...Many historians and scholars in the field of African American studies know about the ambitious rivalry between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B DuBouis. This rivalry between two great leaders of the black community in the late 19th and 20th century gave birth to many debates and dissension about which leader actually offered a better way for black people to advance in American society back then. I personally viewed Booker T. Washington’s beliefs about racial equality as somewhat…“colonized”. I believe his ideas were too ground in the white agenda that was going on in that era. I believe W.E.B DuBois ideas were better for the improvement of African American people in American society. Of these two great men, the first to come along was Booker T. Washington. He was a reformer, an educator and one of the most influential black leaders of his time. He preached the philosophy of racial solidarity, self-help and accommodation. He pushed for black people to accept the vicious discrimination that they were going through for the time being and instead concentrate on advancing themselves through material prosperity and hard work....
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...Introduction Jackie Robinson was important because he was a great baseball player that transcend the game. Even more importantly he was that first African American to play for the Major Leagues. By being the first African American baseball player he open the door for other African Americans to play baseball. He not only did baseball he supported political causes, to pursue a better life for African Americans. He experienced the injustices people treated African Americans but he still supported the peaceful protest for African Americans to get their civil rights. When he broke the color line it was a time of great social change for african americans in 1950’s-1960’s. He show that segregation was more than just for voting rights. He shown people...
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...Uncommon Faithfulness is a collection of essays of the experience of African American Catholics. The book was written by fourteen black Catholic theologians, ecclesial leaders and scholars at a conference held at the University of Notre Dame in 2004. Uncommon Faithfulness was edited by M. Shawn Copeland who serves as the Adjunct Professor of Theology at the Institute for black Catholic studies at Xavier University in New Orleans Louisiana. Catholics of African descent maintained their faith and inspiration to sustain resistance against oppression of slavery and to create life giving opportunities. This was nearly 450 years of Uncommon Faithfulness. The phrase “Uncommon Faithfulness” describes the black Catholic experience in the United States. There are a total of fourteen essays. The first five essays deals with the history of black Catholics in the United States; including essays about African American women in religious communities and black Catholics during the civil rights movement in the United States. The next five essays deals with theological and ethnical aspects of the black Christian experience. There are many challenges that reflect the black Catholic community that allowed African ancestors to endure the denial of their humanity. Despite oppression conditions they were able to exercise their full humanity and were able to create new institutions and cultural traditions by thinking past custom beliefs. The final set of essays speaks about pastoral concerns related...
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...Two great leaders of the black community in the late 19th and 20th century were Booker T. Washington and W.E.B Du Bois. The men had many ideas; however, they sharply disagreed on the approaches to black education. Washington, committed to vocational education, trained blacks on low end jobs, and Du Bois believed in academic education in favor of trade school. Both Washington and Du Bois wanted the same thing for blacks, first-class citizenship, but their contrasting views in black education required different ways of obtaining it. Booker T. Washington’s commitment to agricultural and industrial educations was the basis of his approach. He was founder and principal of Tuskegee Institute, a normal and industrial school in Alabama. Students would receive instruction in thirty-three trades and industries, including carpentry, blacksmithing, printing, and machinery to name a few. His school aimed to train African-Americans in the skills that would help them the most in everyday practical things of life. “…the policy of industrial schools- fitting students for occupations which would be open to them in their home communities (Washington, 4).” For example, in the South there was a demand for men to operate dairies in a skillful, modern manner. This resulted in Washington adding a dairy department in connection with the school that instructed a number of young men in the latest and scientific methods of dairy work. He does not agree with the notion that many think industrial...
