ... Thus she understands that some common ideals of womanhood cannot be applied to black enslaved women, and the latter should establish concepts of integrity and selfhood fo...

• Word Count: 1523
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

"When one considers that Angelou has been a short order cook, a waitress at a nightclub, a madam in charge of her own house of prostitution, a nightclub dancer, a prostitute, and the lover of a drug addict who sold dresses for a living, it becomes apparent that the range of characters whom she encountered during this period of emotional and social upheaval were indeed limited to the declassed elements of the society- (Bloom1 67) Gather Together In My Name "...ends just before she decides to settle down with a man she pictures as an ideal husband, who is in fact a heroin addict and gambler.....

• Word Count: 1347
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

Even as a child she senses, she knows, that white ideals deny her reality by forcing it into strange forms or appearance and experience. (David 68) But Claudia, too, learns to interject those ideals knowing that, in order to be loved and accepted, she must conform because, as she remembers, "all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured-(Morrison 20) But Morrison is not intent upon merely affirming the existence of the fear, frustration, and fury inherent in black life; she wished to expose the psychic causes for the social di...

• Word Count: 2499
• Approx Pages: 10
• Has Bibliography

My American dream has been influenced by the problems, and circumstances that I have gone through in my life. Moving to the United States was one of the biggest circumstances that influenced my American dream because I came with the idea that this was the land of opportunities but when we arrived to...

• Word Count: 2444
• Approx Pages: 10
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

This ideal stayed with him throughout the rest of his life but changed slightly as he found religion. ... He approaches Sophia at an inappropriate time and this leads him to be chased by her husband. ...

• Word Count: 1903
• Approx Pages: 8
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School