scholarly journals Post Slavery and the Plight of Black Americans: An Analysis of Langston Hughes’ “Not without Laughter”

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (Issue 3) ◽  
pp. 37-42
Author(s):  
Christopher Ncube ◽  
Alice Dhliwayo
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
Alice Walker ◽  
Langston Hughes ◽  
The Past ◽  
Talented Tenth ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Government ◽  
To Receive

This paper discussed the lives of black Americans in the Post Slavery period. It was believed that black Americans who were former slaves were then free from being treated brutally by the slave masters and that the whipping of the so called offenders was a thing of the past. On the contrary, Black Americans were not free to receive education, have access to legal marriages, own properties and enjoy all other benefits that an American should enjoy. Life after slavery was still difficult. The reality was that black Americans were free only in a narrow sense as they were still discriminated by the government institutions. This gave rise to activism and movements such as Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement. Great Black scholars, The Talented Tenth, such as Alice Walker, Du Bois, and Langston Hughes emerged. Not without Laughter is one of the books that Langston Hughes wrote. This paper is an analysis of civil injustices that Black Americans had to endure according to Hughes in Not without Laughter. Today, the situation has not changed much as racism is still rampant as depicted by violence still perpetrated against the Blacks. The rise of the Black Lives Matter Movement worldwide against the death of Floyd in the USA gives evidence to such. One encouraging aspect, though, is that the current President, Joe Biden is against racism as he has ordered that those that killed Floyd should face the full wrath of the law.

Foundational Invocations

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angélica Maria Bernal
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
Tea Party ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
Normative Authority ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Us ◽  
Constitutional Thought

This chapter examines appeals to the authority of original founding events, founding ideals, and Founding Fathers in contemporary constitutional democracies. It argues that these “foundational invocations” reveal a window into the unique, albeit underexamined function that foundings play: as a vehicle of persuasion and legitimation. It organizes this examination around two of the most influential visions of founding in the US tradition: the originalist, situated in the discourses of conservative social movements such as the Tea Party and in conservative constitutional thought; and the promissory, situated in the discourses of social movements such as the civil rights movement. Though they might appear radically dissimilar, this chapter illustrates how these two influential conceptualizations of founding together reveal a shared political foundationalism that conflates the normative authority of a regime for its de facto one, thus circumscribing radical change by obscuring the past and placing founding invocations and their actors beyond question.

The Science and Law of School Segregation and Diversity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger J.R. Levesque
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Ethnic Disparities ◽  
School Segregation ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
The Past ◽  
Legal Foundation ◽  
The Law ◽  
The One

The law does not square with people’s experiences of segregation and diversity. An empirical look at the legal system’s effectiveness in addressing school segregation reveals, from a practical perspective, that segregation persists and even surpasses levels before the civil rights movement. Yet, the legal system continues as though segregation is a thing of the past. Even more bizarre, the negative effects of racial and ethnic disparities in schooling are well documented, and the legal system compels itself to ignore much of them. To exacerbate matters, legal analysts increasingly interpret the law as a system that operates in a different world than the one documented by researchers who describe disparities and what could be done about them. For their part, researchers pervasively continue to document experiences without considering the legal system’s basic concerns. This book details the source of these gaps, evaluates their empirical and legal foundation, explains why they persist, and reveals what can be done about them.

Which Bad News to Choose? The Influence of Race and Social Identity on Story Selections Within Negative News Contexts

2019 ◽  
Vol 97 (3) ◽  
pp. 644-662
Author(s):  
Lanier Frush Holt ◽  
Dustin Carnahan
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Racial Group ◽  
Bad News ◽  
Media Environment ◽  
The Past ◽  
Negative News ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Media Choices

This study provides a clearer understanding of how audience members’ race influences their media choices. It finds that in today’s overwhelmingly negative media environment, people prefer reading negative stories about persons in their own racial group over stories about racial out-group members. This suggests social movements seeking to change the attitudes of people of different races using media (e.g., Black Lives Matter) might not be as successful as those in the past (e.g., Civil Rights Movement). Today, people tend to ignore such news when there is other bad news that affects people in their own racial group.

“Alone in a Sea of Rib-Tips”: Alvenia Fulton, Natural Health, and the Politics of Soul Food1

2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 292-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Travis A Weisse
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Natural Food ◽  
Health Food ◽  
Star Power ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Food Movement

Abstract While the intersection between alternative medicine and the natural food movement in radical white communities of the 1960s and 1970s is well known, the connection between these traditions and the simultaneous revolution in the black foodscape has not received adequate attention. This paper addresses this gap by exploring how an alternative healer and minister from the rural South, Alvenia Fulton, rose to prominence in Chicago during the 1960s and 1970s as one of the major figures in the transformation of the black diet by harnessing the star power of her celebrity clients. Fulton hybridized her apprenticeship in slave herbalism with concepts from white Protestant health food lectures into a corrective nutrition program to bring health and renewal to black communities that were struggling under the burden of structural and medical racism. When, in the 1960s, coronary heart disease peaked for black Americans, soul food became the iconic diet of the civil rights movement. To help her community while respecting their culture, Fulton struck a careful bargain to encourage more black Americans to eat raw, natural, vegetarian food by subtly reimagining the historical contents of the slave diet.

