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The Other America
A Speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Stanford University April 14. 1967
Dean Napier, Mr. Bell; members of the faculty and
members of the student body of this great institution of
learning; ladies and gentlemen.
Now there are several things that one could talk about
before such a large, concerned, and enlightened
audience. There are so many problems facing our nation
and our world, that one could just take off anywhere.
But today I would like to talk mainly about the race
problems since I'll have to rush right out and go to New
York to talk about Vietnam tomorrow, and I've been
talking about it a great deal this week and weeks before
that.
But I'd like to use as a subject from which to speak
this afternoon, the Other America. And I use this
subject because there are literally two Americas. One
America is beautiful for situation. And, in a sense,
this America is overflowing with the milk of prosperity
and the honey of opportunity. This America is the
habitat of millions of people who have food and material
necessities for their bodies; and culture and education
for their minds; and freedom and human dignity for their
spirits. In this America, millions of people experience
every day the opportunity of having life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness in all of their dimensions. And
in this America millions of young people grow up in the
sunlight of opportunity.
But tragically and unfortunately, there is another
America. This other America has a daily ugliness about
it that constantly transforms the ebulliency of hope
into the fatigue of despair. In this America millions of
work-starved men walk the streets daily in search for
jobs that do not exist. In this America millions of
people find themselves living in rat-infested,
vermin-filled slums. In this America people are poor by
the millions. They find themselves perishing on a lonely
island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of
material prosperity.
In a sense, the greatest tragedy of this other America
is what it does to little children. Little children in
this other America are forced to grow up with clouds of
inferiority forming every day in their little mental
skies. And as we look at this other America, we see it
as an arena of blasted hopes and shattered dreams. Many
people of various backgrounds live in this other
America. Some are Mexican-Americans, some are Puerto
Ricans, some are Indians, some happen to be from other
groups. Millions of them are Appalachian whites. But
probably the largest group in this other America in
proportion to its size in the population is the American
Negro.
The American Negro finds himself living in a triple
ghetto. A ghetto of race, a ghetto of poverty, a ghetto
of human misery. So what we are seeking to do in the
Civil Rights Movement is to deal with this problem. To
deal with this problem of the two Americas. We are
seeking to make America one nation, indivisible, with
liberty and justice for all.
Now let me say that
the struggle for Civil Rights and the struggle to make
these two Americas one America, is much more difficult
today than it was five or ten years ago. For about a
decade or maybe twelve years, we've struggled all across
the South in glorious struggles to get rid of legal,
overt segregation and all of the humiliation that
surrounded that system of segregation.
In a sense this was
a struggle for decency; we could not go to a lunch
counter in so many instances and get a hamburger or a
cup of coffee. We could not make use of public
accommodations. Public transportation was segregated,
and often we had to sit in the back and within
transportation—transportation within cities—we often had
to stand over empty seats because sections were reserved
for whites only. We did not have the right to vote in so
many areas of the South. And the struggle was to deal
with these problems.
And certainly they
were difficult problems, they were humiliating
conditions. By the thousands we protested these
conditions. We made it clear that it was ultimately more
honorable to accept jail cell experiences than to accept
segregation and humiliation. By the thousands students
and adults decided to sit in at segregated lunch
counters to protest conditions there. When they were
sitting at those lunch counters they were in reality
standing up for the best in the American dream and
seeking to take the whole nation back to those great
wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding
Fathers in the formulation of the Constitution and the
Declaration of Independence.
Many things were
gained as a result of these years of struggle. In 1964
the Civil Rights Bill came into being after the
Birmingham movement which did a great deal to subpoena
the conscience of a large segment of the nation to
appear before the judgment seat of morality on the whole
question of Civil Rights. After the Selma movement in
1965 we were able to get a Voting Rights Bill. And all
of these things represented strides.
But we must see
that the struggle today is much more difficult. It's
more difficult today because we are struggling now for
genuine equality. And it's much easier to integrate a
lunch counter than it is to guarantee a livable income
and a good solid job. It's much easier to guarantee the
right to vote than it is to guarantee the right to live
in sanitary, decent housing conditions. It is much
easier to integrate a public park than it is to make
genuine, quality, integrated education a reality. And so
today we are struggling for something which says we
demand genuine equality.
