History Lesson Poem

The protagonist of the poem is Rosa Parks, a seamstress and an active member in the local NAACP, who refused to give up her seat for a white man. Parks was arrested, which led to a boycott against Montgomery bus system. As a result of more than one year of boycott, the segregation law was announced unconstitutional.

The author uses tone and images throughout to compare and contrast the concepts of “black wealth” and a “hard life”. The author combines the use of images with blunt word combinations to make her point; for example, “you always remember things like living in Woodlawn with no inside toilet”. This image evokes the warmth of remembering a special community with the negative, have to use outdoor facilities. Another example of this combination of tone and imagery is “how good the water felt when you got your bath from one of those big tubs that folk in Chicago barbecue in”. Again the author’s positive memory is of feeling fresh after her bath combined with a negative, the fact that it was a barbecue drum.

Throughout the poem, the author chooses simple diction. This makes the tone straightforward and blunt, like a black America who simply expresses himself instead of sermonizing about discrimination. Thereby, readers can accept the poem’s argument more easily. Furthermore, the author writes the poem mostly in long sentences to emphasize on short yet important sentences such as “That’s America.”, “Be we are. That’s true!”

The appreciation of nature is illustrated through imagery ‘and now the country bursts open on the sea-across a calico beach unfurling’. The use of personification in the phrase ‘and the water sways’ is symbolic for life and nature, giving that water has human qualities. In contrast, ‘silver basin’ is a representation of a material creation and blends in with natural world. The poem is dominated by light and pure images of ‘sunlight rotating’ which emphasizes the emotional concept of this journey. The use of first person ‘I see from where I’m bent one of those bright crockery days that belong to so much I remember’ shapes the diverse range of imagery and mood within the poem. The poet appears to be emotional about his past considering his thoughts are stimulated by different landscapes through physical journey.

Education is the basic key to one’s life and the shift of time shows the process in one’s mind. Migration Portraiture by Nikkey Finney is a poem focuses on the importance of education to African Americans while they were in the South and the key will to learn growing through the movement to the South. This sense of education is seen through the transition of life for African Americans between their time in the South and then to the North. The poem goes through this shift of time to emphasize experiences. We get this feeling of the past (The South) and the future (The North) through the usage of specific words, imagery and repetition of North and South through every line breaking point in the poem.

Poems are built with tradition, but in his case, the speaker wants to end tradition just as he wants to end racism. In line two and three, they both end with the same word which is called symploce. Symploce is a combination of anaphora and epistrophe which implies that these two lines are an important point of the figure of speech. The poem was written by stating a cause and effect. The line beginng with by is the cause and I being the effect. Its an explination of how he will fight social injustice. It also helps readers to use and understand the most effective way to fight social

The poem is depicted from differing perspectives, third and first person, in order to exemplify the differences that exist between father and son. The third person point of view is utilized in the very beginning of the poem in order to help the flow and accentuate the differences in perspectives between the father and the son. As the poem begins, the speaker seems to be recalling and telling a story of how a

Now this story talks about the feeling’s blacks or colored and how they still remember slavery. In both poems they use some form of

This story is about how two brothers from the Watts cross over the line of segregation that separates them from an area that is all-whites and all-american place and how they are off to the store to get groceries and when they try to come back they get beat up buy 5 teenagers on a bike. I think his purpose for writing this is to show that no matter where you are there will always be a place that bases everything off the race. The way that he uses connotation, syntax and imagery is to show the passion between how dependent

Both the poem and novel relate to eachother through race and the "invisibily"of the main characters portrayed. "I, too, sing America" is the

Main Idea: The poet, born in Jamaica and moved to America, has to go through the day to day struggles in order to tolerate the hate he receives only because of his race. The people do not see him for who he really is, however, he can see them for who they really are. Ultimately, he sees himself as better than his haters because he never gives into his rage like the people do.

Race plays a big part in this poem. He speaks on Harlem and its culture and this environment but also about mutual interest with people

The poem starts off with a courageous young girl who begs her mother to go with the people to march for freedom. The mother, of course, answers no due to the violence that was occurring in the town. Then finally, the girl asks to go to church, her mother without hesitation replies with a confident, “yes.” Little did the mother know that her daughter was killed at the church due to radical forms of racism. Randall brings truth to how heart-wrenching this era was simply due to the outrageous acts of inequality.

The point of view of this poem is very attention grabbing. In the first 28 lines the poem is in first person talking about the bitch in the third person. However, in the last six lines it changes to second person referring to the bitch as you. The use of a dialogue in the poem helps to make the poem more remarkable and genuine. The dialogue aids the reader to understand the speaker’s exact feelings.

In the conversation where there competing to win the conversation against each other, you can compare this to a kid against a school bully, using descriptive words and phrases, trying to make the other character feel bad for doing things to innocent people. And the narrator seems confident during the whole thing. But when the poem relates to the fact of life, is that this poem seems to support the fight against the constant fight against bullying all across the world. And how this poem relates to my life personally is that this poem seems like if I am going to an new school with an bully, and how I will stand up to them and make them feel sorry for