The Story Of ' Marly Jane, Get Your Pants On And Be Quick About It

“These words sank deep into my heart, stirred up sentiments within that lay slumbering, and called into existence an entirely new train of thought. It was a new and special revelation, explaining dark mysterious things, with which my youthful understanding had struggled, but struggled in vain. I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty – to wit, the white man’s power to enslave black men. It was a grand achievement, and I prized it highly. From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom” (20).

The article “The Negro Digs Up His Past’’ by Arthur schomburg on 1925, elaborates more on the struggles of slavery as well as how history tend to be in great need of restoration through mindfully exploring on the past. The article, however started with an interesting sentence which caught my attention, especially when the writer says ‘’The American Negro must remark his past in order to make his future’’ (670). This statement according the writer, explains how slavery took away the great deal freedom from people of African descendant, through emancipation and also increase in diversity. The writer (Arthur Schomburg) however, asserts that “the negro has been throughout the centuries of controversy an active collaborator, and often a pioneer, in the struggle for his own freedom and advancement” (670).

The black race has faced many hardships throughout American history. The harsh treatment is apparent through the brutal slavery era, the Civil Rights movement, or even now where sparks of racial separation emerge in urbanized areas of Baltimore, Chicago, and Detroit. Black Americans must do something to defend their right as an equal American. “I Am Not Your Negro” argues that the black race will not thrive unless society stands up against the conventional racism that still appears in modern America. “The Other Wes Moore” argues an inspiring message that proves success is a product of one’s choices instead of one’s environment or expectations.

Slavery was abolished after the Civil War, but the Negro race still was not accepted as equals into American society. To attain a better understanding of the events and struggles faced during this period, one must take a look at its' literature. James Weldon Johnson does an excellent job of vividly depicting an accurate portrait of the adversities faced before the Civil Rights Movement by the black community in his novel “The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.” One does not only read this book, but instead one takes a journey alongside a burdened mulatto man as he struggles to claim one race as his own.

One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land.

Black people in the U.S have been fighting for themselves since the birth of America. Many today say that it will never stop. They may say that the challenges they face will never disappear. During the 1800s Blacks went through extreme hardships. Most of which were regarding slavery and the many attempts to put an end to it. The title of Howard Zinn’s Chapter Nine in A people’s History of the U.S represents much more than a typical reader would presume. The title has a meaning that represents a bulk of black history in the United States of America. The chapter title “Slavery Without Submission, Emancipation Without Freedom” represents the everlasting fight that black people in the United States of America have had to put up for their own rights and freedom because blacks fought during the time of slavery and didn’t give up, the time period spent fighting to end slavery, and even after Slaves were freed they have had to continue fighting for the reason that they weren’t given true freedom.

America in the 1960’s was a dark, despairing environment for African Americans, or Negroes. Conditions in all areas of life were poor, chances of success were slim to none, and appreciation or acceptance in the community was barely a dream. Negroes of this time were downtrodden, disrespected, and poorly treated. In his book, “Why We Can’t Wait,” Martin Luther King uses historical allusion, emotive imagery, rhetorical questions, and juxtaposition to convey the negative, daunting poor social conditions of Black Americans in the 1960’s.

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.

This theme helps illuminate how black people came to be treated in America both when slavery existed and beyond into today’s society. The theme that black people are disposable bodies within American society. Because of the tradition of treating black people as objects or whose value strictly came from their ability to make profit, the idea of what it means to be black in America is imbedded in the danger of losing one’s body. Although slavery has ended, the racism remains as a violence inflicted on black people’s bodies. Coates is more than happy to emphasize that racism is an instinctive practice.

"Two months after Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, one abolitionist wrote that 'to make the proclamation a success, we must make freedom a blessing to the freed.' The question of how to do so would long outlive Lincoln and the Civil War" (Epilogue, p. 361).

Two years previously, on January 1, 1863, President Lincoln issued what we now call the Emancipation Proclamation. Through this executive order, every enslaved person living in areas controlled by the Confederacy was now, legally, freed. Though this action would earn Lincoln noble nicknames like “The Liberator” and “The Great Emancipator,” the legal repercussions of the act were ambiguous at best. Many questioned the president’s authority to

On September 22, 1862, Lincoln presented the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. This publication announced his intent on January 1, 1863, to order that “all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a state, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free,” (Friedman). This installment greatly proves that Lincoln is all deserving of the title, “The Great Emancipator,” as the free blacks referred to him for they were inspired enough to bear arms, (McClain), and most, if not all, of the credit for acquitting the slaves. Furthermore, the eventual African-American luminary, Booker T. Washington was merely 7 years old upon the establishment of the Emancipation Proclamation. He recalls, in his 1901 autobiography Up From

I the speech it says, “But one hundred years later the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination” (King 3) Skin color shouldn't matter we are all people. Another quote is, “One hundred years the Negro is still languished

With slavery flourishing in America in 1832, Maria W. Stewart, an African American writer and educator, delivered a lecture clarifying to the white people of her time that racism still existed. At this time, even the free African Americans were confined to jobs of labor. They are limited to these types of jobs for the rest of their lives, without an opportunity to become rich or independent. The thought of equal rights ignites the souls of African Americans, especially Stewart, yet they are all working hard labor, which kills that energy. Through Stewart’s use of rhetoric, we can sense a certain energy within her -- a burning passion for escaping the labor-filled poverty that African Americans must endure. Change takes time, but, sometimes people must first be aware of what must be amended to spark the necessary change. Stewart is clearly pushing the idea that lifelong poverty is something African Americans must endure, something white people can all but imagine, and that it needs to change as nobody should be doomed to live a life of poverty.