After the emancipation of slavery in the 1800’s, African Americans have struggled to be treated with the same equal rights as Europeans. Even with the laws that were pasted to protect African Americans there were states that ignored and created new laws to overturn the laws to protect African Americans. The ignorant of Europeans who denied African Americans the equal rights the laws stated they deserved. African Americans decided to stand up for themselves by developing non violent protest movement to fight for the equal rights of African Americans. ("Civil Rights Movement") Martin Luther King Jr. became the leader of the non violent protest movement in the 1950’s.The development of Martin Luther King Jr. in this era started when an African American woman named Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama.
Over the years music has been used in anti-establishment or protest themes, including anti-war songs, although pro-establishment ideas are also used, for example in national anthems, patriotic songs, and political campaigns. These songs promote a strong political view in a way that is more accessible to many different cultures. (B.Longhurst , 2007) Music is a way to communicate, a way of expression, and has the power to provoke thoughts and emotions within an audience. Political music is music that is a reflection on events that are changing or have changed society. Black slaves, who were kidnapped and taken to America, brought their own form of music with them and sung about their time in captivity and slavery.
They take the reader through pivotal moments in the South and North to enumerate the chain of events that lead to the achievements and failures of the African-Americans in society. My review led me to understand the Black Power movement as an effort to overcome the colonizer. Black people need to define themselves without the influence of white society. The authors were vocal about the downfall of blacks trying to assimilate into white middle class. In a passionate effort to convey their message, they gave an overview of significant political and life altering moments in history.
Under the bleak condition of slavery, African American used music as a way to stay connected with their own African culture, while expressing the painful experiences that they had throughout history. They expressed their emotions and claims toward the racism they were receiving from white Americans into their music, and that has later on entirely spread among American culture. In Africa, drums were originally used as a tool of communication. During the early slave rebellion in America, they used drums in the same way they had been used in their own country: to communicate secretly in the presence of their owners.
Gordon S. Barker in his book, In Fugitive Slaves and the Unfinished American Revolution: Eight Cases, 1848-1856 he contributes to the stories on American Revolution particularly in an effort to re-image and re-periodize the ‘grand American narrative’ of the U.S revolution by George Bancroft. The book is focused on the other side of the revolution i.e. the Black’s struggle for the war against slavery. For the common American man, the revolution and thus the war ended quite before when compared with the Revolution waged by the African slaves. The African Americans, united in their quest for creating ‘a perfect union’ which at its very earliest ended when the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified.
The Constitution, until recently, did not apply to blacks; blacks feel they deserve payments from 310 years of slavery, destruction to their minds and culture. Dr. Martin Luther King's dilemma in the United States was of a different kind. He was torn between his identity as a Black man of African descent and his identity as an American. He urged Americans to judge based on the content of the character not by skin color and also believed in non-violent protests. Martin Luther King Jr’s main perspective during the fight on racism was equality.
Another influential novel in America’s political history is Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass. This book was a part of the abolitionist movement during a time period of slavery and inequality of African Americans. This narrative was successful during this struggling time period as it urged people to accept the African American race. Not only did it encourage people to accept the race, but it also encouraged people to cease from slavery. The brutal and harmful details that are described in the novel showed to the nation of how detrimental slavery was on an individual African American.
All in all Dyson's main points to his argument is understanding how rap came to be, the negative and positive images that gangsta rap portrays to the black community, and acknowledging that rap music shows true beliefs about growing up in bad black neighborhoods. Rap originated from the early '70s during the Rosetta stone of black culture. Jobs were being losses in the inner cities. Lack of social services in predominantly black rural areas opened up drugs and violence in black communities. Therefore rap came to be the main way of expressing social oppression in black communities.
Pan-Africanism can be seen as a product of the European slave trade. Enslaved Africans of diverse origins and their descendants found themselves embedded in a system of exploitation where their African origin became a sign of their servile status. Pan-Africanism set aside cultural differences, asserting the principality of these shared experiences to foster solidarity and resistance to exploitation. Initially anti-slavery and anti-colonial movements amongst black people of Africa and the Diaspora in the late nineteenth century, the aims of Pan-Africanism have evolved through the ensuing decades. Pan-Africanism has covered calls for African unity (both as a continent and as a people), nationalism, independence, political and economic cooperation, and historical and cultural awareness (especially for Afrocentric versus Eurocentric interpretations).
African philosophers also characterized as heroes of the political struggle, the likes of Nelson Mandela, Steve biko, Julius Nyerere and Kwame Nkrumah to mention but a few. These leaders in different ways have dedicated their lives to the struggle and fight against oppression. In this paper I will investigate Steve Biko’s philosophy of Black Consciousness, with a considerate focus on his idea of mental and political emancipation. 2. Historical background of Steve Biko Tracing back from the year 1939-1948 Jan Smuts pursued a policy of estrangement, throughout his reign separation and conflict became the dominant aspect of South Africa’s foreign relations, because of racial policies that were being enforced (2010:27).