Portfolio Assignment 1: African American Literature and Eras of Change

This portfolio assignment delves into the multifaceted history of African American literature, commencing with the vernacular tradition, which encompasses spirituals and blues as expressive outlets during slavery, evolving through periods of literature of slavery and freedom, reconstruction, and the Harlem Renaissance. The assignment then progresses to examine modern forms like realism, naturalism, and modernism, highlighting key writers and their contributions. It further explores the Black Arts Era, emphasizing its cultural and political impact, and concludes with an overview of the contemporary period, reflecting on the evolution of African American literature from 1945 to the present. The assignment provides a comprehensive overview of the major literary movements, influential figures, and social contexts that shaped the development of African American literature.

Running head: PORTFOLIO ASSIGNMENT 1
Portfolio Era 1 Assignment
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Introduction
The Vernacular Tradition
The spirituals and the blues are examples of the vernacular tradition of African American
literature. A sort of art form African Americans used to explain their plight as slaves and to
declare their desire for freedom, the spirituals were a form of expression. On the other hand, the
blues were a reflection of the African Americans' secular way of life. The events described above
occurred during the 18th century when slavery was at its height. Because the enslaved people,
mostly African Americans, were not authorized to read or write, they turned to oral forms of
literature, giving rise to the vernacular traditions. When the African Americans were relocated to
the United States, they were dispersed across the country's territory. They did not speak the same
language because they had all been brought from different parts of Africa and did not speak the
same dialect. Because of their plight as enslaved people, they developed a sense of camaraderie
that resulted in the development of Creole, which was a shared language among the enslaved
people. The vernacular traditions included songs, poetry, and folk stories in Creole. They did not
adhere to any of the rules of grammar. They were introduced in a call-and-response format when
one person takes the lead and the others respond. Jazz, ballads, blues, sermons, and spirituals are
just a few of the forms of music found in today's America that are part of the vernacular
traditions. The songs also included a dance routine, which gave them an otherwise lacking
rhythm. The song's lyrics were inspired by the difficulties that African Americans were facing at
its release (Graham et al, 2013). (Graham and colleagues, 2013). They also talked about a more
promising future, which gave them hope and the will to continue living. Spirituals, for example,
were often sung on the plantations while people were hard at work. Because they possessed at
least that level of freedom, the enslaved people could scream, sing, and talk in a variety of
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languages. They incorporated their ideals into these songs and kept their religious beliefs under
wraps so that the whites would not be able to discredit them.
Literature of Slavery and Freedom
That happened between 1746 and 1865. It was a time when the first African American
writers appealed to the Christian church for help in negotiating their situation in America with
whites without seeming combative or explicitly confronting them. The writers wanted to talk
about racial segregation. Slavery was brought up during the conversation, and David Walker, a
self-educated historian, contended that it was practiced in Africa long before white people seized
control. He referred to the bondage that existed in ancient Egypt and eventually spread to Greece
and Rome. When they started selling African criminals and their children, the Portuguese were
the ones who created the slave trade as an established institution. The first Africans to go to
North America, according to history, were explorers Estevanico and Jean Baptiste du Sable.
The first African labourers were sent to British America in 1619. The whites saw the physical
differences between the whites and the African Americans as a symbol of intellectual, moral, and
spiritual inequality; therefore, the only way they could employ the African Americans was to
turn them into enslaved people. When America gained independence from Britain in 1783, the
enslaved people's situation did not improve since the Americans still wanted to be their masters.
On the other hand, Enslaved people sought to be treated as human beings, which led to rebellions
(Henry et al, 1996). (Henry and colleagues, 1996). Nat Turner led one of the most successful
slave rebellions in 1831, giving hope to the enslaved people. This was followed by the rise of
African American writers who fought for their people's rights.
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Literature of reconstruction
In the 20th century, after the African-American were freed from slavery, they found it
difficult to live among the whites as most of them did not want to treat the African- Americans as
equals. Four philosophers Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, and Ida B.
Wells came up with competing visions on how to deal with the situation. Washington believed
that equal rights would come naturally for the African- Americans after they has developed
themselves socially, education wise and economically (Karenga, 1982). Dubois agreed with
Washington that the African- Americans should major in self-development but not at the expense
of their freedom and full rights. Garvey saw no hope for the African- Americans to be accepted
as equals by The White-Americans, therefore he called for separate self-development projects for
them within America. If not, he urged them to relocate back to Africa. According to Karenga
(1982), Barnett mostly talked about lynching and unfair treatment of the African- Americans by
the whites and also advised them to move away for the safety of their families.
The main reason for the failure of the civil war reconstruction was the failure to assure
full political and civil rights to the freed slaves. The 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments of this
reconstruction guaranteed civil rights which failed because of the Ku Klux Klan's racial-
segregation, terrorism, lynching and restricting the African-Americans to vote. African-
Americans had also been promised 40 acres of land each and a mule and when this failed, they
were forced to remain poor and work for rich landowners. The Freedmen's Bureau was
underfunded leaving the African-Americans uneducated.
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The Harlem Renaissance
This was a period between the World War 1 and the 1930s. It took place in Harlem and
was termed as a period of social, cultural and artistic explosion. The African American writers,
artists, scholars, photographers and singers came together to embrace their culture. It was a
period when the African Americans accepted themselves publicly. They shared stories about
their lives from the times of slavery to that time. They exposed the ghetto way of life without
fear and owned it. It was led by Alain Locke who named it the New Negro Movement. The name
came because Alain believed that this period would renew the black people hence start new ear
for them.
