The African-American Nightmare Exposed in Black Literature Essay

African-American incubus Exposed in Olaudah Equiano, Narrative of Frederick Douglass, Song of Solomon, and Push The American intake was founded on the concept that all men are created equal(Jefferson 729) and that everyone has the skill and resources to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. The Declaration of Independence was written so Americans could achieve this dream, but was not written with the African slave in mind. The African slave was never intended to be a dissociate of this American woolgather, therefore, not capable of obtaining it. These slaves were beaten up and/or lynched by their massas with these bootstraps instead of being pulled up by them. Even after the subscribe of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, Blacks still did not have entre to all of the privileges of the white world. The Jim Crow laws of 1877 constantly reminded Blacks of their second-class citizenship and also exceptional them to certain areas and to very few resources. Signs reading W hites Only or aslope hung over restroom doors, drinking fountains and other public places. The dominant American Dream narrative involves voluntary participation, forgetting the past, and privileging the individual while the substitute(a) Dream narrative of American minorities involves forced participation, connecting tot the past, and privileging the group-the traditional (extended) or alternative families. So, clearly, to the African-American, there were and still are many restrictions that go along with the American Dream. The great civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King in his famous speech, I hand over a Dream, delivered August 28, 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington, D.C., supports these limi... ...Life of Frederick Douglass. 1845. The unpolluted Slave Narratives. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York Penguin Group, 1987. Equiano, Olaudah. The Life of Olaudah Equiano. 1814. The Classic Slave Narratives. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York Pe nguin Group, 1987. Hughes, Langston. Dream Deferred. Literature, Reading Fiction, Poetry, turn & the Essay. 4th Edition, Published by McGraw Hill, 1998. Jefferson, Thomas. The Declaration of Independence. 1776. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 4th ed. v.1,ed. Nina Baym et al (NY Norton, 1994), 729. King, Jr., Martin Luther. I Have a Dream. A Testament of Hope The all important(p) Writings of Martin Luther King Jr., Ed. J. M. Washington. Harper & Row, 1986. 217, 219. Morrison, Toni. Song of Solomon. New York The Penguin Group, 1977. Sapphire. Push. New York vintage Contemporaries, 1996.