It's not merely a
struggle against extremist behavior toward Negroes. And
I'm convinced that many of the very people who supported
us in the struggle in the South are not willing to go
all the way now. I came to see this in a very difficult
and painful way in Chicago the last year where I've
lived and worked. Some of the people who came quickly to
march with us in Selma and Birmingham weren't active
around Chicago. And I came to see that so many people
who supported morally and even financially what we were
doing in Birmingham and Selma, were really outraged
against the extremist behavior of Bull Connor and Jim
Clark toward Negroes, rather than believing in genuine
equality for Negroes. And I think this is what we've
gotta see now, and this is what makes the struggle much
more difficult.
And so as a result
of all of this, we see many problems existing today that
are growing more difficult. It's something that is often
overlooked, but Negroes generally live in worse slums
today than 20 or 25 years ago. In the North schools are
more segregated today than they were in 1954 when the
Supreme Court's decision on desegregation was rendered.
Economically the Negro is worse off today than he was 15
and 20 years ago. And so the unemployment rate among
Whites at one time was about the same as the
unemployment rate among Negroes. But today the
unemployment rate among Negroes is twice that of Whites.
And the average income of the Negro is today 50% less
than Whites.
As we look at these
problems we see them growing and developing every day.
And we see the fact that the Negro economically is
facing a depression in his everyday life that is more
staggering than the depression of the 30's. The
unemployment rate of the nation as a whole is about 4%.
Statistics would say from the Labor Department that
among Negroes it's about 8.4%. But these are the persons
who are in the labor market, who still go to employment
agencies to seek jobs, and so they can be calculated.
The statistics can be gotten because they are still
somehow in the labor market.
But there are
hundreds of thousands of Negroes who have given up.
They've lost hope. They've come to feel that life is a
long and desolate corridor for them with no Exit sign,
and so they no longer go to look for a job. There are
those who would estimate that these persons, who are
called the Discouraged Persons, these 6 or 7% in the
Negro community, that means that unemployment among
Negroes may well be 16%. Among Negro youth in some of
our larger urban areas it goes to 30 and 40%. So you can
see what I mean when I say that, in the Negro community,
that is a major, tragic and staggering depression that
we face in our everyday lives.
Now the other thing
that we've gotta come to see now that many of us didn't
see too well during the last ten years—that
is that racism is still alive in American society, and
much more wide-spread than we realized. And we must see
racism for what it is. It is a myth of the superior and
the inferior race. It is the false and tragic notion
that one particular group, one particular race is
responsible for all of the progress, all of the insights
in the total flow of history. And the theory that
another group or another race is totally depraved,
innately impure, and innately inferior.
In the final
analysis, racism is evil because its ultimate logic is
genocide. Hitler was a sick and tragic man who carried
racism to its logical conclusion. And he ended up
leading a nation to the point of killing about 6 million
Jews. This is the tragedy of racism because its ultimate
logic is genocide. If one says that I am not good enough
to live next door to him, if one says that I am not good
enough to eat at a lunch counter, or to have a good,
decent job, or to go to school with him merely because
of my race, he is saying consciously or unconsciously
that I do not deserve to exist. To use a philosophical
analogy here, racism is not based on some empirical
generalization; it is based rather on an ontological
affirmation. It is not the assertion that certain people
are behind culturally or otherwise because of
environmental conditions. It is the affirmation that the
very being of a people is inferior. And this is the
great tragedy of it.
I submit that
however unpleasant it is we must honestly see and admit
that racism is still deeply rooted all over America. It
is still deeply rooted in the North, and it's still
deeply rooted in the South.
And this leads me
to say something about another discussion that we hear a
great deal, and that is the so-called "white backlash."
I would like to honestly say to you that the white
backlash is merely a new name for an old phenomenon.
It's not something that just came into being because
shouts of Black Power, or because Negroes engaged in
riots in Watts, for instance. The fact is that the state
of California voted a Fair Housing bill out of existence
before anybody shouted Black Power, or before anybody
rioted in Watts.
It may well be that
shouts of Black Power and riots in Watts and the Harlems
and the other areas, are the consequences of the white
backlash rather than the cause of them.
What it is
necessary to see is that there has never been a single
solid monistic determined commitment on the part of the
vast majority of white Americans on the whole question
of Civil Rights and on the whole question of racial
equality. This is something that truth impels all men of
good will to admit.