It was a time of cultural celebration as the African Americans had endured many years of
slavery and the end of slavery cam with the failure of the reconstruction meaning that it wasn't
any better for them. The Harlem Renaissance gave the African Americans a chance to contribute
to the American Literature and history with the truth about their lives. The conservatives among
them however, were scared that the ghetto reality would lead to more racial segregation but
Langston Hughes argued that the event was more aesthetic than it was political. He said that it
was an expression of their dark-skinned selves.
The cultural event fascinated the whites as they had a taste of the exotic lives the African
Americans were leading. In turn, they sought many black writers and published their work. This
encouraged many African Americans to venture in to writing which gave hope to future writers
of the community even though the event was waned in the 1930's. Its effects of the African
American self-declaration, determination and acceptance are still felt to date as the movement
gave new life and hope to this group of people.
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PART TWO
Realism, Naturalism and Modernism
These were modern forms of literature which were used between 1940 and 1960. They
mostly focused on the past lives of the African Americans. Realism is a faithful reproduction or
illusion of a material reality in literature. Naturalism was a form of writing that depicted a
harsher treatment of the above reality while Modernism was a deliberate break with tradition.
James Baldwin, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ralph Ellison, and Robert Hayes were among the
most prominent writers of that time. They concentrated on the plight of the African Americans in
the south during the Jim Crow era. America continued to progress from the times when the
whites did not view the African Americans as human beings to a time when they the Realism,
naturalism and modernism movement inspired the white youth. They even supported it.
Gwendolyn Brooks wrote poetry which was very popular at the time. She mostly wrote
about the ghettoes in Chicago and was mostly commended due to her exemplary vivid
description and imagery. Brooks hated the protests that were taking over the country. The
African Americans did not want to lose their culture hence they did not want to be assimilated in
to the American culture. The African American writers competed among each other. We see
Wright and Ellison criticizing each other's works. They also do not want to be placed in the same
category of writing as each of them want to be unique and have their own voice and agenda.
The different writers wrote about different things. Wright for instance criticized the
Harlem Movement, his novel Native Son talks about the urban black America's reality and talks
about the delinquent juveniles. Ellison was a protest writer like wright but his novel Invisible
man talked about social responsibility and writing craft.
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The Black Arts Era
This was a period between 1965 and 1975. This is when a poet by the name ImamuAmiri
Baraka emerged. He was considered to be the father of this period which involved politically
motivated African American poets, artists and writers coming together in the wake of the Black
Power. The movement was triggered by the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965. This was
followed by formation of the Black Panther Party and the Cultural Nationalists who were
responsible for the Black Arts Movement which used theatre to reflect the pride of black history.
The movement started in Harlem where Imamu opened a Black Arts Repertory since the
movement had its greatest impact on theatre and poetry. It started in New York and later on
spread to the other states. Different journalists published works about the movement in their
respective states. They included: Hoyt Fuller and John Johnson in Chicago, Lotus Press and
Broadside Press dug up and republished the older works of black poetry, and finally Robert
Chrisman and Nathan Hare published the first scholarly journal promoting black studies in the
academic world (Thomas, 2008).
Jazz is mostly associated with African Americans hence it was suitable to be used for the
movement. The creative works however played a big role in alienating the blacks and the whites
which often resulted in violence as the activities had a raw shock value that the unrepresented
group did not understand. Some works could be interpreted as sexist or homophobic and others
were outright racist. Most of the African American works were filled with the masculinity and
aggression that was as a result of the many years of slavery and humiliation. Baraka shifted to
another movement which brought an end to the Black Arts Movement. Baraka and his crew
however were recognized by the white mainstream as they achieved cultural recognition and
economic success.
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The Contemporary Period
The contemporary period refers to the phase from the year 1945 to present time. The
period began after the end of World War II. Peace was still not fully established as the cold war
began soon after the end of the war in 1947. This period saw the onset of the space age which
encompassed activities linked to space exploration, the space race, and space technology. The
cold war was conveyedthrough espionage, weapons development, invasions, competitive
technological development, and information sharing. This period experienced the formation of
new states. The Soviet Union formed the Eastern Bloc of nations that it controlled and created
new Soviet Socialist Republics while maintaining others as satellite states. The cold war came to
an end in 1991 following the Malta summit and revolutions in 1989 and most nations became
democratic republics (Levitsky et al, 2010).
The contemporary period similarly saw the birth of the information age and computer
technologies. This age sought to shift the traditional industries from industrialization to
industries based on information. The era began in the 1980's and rapidly developed. By the
1990's the popularity of technology based services like search engines and web directories had
risen drastically. Yahoo and Google were the industry leaders, albeit Google soon outshone other
services due to their innovative approaches to relevancy ranking. Easier communication,
collaboration, and interoperability was facilitated by the World Wide Web. This resulted in the
creation of online-based communities, web applications, and hosted services. Websites such as
Facebook and You Tube quickly gained extensive popularity.
This period also marked the great recession. The commodity recession of 1980 came to
an end in 2000. Prices of commodities and housing rose globally and the US mortgage-backed
securities were marketed around the world. There was also a sharp increase in food and fuel
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prices. The American housing securities collapsed causing a lot of damage to financial
institutions. This leads to a severe economic recession that began in 2007. The great recession
spread to most of the world and caused a decline in economic growth. Its effects included rising
unemployment, and slumping prices of goods.
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References
Graham, M. & Turner, S. (2013). Contemporary African American literature.Cambridge
university press. Cambridge
Henry Louis. & Nellie Y. McKay.(1996) the Norton Anthology of African American Literature.
New York: W.W. Norton. Print. Pg.151-162
Karenga, M. (1982). Introduction to Black studies.Kawaida Publications.
Thomas Aiello, (2008)"Black Arts Movement," Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896
to the Present: From the Age of Segregation to the Twenty-first Century, ed. Paul
Finkelman, New York: Oxford University Press
LevitskyS.,& Lucan A. (2010).Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold
War.
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