Equality in African-American Literature

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how African-Americans' repeated struggles to obtain freedom from Southern slavery as well as their quest for social, economic and educational equality with whites, have been starkly and vividly described by a number of African-American authors. It points out that among these are the black educational leader Booker T. Washington; the novelist, short story writer and essayist Zora Neale Hurston and the novelist Ralph Ellison. The paper analyzes Washington's "The Atlanta Exposition", Hurston's "How It Feels to Be Colored Me" and Ellison's "Battle Royal" in terms of depictions of the African-American struggle toward equality, freedom and self-actualization.

From the Paper:

"The "gradualism" argued for by Washington, in what is known now as his "Atlanta Compromise Speech", as a way of blacks' slowly gaining equality with whites through vocational education, pleased Washington's, mostly Southern white, audience at the 1894 Atlanta Exposition. Southern whites, worried about losing economic ground to former slaves, were happy to accept Washington's views of gradual progress for blacks through vocational education, although in hindsight this was not the best way for blacks to achieve equality with whites."
"Zora Neale Hurston's essay "How It feels to be Colored Me" (1928), is written from the perspective of a 20th century African American woman, who feels, more than 60 years after the abolition of slavery, sanguine about being black in America."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Ellison, Ralph. "Battle Royal" [from Invisible Man]. In The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 6th ed. Vol. E. Nina Baym, et al. (Eds.). 2083-2093.
• Hurston, Zora Neale. "How It Feels to Be Colored Me," In The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 6th ed. Vol. D. Nina Baym et al. (Eds.). 1516-1518.
• Washington, Booker T. "The Atlanta Exposition" [from Up from Slavery]. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 6th ed. Vol. C: Nina Baym et al. (Eds.).

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