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... An African-American cultural movement of the 1920’s centered in Harlem, that celebrated black traditions, the black voice, and black ways of life. Jazz and music Jazz was a new style of music created by African American musicians, featuring syncopated rhythms and improvisational solos It was so interesting because the improv aspect meant that no two performances could ever be the same Duke Ellington turned commercial radio into a place for music by performing jazz music from the Cotton Club, broadcasted to thousands of Americans Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday coined blues and jazz vocal solos Chick Webb (King of Swing) saved money as a paperboy to buy his drum set, and started playing professionally in Harlem at 11 years old, then later became the best-regarded band leader Louis Armstrong played jazz music on Broadway, a Creole Jazz Band, and at the Cotton Club. He played in many films and toured internationally. He was the man that made the most Americans begin to accept jazz into their culture II. Poetry Langston Hughes One of the most well known names of the Harlem Renaissance His writing reflected that black culture should be celebrated because is it just as valuable as white culture "I tried to write poems like the songs they sang on Seventh Street...(these songs) had the pulse beat of the people who keep on going." said Langston One of Langston most famous work was his essay entitled "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" This essay talks about...
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...Essay The essay gives you the opportunity to go in-depth into an issue in American culture. Your three possible topics are: (1) relations between blacks and whites; (2) the status of women; and (3) relations between the U.S. and the rest of the world. You pick one of these topics and, using only our textbook, write 1800-2000 words on how you have seen that topic throughout the course, from the beginnings to the present. How has it changed? What were the big events or people involved in it? What analysis can you bring to the topic, in order to assess it critically? The essay is to be critical and not just a summary of sections in which your topic is mentioned in the textbook. The essay should be double-spaced, with one-inch margins, and a 12-point font. Frequent citations (probably one or two per paragraph) to the textbook are essential for each point you find from the textbook. Use Turabian or MLA for your citation format and be exact in your citations, including page numbers for each one. No title page or works cited page are needed. In the beginning of the African American history, there were many obstacles and struggles that the colored people had to face. They were being mistreated, sometimes even less than a white man’s dog. It all began in 1619, the first African slaves were brought to Virginia. Once a person becomes a slave, they were slaves for life and so were the next generation. The majority of the slaves worked in rice or tobacco plantations in dangerous...
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...How far were the actions of the African Americans the main reason for the advancement of the Civil Rights in the period 1865-1980? “Power concedes nothing without demand, it never has and it never will”[1]. Said by Fredrick Douglass in 1857, an escaped slave who had bearded the brunt of the slave years. He had come to the realisation that African Americans had a fountain of “power”; however that power that they possessed would never establish anything without a “demand”. Fredrick Douglass awoke the conscious of African Americans to make them realise that wanting to be free and wanting to achieve full civil rights was not enough, neither was enduring a life under white supremacy waiting for life after death to see a new dawn .Believing and hoping was not enough. “Power concedes nothing without demand” the solution is to be willing to work hard to establish it yourself by demanding what belongs to them. However using power in order to concede civil rights was a struggle which was acknowledged by Fredrick Douglass “Without struggle there is no success”. To achieve advancement in African American Civil Rights, African Americans had to undergo a process of struggle. A rainbow is not made without rain; you can not want rain without thunder and lightening being accompanied by it. To achieve full civil rights African Americans had to pay the price along the way which was persecution, de-humanisation and scrutiny. Martin Luther King being inspired by Fredrick Douglass said “Freedom...
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...Bibliographic Essay on African American History Introduction In the essay “On the Evolution of Scholarship in Afro- American History” the eminent historian John Hope Franklin declared “Every generation has the opportunity to write its own history, and indeed it is obliged to do so.”1 The social and political revolutions of 1960s have made fulfilling such a responsibility less daunting than ever. Invaluable references, including Darlene Clark Hine, ed. Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Evelyn Brooks Higgingbotham, ed., Harvard Guide to African American History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001); Arvarh E. Strickland and Robert E. Weems, Jr., eds., The African American Experience: An Historiographical and Bibliographical Guide (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2001); and Randall M. Miller and John David Smith, eds., Dictionary of Afro- American Slavery (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1988), provide informative narratives along with expansive bibliographies. General texts covering major historical events with attention to chronology include John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss, Jr., From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans (Boston: McGraw Hill, 2000), considered a classic; along with Joe William Trotter, Jr., The African American 1  Experience (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001); and, Darlene Clark Hine, William C. Hine, and Stanley Harrold, The...
