In 1903 the late Mrs. Annie Johnson of Arkansas found herself with two toddling sons, very little money, a slight ability to read and add simple numbers. To this picture add a disastrous marriage and the burdensome fact that Mrs. Johnson was a Negro. When she told her husband, Mr. William Johnson, of her dissatisfaction with their marriage, he conceded that he too found it to be less than he expected, and had been secretly hoping to leave and study religion. He added that he thought God was calling him not only to preach but to do so in Enid, Oklahoma. He did not tell her that he knew a minister in Enid with whom he could study and who had a friendly, unmarried daughter. They parted amicably, Annie keeping the one-room house and William taking most of the cash to carry himself to Oklahoma.…
Rebecca Taylor LaBrode discusses in her article, “Etiology of the Psychopathic Serial Killer: An Analysis of Antisocial Personality Disorder, Psychopathy, and Serial Killer Personality and Crime Scene Characteristic," LaBrode discusses the treatment available to individuals with psychological disorders, and she connects personality disorders that come from children with past traumatic events, but she also states that the disorder can be treated from an early stage in life. Labrode specifically says,…
Highlighting racial bias and the identification of Race, she sculpted the life stories of the African American community, and displayed the struggles that black…
Davis, Angela Y. “I Am a Revolutionary Black Woman.” In Let Nobody Turn Us Around: Voices of Resistance, Reform and Renewal: An African American Anthology, edited by Marable, Manning, and Leith Mullings. Rowman & Littlefield, 2003.…
Per society, African American women, are not smart, must have a big butt, and if you are not lite-skin you are not pretty. Davis, asks her peers to discuss what the standards are for “a girl like me”. Most of the girls believe if they have blonde permed hair their better, never want to marry a darker male, or that having natural hair makes them African looking. I strongly believe white America has brainwashed African American women into idolizing what is “right” for them. I believe that they are looking to be accepted into a culture because they lack knowledge of their culture. For example,…
My initial thought was her autobiography would be about the Black Panther’s ideology and movement. How wrong was I? Angela Davis wrote this book as a tool to show her resistance against the state, and continue the work to end systematic oppression through political awareness. This book is enlightenment to those who are not familiar with black woman’s firsthand experience in the criminal justice as an offender; well let me rephrase that into a better term as a political prisoner. What I love about this autobiography that each event in Ms. Davis’ incarcerated life she turned into an act of political activism to continue the fight to end the struggle, whether she was on a hunger strike or when she shared a cell with a mentally ill white woman. She channeled these events into something beyond the surface.…
Maria W. Stewart delivered an emotionally charged lecture that expressed her views regarding African American freedom and treatment in America. Stewart addresses many other positions and logically appeals to them. Stewart was trying to send the audience a message of awareness to the continued injustices and mental barriers America is facing. She uses allusions, pathos, and anecdotal evidence to effectively portray her position.…
Sociological insights are found in different varieties. Deviant families such as “the Wild and Wonderful whites of West Virginia,” Life with Murder” “Farmingville” are an ideal explain to discuss about this topic. A common idea or explanation can be how these people grew up in economic style life or how these people mental issues. Deviant form grows up from aggressive lives, or can be changed from social or internal issues that relates to their families. No matter the situation there are always a common interest with families and cultural conflicts among deviant.…
The Author of this book (On our own terms: race, class, and gender in the lives of African American Women) Leith Mullings seeks to explore the modern and historical lives of African American women on the issues of race, class and gender. Mullings does this in a very analytical way using a collection of essays written and collected over a twenty five year period. The author’s systematic format best explains her point of view. The book explores issues such as family, work and health comparing and contrasting between white and black women as well as between men and women of both races.…
Audre Lorde, in the article I am Your Sister: Black Women Organizing Across Sexualities, provides a clear assessment of the traditional and contemporary difficulties that Black Lesbian Feminists have to deal with everyday. Lorde illustrates, for the reader, among her own personal experiences and stories, the struggles that not only Black women, but Black lesbian women and gay men continuously live with. She explains that we should not try to become identical to each other in order to attempt to…
Although it was customary but not necessary to discriminate against the African-American people back in the 1920's, Curley's wife takes it to a whole other extreme. Her attitude and negligence of Crooks' ego and feelings is so uncalled for, she literally kills his self-esteem with her words. Although Crooks is getting directly abused, there are residual effects on everyone who is a part of this social…
The cliche stereotype of the Angry Black woman stems from the pain that Black women have endured in this country for centuries. Like Henrietta Lacks, the Black woman’s character has been taken for the benefit of others. It has been said that behind every strong Black man, there is an even stronger Black woman; but what isn’t mentioned is how strong that woman has to be. Black women endure so much, including infidelity. Rose Maxson was a devoted and loving wife to her husband, Troy Maxson until she discovered that he was having an affair with another woman (Fences 1985).…
The portrayal of black women remains a representation of how people see them; treat them and how they observe themselves. From how they wear their hair, how they look, how they dress, their assets, skin color and ethnicity, they are being picked apart from things that serve no importance of how a black woman should be respected. In the article, “Mentoring and Mothering Black Femininity in the Academy: An Exploration of Body, Voice, and Image through Black Female Characters” by Devair and Rhonda Jeffries it examines the social construction of the identity of black women in the media. For example, most of what we see on the media is never accurate about black women; it is used to tear a community down because of the past racial attitudes. The article says, “A pressing issue is the lack of Black women’s voice and presence in both media productions’ illustra¬tion of them and the scholarship about them. Therefore, much of what is consumed by mainstream culture is a skewed, caricatured perception of Black women created by those outside o f their demographic”. (127). I believe the past has significance in the present about how black women are perceived in the media since it continues to put exclusion on black women and we continue to not stand up for how we should be characterized therefore, our identity becomes invisible to the…
Through it all, these three main Black women, Celie, Shug, and Sophia find a way to maintain their self dignity through friendship, understanding, and encouragement to finally free themselves of their oppressors, stand in their own strengths and rise above the oppression of females that to them was an accepted way of life.…
When Tatum begins her assessment of racism, she uses her experience as a teacher to show how there is an obvious naïveté concerning the existence of racism among her White students. She quotes a conversation between two White students, one of whom had just discovered that Cleopatra was a black woman. In this conversation, one of the states her shock at this revelation and how there is no way that it could be true because – “Cleopatra was beautiful!” (Tatum, 1997). In recapping the thoughts of another one of her students concerning African-American or Black authors, this student wrote: “It’s not my fault Blacks don’t write books” (Tatum, 1997). In reading these statements I became even more aware to the extent in which the culture of Blacks has been distorted or erased from history. Was it impossible for Cleopatra to be Black and beautiful? When did the writings of James Baldwin or Zora Neale Hurston equate to Blacks not writing books?” It is this ignorance that angers and saddens me in deepest of places in my heart, because for many people my heritage…