scholarly journals The American Dream: Its Echoes and Possibilities in Literary Discourse

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Kalu, Kalu Obasi
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Racial Discrimination ◽  
American Dream ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Freedom Of Movement ◽  
Inaugural Speech ◽  
The Face ◽  
American Society

The American Dream stems from the inaugural speech of President Franklin Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms”(1941). The Four Freedoms envisaged an American society where the freedom of worship, freedom of speech, freedom of movement and the rights to life are enshrined, guaranteed, and accommodated. America has been clouded with numerous yearnings from all angles – politics, academic, economic, among other social upheavals for the enthronement of the Four Freedoms. Literary scholars have diminutively expressed the horrors of African Americans in various forms and shades, and have hopefully waited for the day it will be implemented. This paper attempts to relay the horrors, echoes, and possibilities of the American Dream as expressed by literary scholars, and the mass media. It also attempts to unveil the measures the African Americans have tried to live within the face of the horrors that have attained their existence among the White Americans. The possibilities of their struggles to live above subjugations, oppressions, the Jim Crow Laws, and racial discrimination that have rocked the American society for decades are also within the wavelength of this work. 

Crispus Attucks Meets Jim Crow

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mitch Kachun
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
African Americans ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
Community Organizations ◽  
White Americans ◽  
High Regard ◽  
American Memory ◽  
History Books

As Jim Crow segregation came to define black Americans’ place in the nation by the end of the nineteenth century, American memory also became largely segregated. African Americans continued to hold Attucks in high regard, but his name was invoked far less frequently in mainstream popular culture and historical scholarship. As white America all but abandoned its concern for the basic welfare and rights of black citizens, a black hero like Crispus Attucks had little chance to enter the heroic pantheon of the nation. School textbooks, mainstream popular culture, and white Americans in general virtually erased Attucks from the story of the American Revolution. African Americans kept his memory alive in history books, public commemorations, and memorial acts like the naming of children and community organizations.

African American Dreams

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan W. White
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
American Dream ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Free African Americans

The experience of slavery had an indelible effect on the dreams of black Americans. Some slaves dreamt of escape, or of loved ones who had been sold away. Former slaves sometimes had vivid dreams of being returned into slavery. Whether slave or free, African Americans often looked to their dreams as signs from God or as confirmation of their conversion to Christianity. White Americans tended to look down on African American dream practices as superstitious, but in fact, white and black Americans had a shared dream culture that stretched back into the colonial era.

scholarly journals Jim Crow Downunder? African American Encounters with White Australia, 1942––1945

2002 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 607-632 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Brawley ◽  
Chris Dixon
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
American South ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
White Americans ◽  
American Experience ◽  
The American South ◽  
The U.S

Between 1941 and 1945, as the U.S. military machine sent millions of Americans——and American culture——around the world, several thousand African Americans spent time in Australia. Armed with little knowledge of Australian racial values and practices, black Americans encoutered a nation whose long-standing commitment to the principle of "White Australia" appeared to rest comfortably with the segregative policies commonly associated with the American South. Nonetheless, while African Americans did encounter racism and discrimination——practices often encouraged by the white Americans who were also stationed in Australia during the war——there is compelling evidence that their experiences were not always negative. Indeed, for many black Americans, Australians' apparent open-mindedness and racial views of white Britons and others with whom African Americans came into contact during the war. Making use of U.S. Army censors' reports and paying attention to black Americans' views of their experiences in Australia, this article not only casts light on an aspect of American-Australian relations that has hitherto recieved scant scholarly attention and reveals something about the African American experience, but also offers insights into race relations within the U.S. armed forces.

Fabricating black modernity: Fashion and African American womanhood during the first great migration

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-260
Author(s):  
Einav Rabinovitch-Fox
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Role Models ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
The North ◽  
American Society ◽  
Racial Progress

The early twentieth century was a time of great influx in America. Shifting demographics in the 1910s and 1920s, most notably the migration of thousands of African Americans from the rural South to the urban centres of the North, opened economic and leisure possibilities that provided new spaces to define black modernity and its role in shaping American identity. Debates over black women’s bodies, clothing, hair, and general appearance stood at the centre of public attention and political discourse over gender and race equality, forming a realm where African Americans could challenge white racist stereotypes regarding black femininity and beauty, as well as a means through which they could claim new freedoms and achieve economic mobility. Middle-class reformers, young black migrants, as well as new role models such as female performers and blues singers, all used dress and appearance to redefine notions of beauty, respectability and freedom on their own terms. For these women, fashions became intertwined with questions of racial progress and inclusion in American society, offering a way to lay claims for equal citizenship that moved beyond individual expressions and preferences. This article highlights the place of fashion as a critical political realm for African Americans, who were often barred from access to formal routes of power in the era of Jim Crow. Shifting the perspective beyond official forms of civil rights activism, it argues that fashion enabled black women to carve new positions of power from which they could actively participate in gender and racial politics, demanding their equal place in American society.

scholarly journals Communication Effect Research on the Anti-Racist Thought of African Americans

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shiyao Zhang
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Major Contributor ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Face ◽  
Communication Effect ◽  
American Society

Racism is one of the most important issues in American society, and the anti-racist movement has been a frequent one in the face of the injustices suffered by African Americans. As a major contributor to the development and implementation of anti-racist movements, African Americans have taken a variety of effective measures to disseminate their thoughts and have achieved some success. However, the fact that the anti-racist movement in the US has often ended in dissipation reveals that there are still problems with the effect of the communication of thoughts, and it is important to explore these problems for the study of African Americans.

