African American Experience NM

All of the authors led different lives during separate eras that influenced their writings. For example, Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, grew up in the North during the mid-nineteenth century, a time when the Abolitionist movement began to arise. Surrounded by a family of abolitionists, she grew to become a devoted Christian and mother. Affected by the death of her fifth child and recent passing of the Fugitive Slave Law, she developed a clear understanding of the inhumanity of slavery. On the other hand, Booker T. Washington displays a quite different experience. Shown in his autobiography, Up From Slavery, Washington went from a slave in Virginia, to become an educated professor and well-known public speaker during the period of Reconstruction because he loved learning. Education, he hoped, would improve the economic conditions of these people. Next, Nella Larsen switches the scene from the reconstructed South to the rapidly changing North. Larsen was a mixed child who struggled to find a place to fit in society. She attended several universities in the United States and abroad, but she never stayed in one place for long, for she searched for "something" to help her find her place. A product of the Harlem Renaissance, Passing conveys her struggles to present a woman's psyche at a time of intense literary and social pressure. Lastly, Maya Angelou's autobiography, I know Why a Cage Bird Sings, regresses back to life in the South during the time of the depression. Because her grandmother raised her with a strict set of values and after her rape at the age of eight, she had the ability to write of mature experiences through a child's perspective.
Through their works, these authors illustrated the changing conditions between the early nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. For instance, the self-image of African-Americans and their attitudes towards their race slowly began to change throughout each book. In the times of slavery, blacks saw themselves as merely property, instead of human beings. Because of this, Stowe depicted a novel that displayed how the institution of slavery damaged the moral of slaves. After the civil war, Washington depicts African-Americans as an ignorant, uneducated people living in dreadful poverty. In spite of efforts for improvement, attitudes during the 1920s worsened. Blacks became increasingly ashamed of the color of their skin, and Larsen displayed the trend of light skinned blacks risking to "pass" as whites to escape the burden of their race. Angelou, nevertheless, recognizes her rareness and individuality, making her a proud member of the African-American race. Similarly, economic conditions of the times revealed social atmosphere. Stowe and Washington describe African-Americans in slavery and immediately after slavery, where life centered on the plantation or small communities. But Larsen describes a different world: The world of the black bourgeoisie. Their lives, characterized by dinner parties and galas, rivaled any of their white contemporaries. Finally, the relationship between whites and blacks seemed to go downhill as time passed from one century to the other. Stowe and Washington depict a fairly good relationship between the two groups. But Larsen and Angelou allude the increasing stereotypes and aversion between them, not only in the South, but also in the North. Thus, changing conditions between centuries had affects in the works of the authors.
Each of these authors serves as a tour guide through African-American history. Beginning in the early nineteenth century, Stowe displays the horrors of slavery, and the harmful physical, spiritual, and moral affects the institution had upon slaves. Challenging the idea that slaves deserved no respect because they did not represent human beings, Stowe illustrated her main character as a Christian man, loyal and honest to everyone he met. As slavery ended by the Civil War, and America moved into the period of Reconstruction, when slaves left their masters without any knowledge of how to survive on their own. They were children in a dangerous world of whites. Washington dedicated his life into teaching his people, for he believed that only through education in the trades would they overcome their economical hardships. As the new century approached new divisions became clearer between blacks of the North and South. Usually, northern blacks had access to better education that allowed them to live under better economic conditions than their southern counterparts, and eventually the wealthy classes of the black bourgeoisie arose out of this. But as economic conditions rose for blacks in the early twentieth century, racial attitudes between whites and blacks did not. Finally, in the 1930s and 1940s conditions for blacks remained relatively the same. Northern blacks were still better off than southern blacks, and increased racism continued to separate whites and blacks.