American literature - "They wouldn't care if we killed each other" (Black Boy).

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“They wouldn’t care if we killed each other.”

(Black Boy)

Benjamin Gehring

American Literature and Composition, Period 6

Ms. D. Isaac

February 2002

        

In 1883 the Southern states of the United States passed new laws which created several rules for the segregation of white and black people. Many of these laws, which are also called “Jim Crow Laws,” said, for example, that black people could not have the same rights and opportunities as whites in schools and jobs. For example, it was unlawful for whites and blacks to attend school in of another color.  The United States Supreme Court, the highest judicial tribunal in of the country, decided in 1896 that these laws were valid. The former slaves, who were freed in 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln, were in this time mistreated again.

        On December 1st 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama to a white passenger, as the Jim Crow laws required. After her arrest, many black people demonstrated against the Jim Crow laws and set a common goal of getting attention from the public about the mistreatment of blacks. This was the first demonstration of blacks against the mistreatment and segregation. In the Jim Crow era many black poets and writers founded different ways to express their feelings and emotions. One of these artists was Richard Wright, who is one of the most famous and important black writers of this time. His work Black Boy (1945) is his most popular autobiography novel and talks about many problems for black people in the Jim Crow era, especially in education and work.

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Black Boy, an autobiography of Richard’s life, which describes his development from a boy to a young man. In the beginning of the book, Richard lives a life full of mistreatment, misunderstandings, and mistrust between black people and white people. Some of the biggest issues and most discussed topics in the book are the conditions of school and work for black people. Richard gets his first experience about working as a black, when he goes with his mom to work. His mother Ella works for a white family in the kitchen. Richard cannot understand why the white people have plenty full ...

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