Posts

When The 10-Point Program Meets Poetry

-
The 10-Point Program is an insightful list of demands by the Black Panther Party which lists the values they wanted society to hold in order to gain equality during the Civil Rights Era. These values have lasted through the decades and affected literature in the Black Arts movement as well as pieces about similar topics like John Coltrane and Malcolm X. These poems that reflect themes of Black liberation and power create unique representations of the 10-Point Program that remain really helpful when looking at different circles of Black history. “We Want Freedom For All Black Men  Held In Federal, State, County And City Prisons And Jails.” As we know, Malcolm X spent a large portion of his young adulthood in jail. In the poem “For Malcolm X” by Margaret Walker, both his journey through imprisonment and those of other Black people in the prison system are represented in this poem. These lines in the first stanza relate especially to the eighth point of the 10-Point Program: “You viol...
4 comments
Read more

"Down By the Riverside": How Richard Wright Writes To Protest Racism

-
Image
       I find Richard Wright’s “Down By the Riverside” a very interesting text in the context of the Civil Rights Movement because of how Wright uses protest novel tactics to retaliate against racist sentiments in the 20th century. His story heavily incorporates naturalist themes regarding the Mississippi River Delta flood impacting Mann’s life, although the rather large underlying theme is the presentation of systemic racism in this time and place. Through Mann’s many struggles, Wright effectively demonstrates the difficulties of a lot of African Americans in the early 20th century since there were so many prejudices, harmful stereotypes, and dangerous people against them. Gelatin silver print of the 1927 Great Mississippi River Flood.           Even in places that should have been safe havens, such as hospitals, racism lingered in how white people interacted with African Americans. On page ...
3 comments
Read more

Vernacular Tradition During Reconstruction and Through the Harlem Renaissance

-
Vernacular Tradition During Reconstruction and Through the Harlem Renaissance Citlali Vernacular tradition is the representation and documentation of spoken stories and songs passed down over time. In African American literature, it’s seen in song lyrics and stories. During the Reconstruction period (1860s-1870s), when enslaved African Americans were documenting their experiences and creating stories based on their time in slavery, the vernacular tradition also presented dialogue in stories and poems, recording how people’s dialects might have sounded. Jumping forward to the Harlem Renaissance (1920s-1930s), blues songs and poems became much more popular as African Americans were able to express creativity a lot more freely, though in defiance of white society saying otherwise. During slavery and Reconstruction, a large point of slave and abolitionist narratives was to spread awareness of the atrocities of ...
6 comments
Read more