Romare Bearden was an American artist who was born in the South in 1911. As an African American, Bearden sought to convey the experiences shared by Americans of color. Bearden’s early work consisted of more oil paintings, but his work evolved into collage art around 1964. Bearden began using spray paint and other techniques to make the collages seem almost like an oil painting themselves, which added to their complexity and intrigue. The colors and layers of his works were meant to provoke tension and to encourage discussion of the inequality and challenges that Americans of color faced, while also capturing the feel of authenticity of universal black cultures. Using his collage technique, Bearden managed to shine light on how constructed views…
As the colors of the trees changed throughout the different seasons, the life that Sunny has grown to know was about to change colors exactly like the leaves on the trees. On June second…
Leaves which was written by David Ezra Stein tells the story of a bear in his first year of life. Since it is his first time experiencing the seasons, he has to deal with the fear that comes with change. The little bear, has only ever known a world where the leaves are always on the trees and the weather is always good enough to play but with autumn comes the leaves changing colours and falling. This is reminiscent of children that have to deal with the change that occurs in their lives once summer comes to an end and they go back to school. The bear soon learns about hibernation, when he starts to get very tired while the weather gets colder. When he finally wakes up to spring’s arrival, the bear believes that the leaves have started growing…
The duality in this poem creates an illustration of the poet’s struggle which refers to the rising and falling of the African American culture; Johnson wonders how the world sees African American during this period as a people or things. It shows that the poet is worried about the direction the African American culture will be moving. Men or things is the comparison which is “Do they really think that African American people are worthless than white american people?” So the poet uses the word “thing” it mean that whites do not appreciate and insult African American people that they do not value as a human. It might be a question the the poet wants to ask others if it will take a long time to change their thinking or if it will take great efforts, strides, and sacrifices.…
The emancipation of the African slave who was now disconnected from their traditions and way of life after nearly 300 years, is seemingly a great gush from the dam to the ebbs and flows of the struggle. The end of slavery as we know it, presented a ball of mixed emotions among the nation; North and SOUTH. Some slaves were grossly ecstatic to be free. For example, when a slave girl named Caddy, from Goodman, Mississippi found she was free, went to her mistress, flipped up her dress and told her "Kiss my ass!" On the contrary, some slaves were apprehensive of being free. For example, one elderly slave woman reportedly said, "I ain' no free nigger! I is got a marster and mistiss! Dee right dar in de great house. Ef you don' believe me, you go dar an' see." Though most slaves were detached from their families, many managed to regroup and find their love ones after their emancipation and constructed close knit families. Land was an viable means of survival in the minds of newly freedmen and the government was eager to deem lands to the ex-slaves . On January 16, 1865, General William T. Sherman told the freedmen that they will receive the land they were in search of. They were granted the head of each family would receive "possessory title" to forty acres of land. Sherman also gave the use of Army mules, thus giving rise to the slogan, "Forty acres and a mule." Similarly in 1862 the Union military set aside land in Port Royal, South Carolina, which became known as the Port Royal experiment. The freedmen bureau was created to aid newly freed slaves in the transition from bondage to freedom in 1865. After Lincoln's assassination the succession of his Vice president, Andrew Johnson, to the presidency meant that the white owners of the lands, that were given to the freedmen, would be returned. Sharecropping became a sort of ebb in the…
The book Night, written by Eliezer Wiesel is about his experience in the holocaust and the pain and suffering him and the jews went through. He was taken from his home as a young boy and put into multiple ghettos before he was shipped off to Auschwitz. There he was separated from his family and left with his father, Shlomo Wiesel. He was sent to different camps and stuck with his father until the end. But at the last camp they stayed at, his father was sent to the crematorium and burned to death. Elie was liberated a few days after that and was able to write this book to tell his story to the reader. In his personal narrative Night, Elie Wiesel’s uses symbolism and very detailed description of the setting with a deep and profound tone to show the story of his hellish time in the Holocaust concentration camps.…
Speaking from your own life experience and observations, which writer least accurately represents what it means to be American? I would have to say it is Walt Whitman least accurately represents my life experiences in America. Why? Well in his poem “America” he talks of a “Centre of equal daughters, equal sons” (Whitman). There is nothing equal about America. There are those who have connections, networks of people, families of support that provide all with certain advantages or disadvantages. When I was in my late teens my mother worked for an eye doctor in Chicago. I needed a job so she told my mother to have me go and apply at the hospital were she was on staff. So…
