Amiri Baraka, a fellow poet who was a friend of Frank O’Hara at the time, was black. It is intriguing to assess the influence Baraka had on O’Hara’s views. Allen Ginsberg shares the same views as O’Hara but writes in a very different way. I will be focusing on his revolutionary poem, “Howl” and the way in which he discusses race as well as how racial minorities are treated in America. To analyse “Howl” fully, I will bring in details from his poem “America” to support my points.
“AMERICA” by Claude McKay Amanda Zacek 2-21-2012 Claude McKay is trying to show America that he as well as all other African Americans are just as capable to do great things as white people ,if given the chance to prove themselves, In the poem “America” by Claude McKay, he tries to describe the difficultly for most African Americans to live in a country filled with racism. While Claude loves America he believes that time is being wasted because many black people can do great things for this country. That this culture does not allow African Americans to prosper, Claude wrote this poem during the Harlem Renaissance, it was how he experienced racism. Harlem was the largest black community in the 1930’s in America. His whole goal of writing the poem was to destroy race prejudice.
Jessica king American Literature II 231 April 23, 2012 Title: Comparing and contrasting two protagonist African Americans authors, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century are controversial topic for many people. Both authors have popular debating ideas of an equal society relating to the segregation among white and black people. But what’s so interesting about both authors is their background. Booker T. Washington was born in 1856; he was an American educator, founder of Tuskegee University, and an author during the late nineteenth to early twentieth century.
After minimal schooling, he traveled around Latin America and eventually ended up in England. He embraced the ideas of the Pan African Movement. These ideas were the groundwork for the organization he founded, the UNIA. He attracted working class blacks, who formed a devoted following of the man and his ideas. Both of these leaders, of course, were interested in the betterment of their race, but their different visions in achieving their goals led to a division that became both philosophical and intensely personal.
The Ideological State Apparatus at work in George Schuyler’s Black No More George Schuyler was a controversial figure of the Harlem Renaissance. At a time when “race men” were glorifying a uniquely African American culture, Schuyler steadily purported the view that African Americans were primarily American, and did not differ from other immigrants. In his essay entitled “Negro-Art Hokum,” Schuyler writes: If the European immigrant after two or three generations of exposure to our schools, politics, advertising, moral crusades, and restaurants becomes indistinguishable from the mass of Americans of older stock…how much truer must it be of the sons of Ham who have been subjected to what the uplifters call Americanism for the last three hundred years. Aside from his color, which ranges from very dark brown to pink, your American Negro is just plain American. (37) Schuyler felt that by viewing Negro art as unique and separate, it helped to perpetuate myths of racial inferiority.
In King’s, I Have a Dream speech and Malcom X’s, Coming to an Awareness of Language, both speakers express their ideas and viewpoints on racial inequality. Throughout history the African American race has had to fight for the same equal rights as the “white man”. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcom X were two influential leaders that fought for equal liberties until the days that they were killed, making important impacts on the lives of many Americans. These two pieces of literature have many similarities, but also some differences. In this essay I will share things that I found similar and different with these writings.
Post-Civil war America exercised the segregation of Whites and Blacks. Originally, the aim of this division was to keep everything separate but equal. By the late 1800’s into the 1900’s, the “separate but equal” motive adapted into the superiority of Whites, leaving much racial tension and limitation for the freed slaves and their ancestors. Marcus Garvey, like many social activists, had many goals to either remove this separation, or to completely relocate America’s blacks to a new place of their own. Marcus Garvey’s ideas of black nationalism and fighting oppression helped shape the identity of African Americans in the United States during the 1920’s.
Until the dawn of the 20th century the pale-skinned poets and their rose-tinted interpretation of the world dominated the whimsical world of literature. But the fiery uprising of the Harlem Renaissance in the early 1920’s shook America to its core. Fortified black voices broke out across the nation, effectively using rhythms and cadences so clearly defined by the African-American culture, but the soulful voice that rose above the rest was the voice of Langston Hughes. The poetry that Hughes crafted was filled with sensual rhythms and beats. His stanzas united the beautiful simplicity of blues and jazz music with the heart rendering soulful cries of a race defined by oppression.
Most of his writings describe the troubles and drama of being a black person in America. A lot of his work also had deep religious undertones, and dealt with topics such as Homosexuality, Racism, Classism and Religion. To this very day James Baldwin is revered as one of America’s greatest writers, and essayists. He is and will always be an American Icon, and Hero. Discussion James Arthur Baldwin, was born Out-Of-Wedlock in Harlem Hospital on the 2nd of August 1924.
Harlem Renaissance is very colorful and the picture itself tells a story. “Art Throughout the Harlem Renaissance depicts the colorful nature of time of the Harlem Renaissance.”(Framing America: A Social History of American Art 152) “Artists such as Palmer Hayden paint more than a picture in their artwork; they paint a story that can be interpreted in many different ways. (Framing America: A Social History of American Art 225) Hurston’s language helps one to understand African-American culture depicted in Harlem Renaissance paintings. “Most of dese zigaboos is so het up over yo’ business till they liable to hurry theyself to Judgment to find out about you if they don’t soon know. You better make haste and tell ‘em ‘bout you and Tea Cake gittin’ married, and if he taken all yo’ money and went off wid some young