Racial Prejudice By Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou And Kathryn Stockett

During the early 1930s many black writers begin to produce works that helped to shape and define the Civil Rights movement. Among them was Langston Hughes whose poems and writing contributed directly to the rhetoric of the day and inspired many African-Americans, both in and out of the Civil Rights movement. Much of this grew out of what was called the Harlem Renaissance, which emerged during turbulent times for the world, the United States, and black Americans. World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 had left the world in disorder and stimulated anti-colonial movements throughout the third world. In America, twenty years of progressive reform ended with the red scare, race riots, and isolationism throughout 1919 and led to

One of Langston Hughes’ most common and popular themes is that of the American Dream. Langston Hughes portrays the theme of equal hope for all people in America in his poem “Evenin’ Air Blues” (Johnson 60). Through the theme of the American Dream, Langston Hughes is ultimately saying that life should be better, richer, and fuller for everyone, especially the suppressed African American people. Langston Hughes writes about the promise that every person in America should have an equal opportunity to achieve success through hard work (Johnson 60). Hughes is expressing

My dissertation started off with the idea of how the characters in The Help expressed their voice and the complications they faced in doing that. The novel is about giving voice to African Americans maids in the 1960s in a society formed by its legacy of slavery and racism. However, The Help got a lot of criticism from both critics and readers as they questioned the success and motives of Kathryn Stockett's attempt to give voice to African Americans, especially in its authenticity. One of the problems found in the novel is that the black maids can only express their voice and stories through Skeeter, a white woman, who is using the stories (at least at the beginning of the novel) to boost her own career.1 The issue becomes more complicated

Langston Hughes was the leading voice of African American people in his time, speaking through his poetry to represent blacks. His Influence through his poems are seen widely not just by blacks but by those who enjoy poetry in other races and social classes. Hughes poems, Harlem, The Negro speaks of rivers, Theme for English B, and Negro are great examples of his output for the racial inequality between the blacks and whites. The relationship between whites and blacks are rooted in America's history for the good and the bad. Hughes poems bring the history at large and present them in a proud manner. The injustice that blacks face because of their history of once being in bondage is something they are constantly reminded and ridiculed for but must overcome and bring to light that the thoughts of slavery and inequality will be a lesson and something to remember for a different future where that kind of prejudice is not found so widely.

While reading literature, we manage to forget that they have true roots to what is being written and what they actually represent. When looking at the similarities of how literature is represented it obvious to see that there are certain socially constructed groups presented. Although these socially constructed groups do vary throughout literature, they still tend to be very similar. In Alice Walker’s short story “Everyday Use,” Lorraine Hansberry play “A Raisin in the Sun,” and Langston Hughes’s poems “Harlem” and “Theme for English B” they evaluate the social construction of African Americans. What makes these authors so alike is the similarities that they share; being that they were all born in the early 1900’s, are all of African American ethnicity, and acknowledge the social construct of African Americans in these works. Looking at each of these works of literature they represent the struggles that African Americans faced when trying to be seen as equal, by allowing these works to be shown in different insights towards the battles faced in their movement towards being seen as equal.

The Help, written by Kathryn Stockett, is set in Jacksonville, Mississippi during the 1960’s — a time when white people were considered superior to blacks in the southern United States. Throughout most of the book, we follow the story of a white woman named Skeeter Phelan, who gathers stories from the black women, called ‘the help’, about their work as maids inside of the white peoples homes, and compiles them into a book. The goal of this book is to expose (and eventually get rid of) the racism that these black women are faced with working for their white families. Most of the white people grew up with the help doing whatever they were asked and in turn were exposed to racial inferiority as a normal occurrence.

The New York Times Bestseller novel, The Help, is a fiction story that is set on real life in Jackson, Mississippi, during the 1960s. It is about African American or colored women/men and their interaction with the caucasian society and families. The novel takes places during the time of the Civil Rights Movement. The time in which segregation and racism was at its full throttle; when people had severly different morals and assumptions of one another. The Help demonstrates how during times of hardship and inequality of African Americans, people (caucasians) tend to think that power should just fall into their hands and that leads to destruction, and the alienation of people with different mindsets or hearts of that era.

