Analysis Of Separate Pasts By Melton Mclaurin

History has a deep past involving white and black relations. It is a history of deep oppression and hatred based on color of skin. Out of the Reconstruction Era of the United States, slavery was abolished but racial oppression would be evident and existent 100 years from then. White supremacist ideals kept the two races segregated. Not only did white people find black people grotesque and less than human, but they especially feared miscegenation. The only thing worse than being black was being of mixed race of black and white. Black Boy by Richard Wright and Separate Pasts by Melton McLaurin are both autobiographies that touch upon the ideas of growing up in the segregated South but from different perspectives. Richard Wright experiences the effects of blatant racism and segregation in the south first hand from his boyhood during World War I until his adulthood during the Great Depression. Melton McLaurin experiences segregation in Wade, North Carolina during the 1950s era from the point of view of a white boy undergoing
Defiance is his way of rebelling against society. He does not accept religion even though his grandmother tries to force it on him, but he finds a spiritual connection to the principles of Communism. He likes the idea of unity in a society full of oppression. “My life as a Negro in America had led me to feel . . . that the problem of human unity was more important than bread, more important than physical living itself; for I felt that without a common bond uniting men . . . there could be no living worthy of being called human.” (Wright, 318) He refuses to conform and later defies the Communist Party because they are trying to change him. He later accepts that he is an individual and will not sacrifice his own beliefs to conform to society. He has to live with the fact that no group will truly accept him because he will not give into what people tell him to