It is said on the
Statue of Liberty that America is a home of exiles. It
doesn't take us long to realize that America has been
the home of its white exiles from Europe. But it has not
evinced the same kind of maternal care and concern for
its black exiles from Africa. It is no wonder that in
one of his sorrow songs, the Negro could sing out
"Sometimes I feel like a motherless child." What great
estrangement, what great sense of rejection caused a
people to emerge with such a metaphor as they looked
over their lives.
What I'm trying to
get across is that our nation has constantly taken a
positive step forward on the question of racial justice
and racial equality. But over and over again at the same
time, it made certain backward steps. And this has been
the persistence of the so-called white backlash. In 1863
the Negro was freed from the bondage of physical
slavery. But at the same time, the nation refused to
give him land to make that freedom meaningful. And at
that same period America was giving millions of acres of
land in the West and the Midwest, which meant that
America was willing to undergird its white peasants from
Europe with an economic floor that would make it
possible to grow and develop, and refused to give that
economic floor to its black peasants, so to speak.
This is why
Frederick Douglas could say that emancipation for the
Negro was freedom to hunger, freedom to the winds and
rains of heaven, freedom without roofs to cover their
heads. He went on to say that it was freedom without
bread to eat, freedom without land to cultivate. It was
freedom and famine at the same time. But it does not
stop there.
In 1875 the nation
passed a Civil Rights Bill and refused to enforce it. In
1964 the nation passed a weaker Civil Rights Bill and
even to this day, that bill has not been totally
enforced in all of its dimensions. The nation heralded a
new day of concern for the poor, for the poverty
stricken, for the disadvantaged. And brought into being
a Poverty Bill and at the same time it put such little
money into the program that it was hardly, and still
remains hardly, a good skirmish against poverty. White
politicians in suburbs talk eloquently against open
housing, and in the same breath contend that they are
not racist. And all of this, and all of these things
tell us that America has been backlashing on the whole
question of basic constitutional and God-given rights
for Negroes and other disadvantaged groups for more than
300 years.
So these
conditions, existence of widespread poverty, of slums,
and of tragic conditions in schools and other areas of
life, all of these things have brought about a great
deal of despair, and a great deal of desperation. A
great deal of disappointment and even bitterness in the
Negro communities. And today all of our cities confront
huge problems. All of our cities are potentially powder
kegs as a result of the continued existence of these
conditions. Many in moments of anger, many in moments of
deep bitterness engage in riots.
Let me say as I've
always said, and I will always continue to say, that
riots are socially destructive and self-defeating. I'm
still convinced that nonviolence is the most potent
weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle
for freedom and justice. I feel that violence will only
create more social problems than they will solve. That
in a real sense it is impractical for the Negro to even
think of mounting a violent revolution in the United
States. So I will continue to condemn riots, and
continue to say to my brothers and sisters that this is
not the way. And continue to affirm that there is
another way.
But at the same
time, it is as necessary for me to be as vigorous in
condemning the conditions which cause persons to feel
that they must engage in riotous activities as it is for
me to condemn riots. I think America must see that riots
do not develop out of thin air. Certain conditions
continue to exist in our society which must be condemned
as vigorously as we condemn riots. But in the final
analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard.
And what is it that
America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that
the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last
few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of
freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed
to hear that large segments of white society are more
concerned about tranquility and the status quo than
about justice, equality, and humanity. And so in a real
sense our nation's summers of riots are caused by our
nation's winters of delay. And as long as America
postpones justice, we stand in the position of having
these recurrences of violence and riots over and over
again. Social justice and progress are the absolute
guarantors of riot prevention.
Now let me go on to
say that if we are to deal with all of the problems that
I've talked about, and if we are to bring America to the
point that we have one nation, indivisible, with liberty
and justice for all, there are certain things that we
must do. The job ahead must be massive and positive. We
must develop massive action programs all over the United
States of America in order to deal with the problems
that I have mentioned.
Now in order to
develop these massive action programs we've got to get
rid of one or two false notions that continue to exist
in our society. One is the notion that only time can
solve the problem of racial injustice. I'm sure you've
heard this idea. It is the notion almost that there is
something in the very flow of time that will
miraculously cure all evils. And I've heard this over
and over again. There are those, and they are often
sincere people, who say to Negroes and their allies in
the white community, that we should slow up and just be
nice and patient and continue to pray, and in a hundred
or two hundred years the problem will work itself out
because only time can solve the problem.