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...The essay below was a very strong essay answering the question about Reconstruction. It was an actual essay (word for word) written by one of the students in class. It received 28.5 points out of 30. This was a great essay; about the only comment I would write was that the thesis in the introduction could have been a little more direct: As a country, America has gone though many political changes throughout her lifetime. Leaders have come and gone, all of them having different objectives and plans for the future. As history takes its course, though, most all of these “revolutionary movements” come to an end. One such movement was Reconstruction. Reconstruction was a time period in America consisting of many leaders, goals and accomplishments. Though, like all things in life, it did come to an end, the resulting outcome has been labeled both a success and a failure. When Reconstruction began in 1865, a broken America had just finished fighting the Civil War. In all respects, Reconstruction was mainly just that. It was a time period of “putting back the pieces”, as people say. It was the point where America attempted to become a full running country once more. This, though, was not an easy task. The memory of massive death was still in the front of everyone’s mind, hardening into resentment and sometimes even hatred. The south was virtually non-existent politically or economically, and searching desperately for a way back in. Along with these things, now living...
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...During the American Revolution, slavery was in the process of being abolished in Europe and in the Northern states of America. Even though parts of the world were willing to free slaves, the Southern states found ways to defend slavery. In Paul Finkelman’s book Defending Slavery: Proslavery Thought in the Old South, Finkelman provides the writings of many white leaders from the South who believed that slavery was essential to America’s society. The white leaders who spoke about proslavery included a broad range of defenses to justify themselves because they wanted Americans to believe that slavery had a lasting impact economically, religiously, legally, and racially. One of the defenders in Finkelman’s book was Thomas R.R. Cobb. He justified slavery by arguing the effects of abolition in the United States. Cobb said, “The emancipated negroes do not enjoy full and equal civil and political rights in any State in the union, except the State of Vermont” (Finkelman, 79). He was convinced that those who became free of slavery did not live a better life. He believed that any African American slave who is free is not capable of living successfully and “His moral condition compares unfavorably with that of the slave of the South” (Finkleman, 79). This argument states that African Americans who are enslaved are in better hands with the slave owners and therefore they should remain as slaves. Cobb’s defense was justifiable because he believed that keeping African American’s...
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...Robinson's appearance, and impact before the House UN-American Activities Committee in light of anti-American messages made by the entertainer and former Rutgers University All-American football superstar Paul Robeson. Smith argues that for symbolical grounds, the federal government reached out to Jackie Robinson so he can assist in getting rid of Paul Robeson from his function as a black leader. Using a relative analysis of both Robinson and Robeson early lives, Author Ronald Smith affirms that they spearheaded change from different paths. Smith illustrates how Jackie Robinson was willing to cooperate with white society for the purpose of positive racial goals and Paul Robeson wanted improvement own his own terms, not necessarily those suggested by white society. Nonetheless, Smith insists both Robinson and Robeson fought for equal rights in their respected ways. In this informative and well written essay, The Paul Robeson-Jackie Robinson Saga and Political Collision, Ronald A. Smith (following his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin, he spent 28 years at Penn State teaching sport history and researching intercollegiate athletics) illustrates how a collision arose between Robinson and Robeson, Significantly because of Robinson’s desegregation of baseball under white terms and Robeson’s stand for human rights under free political terms. This essay takes us through a clashing journey of two outstanding and prominent African American men, who shared core values and beliefs of equality...
