W.E.B. DuBois (1868-1963) was a black scholar and political thinker. His views differered from Booker T. Washington's who believed that African Americans should accept the discrimination they faced during the early 1900's. DuBois argued that this would only encourage and sustain the white oppression. Instead, he advocated political action and a civil rights agenda. He founded the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and the Niagara Movement in the early 1900's. The Niagara Movement demanded black suffrage, and no discrimination or segregation of black Americans on public transportation. It also demanded that black Americans should have the same liberties white people had at that time. He became the editor of the NAACP's magazine, The Crisis. In addition, he argued that social change could be accomplished by developing the small group of college-educated blacks he called "the Talented Tenth". He believed the Talented Tenth would "advance the interests of all black Americans".
References
http://www.naacp.org/pages/naacp-history
http://christopherbuck.com/Buck_PDFs/Buck_TalentedTenth_2010.pdf
Monday, April 18, 2011
The Oddyssey by Homer
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison is very similar to The Odyssey by Homer.Personal characters and national name is apparent in both books. The battle royal scene in Invisible Man and the Trojan War in The Odyssey are similar as they help determine the outcome of the protagonist, which in The Odyssey is Odysseus. The battle royal scene in Invisible Man introduces the enemy ("the white") which in The Odyssey is similar to Poseidon. After the battle royal, the protagonist in Invisible Man gets sent away by the whites to a college, just like how Odysseus is exiled to an island. The character Brother Jack in Invisible Man is a reference to the Cyclops in The Odyssey.The magnificent blond in Invisible Man, who the narrator describes as "a fair bird-girl girdled in veils calling to me from the angry surface of some gray and threatening sea" (Ellison) is reference to the Greek sirens that Odysseus encounters on his way home from Troy.
Reference
Reference
The Brotherhood
The Brotherhood: A multi-racial doctrinaire organization professing to uphold the rights of all who are socially oppressed. The Brotherhood may have been drawn from the American Communist Party, where Ellison, the author of Invisible Man, worked for a number of years. Its emphasis on the collective, the rational, the scientific, and the abstract makes it a very cold ideology that is often at odds with the narrator's own. The Invisible Man narrator's feelings of betrayal when the Brotherhood informs him that Harlem is no longer a focus of attention, may have been drawn from Ellison's feelings when the American Communist Party shifted its focus away from blacks in the 1940s.
1930's Civil Rights Movement
League of Struggle for Negro Rights (1930 - 1936)
The League of Struggle for Negro Rights was the primary civil rights organization of the American Communist Party in mid 1930's. The primary branches were in Harlem and Chicago. This organization worked towards land redistribution and a negro state. It focused on civil and social equality through the newspaper, The Liberator. Langston Hughes was honorary president.
References
The American Communist Party was founded in Chicago in 1919. The organization moved to New York in 1927 and eventually adopted the title of Communist Party of the USA. The party advocated Marxism-Leninism and recruited members from the African Blood Brotherhood, including Harry Haywood. In 1925, the organization formed the ANLC (American Negro Labor Congress). Its function was to eliminate prejudice in the work place. The ANLC rioted with the unemployed and fought racial discrimination in factories. In the 1930's, the communist party grew to around 100,000 members. The rise of Hitler helped to aid the party and assisted in addition of more members. The period of the 1930's was called the Popular Front in the party's history.
References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_USA#The_Third_Period_.281928.E2.80.931935.29
The Liberator
The Liberator
The Liberator was a black-led communist paper that exercised the ideas and met the demands of the CPUSA (Communist Party of the USA). It has been a topic of controversy in that some believe the writing reflects a "Cold War" point of view. The circulation information of this paper is difficult to prove due to the fact that many African Americans at this time were illiterate. Therefore, they were informed by this paper through hearing someone read it aloud to them. The paper had three different editors: Max Eastman, Floyd Dell and Robert Minor.
References
Booker T. Washington
Booker T. Washington (1856-1915), educator, reformer and the most influential black leader of his time preached a philosophy of self-help, racial solidarity and accommodation. He urged blacks to accept discrimination for the time being and concentrate on elevating themselves through hard work and material prosperity. He believed in education of the crafts, industrial and farming skills and the cultivation of the virtues of patience, enterprise and thrift. He said would win the respect of whites and lead to African Americans being fully accepted as citizens and integrated into all strata of society.He criticized W.E.B. DuBois who had a civil rights agenda and for establishing the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). He has been criticized for being too conservative and accommodating to white society in the post-Civil War era. There is evidence, however, that his public work of accommodation differed greatly from his private work, which pushed the envelope more than he let on. He was also the founded the Tuskegee Institute. A more explicit connection to Booker T. Washington in Invisible Man (besides when the narrator quotes him in his speech) comes in Chapter One, when the Narrator writes of his grandparents: "About eighty-five years ago they were told that they were free, united with others of our country in everything pertaining to the common good, and, in everything social, separate like the fingers of the hand" ( ). This is a direct allusion to Washington's 1895 Atlanta Compromise address, when he said, "In all things purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress". This is the most conservative approach in the discussion on black America.
References
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAbooker.htm
http://www.biography.com/articles/Booker-T.-Washington-9524663
http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/washington/bio.html
References
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAbooker.htm
http://www.biography.com/articles/Booker-T.-Washington-9524663
http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/washington/bio.html
Marcus Garvey
Marcus Garvey, nicknamed the "Black Messiah", was an ambitious yet contradicting African American activist. His views were influenced by those of Booker T. Washington. Garvey argued for segregation rather than integration and thought that African Americans should live in Africa. He thought Africa was the only place black people could be equal and achieve self-emancipation. This was called the "Back to Africa" Movement. He believed in Black Nationalism, the belief that African Americans could never achieve social equality in America. He also established the UNIA (Universal Negro Improvement Association) in 1917, which was one of the largest black organizations in history after World War I claiming to have over 2 million members. He was eventually charged with fraud, sentenced to five years in jail, and deported back to Jamaica.
References
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/garvey/filmmore/fd.html
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAgarvey.htm
http://www.inmotionaame.org/migrations/topic.cfm;jsessionid=f8303082421302521760586?migration=4&topic=8&bhcp=1
http://www.marcusgarvey.com/wmview.php?ArtID=531&page=3
References
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/garvey/filmmore/fd.html
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAgarvey.htm
http://www.inmotionaame.org/migrations/topic.cfm;jsessionid=f8303082421302521760586?migration=4&topic=8&bhcp=1
http://www.marcusgarvey.com/wmview.php?ArtID=531&page=3
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