Albert King once stated: "The Blues its twelve-bar, bent-note melody is the anthem of a race bonding itself together with cries of shared self victimization and trouble, which are always present, and always the result of others, pressing upon unfortunate and down trodden poor souls." The music within the novel "Beloved" presses upon the reader's own emotional boundaries by presenting to us the treatment of slaves through an entirely different medium; not only through language but through sound; through the "soul" of those who give their voice melody. It further accumulates within Toni M...

• Word Count: 3100
• Approx Pages: 12
• Has Bibliography

During the early 1920's when Toomer was writing there was much emphasis on becoming a 'New Negro', forging a new identity for ones self through the mediums of literature, art and music. ... Toomer continually struggled with his own identity 'I wrote a poem called "The First American", the idea of which was that here in America we are in the process of forming a new race, that I was one of the first conscious members of this race'.7 Cane however, was still marketed by Waldo Frank as 'a book about Negroes by a Negro'8 and this slogan appeared in the New Yor...

• Word Count: 3347
• Approx Pages: 13

Sundquist says: " More specifically, it corresponds to an array of dualisms compromising the contemporary American racial trauma: theories of miscegenation and "blood- contamination that polarized the races and divided the mulatto identity,"- (50) Sundquist hints at a problem that is inhabited by Americans, and especially by white Americans living in the South. ...

• Word Count: 3258
• Approx Pages: 13
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

One possible answer draws on the different values of societies around the Atlantic and, more particularly, the way groups of people involved in creating a trans-Atlantic community saw themselves in relation to others in short, how they defined their identity. ... The slave trade was thus a product of differing constructions of social identity and the ocean-going technology that brought Atlantic societies into sudden contact with each other. ... Because Amerindians died in large numbers, and insufficient numbers of Europeans were prepared to cross the Atlantic, the form that this demand took ...

• Word Count: 4994
• Approx Pages: 20
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Frederick Douglass Born 1818 (?) in Tuckahoe, Maryland Died 1895 in Washington D.C. Frederick Douglass was the leading spokesman of African Americans in the 1800's. Never knowing his mother or even the identity of his father, he was born a slave and escaped to the north when he was twenty years...

• Word Count: 5595
• Approx Pages: 22
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

What does it mean to be an American? What does it mean to be an American slave? These two questions are ideal thematic rhetorical statements that both Crevecoeur and Douglass write about in various ways. Crevecoeur was not born in the United States, but once he arrived here, he was a free man who ma...

• Word Count: 2927
• Approx Pages: 12
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

Before the Civil War, America was plagued with a complicated social quandary that incorporated individual, societal, political, economic, and religious principles. This taboo of a topic found itself well-versed throughout the country in many publications. Its authorship included Frederick Douglass...

• Word Count: 2701
• Approx Pages: 11

Introduction The Middle Passage is the crossing of the Ocean from Africa to America of African people, who passed from the state of liberty to the state of slavery, and took place between the XVI and XIX centuries. They were captured from the tribes situated on Africa's West Coast: Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Congo, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Senegal, etc. and they were shipped in the southern area of North America (Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, Florida). The Diaspora gives birth to a new human being: the African American, who links together the African and the Ame...

• Word Count: 4160
• Approx Pages: 17
• Grade Level: High School

The Native Americans and Africans Slaves are two prominent groups seen in the Colonial Era with great influence, difficult challenges, and cultures that shaped the colonies into how we see them today. Both, the African Americans and Native Americans were challenged by the hardships of the whites throughout the midst of the eighteenth century. African Americans were found mainly in the North and South, while Native Americans were sprinkled all over the United States. In the Colonial Era, Native Americans had a community with a rich culture that defines them. There is a huge concept of "d...

• Word Count: 2660
• Approx Pages: 11
• Grade Level: High School

Reflections from the Past A young and nave child is convinced by an older sibling to commit a rude and senseless act in the presence of his parents. After witnessing the act, the parents then become quite irritated, and they seek out to find the one responsible for informing the child of the wrongdoing. Once the parents address the guilty sibling, he is disciplined because of his heartless intentions. In this instance, the child is not held accountable for his actions even though he was the one guilty for performing the offense; the parents might even argue that the child did not know any b...

• Word Count: 2726
• Approx Pages: 11
• Grade Level: High School

Society secretary Thomas Pringle edited Prince's History to meet the restrictive criteria imposed on female slave narratives, and many believe his heavy-handedness blurs Prince's true identity and the crucial sense of authenticity (Rauwerda 397). ...

• Word Count: 3051
• Approx Pages: 12
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School