Preview

Will V Day Be Me Day Too

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
918 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Will V Day Be Me Day Too
http://www.aboutjonesfamily.com/PAGES/WAR10.HTM May 8, 1945 issue of The Stars and Stripes

Significance of title
The significance of the title is talking about Victory day. The anniversary of Japan’s surrender to the Allies in 1945, ending World War II. The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9, and the Soviet Union’s invasion of Manchuria in the previous week made the surrender inevitable. http:
//www.timeanddate.com/holidays/us/victory-day. Also it was the day African
Americans helped fight.
“Troops in Burma stop work briefly to read President
Truman's Proclamation of Victory in Europe." May 9, 1945” http://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/ww2pictures http://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/ww2pictures/images/african-americans-wwii-012.jpg

Diction
He is using diction to show that he is fighting for democracy but he still has his rights restrained from him
● “Tan-skinned yank.”
“ Colored folks sit in front of a colored only store in Belle Grade Florida. This store was
● “Fascists' laps..” segregated by police order, just like all stores
● “I face death.” and locations were under the Jim Crow laws
● “Jim Crow birds.” that 'required' separate but equal services for colored and white people. The building itself
● “Victory’s glow.” seems to be covered in dirt and not well taken
● “Liberated.” care of. This shows that many colored only
● “Negro American.” stores were very poor, and there were likely very few in number. The surrounding area
● “Herd.” shows that it is in a very poor location.
● “Cattle.”
Often colored only stores were poor, simply out of the fact that colored people were kept
● “For Democracy?” poorer than whites.”

(http://mrd4-jimcrow-shopping.weebly.com/)

Tone
Langston Hughes tone in this poem shows how he is disappointed, grieved, and indignant towards the wrong doing towards African Americans that still have no rights even though they fought in the war.
● “When I take off my uniform,
Will

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    The year is 1969 and the United States of America has changed drastically. During the 60’s African Americans fought and struggle to be treated fairly and discriminated against. And though their freed from slavery, they aren’t allowed to vote nor are they allowed to attend the same schools as white or use white folks public facilities. Although back in the 1940’s, President Truman attempted to ambiguity civil right matters; He did however request a closer on ethnic discernment in federal employment practices and commanded the end of exclusion in military forces, which was finalized by President Eisenhower (Congressional Record - U. S. Government Printing Office, 2002). Now during President Eisenhower presidency he reinforced the Civil Rights Act of 1957…

    • 768 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    How does the poetry of Langston Hughes, “I, Too,” “Harlem,” and “A Song to a Negro…

    • 684 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    How far do you agree that African Americans were treated as Second Class Citizens in the US in the 1945?…

    • 262 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Being born and raised in Vietnam, the country which citizens had been spending thousands years fighting various invaders for freedom, I was taught to be grateful for the freedom we have. That freedom was not there right after we declared independence. We had to fight for it. There was a time when the aristocrat and bourgeois were treated badly. After one night, all their properties were taken away while their houses were burned down. And, miserably, the husbands were missing and never came back. The luckier ones who survived had to flee their own country. A similar story happened in American history for black people. It was stated eloquently on the Declaration of Independence that, “All men are created equal.” However, the Negro was still being sold and treated inhumanly.…

    • 287 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The fact that White people were so cruel to African Americans is still crazy to me. They would not want them to have any kind of chance to have a life. To be able to just work and provide a life for their families. Instead they were treated like animals, but it was okay for them to put their lives on the line by defending this country. The same country that was not allowing them to have equal rights as everyone else. African Americans were fighting their own battle against white people. They were fighting for their lives, for their families, and mostly for their…

    • 348 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Langston Hughes is one of those incredible people. The way his poems bring a sensation to them that some other poets can’t even process. “Hughes was a very complex person, split between a sophisticated consciousness and a fierce determination to create a popular and simplified poetic art” (Bloom 10). Langston Hughes had a way of reaching his people by speaking to the black people and putting down everyday life for them. He helped form a new kind of poetry with more rhythm style. “Hughes was an established figure in the Harlem Renaissance, a cultural movement characterized by an explosion of black literature, theater, music, painting, and political and racial consciousness”(Meyers 908). Jazz was growing during the Harlem Renaissance and Langston captured that in jazz poetry. “Jazz poetry is a literary genre defined as poetry necessarily informed by jazz music… Jazz poetry, like the music itself, encompasses a variety of forms, rhythms, and sounds.” (A Brief Guide to Jazz Poetry). Jazz poetry can be seen as a thread that runs through the Harlem Renaissance, the Beat movement, and the Black Arts Movement. Jazz poems are supposed to bring a vivid imagery in your head. To which Langston could write poems that could almost make you feel…