I think there is an
answer to that myth. And it is that time is neutral. It
can be used either constructively or destructively. And
I'm absolutely convinced that the forces of ill-will in
our nation, the extreme rightists in our nation, have
often used time much more effectively than the forces of
good will. And it may well be that we will have to
repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic
words of the bad people and the violent actions of the
bad people, but for the appalling silence and
indifference of the good people who sit around and say
wait on time. Somewhere we must come to see that social
progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability.
It comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent
work of dedicated individuals. And without this hard
work time itself becomes an ally of the primitive forces
of social stagnation. And so we must help time, and we
must realize that the time is always ripe to do right.
Now there is
another notion that gets out, it's around everywhere.
It's in the South, it's in the North, it's in
California, and all over our nation. It's the notion
that ,legislation can't solve the problem; it can't do
anything in this area. And those who project this
argument contend that you've got to change the heart and
that you can't change the heart through legislation.
Now I would be the
first one to say that there is real need for a lot of
heart-changing in our country. And I believe in changing
the heart. I preach about it. I believe in the need for
conversion in many instances, and regeneration, to use
theological terms. And I would be the first to say that
if the race problem in America is to be solved, the
white person must treat the Negro right, not merely
because the law says it, but, because it's natural,
because it's right, and because the Negro is his
brother. And so I realize that if we are to have a truly
integrated society, men and women will have to rise to
the majestic heights of being obedient to the
unenforceable.
But after saying
this, let me say another thing which gives the other
side, and that is that although it may be true that
morality cannot be legislated, behavior can be
regulated. Even though it may be true that the law
cannot change the heart, it can restrain the heartless.
Even though it may be true that the law cannot make a
man love me, it can restrain him from lynching me. And I
think that's pretty important also. And so while the law
may not change the hearts of men, it can and it does
change the habits of men. And when you begin to change
the habits of men, pretty soon the attitudes will be
changed; pretty soon the hearts will be changed. And I'm
convinced that we still need strong civil rights
legislation. And there is a bill before Congress right
now to have a national or federal Open Housing Bill. A
federal law declaring discrimination in housing
unconstitutional.
And also a bill to
made the administration of justice real all over our
country. Now nobody can doubt the need for this. Nobody
can doubt the need if he thinks about the fact that
since 1963 some 50 Negroes and white civil rights
workers have been brutally murdered in the state of
Mississippi alone, and not a single person has been
convicted for these dastardly crimes. There have been
some indictments but no one has been convicted. And so
there is a need for a federal law dealing with the whole
question of the administration of justice.
There is a need for
fair housing laws all over our country. And it is tragic
indeed that Congress last year allowed this bill to die.
And when that bill died in Congress, a bit of democracy
died, a bit of our commitment to justice died. If it
happens again in this session of Congress, a greater
degree of our commitment to democratic principles will
die. And I can see no more dangerous trend in our
country than the constant developing of predominantly
Negro central cities ringed by white suburbs. This is
only inviting social disaster. And the only way this
problem will be solved is by the nation taking a strong
stand, and by state governments taking a strong stand
against housing segregation and against discrimination
in all of these areas.
Now there's another
thing that I'd like to mention as I talk about the
massive action program and time will not permit me to go
into specific programmatic action to any great degree.
But it must be realized now that the Negro cannot solve
the problems by himself. There again, there are those
who always say to Negroes, "Why don't you do something
for yourself? Why don't you lift yourselves by your own
bootstraps?" And we hear this over and over again.
Now certainly there
are many things that we must do for ourselves and that
only we can do for ourselves. Certainly we must develop
within a sense of dignity and self respect that nobody
else can give us. A sense of manhood, a sense of
personhood, a sense of not being ashamed of our
heritage, not being ashamed of our color. It was wrong
and tragic of the Negro ever to allow himself to be
ashamed of the fact that he was black, or ashamed of the
fact that his home, ancestral home was Africa. And so
there is a great deal that the Negro can do to develop
self-respect. There is a great deal that the Negro must
do and can do to amass political and economic power
within his own community and by using his own resources.
And so we must do certain things for ourselves but this
must not negate the fact, and cause the nation to
overlook the fact, that the Negro cannot solve the
problem himself.
