A More Perfect Union By Maya Angelou Essay

Looking back to the birth of our nation, it easy to understand what makes this country what it is. It is culture, diversity, liberty, and hope. America is a place for acceptance, but it was not always like this. In the civil rights movement, America was in a time of change from segregation to freedom, similar to today’s issue in Black Lives Matter. On March 18 2008, Barack Obama addresses these issues along with the controversial remarks made by Reverend Jeremiah Wright in his speech, “A More Perfect Union”. Maya Angelou’s piece “Graduation” tells the story of Angelou’s eighth grade graduation and reflects both the excitement and disappointments of her special day. Although Angelou and Obama are separated by decades, both share very similar visions of American racism and express these views through strong anecdotes, figurative language and parallelism. Within their writings, both Obama and Angelou account for the unfair treatment that non-white students oftentimes in segregated schools have faced. Angelou identifies significant differences between the white schools and the black
For example, Angelou delivers a sense of community that revolves around the church in her vision of America and that is not all strictly defined by racism: “Even the minister preached on graduation the Sunday before. His subject was, ‘Let your light so shine that men will see your good works and praise your Father, Who is in Heaven’” (Angelou 24). Obama adds to this idea by sharing his experience at Trinity, “Trinity embodies the black community in it’s entirety--the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger” (652). The churches mentioned in their pieces share another way of viewing America. Not only a place where segregation unfortunately still exists, but also a place where people come