Jacob Lawrence: Progress In African American Communities

(Intro) since July 4th 1776 the great country we call the United States has been growing. It started small; just a few immigrants seeking a new world for religious freedoms, and has grown into a world power. It was not an easy journey though, our country experienced many struggles along the way: political disagreements over land, wars, Indian, and technological blocks. As a country we have been very resourceful; throughout history we have come together, explored new land, made monumental changes in technologies, and our thought processes. Once a country of only thirteen colonies, we have gone through great westward expansion to become a united nation of fifty states.

The book, The Spirituals and the Blues, by James H. Cone, illustrates how the slave spirituals and the blues reflected the struggle for black survival under the harsh reality of slavery and segregation. The spirituals are historical songs which speak out about the rupture of black lives in a religious sense, telling us about people in a land of bondage, and what they did to stay united and somehow fight back. The blues are somewhat different from in the spirituals in that they depict the secular aspect of black life during times of oppression and the capacity to survive. James H. Cone’s portrayal of how the spirituals and the blues aided blacks through times of hardship and adversity

Hello my name James Johnson, and I am a enslaved african american that is currently living on a plantation in the territory of North Carolina. I am twenty five years old, and ever since I can remember, I have always been interested in human rights for the people of my race who are constantly faced with criticism, prejudice, and inequality.

A nation founded in a land unknown, a nation that united in a world marked by the dissonant notes of rebellion, a nation of people unified by vision not lineage for the first time. This is the nation that became the most powerful nation in the world. This is the United States. This nation that flourished when the scales tilted so out of its favor can be explained only in the eloquent words of President Calvin Coolidge, “the human mind has the power to know truth.” The founders of our nation worked tirelessly assembling the pieces of heritage and the bits of idealogy that were scattered about the thirteen colonies not to change the status quo but to pursue the truth. The founders of our nation did not read the orations of Cicero or the remarks

For the Formal Analysis Essay, I have chosen the following artist and work of art to discuss: Faith Ringgold (African American, b. 1930), God Bless America, c. 1964, oil on canvas, approx 31” x 19”. The subject of Faith Ringgold’s God Bless America (Figure 1-22) is to inform us about the physical and emotional torment of African Americans prior to and during the Civil War. The painting symbolizes a white woman portrayed as a racist who is denying “blacks” to vote. The painting also shows the American flag, with the stripes symbolizing bars, and the star symbolizing a sheriff's badge. The woman herself is also symbolized as a prisoner of her own bigotry. The medium for God Bless America is oil painting. Faith Ringgold uses the technique

The issue of slavery in the United States has been hotly debated for centuries. Historians continuously squabble over the causes and effects of America’s capitalistic, industrial form of slavery. But two of the most heavily discussed questions are whether the institution of slavery destroyed African culture in America, and whether it reduced slaves to a child-like state of dependency and incompetence. Anthropologist Melville Herskovits, and historian Stanley Elkins both weigh in on this debate: Herskovits with, The Myth of the Negro Past, and Elkins with, Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life. In, Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life, Elkins asserts that African culture was all but destroyed by a repression of the slaves’ rights, at the hands of their masters. He claims that complete dependence on their masters and a lack of collective cultural identity and family bonds, reduced slaves to a child-like state of helplessness and ignorance, and childish behavior called the ‘Sambo’. Herskovits takes a different stance in this debate. In, The Myth of the Negro Past, he claims that African culture was not completely destroyed by slavery, and that the ‘Sambo’ stereotype was no more than a myth or at least a gross generalization. He uses slave revolts and the persistence of African culture in American in music, dance, and language as evidence to prove this.

Christianity is an essential part of the women’s slave narratives that were read thus far. As slaves bounded by their foreign masters, the religion of Christianity has shaped the black community’s way of thinking and their way of life as a whole. While the majority of slaves converted to Christianity, the women were very passionate with their Christian faith as they used it as a fundamental anchor to allow them to keep hope alive in times of struggle and strife. The three narratives that are chosen to illustrate this role of Christianity within the lives of slave women are the narratives of Memoir of Old Elizabeth: a Coloured Woman, A Slave Girl’s Story: Being and Autobiography of Kate Drumgoold, and Memories of Childhood’s Slavery Days by

Many cultures have a unique art form for representing their identity. These arts trace a history and a set of people. Because of slave trade, many African Americans lost a form of themselves. Like a victim under hypnosis, were instilled the values that weren’t part of their basic nature. Because these values were drained, the fear that cast it way into the hearts of the oppressed only sort a means of survival. Art has influenced many movements African Americans have taken to sort out an array of scrambled identities and mislead truths. Art is the means by forming an opinion of oneself and directing its visuals for personal or cultural influence. However, to start on a journey without an identity; is to

America is a great nation because of all the laws and regulation set forth to protect its citizens. As

In Arlene Keizer’s essay, titled “Gone Astray in the Flesh: Kara Walker, Black Women Writers, and African American Postmemory,” she addresses the concept of postmemory, stating it “is a haunted condition, in which images from the past hover over the present or erupt into it” (1650). In other words, postmemory is almost a trauma induced on the descendants of some intense event—such as slavery—and rather than these descendants experiencing the trauma directly, they experience it through a relation or sense of identity that it, in a way, imprints itself upon them. For the sake of this essay, I will be examining postmemory in the sense of slavery and the descendants of slaves. More specifically, I will be examining how this sense of postmemory is demonstrated throughout Kara Walker’s art, as well as Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred and

African- American folklore is debatably the origin for most African- American literature. In a country where as late as the 1860’s there were laws prohibiting the teaching of slaves, it was essential for the

To approach the influence of these colonial eras and slavery atrocities, Dr. Michael D. Harris who is the curator of the exhibition Alison Saar: The Nature of Us has put in place a moving and eye-opening set of artworks in the Gallery West of the Harvey B. Gantt Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. Opened January 18, the exhibit features more than

The greatest nation the world has ever seen the United States of America was a vast land made up of various Native American nations that originally had their own traditions and cultures. This so called new world was already inhabited by people already but the europeans saw them as just wanting to be ruled by other inferior nations. As time has told us again and again humanity does not like to be ruled by other people so by nature if we want freedom then we fight for it. Once independence was for Americans this nation had a foundation that was going to be built upon on even til this day. If you go back a couple hundred years ago and look at this nation 's past, a large amount of indian tribes having to adapt and coexist with immigrants from around the world only to have malicious wars played out on this land then for americans to overcome overwhelming adversities and end up being the United States we know today is definitely something unexpected.

History is a collection of event interpretations and narratives produced by oppressors and colonizers. These dominant narratives influence belief systems, shape institutions, and silence historically disenfranchised groups. Still, various art forms such as literature, oral storytelling, and films give the historically marginalized the opportunity to share their less commonly told narratives. In Haile Gerima’s film, Sankofa(1993), and Steve McQueen’s film, 12 Years a Slave(2013), they divert from the slave narrative genre and recenter the stories and voices of enslaved people. Accordingly, Gerima’s, Sankofa, and McQueen’s, 12 Years a Slave, use unconventional sound and pictorial images to accurately historicize the suffering of enslaved people. Thus, both films challenge dominant narratives of American slavery that exploit the trauma experienced by Africana.

Some scholars such as E. Franklin Frazier, contends that slavery in the United States expunged all the religious traditions of the slaves. Conversely, others, including Melville Herskovits, which challenges residuals, existences, and "Africanisms,” are still palpable in African-American ethos, specifically in its religious