A man was on the
plane with me some weeks ago and he came and talked with
me and he said, "The problem, Dr. King, that I see with
what you all are doing is that every time I see you and
other Negroes, you're protesting and you aren't doing
anything for yourselves." And he went on to tell me that
he was very poor at one time, and he was able to make it
by doing something for himself. "Why don't you teach
your people," he said, "to lift themselves by their own
bootstraps?" And then he went on to say other groups
faced disadvantages, the Irish, the Italians, and he
went down the line.
And I said to him
that it does not help the Negro, it only deepens his
frustration, upon feeling insensitive people to say to
him that other ethnic groups who migrated or were
immigrants to this country less than a hundred years ago
or so, have gotten beyond him and he came here some 344
years ago. And I went on to remind him that the Negro
came to this country involuntarily in chains, while
others came voluntarily. I went on to remind him that no
other racial group has been a slave on American soil. I
went on to remind him that the other problem that we
have faced over the years is that this society placed a
stigma on the color of the Negro, on the color of his
skin because he was black. Doors were closed to him that
were not closed to other groups. And I finally said to
him that it's a nice thing to say to people that you
oughta lift yourself by your own bootstraps, but it is a
cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he oughta lift
himself by his own bootstraps. And the fact is that
millions of Negroes, as a result of centuries of denial
and neglect, have been left bootless. And they find
themselves impoverished aliens in this affluent society.
And there is a great deal that the society can and must
do if the Negro is to gain the economic security that he
needs.
Now one of the
answers it seems to me, is a guaranteed annual income, a
guaranteed minimum income for all people, and for all
families of our country. It seems to me that the Civil
Rights Movement must now begin to organize for the
guaranteed annual income. Begin to organize people all
over our country, and mobilize forces so that we can
bring to the attention of our nation this need, and this
something which I believe will go a long long way toward
dealing with the Negro's economic problem and the
economic problem which many other poor people confront
in our nation.
Now I said I wasn't
gonna talk about Vietnam, but I can't make a speech
without mentioning some of the problems that we face
there because I think this war has diverted attention
from civil rights. It has strengthened the forces of
reaction in our country and has brought to the forefront
the military industrial complex that even President
Eisenhower warned us against at one time. And above all,
it is destroying human lives. It's destroying the lives
of thousands of the young promising men of our nation.
It's destroying the lives of little boys and little
girls in Vietnam. But one of the greatest things that
this war is doing to us in civil rights is that it is
allowing the Great Society to be shot down on the
battlefields of Vietnam every day.
And I submit this
afternoon that we can end poverty in the United States.
Our nation has the resources to do it. The National
Gross Product of America will rise to the astounding
figure of some $780 billion this year. We have the
resources. The question is whether our nation has the
will, and I submit that if we can spend $35 billion a
year to fight an ill-considered war in Vietnam, and $20
billion to put a man on the moon, our nation can spend
billions of dollars to put God's children on their own
two feet right here on earth.
Let me say another
thing that's more in the realm of the spirit I guess,
that is that if we are to go on in the days ahead and
make true brotherhood a reality, it is necessary for us
to realize more than ever before, that the destinies of
the Negro and the white man are tied together. Now there
are still a lot of people who don't realize this. The
racists still don't realize this. But it is a fact now
that Negroes and whites are tied together, and we need
each other. The Negro needs the white man to save him
from his fear. The white man needs the Negro to save him
from his guilt. We are tied together in so many ways;
our language, our music, our cultural patterns, our
material prosperity, and even our food are an amalgam of
black and white.
And so there can be
no separate black path to power and fulfillment that
does not intersect white groups. There can be no
separate white path to power and fulfillment short of
social disaster. It does not recognize the need of
sharing that power with black aspirations for freedom
and justice. We must come to see now that integration is
not merely a romantic or aesthetic something where you
merely add color to a still predominantly white power
structure. Integration must be seen also in political
terms where there is shared power, where black men and
white men share power together to build a new and a
great nation.
In a real sense,
we're all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality,
tied in a single garment of destiny. John Donne placed
it years ago in graphic terms, "No man is an island
entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent,
a part of the main." And he goes on toward the end to
say, "Any man's death diminishes me because I'm involved
in mankind. Therefore never send to know for whom the
bell tolls. It tolls for thee." And so we are all in the
same situation: the salvation of the Negro will mean the
salvation of the white man. And the destruction of the
life and of the ongoing progress of the Negro will be
the destruction of the ongoing progress of the nation.