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...African American's Journey Essay Below is a free essay on "African American's Journey" from Anti Essays, your source for free research papers, essays, and term paper examples. “African American’s Journey to Freedom” Charity Johnson HIS204: American History since 1865 Instructor: Leslie Ruff February 11, 2013 “African American’s Journey to Freedom” To some African Americans it may seem ironic that The United States of America is known as “the land of the free” considering that majority of their ancestors entered the US as slaves. African Americans were brought to North America via the middle passage which originated during the fifteenth century. They were enslaved for approximately 400 hundred years until the end of the Civil War in 1865. Although African Americans were enslaved in America, they were determine to survive and one day be freed in this great country. During The African American’s journey to freedom several significant events took place which was inclusive of but not limited to: The Civil Rights Movement of 1865-1877, Separate but Equal Legislation (Plessy vs. Ferguson court case) in 1896, The Harlem Renaissance of 1920, Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954, The March on Washington Movement of 1963, and The Black Power Movement of the late 1960s and 1970. I will discuss the significance of these events in relation to the African American journey to freedom and how they have help shape American society today. THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT OF 1865-1877 Frequently when...
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...Shiquita Jones 6/5/08 Expository Essay Every culture has some form of music they practice or enjoy listening to. Music can have a huge impact around the world. Music has important themes or meanings that can be positive or negative. Music originated around the globe. Music is created for all ages to listen to; however it can be harmful to certain people for various reasons. Some cultures musical styles are similar; however many are also different. African Americans have quite different musical rhythms and instruments from the musical traditions of Native Americans. In this essay I will explain the differences and similarities between Iroquois, a Native American tribe and African American music. Music is used for various reasons between Iroquois and African Americans. It is used for recreation, rituals and ceremonies, story telling, and language. For example, African Americans sung spiritual songs to help one another during slavery, so the master wouldn't know what they were talking about. Music was also used in Iroquois and Africans Americans society by communicating with others parts of the world. Music was used as an early sign of general cultural diffusion. (Plantinga, p.6) Music is used to help expand our world and cultures. Music is a part of most activities that African Americans and Iroquois tribes enjoy. Music is taught and learned orally by both cultures. This means that they are sung and played together easily;...
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... In his short essay, “The Preconditions for Racial Change,” author Harvard Sitkoff argues that economic, political and ideological considerations played a major role in bringing about racial equality for African-Americans in the United States during the middle of the 20th century. Sitkoff maintains that the introduction of televisions into American homes, a booming postwar economy, the decolonization of many African nations from white rule and the emergence of the United States as the leader of the Free World were the driving forces behind bringing racial equality to the forefront for many Americans, both black and white. The arguments offered by Sitkoff regarding this awakening in many Americans are both compelling and convincing. While his viewpoints are based on nothing more than perception and opinion, his logic is sound and his line of reasoning is very persuasive. Sitkoff begins his essay by discussing the opportunities afforded to blacks as a direct result of positive changes in the American economy. With the explosive growth of our Gross National Product (GNP) after the 1940’s, many blacks saw a sharp increase in their income, the availability of jobs in industries that had previously been off-limits to them and advancement opportunities that ranked them alongside their white counterparts. In the past, the fear of blacks taking jobs that could have gone to whites was a powerful incentive to suppress the advancement of black Americans in the workforce....
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...child born to the reverend Martin Luther King Sr and Alberta Williams King a school teacher. Martin began his schooling at the all black Younge Street Elementary in Atlanta. He experienced an extremely rough childhood and witnessed things such as police brutality of the worst kind ;watching black people ‘negroes’ receive injustices in courts.(Martin Luther King pg 90).The things he saw and experienced were eventually what caused him to strive for African American freedom and despise segregation. “I had grown up abhorring not only segregation but also the aggressive and barbaric acts that grew out of it.” (Martin Luther King pg 90). Martin was an extremely bright student and skipped right through his high school years and on June 1944 he entered Atlanta’s Negro Morehouse College at age 15.His father encouraged him to study ministry though his heart was set on medicine or law. During his studies at school and as a minister , two very important people came into Dr. King’s life .One of these men was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi; who was a leader in India which had a similar situation to Dr. King. Lower class of India lived in poverty and hunger while the upper class Indians and British led a separate life. Gandhi saw the need for India to gain its independence from Britain in order for all the horrors of the lower class to stop (Haskins 32). Gandhi performed strikes, boycotts and fasts against the British government and he did it in a nonviolent way. King would use Gandhi’s nonviolent...
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