scholarly journals The Native American dream in Sherman Alexie's short story “One Good Man”

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 33-45
Author(s):  
María Laura Arce Álvarez
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Short Story ◽  
American Dream ◽  
White Americans ◽  
White American ◽  
Native American Identity ◽  
Indian Identity ◽  
The Social ◽  
American Society ◽  
Definition Of

The purpose of this article is to discuss the idea of an Indian identity and the Native American Dream in Sherman Alexie’s short story “One Good Man.” In this story, Alexie introduces the idea of the Indian constructed by the White Americans and attempts through his characters to redefine that concept by deconstructing all the different stereotypes created by the White American society. In order to do this, he also introduces the idea of the American Dream that he calls the “Native American Dream” to express the social inequality and hopeless existence of the Indian community always immersed in an ironic and comic discourse. In this sense, Alexie proposes a new definition of the Indian identity looking back to culture, tradition and the space of the reservation. He creates in his fiction a space of contestation and resistance opening a new voice for the Native American identity. 

War Changes

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald Horne
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
World War ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Espionage Act ◽  
External Threat ◽  
The Face ◽  
Racial Progress ◽  
The U.S

This chapter discusses how the U.S. entry into World War II marked a watershed for both the Negro press generally and the Associated Negro Press (ANP) specifically. The “Double V” campaign among African Americans targeting fascism abroad and Jim Crow at home was a simple continuation and escalation of ANP prewar policy. Despite the racial progress propelled by the antifascist war, there were contrary disquieting notes that did not escape the gaze of Claude Barnett. The Negro press could hardly ignore the ambivalence, if not outright support, within their constituency for Tokyo. This factor helped to further propel black militancy at a moment when Washington was demanding stolid acquiescence in the face of the external threat. This widespread sentiment had led FBI leader J. Edgar Hoover to demand Espionage Act indictments of certain Negro papers.

Forgiveness in the Face of Hate

2020 ◽  
pp. 185-200
Author(s):  
Nadine V Wedderburn ◽  
Robert E Carey
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
African Americans ◽  
World View ◽  
White Male ◽  
Racial Oppression ◽  
The Face ◽  
American Society ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The U.S

The June 2015 killing of nine African-Americans by a white male shooter in Charleston, South Carolina re-ignited intense discussions around the relationship of race, justice, and faith in the U.S. Within two days of the massacre, members of the victims' families were shown openly offering forgiveness to the accused killer and praying God's mercy on his soul. This seemingly quick offer of clemency raises penetrating questions concerning the value and purpose of the act of forgiveness, arguably an act of pure grace. This chapter shows that forgiveness, as a complex Christian practice, casts an extraordinary light on structures of identity and the politics of privilege in the U.S. In doing so, forgiveness exposes the myth of a “post-racial America” and reveals the deeply-rooted and longstanding systems of racial oppression and discrimination in American society. Structured around key guiding questions, the chapter provides a way to think through the meaning of forgiveness towards developing an approach to dismantling structures of exclusion that are the hallmark of a racial world view.

“Picture Makers”

2019 ◽  
pp. 105-152
Author(s):  
Susan T. Falck
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
African American Men ◽  
Lost Cause ◽  
Photographic Images ◽  
White Southerners ◽  
American Popular Culture ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face ◽  
Women And Children

This chapter examines the photographs shot by Henry C. Norman and amateur photographer Mary Britton Conner of Natchez African Americans in the postwar era. Norman, a highly-skilled white photographer, created hundreds of magnificent portraits of African-American men, women and children, leaving a priceless record of how these people wanted to be remembered. At a time when American popular culture frequently ridiculed African Americans, Norman’s portraits gave his black customers a means to define themselves in the face of negative racist stereotypes. The images shot by Conner reveal the social climate of early twentieth century Natchez as seen through the eyes of a prominent white woman raised in an environment suffused in Lost Cause romanticism and Jim Crow racism. In stark contrast to the narrative visible in Norman’s portraits of black consumers, Conner’s photographic images reflect the depth of white southerners’ nostalgia for antebellum notions of race, dependency and paternalism.

“Work and Wait Unwearying”: Dunbar's Georgics

PMLA ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 127 (4) ◽  
pp. 863-878 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Ronda
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Institutional Racism ◽  
Black Belt ◽  
Social Discourse ◽  
Racial Uplift ◽  
Negative Freedom ◽  
Paul Laurence Dunbar ◽  
Work Characteristic ◽  
The Face

This essay argues that the georgic poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar offer his most incisive representations of the hardships faced by African Americans after Reconstruction. Written in the context of Jim Crow laws, vagrancy statutes, and other coercive means of restricting the mobility of southern blacks and extracting compulsory labor from them, these poems present the hard agrarian work characteristic of the rural Black Belt. They confront the pervasive rhetoric of racial uplift through labor, popularized by Booker T. Washington, that dominates American social discourse on race in the late nineteeth and early twentieth centuries, by revealing the negative freedom of black agrarian labor. At the same time, these poems assert the humanity and blamelessness of African Americans in the face of institutional racism. The essay aims to recast Dunbar's legacy by turning attention from his dialect poetry toward his georgic analyses of the uneven modernization of racialized labor.

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