Responses in the west of Ireland to civil rights protest in Northern Ireland, 1968–72

2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (159) ◽  
pp. 58-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerard Madden
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The West ◽  
Protest Movements ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Government ◽  
West Of Ireland

Abstract1968 has become synonymous with the large-scale global protests of that year. International scholarship has increasingly sought to examine instances of these protests in global peripheries, and amongst the most studied examples is Northern Ireland. The growth of civil rights protest in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s, which emerged from long-standing feelings of exclusion amongst the Catholic minority of the predominantly Protestant polity, was influenced by a broader international discourse of protest associated with the long 1968, notably the African-American civil rights movement. Simultaneously, in the west of Ireland, a number of protest groups also emerged in the late 1960s, frustrated at their communities’ perceived neglect by the government of the Republic of Ireland. This article will examine the emergence of these protest movements, discussing groups in the Galway Gaeltacht and other peripheral rural areas of Connacht, student activists in University College Galway, and campaigns challenging racism against the Travelling community. It will argue that they were influenced by the global protests associated with the long 1968, most notably by events across the border. For the purpose of the article, the ‘west of Ireland’ refers to the five Connacht counties of Galway, Roscommon, Mayo, Sligo and Leitrim.

LEARNING RACE, SOCIALIZING BLACKNESS

2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 185-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shayla C. Nunnally
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Racial Socialization ◽  
Generational Differences ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
Value Orientations ◽  
Probit Regression ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Post Civil Rights

AbstractContemporary discourse about Black Americans questions the loyalties of younger Blacks to the advancement of the Black racial group. This discourse often compares the commitment of Black Americans who came of age during the Civil Rights Movement era to those who came of age during the post-Civil Rights Movement era. Fueling this discourse is a working assumption that somehow younger Black Americans have a different understanding about race and its role in Blacks' political interests. This begs the question whether there are generational differences in the ways that Black Americans learn about race, or racial socialization, perhaps with implications for distinct value orientations about Black politics. Using public opinion data from an original survey, the 2007 National Politics and Socialization Survey (NPSS), this paper compares the racial socialization experiences of four generations of Black Americans—(1) World War II generation (age 67 and older, born in and before 1940); (2) civil rights generation (ages 54–66, born 1953–1941); (3) mid-civil rights generation (ages 43–53, born 1964–1954); and (4) post-civil rights generation Black Americans (age 42 and under, born 1965 and after). Results of ordered probit regression analyses indicate minimal generational differences. Differences emerge in emphases on racial socialization messages about Black public behavior, Black intraracial relations, Black interracial relations, and composite factor loadings of Black consciousness and Black protectiveness messages.

scholarly journals The Meanings of Black Power: A Comparison of White and Black Interpretations of a Political Slogan

1970 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 367-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel D. Aberbach ◽  
Jack L. Walker
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Racial Discrimination ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Black Power ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Civil Rights Organizations ◽  
The Past ◽  
Black Protest ◽  
True Meaning ◽  
American Cities

Angry protests against racial discrimination were a prominent part of American public life during the 1960's. The decade opened with the sit-ins and freedom rides, continued through Birmingham, Selma, and the March on Washington, and closed with protests in hundreds of American cities, often punctuated by rioting and violence. During this troubled decade the rhetoric of protest became increasingly demanding, blanket charges of pervasive white racism and hostility were more common, and some blacks began to actively discourage whites from participating either in protest demonstrations or civil rights organizations. Nothing better symbolized the changing mood and style of black protest in America than recent changes in the movement's dominant symbols. Demonstrators who once shouted “freedom” as their rallying cry now were shouting “black power”—a much more provocative, challenging slogan.The larger and more diverse a political movement's constituency, the more vague and imprecise its unifying symbols and rallying cries are likely to be. A slogan like black power has no sharply defined meaning; it may excite many different emotions and may motivate individuals to express their loyalty or take action for almost contradictory reasons. As soon as Adam Clayton Powell and Stokely Carmichael began to use the phrase in 1966 it set off an acrimonious debate among black leaders over its true meaning. Initially it was a blunt and threatening battle cry meant to symbolize a break with the past tactics of the civil rights movement.

The Legal History of Public Land in Liberia

2014 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 250-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caleb J Stevens
Keyword(s):  
Legal History ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Public Land ◽  
Legal Concept ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Usa ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Source Materials

AbstractThis article demonstrates that there has never been a clear definition of public land in Liberian legal history, although in the past the government operated as if all land that was not under private deed was public. By examining primary source materials found in archives in Liberia and the USA, the article traces the origins of public land in Liberia and its ambiguous development as a legal concept. It also discusses the ancillary issues of public land sale procedures and statutory prices. The conclusions reached have significant implications for the reform of Liberia's land sector.

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