Now let me say
finally that we have difficulties ahead but I haven't
despaired. Somehow I maintain hope in spite of hope. And
I've talked about the difficulties and how hard the
problems will be as we tackle them. But I want to close
by saying this afternoon, that I still have faith in the
future. And I still believe that these problems can be
solved. And so I will not join anyone who will say that
we still can't develop a coalition of conscience.
I realize and
understand the discontent and the agony and the
disappointment and even the bitterness of those who feel
that whites in America cannot be trusted. And I would be
the first to say that there are all too many who are
still guided by the racist ethos. And I am still
convinced that there are still many white persons of
good will. And I'm happy to say that I see them every
day in the student generation who cherish democratic
principles and justice above principle, and who will
stick with the cause of justice and the cause of civil
rights and the cause of peace throughout the days ahead.
And so I refuse to despair. I think we're gonna achieve
our freedom because however much America strays away
from the ideals of justice, the goal of America is
freedom.
Abused and scorned
though we may be, our destiny is tied up in the destiny
of America. Before the pilgrim fathers landed at
Plymouth we were here. Before Jefferson etched across
the pages of history the majestic words of the
Declaration of Independence, we were here. Before the
beautiful words of the Star Spangled Banner were
written, we were here. For more than two centuries, our
forbearers labored here without wages. They made cotton
king. They built the homes of their masters in the midst
of the most humiliating and oppressive conditions. And
yet out of a bottomless vitality, they continued to grow
and develop.
And I say that if
the inexpressible cruelties of slavery couldn't stop us,
the opposition that we now face, including the so-called
white backlash, will surely fail. We're gonna win our
freedom because both the sacred heritage of our nation
and the eternal will of the Almighty God are embodied in
our echoing demands.
And so I can still
sing "We Shall Overcome." We shall overcome because the
arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward
justice. We shall overcome because Carlyle is right, "no
lie can live forever." We shall overcome because William
Cullen Bryant is right, "truth crushed to earth will
rise again." We shall overcome because James Russell
Lowell is right, "Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong
forever on the throne - Yet that scaffold sways the
future."
With this faith, we
will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a
stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to
transform the jangling discords of our nation into a
beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we
will be able to speed up the day when all of God's
children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles,
Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands
and live together as brothers and sisters, all over this
great nation. That will be a great day, that will be a
great tomorrow. In the words of the Scripture, to speak
symbolically, that will be the day when the morning
stars will sing together and the sons of God will shout
for joy.
Thank you.
posted 1 September 2008
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Salvage the Bones
A Novel by Jesmyn Ward
On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family that’s about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrina’s inexorable winds is the voice of Ward’s narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her family’s raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brother’s “blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt.” Her father’s hands “are like gravel,” while her own hand “slides through his grip like a wet fish,” and a handsome boy’s “muscles jabbered like chickens.” Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isn’t usually just metaphor for metaphor’s sake. She conveys something fundamental about Esch’s fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, what’s salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.—WashingtonPost |
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Becoming American Under Fire
Irish Americans, African Americans, and the Politics of Citizenship
During the Civil War Era
By Christian G. Samito
In Becoming American under Fire, Christian G. Samito provides a rich account of how African American and Irish American soldiers influenced the modern vision of national citizenship that developed during the Civil War era. By bearing arms for the Union, African Americans and Irish Americans exhibited their loyalty to the United States and their capacity to act as citizens; they strengthened their American identity in the process. . . . For African American soldiers, proving manhood in combat was only one aspect to their quest for acceptance as citizens. As Samito reveals, by participating in courts-martial and protesting against unequal treatment, African Americans gained access to legal and political processes from which they had previously been excluded. The experience of African Americans in the military helped shape a postwar political movement that successfully called for rights and protections regardless of race. For Irish Americans, soldiering in the Civil War was part of a larger affirmation of republican government and it forged a bond between their American citizenship and their Irish nationalism. The wartime experiences of Irish Americans helped bring about recognition of their full citizenship through naturalization and also caused the United States to pressure Britain to abandon its centuries-old policy of refusing to recognize the naturalization of British subjects abroad. / For Love of Liberty |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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