"Their Eyes Were Watching God," by Zora Neale Hurston tells the story of a middle-aged black women named Janie Crawford who lives in Eatonville, Florida. ... Zora Hurston gives us a great description of being a women and how we are portrayed to be in the world and also being a black women too. ... She wants to run away but she knows there was no were else for her to go. ... After the death of Joe Janie fell free from him and everything that he made her feel less of a women. ... Janie thinks about Tea Cake all the times because he makes her happy, the happiest than she has ever been before. ...

• Word Count: 982
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

Indians and Africans were here long before pilgrims. ... Through the readings so far in the book African American Literature I have learned that African slaves would tell stories to keep hope of becoming free someday. ... In the last paragraph it says that no one remembers the word now but maybe one day someone will wake up with the word on their tongue and "we will all stretch out our arms and take to the air, leaving these blood-drenched fields of our misery behind." I think stories like this were told to keep the idea of becoming free in the slaves minds, to keep hope alive so no one wou...

• Word Count: 457
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

Washington were both extremely influential black leaders, who were remembered for their beliefs, on the lives and freedoms that were deserved by the freedman during the late eighteen hundreds. ... Washington was born four years before the civil war had begun, Dubois was born three years after the civil war had come to an end. ... Washington worried about the high tensions that existed between the conservative white man and the newly freed black man. ... They both felt very strongly about there beliefs and the rights of the freed black man. ... Even though they had different ideals the...

• Word Count: 514
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

Before the war we were struggling to get our of a depression that had carried on about ten years; after we were an economically strong country facing many new opportunities and struggles. We were now a huge world power, and though we may have been before WW2, we had finally acknowledged it. We were economically and technologically advance, and a free country was doing it. ... We were fighting to "save the world" and "save democracy", but racism still ran rampant. ... But during the war they were given opportunities never given to them before. ...

• Word Count: 755
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

Reparation to African-Americans is not a new topic, but it has never been this hot before, and it's only going to get hotter. ... How can we deny something that is staring us right in the face? ... We must give reparations to African American descendents. ... America today as we know it was built off the free, skilled labor of African American Slaves. ... The Japanese-Americans were compensated by the U.S. ...

• Word Count: 1057
• Approx Pages: 4

Take African-Americans, before the Million Men March, Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement, black people were given less respect than dogs. ... Even after the Civil War freed them, there was no equal opportunity and much oppression of them by whites, particularly in the South. ... Why did we betray and kill the Indians? We killed them because they were different, because we were afraid of them and because we wanted their land. ... After we massacred most of the Indians we put the remanning on reservations specifically for Indians. ...

• Word Count: 516
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

In one perspective we are offered that it is probably a coincidence that no blacks had ever been elected for the office, and that a street closing is just a routine traffic control decision. ... A series of these laws were known as black codes. They were designed to govern movement, marriage, work relations, and most major aspects of freed person's life. Basically these black codes were another name for the same thing that was happening before the civil war, only with a slight compliance with constitution. Not much had changed in the actual implementation of rights for freed slaves until...

• Word Count: 793
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

He did not see a free black man, working along his father as an equal; he was brought up thinking that blacks were supposed to be less respected than whites like him. ... The document discussed the need and want for owning property, elections and voters, and also "all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion- (The Virginia 156). ... That we will never know. ... Without the events that occurred in the past, whether they were right or wrong, we as a country would never be where we are today. So before anyone calls our founding fathers hypocrites again, maybe they should take a...

• Word Count: 1212
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

In other words they were treated almost as "slaves," whites were allowed to lynch them (burn them alive, or kill them in front of the public). ... In this play we are given some insight to what it likes to be caught up in racist battles over stereotypes, and accusations. More so, we are drawn into the reality of the problems our society faces with these issues. ... He can't be free from heritage of slavery and she can't be free from the heritage of oppression. ... This sends Clay a clear picture of her real persona, that he was trying to figure out before. ...

• Word Count: 1234
• Approx Pages: 5

Nearly 150,000 people were killed during 1975-1990. ... He showed the rights of free speech. ... Many people were not offered the same chance at life. ... As I've said before you have to go with the change of time. ... That's what the founding fathers before us foresaw when they won the battle that ensured our freedom. ...

• Word Count: 1129
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

His other poem "If We Must Die" is a rather rebellious one that makes a call to fight against the racial prejudice and segregation and the brutal fact of lynching, which this line implies: "What though before us lies the open grave?". He makes a call for his kinsmen and stresses that they must fight back writing: "we must meet the common foe!". ... Yet they are free verses though, since there are no metrical structure but differently lengthened lines written in a verse paragraph and not divided into classical stanzas. ... (Where no Negroes worked and none were admitted as guests.) The hotel ...

