African American Studies: History, Struggle, and Development

Running head: AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES
AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note:

1AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Discussion..................................................................................................................................3
Early.......................................................................................................................................3
Middle....................................................................................................................................4
Present....................................................................................................................................6
Reference................................................................................................................................9

2AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES
Introduction
The development of the African-American tradition has been a history of struggle.
The Americans having their origin in Africa had been proactive in establishing themselves as
a community with equal rights after difficult struggle for a long time. However there is still
evidences of racial discrimination shown towards the community. The development of the
African American Theatre has been such a similar struggle which the performers had to go
through in order to establish the art form. Harlem Renaissance was one of the important
events in the history of the African-American struggle. Harlem Renaissance was one of the
“intellectual, social, and artistic explosion” that happened at New York in the Harlem region
which went down in History as one of the most famous struggles to establish intellectual
equality in America and the world (Colbert, n.d.). The movement had the elements of the
expressions that included cultural and social elements of the African-American community.
The theatre movement of the African American community against the inequalities shown to
them also started during the Harlem Renaissance. The first theatre produced during this time
is Angelina Weld Grimke’s Rachel during the 1916. The subject of the theatre was “lynching
on women and families” and the “ghastly practice in terms of black female reproductively”.
The theatre had hit one of the most important issues faced by the African-American women
in the contemporary times, however the required change in the perception of people in
America towards the community was yet to take place.
The discrimination in the times of development of theatre in the community also
raised a larger question about the “white” people with racial mentality not agreeing to allow
the “black community to take over the cultural landscape of the country.