    • 1727 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    This short poem is one of Hughes’s most famous works; it is likely the most common Langston Hughes poem taught in American schools. Hughes wrote "Harlem" in 1951, and it addresses one of his most common themes like the limitations of the American Dream for African Americans. The poem has eleven short lines in four stanzas, and all but one line are questions.In the early 1950s, America was still racially segregated. African Americans were saddled with the legacy of slavery, which essentially rendered them second-class citizens in the eyes of the law, particularly in the South.Hughes was intimately aware of the challenges he faced as a black man in America, and the tone of his work reflects his complicated experience. He can come across as sympathetic, enraged, and hopeful. Hughes titled this poem “Harlem” after the New York neighborhood that became the center of the Harlem Renaissance, a major creative explosion in music, literature, and art that occurred during the 1910s and 1920s. Many African American families saw Harlem as a sanctuary from the frequent discrimination they faced in other parts of the country. Unfortunately, Harlem’s glamour faded at the beginning of the 1930s when the Great Depression set in that left many of the African American families who had flourished in Harlem…

    • 539 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Langston Hughes brings emotion and drama to his childhood story by what seems to be almost taking himself back in time into the mind of a young boy and his youthful writing techniques and styles that would represent the story being told by a young boy. i believe that this literary device allows the reader to listen to the boy instead of an older man. This almost forces sympathy onto the reader and causes the reader to become more…

    • 575 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    African Americans: African Americans have always faced discrimination, so it was no surprise that they did even after the war. They were treated the same even after they fought for the same country that the white men did.…

    • 380 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the history of the United States, discrimination was something that African Americans faced painfully in the Civil War era and which continues to happen on a milder scale in today’s society. When African Americans first came to America, they were forced to perform manual labor against their will. Greedy, rich, lazy Americans called themselves superior to the “different, dark-skinned” people who slowly became slaves to the whites. In bondage, they received no pay and were physically abused. Their struggle for freedom saw no hope until the Civil War became inevitable. When the war began, African Americans united in the fight to free all slaves of their kind. Although it did not come easily, the opportunity finally came for blacks to serve as soldiers and fight alongside white men, and they proved their ability to withstand the hardships of battle and become distinguished American heroes.…

    • 1944 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    If you fought for a country, don’t you think you should be treated kindly when you came home no matter what race you are? Black people who fought in World War II were still not treated nicely when they came home. It wasn’t just at home, Black soldiers were discriminated against overseas by their fellow soldiers. These “fellow soldiers” were White. Not only were Black veterans still discriminated against when they came home, They were treated even worse than average Black people. Black veterans should be treated just as nicely as White veterans.…

    • 973 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    During the Second World War, African Americans participated in the battlefield and didn’t face any discriminations from their fellow brothers in arms. In 1964, President Truman called for an end to discrimination, however, this call resulted in miscorrelation and resulted in school desegregations. Furthermore, public schools were discriminating African Americans, especially in the South. Back in1954, the state laws by the United States…

    • 917 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In another one of Langston Hughes’ poems, Harlem, a shorter more heart felt piece, he wrote,…

    • 908 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Jim Crow Laws Essay

    • 1418 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Between the years of 1930 to 1959, Jim Crow laws and etiquette rules dominated the South and allowed some of the most horrific crimes and injustices against African Americans to occur, especially throughout those thirty years. Unfortunately, for the people devastated by these abhorrent laws justice comes often came too late and many more never received any justice. After the Civil War ravaged the country, the Southern states and people wanted to remind the recently freed slaves that they were not equal to their white counterparts. During Reconstruction, most of the Southern states passed laws which allowed for the continued persecution and the atrocious treatment of African Americans. Even the laws themselves were given the racist name of…

    • 1418 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    This is his way of saying that he is not included in with the “average” American because he is colored. His job is merely a servant compared to others and he in incapable of singing his work proudy. Hughes disagrees completely and shows that he, too, sings his work loud and proud even if his work is considered less than the others. At the end of the poem, Hughes finishes with, “They’ll see how beautiful I am/ And be ashamed”. This was his way of saying that one day in the future, people will be ashamed that they ever treated him and others different and they will see his true colors shine through.…

    • 770 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays