Sojourner Truth And Maya Angelou Essay - 1505 Words

While they were born in different centuries, Maya Angelou and Sojourner Truth led parallel fights for African American equality. Despite living in different time periods, both of these women laid the groundwork for activists to come. Sojourner Truth was born into slavery in 1797, she later escaped which led her to become an abolitionist to fight for the freedom of others. Maya Angelou was born almost 150 years later in 1928, and faced much of the same hate-fuelled racism. Living in the south during the Civil Rights Era pushed Angelou to become an activist to fight for those without a voice. Through peaceful protest using poetry, both Truth and Angelou made progress in their fight for equality of African Americans and complete social†¦show more content†¦Angelou was born in Missouri in 1928. She spent most of her childhood in Stamps, Arkansas, pre Civil Rights Movement with her grandmother and her older brother. Angelou is most known for writing the poem Caged Bird. In the f irst stanza about the caged bird, Angelou declares that the bird, â€Å"can seldom see through/ his bars of rage/ his wings are clipped and/ his feet are tied/ so he opens his throat to sing†(Caged Bird). Angelou uses the bird as a metaphor for oppressed African Americans during this time period; the bird is held back by a barrier, just like African Americans were held back by unjust laws, a corrupt legal system, and their white peers who saw them as inferior. Similar to the bird, Angelou felt held back by others, but she did not let the â€Å"bars of rage† hold her back from her potential so, like the bird, she â€Å"opened her throat to sing† and used her voice to protest for herself and those who could not advocate for themselves. Before and during the Civil Rights Era, the United States was extremely biased against African Americans, and especially against African American women. Not only was Angelou black and female, she was also growing up in Stamps, Arkansas, during a time when the south was not welcoming of African American rights. In her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou describes her upbringing and states,â€Å"If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, beingShow MoreRelatedThe Negro Movement1364 Words   |  6 Pagesthe 1920s. In a 1925 essay entitled The New Negro , Howard University Professor of Philosophy Alain Locke described this transformation as not relying on older time-worn models but, rather, embracing a new psychology and new sprit . Central to Locke s prescription was the mandate that the New Negro had to smash all of the racial, social and psychological impediments that had long obstructed black achievement. Six years prior to Locke s essay, the pioneering black film maker