• Word Count: 750
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

The results were compelling because most of the black children always said that the white dolls were prettier, smarter, and better (Williams, 197). ... The scheme was known as nonviolent civil disobedience; sit-ins, freedom rides, and mass demonstrations were just a few of the tactics that were implicated. ... The philosophy had been advocated effectively in India, but never before had the black population of Montgomery, Alabama used it so determinedly; in a continuous and successful struggle. ... King's speech, he made it evident to his audience, that blacks weren't treated fre...

• Word Count: 1091
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography

Harper was born in Baltimore to African American free slaves. ... I believe slave auctions were just wrong. ... Before the bidding began, if any bidders decided to come up onto the platform to inspect the slaves closely, they could. ... The Whites said that we was not a race and we were ignorant. ... Slaves were brutally beat just because of their skin color. ...

• Word Count: 748
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

Therefore, the Ex-Colored Man would hardly be treated as a black boy, if it were not for him and for people around him being told that he is not white. After this moment of revelation and before he decides to pass for white, the narrator acquires a new vision of the situation of black people in the United States. ... This with the situation of black people contributes to the narrator's decision of establishing his identity as a colored person with honor and dignity, before choosing, later on the novel, to pass for white. ... He is tired of humiliation and shame and wants to be successful...

• Word Count: 977
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

In the novel, A Lesson Before Dying, discrimination is a major predicament throughout and the story takes place during a particularly racial time period, but is there an even greater problem that the two men are faced with? ... Years ago, Professor Antoine told me that if I stayed here, they were going to break me down to the nigger I was born to be. ... "We black men...stay here in the South and are broken, or we run away and leave them alone to look after the children and themselves. ... They must believe, if only to free the mind, if not the body. Only when the mind is free has the body a c...

• Word Count: 1045
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

Before the emancipation of slavery it was clear to all that the whites were the superior beings. ... Willalee was our friend But sometimes we used him like a toy." (402) Harry deep down knew they were the same people inside yet in the world he lived in he was still the superior being which still confused him. ... On the farm he lived on he wondered why that a half century after the "War Between the States" (17) his families "could not forget that we had been conquered while most of our neighbors were black people whose grandparents had been liberated in the same conflict. ... They were a fe...

• Word Count: 1153
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

There were several events that directly or indirectly stirred up the indignation that motivated the Movement, and the aftermath was quite significant to America, as we know it today. ... The end of the Civil War, which brought about these Amendments, was the legal end to slavery in the United States, but it would be a long and difficult battle before those rights became a social custom in America. Now, hostile whites, who did not know how to treat blacks as equal human beings, surrounded, and still held authority over, freed African Americans in the South. ... Whites enjoyed comfortable and...

• Word Count: 1230
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

As shown by Document A, the school enrollment by race was much lower for blacks in the period before when Washington and Du Bois became a great impact on the educational system. ... Du Bois fought for the same thing, but had different ways of handling the situation in order to change the country we once knew. ... Washington thought everything would come eventually and we don't need to rush. ... The efforts made by these two highly influential people were very apparent in the changes that were made to society. ... Washington and Du Bois helped change the American culture, and took the firs...

• Word Count: 1230
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

The speaker stating "I am the only colored student in my class" shows that very few people of color were able to attend college at that time. ... In the beginning as mentioned before, the speakers" tone is sort of confused. ... This is especially evident when the speaker mentions Christmas, which we all tend to think of as a Joyous time of year. ... But we are, that's true!" ... As I try to convey this moral in three awkward sentences, Hughes compresses it in a single statement, "As I learn from you, I guess you learn from me-although you"re older-and white-and somewhat more free." ...

• Word Count: 1151
• Approx Pages: 5
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

The era of the Jazz music genre is linked to the days of slavery in North America, where black slaves maintained their rooted music through love and desire for freedom, would occur over time a phenomenon beyond the music itself that would revolutionize not only the black and white society, but also the whole world and that fact was: the beginning of Jazz in the town of New Orleans, its spread, but above all, the discovery of a charismatic and innovative character that marked a before and after in the history of music called ''the famous trumpeter Louis Armstrong." ... On the...

• Word Count: 1036
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Graduate

The book's use of the "n-word" leaves many people wondering exactly what Twain's intentions were for writing such a popular novel. ... "All the same, we cannot let ourselves shy away from the uncomfortable purely because it hurts. ... " (Shepherd) We shouldn't close our eyes and pretend that racism never existed. We should face the fact instead of fighting it because it is a part of our history. ... He states that "it was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger....

• Word Count: 920
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

To completely understand what aunt Jemima represents we consumers must first learn the history of her and African American as a whole to know why she represents such harsh categories. ... The Mammy usually attends to and treats her master's family and children's needs first before she ever puts her own family and children's needs. ... This happiness is to have the public believe that the slaves were happy doing their jobs and did not mind being a slave but actually like it. ... Her pancakes were the envy of the region, but she would not share ...

• Word Count: 1143
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School