Katherine Hancock, Christal Scott, Kayla Chavis, Jonathan
Clarke, Malik Thompson
Final Group Review
May 2, 2016
History 105.05
From
slavery to reconstruction, to the Harlem Renaissance to the Civil Rights
period, and from then until today, the identity of the African descendant has
changed drastically over time. This change has been produced by the ill
treatment of the community as a whole, and living in a society where the Negro
is considered a second-class citizen. Through oppression, however, black
identity will find ways to break through, because it always has.
The black identity in America begins with the history of slavery.
The slave was identified as property by the slaveholders; therefore, slaves
were stripped of an identity completely. Legislation and court had molded a
false identity for black slaves. Cases like the State of Missouri v. Celia and
George v. State established that there would be no protection of black female
slaves against rape. This had caused the black woman to be identified with
lasciviousness.
Black people would also be falsely identified with being criminals
thanks to the Fugitive Slaves Laws. These had pronounced the slave as living
property; therefore, if a slave ran away they were a criminal for life. The
dehumanization and diversity of the slave would also influence the identity of
early black lives in America. With the Three-Fifths Compromise, the government
had degraded the black slave to three-fifths of a human, stealing their
humanity from them. The experience in slavery had impacted each slave and
former slave’s identity differently. “Owners dictated where and how the slaves
lived, how they worked and played, and with whom they associated. Slaves
learned this fact early in their lives, and their owners never let them forget
it.”[1]
Each character from Toni Morrison’s Beloved experienced something
different during slavery that had stunted the formation of their identity.
Their identities had been tainted with the false perception that slavery had
labeled them. Slaveholders had used their authority as justification for the
torment and suffering that has unfortunately defined early black life in
America.
The
next major time period for African Americans was the Reconstruction period,
which was after the Emancipation Proclamation and the passage of the Thirteenth
Amendment, spanning from about 1866 to 1877. African Americans were no longer
legal property; however, white society continued to treat them as second class
humans because of the Black Codes, which were laws that limited black peoples’
agencies and opportunities (such as economic and job-wise). Though black people
were able to gain a new identity other than that of property, it was still hard
to feel like completely free individuals because the class of Southern white
elites reconstructed society to place African Americans underneath them.
Community identity
shifted as early as Emancipation Day, when ex-slaves gathered to celebrate the
formal end of their legalized bondage. However, the irony of such celebrations
and memorials shows how the community still felt the oppression of a
constrictive white society. As said in Envisioning
Emapncipation, “Images of Emancipation Day celebrations and ‘slave
reunions’ stand out, both for the ways in which they directly engage the
history of slavery and freedom and for the ways they veil or obscure elements
of that history.”[2]
The freedom that black people celebrated was paradoxical because they were
still very constrained by white society. Additionally, white society was made
out to be the benevolent figure in the freedom of slaves, not the force that
failed to recognize the basic human right of all people. That is shown by a
picture in Envisioning Emancipation
where a black child is photographed before and after emancipation. Before and
after Proclamation pictures of an African American boy show him “obligingly
performing the appropriate responses for the intended Southern audience.”[3]
These sources show that the identity of black people was still manipulated by
the oppression of whites, although they were no longer property. However, this
freedom was the first step for black people to find an identity outside of
white control.
In 1917, the United
States entered what would become known as World War 1. Thousands of African
American men volunteered to defend and die for a country that viewed them as
second-class citizens. During the war, European immigration virtually ceased
and northern industries needed unskilled labor for their factories. The
American south after reconstruction was a terrible place for African Americans.
Between Jim Crow laws and the rise of the KKK, the south was a violent and
dangerous place for blacks.
After
Reconstruction, a rebirth in black culture sparked the Harlem Renaissance. When
blacks arrived in the city, they were not welcomed with open arms. They were
corralled into ghettos, most notably Harlem in New York, and surrounded by
white people who though blacks were there to take their jobs. They reacted
negatively and sometimes violently. In order to combat the negative stereotypes
presented in the media, African Americans came together and created their own
institutions, music, art, literature, and theatre. This cultural movement would
later be called the Harlem Renaissance.
