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Showing posts from March 31, 2019

Margaret Walker Alexander: Poet, Writer, Voice of Civil Rights

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photo from wikipedia.com 'Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a bloody peace be written in the sky. Let a second generation full of courage issue forth; let a people loving freedom come to growth.'' (From "For My People" qtd. here ) American poet Margaret Walker (1915-1998) was initially an important part of the Chicago Black Renaissance, which emerged following the demise of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1930s. Stemming from Chicago's South Side, the Renaissance brought together a notable cadre of well-known writers including Richard Wright, Lorraine Hansberry, Arna Bontemps, and Gwendolyn Brooks. Perhaps not as nationally heralded as the Harlem Renaissance, the Chicago Renaissance did not have the same backing by white patrons, and struggled due to the geographic distance from New York City's publishing houses ( 1 ). Nonetheless, the Renaissance brought forth a new generation of inspiring writers, fresh talent, and new foc...

Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement

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No other human rights activist is more recognizable, more lionized, or more revered for his work toward achieving social equality than Martin Luther King, Jr. King rose to recognition Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955. In what became historically known as the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Parks' and King's actions would herald the dawn of a new age in America in which African Americans would take a collective stand against the oppression of the Jim Crow South and set into motion an unprecedented series of events that would culminate in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. However, to appreciate fully the courage this man expressed, one must first understand the climate of the social stage he was entering at the time.  Just one year before Rosa Parks defied Jim Crow law that segregated whites from blacks on public transportation, progress was being made in education. In 1954, Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas was successful i...