Slavery Essay : Native Son, By Richard Wright

“Native Son” composed by Richard Wright was revolved into an American drama picture in 1986 by director Jerrold Freeman. This piece caused a lot of controversy on whether the protagonist, Bigger Thomas, is guilty or innocent in the unfortunate events that have occurred. The purpose of this argumentative essay is to examine Richard Wright’s film adaptation of Native Son and prove his innocence based on how society deceived and deprived African Americans, his living and social environment, and his fears.

The United States is a immigrant country, which faces varieties of problems. The African American problem is one of the most serious one. Racial segregation is a deep-rooted social problem, which reflects in every field in the United States. For example, education, labor market and criminal justice system. In the aspect of education, most of black children were not permitted to enter the school, because the white children studied there. In the aspect of labor market, the black people 's average wages were lower than the whites. They did the manual work. In the aspect of criminal justice system, the blacks were easily in jail. Badly, their sentences were also more serious than the whites. In general, the blacks live in the bottom of the American society. Martin Luther King delivered the famous speech I Have a Dream, ' ' I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. ' ' (1) However, it was difficult for African American to get the freedom. The 1776 Declaration of Independence announced that everyone are equal and freedom.But black slavery still occurred in the southern states of America. Then the Civil War broke out, African American kept struggling for land and political rights.

During Reconstruction, African Americans’ freedoms were very restricted. There were strict regulations on voting, relationships, employment, firearms, and other freedoms that white people had. African American faced disenfranchisement for years after being freed and becoming citizens. In What a Black Man Wants by Frederick Douglass, Douglass angrily demands the freedom to vote that every American deserved. He assesses the black man’s contribution to society and wonders why this contribution has not led to more rights. Those who were supposed to be fighting for the rights of freed slaves were not speaking up. Even the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society was not fighting for the rights of the freed slaves. Because of the restrictions on voting, African Americans did not have the same power over their own lives that white people had. Disenfranchisement is just one way white people limited freedoms of freed slaves.

Slavery was created in pre-revolutionary America at the start of the seventeenth century. By the time of the Revolution, slavery had undergone drastic changes and was nothing at all what it was like when it was started. In fact the beginning of slavery did not even start with the enslavement of African Americans. Not only did the people who were enslaved change, but the treatment of slaves and the culture that each generation lived in, changed as well.

Slave as defined by the dictionary means that a slave is a person who is the property of and wholly subject to another; a bond servant. So why is it that every time you go and visit a historical place like the Hampton-Preston mansion in Columbia South Carolina, the Lowell Factory where the mill girls work in Massachusetts or the Old town of Williamsburg Virginia they only talk about the good things that happened at these place, like such things as who owned them, who worked them, how they were financed and what life was like for the owners. They never talk about the background information of the lower level people like the slaves or servants who helped take care and run these places behind the scenes.

After the American Revolution, slavery became a more significant component in the American economy. As a result of many slave owners being materialistic, slaves were overworked and treated callously. One such slave was Frederick Douglass. Through most of his life, Douglass was trapped in a typical slave environment. However, Douglass taught himself to read and eventually escaped the desolate life of a slave. After his freedom, Douglass wrote his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, which chronicled his life story. In his book, Douglass details his slave upbringing and how it affected him. His autobiography was incredibly comprehensive which is one reason

Blackmon provides many stories in his book about what the slaves to forced laborers went through and how they felt about the new so called “freedom” they gained. The Black Americans prior to the Emancipation Proclamation have never seen the slightest clue to what freedom could even feel like. “Some of the old slaves said they too weren’t sure what “freedom” really was”

The life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination… the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land (qtd. in W.T.L. 235).

“What I told you is what your grandparents tried to tell me: that this is your country, that this is your world, that this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it.” (Coates). This powerful quote exemplifies the mistreatment of blacks in America as something that has been prevalent throughout our nation’s history and is still present in our contemporary world. Our national founding document promised that “All men are created equal”. As a nation we have never achieved the goal of equality largely because of the institution of slavery and its continuing repercussions on American society.

The sense of agency is formed through the responsibilities and interaction with others. It is essential in life, but how is one’s life different if they do not have that sense of agency? Native Son is written by Richard Wright. The protagonist named Bigger Thomas is a poor, uneducated, and 20-year-old black man. He lived in a one-room apartment with his mother, little brother, and little sister. Bigger was originally part of a gang, but then he left and got the opportunity to work for Mr. Dalton. However, on the first day of his job, he accidentally killed the daughter of Mr. Dalton named Mary Dalton. In my opinion, Bigger portrayed as a person who does not have agency over his life. The factors that formed Bigger into a person with no control

Discrimination has afflicted the American society since its inception in 1776. The inferiority of the African American race – a notion embedded within the mindset of the white populace has difficult to eradicate – despite the efforts of civil rights activists and lawmakers alike. Many individuals are of the opinion that discrimination and racism no longer exist and that these issues have long since been resolved during the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. However such is not the case. Discrimination is a complex issue – one that encompasses many aspects of society. The impact of discrimination of the African American race is addressed from two diverse perspectives in the essays: “Notes of a Native Son” by James Baldwin and “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King .

In this book Fredrick Douglass finds shows himself growing up as a slave in Baltimore, Maryland. He eventually escapes from his master and becomes a run away slave as he flees to the north. Douglass however is most popularly known for his pressure on the supreme court to obtain equal rights for African American citizens. He made huge advances in civil rights for his fellow African American brothers and sisters. His contributions have caused a balancing of society that is still getting better to this day.

During the 1840s, America saw increasingly attractive settlements forming between the North and the South. The government tried to keep the industrial north and the agricultural south happy, but eventually the issue of slavery became too big to handle, no matter how many treaties or compromises were formed. Slavery was a huge issue that unraveled throughout many years of American history and was one of the biggest contributors leading up to the Civil War (notes, Fall 2015). Many books have been written over the years about slavery and the brutality of the life that many people endured. In “A Slave No More”, David Blight tells the story about two men, John M. Washington (1838-1918) and Wallace Turnage (1846-1916), struggling during American slavery. Their escape to freedom happened during America’s bloodiest war among many political conflicts, which had been splitting the country apart for many decades. As Blight (2007) describes, “Throughout the Civil War, in thousands of different circumstances, under changing policies and redefinitions of their status, and in the face of social chaos…four million slaves helped to decide what time it would be in American History” (p. 5). Whether it was freedom from a master or overseer, freedom from living as both property and the object of another person’s will, or even freedom to make their own decisions and control their own life, slaves wanted a sense of independence. According to Blight (2007), “The war and the presence of Union armies

There have been many cases of social injustice on a number of occasions in the expansive history of the United States. The oppressions of the early movements for women’s suffrage and the relocation and encampment of Native Americans are two of many occurrences. Around the middle of the 20th century, a movement for equality and civil liberties for African Americans among citizens began. In this essay, Notes of a Native son James Baldwin, a black man living in this time, recalls experiences from within the heart of said movement. Baldwin conveys a sense of immediacy throughout his passage by making his writing approachable and estimating an enormous amount of ethos.

Slavery, especially in America, has been an age old topic of riveting discussions. Specialist and other researchers have been digging around for countless years looking for answers to the many questions that such an activity provided. They have looked into the economics of slavery, slave demography, slave culture, slave treatment, and slave-owner ideology (p. ix). Despite slavery being a global issue, the main focus is always on American slavery. Peter Kolchin effectively illustrates in his book, American Slavery how slavery evolved alongside of historical controversy, the slave-owner relationship, how slavery changed over time, and how America compared to other slave nations around the world.