The Harlem Renaissance created a racial pride
within the African American community that had never been seen before. Pride in
the community fomented thanks to black cultural icons such as Louis Armstrong,
Jessie Redmond Fauset, Langston Hughes, and Josephine Baker. African American children
had black role models to look up to. This is something they had really not had
before. A term often used in conversation about the Harlem Renaissance is the
New Negro. The New Negro had left the southern life for the northern, the rural
life to urban, and the uneducated life for the educated. The racial pride
created in this movement was the catalyst for the civil rights movement.
Identity shifts within the
Civil Rights era began to reach an all-time high. Those that were away serving
the country came back in the mindset that things would be different for the
African American community. Stereotypes continued to be the main ammo for the
white community in order to maintain their segregated traditions. From the
enslavement era, stereotypes went from being broad assumptions of the black
community being inferior to more specific accusations of the New Negro that
asserted his or her autonomy such as lazy, uneducated, and unmotivated. To
white society, African Americans had quickly gone from hard working, sturdy,
and strong pieces of property to a populace that did not work for what they
wanted. As we continue through this era, we also begin to see this stereotype
shift of the African American community within the realm of housing. The black
community began to have new tags on themselves, by being identified as a people
that tend to cause trouble and who wanted to threaten what white society had
already claimed.
Racial discrimination began
to increase within the housing market rapidly. Not only did it place a new way
to view African Americans, but it also shifted the identity of white America as
well in retrospect of violence. It seemed that the more the African American
population gained some form of autonomy, the more violent the white community
grew. African American identity shifted even more when it came to education and
equality in the social dynamics, because the face for the fight for equality
became very youthful. College students began protesting and forming sit ins to
speak up for themselves and the rest of their people, giving off an image that
they will no longer tolerate this negative identity that they have been given
since the beginning of time. The youth were setting a new identity of
empowerment and fight within the African American community then and now.
Tracing through African American history and the progression
through slavery, segregation and several other forms of institutional nation
wide racism gives a comprehensive bird’s eye view. What this view lacks is the
Black experience through the trauma, and the genuine psychological and mental
impact that this system has on the people. Those aspects are largely overlooked
as parts of this systemic oppressive system that we confront on a daily basis.
The willful ignorance to the magnitude of this pain is perpetuated by people of
all races because understanding our history is a painful and exhausting
process. Honest conversations about the past are evidently difficult to manage,
yet when writers such as Kiese Laymon and Toni Morrison can create a brutal and
honest imagery there leaves choice but to confront the discomfort. Laymon’s How
to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America was intended to break the
stereotypical literary trends in order to draw attention to the aspects of
modern day racism from a perspective that is less well understood. “I wanted to
explore the benefits and burdens of being born a black boy in America without
the predictable literary rigidity.”[4]
Throughout his book one of the essential points is that racism is a part of
daily life and that has to be accepted as an African American, the next step is
how to deal with it. Today we understand that we have made much progress from
times that Morrison has written about because we do not walk around with the
physical scars of slavery on our backs. However the weight of slavery is still
a very real burden today, which proves that there is more uphill battle before
equality is achieved.
The African American identity has always been a very difficult
term to define because of it’s internal duality and also the many conflicting
views and opinions on the matter. We can understand how the term and the people
have progressed through the different forms of struggle and oppression placed
on the group. Yet the difficulty of accepting the harsh realities of the past
is an essential step, of many more to be made, in order to achieve equality for
a group of people who have never had any form of firmly established liberty in
this country.
[1]
Berlin, Ira, Marc Favreau, and Steven F. Miller,
Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk about Their Personal Experiences of
Slavery and Emancipation (New York: New, 1998), 3.
[2]
[2] Willis, Deborah, and Barbara
Krauthamer. Envisioning Emancipation: Black Americans and the End of Slavery.
(Temple University Press, 2012), 130.
[3]
Ibid.
[4]
Laymon, Kiese. How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America: Essays.
(Chicago, 2013) 11-13
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