The snow never disappeared throughout the winter. Making snow men, having snowball fights, lying on the snow, and skiing through the mountains, my friends and I would indulge in the vast shimmering snow world forever. People say that there are four seasons in Vermont: almost winter, winter, still winter, and road construction. That is partially true—it even snowed at the end of April last year—except for the warm spells that bring unforgettable, charming maple leaves in the fall. The fall of Vermont is colorful, decorated by all the maples trees in green, yellow, orange, red, and even a mix or gradient change between them. The maple leaves form the rainbows near sky, the fineries of mountains, the unique blanket on road. They are the star and protagonist in the fall; they never fail to catch people’s eye. Never did I feel so close to the nature when I was in Vermont, living next to the green mountains and running streams.…
The Civil War was not the first war where blacks would participate, nor would it be the last. Butler’s policy to allow blacks into Union forces, opened the opportunity for not only Virginian slaves, but other slaves throughout the South, to escape their masters. The Union army allowed a form of social elevation for the black race, influencing military duties and a form of schooling, but most importantly, offering certain legal rights that no slave could possess. The use of colored men, began with Butler’s began to use these me as a labor source for his camp. Secretary of War’s approved a contraband policy. Simon Cameron, who was Secretary of War at that time, approved Butler’s request of in taking blacks, informing him that “You will employ such persons in the service to which they may be best adapted, keeping an account of the labor by them performed, of the value of it and of the expense of their maintenance.” They were to be used as help for Union laborers and not as soldiers.…
As of today the state of Black America is at a place where there is a lot of work that has to be done. The Black America has made many strides in the right direction the community is still lacking in many ways. The black community is one that is not unified as it should be. Blacks don’t control the communities that they live in or have a real say so about what goes on in them. The black youth in America seems to have a plight that is continuously worsening.…
In "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain," Langston Hughes begins his argument with a quote from a young black man who declares that he "want[s] to be a poet -- not a Negro poet;" Hughes does this to inform the reader of the perceptions of young black artists in the 1920s. Hughes believes that artists like this man think "white is best," which carries into the theme of the essay, that self-love as an African American shapes the basis of your self-identification. Hughes uses this quote because it embodies the central idea of self-love, no matter your skin color. He carries this quote through the piece, by shaping his argument around it. The quote infers that being African American is not good enough, or how Hughes puts it, that "his own…
In the poem, "Misgiving" (1923), Frost creates a metaphor by comparing the narrator's death and afterlife to the lifecycle of the leaf. When the leaf is finally released from its bondage to the tree, he implies that it has the option of flying free with the wind and exploring the world. Frost has shown the human protagonist identifying in some way with the trees, feeling somehow related to them because of mood, emotion, fear, or desires that are being projected onto the trees, creating relationships that are more than analogy, that approach an expression of identity. But, unfortunately, most leaves tend to fall straight to the ground and lie motionless against a wall or in a ravine. His hope is that his own impending departure from this mortal spiral is not equally as anticlimactic.…
My name is Michelle Williams-Agwagu and my ethnicity group is African American. African Americans came here by forced immigration. They were not invited here to America, and they certainly did not come here by choice. They were forced and taken on ships that brought them to America just to become slaves to the white people.…
When analysing American society through postcolonial theory, the basic division shows how imperialism created a binary construction in society's mindset and the creation of a group identity rather than a personal identity. Due to the focus of this paper on African Americans and their relation to the dominate Euro-Americans, other ethnics groups, such as Native Americans, are not included in this society analysis. Moreover, this paper does not presume that the position between coloniser and colonised is a stable one, as, how the novel will highlight, it is undergoing a change and reflects many gray areas in this binary opposition. This analysis is to provide a simple first step in understanding a complicated issue in the relationship between African Americans and Euro-Americans.…
It derived from the Greek verb dran, meaning “to act” or “to do”, refers to actions or deeds as they are performed in theatrical setting for the benefit of a body spectators. More limited than the related concept of theater, which also comprehends such forms as opera and dance, the term drama refers essentially to dramatic literature—the text composed by playwrights to be spoken in a theater. Because the heritages of Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and African drama have had little influence on one another and even less on the theaters of the English-speaking world.…