“Breakfast in Virginia” is a short story written in 1963 by Langston Hughes, an American poet, and author, a time where racism still existed. The story is about two black soldiers who had been traveling on a long and hard journey. They were starving, so they went to the train’s dining car. An elderly white man, whose son was also a soldier, invited the two boys to join him. A steward walked over and said that the two soldiers were not allowed to sit there. The white man, who was ashamed, not of the steward, but of the system the steward was required to follow, invited the boys to have breakfast with him in his room, where he talked about how much he admired the bravery of soldiers. He treated the two as his equals, not anything less. Hughes

The Harlem renaissance bought many changes into African American history and allowed Africans to express their culture. During the Harlem renaissance, the Africans migrated to America and drew black writers, musicians and poets into American literature. Many artists influenced the Harlem in there writing, one of them was Langston Hughes. Hughes lived his life mostly in Harlem, his writing reflected African culture and the Harlem. He described how Harlem was still a place of fear for the Africans, as they still faced racism and ethnicity. One of his writings that he published was “powder-white faces”, in this writing Hughes described how difficult African-Americans lives were. As he used one character named Charlie who changes his name while migrating to America to sound more white type, got a job as a waitress and was faced racism and ethnicity towards him during this period. Another famous poetic writer was Zora Neale Hurston, who published the “story in the Harlem slang.” In this writing, she described what the life was like during Harlem period, how they talked using their “slang” language. She described how they still faced racism during this period of their life. She used the type of slang to show how their race and culture were different back then. Both writers used powerful sources of imagery to describe how the African Americans faced racism and ethnicity during the Harlem renaissance. The writers gave us an image in our mind as we read these stories about how

The most important idea I have learned about this semester has to be about segregation of the blacks. This topic struck my interest because have you ever thought about how it would be if they were still treated as poorly as they were during these times? Well the person that was in this chapter was Langston Hughes, which was a poet that wrote about the black community and what they struggled with in their everyday lives. He would even compare the lives of African Americans to the lives of the whites. During the times of his poems, slavery was over but the mistreating of the blacks wasn’t. Hughes talked about the dream the African Americans had and how the whites were putting it off. As this chapter continued, we learned about a man named Martin Luther King Jr. He was a man that always stuck to what he believed in and never gave into the thoughts of other people. He uses his “I Have a Dream” speech to show how he felt about this problem they were having. In this speech he repeats “I have a Dream” many times to let the reader know that this is his main goal for the black community. He wants the blacks to be free and have the freedoms the whites have on a daily basis. He says “I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, that one day right down in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as

In today’s society, people have many racial prejudices whether they are displayed to the public or not. Racial tensions were even more prevalent in the twentieth century. Langston Hughes was a poet who really tried to bring attention to the growing racial tensions until his death in the late 60s. Throughout his life, Hughes was influenced by the time he grew up in and by his own family; he wrote to free the black culture and literature from racial pride.

Whether it’s true or fictional, literature often reflects issues in our society. Whether it’s social justice or The Great Depression, literature highlights the issue and uses it to enhance the richness of the story. Furthermore, the problem of racism and discrimination becomes a theme of a multitude of novels. Various American Literature works and documentaries such as To Kill A Mockingbird, A Raisin In The Sun and American Denial exhibit that the oppression of African Americans in the US requires their cooperation as well.

The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, is a historic novel set in the early 1960’s in Jackson, Mississippi. This story is told from the perspective of two black maids, Aibileen and Minny, and a white southern girl, Eugenia ‘Skeeter’ Phelan. It focuses in on the black maids, their lives, and their work environment. This book digs into the details of how “the help” were treated even after the civil war had ended. The maids in this novel decide to work together with Skeeter to show all of America exactly how Jackson treats their “help”. The Help shows how black people were treated after the civil war, good and bad, and the views of the maids during this time about this issue all through a book within a book.

Before the civil rights movement in America, many writers that grew up during times of oppression and racial discrimination began to speak out about the problems African Americans faced. Wilson, Hughes, and Hansberry explore the themes of racism and the American dream in their works to reveal the situation for black Americans in the United States during the time period after World War II.

Graduation and Salvation – written by critically acclaimed authors Maya Angelou and Langston Hughes, respectively – are two autobiographical essays that tell of an important memory of the authors; a memory in which they’ve experienced disappointment as young adults. Although both authors experienced disappointment, the feelings that were evoked show several differences.