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Our Strange Birth Summary

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The Lives of African Americans in America’s South Disturbing, haunting, and strange, these photographs are a vivid reminder of how rough the lives of African Americans were in the South. These photographs give the viewer a much more detailed idea of how African Americans were treated in the South than any story could ever convey. These photographs show the pain, loneliness, and poverty that these Americans lived through every single day of their lives. Richard Wright crafted this book by organizing each part into similar groups to add emphasis to the main struggles of everyday life for African Americans. Richard Wright begins 12 Million Black Voices with part one, Our Strange Birth, a collection of stories and photographs of the work that African Americans were …show more content…

A picture of a kitchenette is presented and the photograph reveals the true poverty in the cities (pg. 106). The photograph reveals a dirty, broken, and disgusting toilet that looks as if it hasn’t ever been cleaned. Write states that “the kitchenette is our prison, our death sentence without trial…” and this helps him convey the message that the living situation was extremely rough. Children slept on the floor with very little padding or cushion between them and the cold hard floor (pg. 107). Slums with large piles of trash and debris in front of them and run down town houses were common places of living for Black Americans (pg. 114-116). The African Americans were even forced to pay more than the poor White Americans who lived in similar, if not the same, buildings (pg. 115). The inequality of this was outrageous. The African Americans were forced to live in these run-down buildings because of the color of their skin. To make matters worse, there would be multiple people living in these small houses. The living conditions for many Black Americans was extremely

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