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From Oppresion to Empowerment

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Booker T. Washington’s Up from Slavery and Malcolm X’s The Autobiography of Malcolm X both start out highlighting their respective hardships. Washington begins his story saying, “I was born a slave on a plantation in Virginia.” Following, he goes into further details in the early years of his life and retells the emotions experienced by other African American slaves during and after the emancipation. Born decades after Washington, Malcolm X describes his different but similar experiences beginning with "I grew up in a house attacked by the Klan." Malcolm looks back on his youth, narrating the terrors of the segregative systems that superseded slavery. Their stories show continual exploitation and injustice, but differ in interpretation due to different circumstances. Despite the disparities, both Booker T. and Malcolm were heavily influenced by their curiosity and ferocity when it came to education and learning. Malcolm X transforms himself while in prison, spending most of h...
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Floods and Dreams: Different Ways Racism Faced Opposition

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 Richard Wright's Down by the Riverside and Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun  are both significant and powerful stories of protest, going against the racist and segregationist regime in the United States. Although they share this similarity, due to the story's theme, writing style, and other details, they have some key differences that are critical for me to present, in order for the whole blog to bring itself together. Wright in his socialist-driven naturalist story portrayed Mann, his family, and blacks overall as oppressed and even hopeless in certain situations. Look at Mann, his wife was having his child, in critical condition, and he had no way to help her, since the Great Mississippi Flood stripped normal transport away for numerous Americans. Because of these dire circumstances, he is forced to utilize Mr. Heartfield's ship that Bob stole, so he can get his wife the care she needs. This thievery ends up becoming the reason he is killed but as you can see...
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Differences in Perspectives during the Time of Slavery

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Harriet Jacobs, in her Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,  highlights the terror and misconduct slaves, particularly, slave women experienced under their masters, who were allowed free rein, often committing horrific crimes upon them with no repercussions. With Jacobs, there was no love lost for her master, Mr. Flint as she saw no reason for compassion when he passed away towards the end of the book. Booker T. Washington, in his 1901 autobiography,   Up from Slavery,  takes a much different approach when analyzing the slavery's effects on himself and those around him. When Book and his family were freed due to the North's victory in the Civil War, they did not resent their former masters, even pitying them. Washington goes further, stating that numerous elder slaves did not have better situations to go to and worked out contracts to stay working for them. The question I will be analyzing is how two people who experienced the same plague of slavery approach it so ...
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