MEET JIM CROW

• Jim Crow was an offensive caricature of an African American created by a White minstrel named Thomas Rice. “Jim Crow” became a name used to stereotype African Americans.

MEET JIM CROW

• Jim Crow later referred to laws written to keep Blacks segregated from Whites especially in southern states.

• Jim Crow Laws began around 1877 and lasted until the Civil Rights Movement in the mid 1960s.

MEET JIM CROW

• Segregated:-public restrooms-theatres-schools-restaurants-buses-hospitals-marriage-soda

machines???

MEET JIM CROW

• In 1869, the 15th Amendment was passed granting Black men the right to vote.

• Jim Crow Laws (a.k.a. Black Codes) kept Blacks from voting by denying them the right to exercise that right.

• Literacy tests, poll taxes, hiding poll locations, threats, and violence were used to keep Blacks from voting.

MEET JIM CROW

• Lynching is a form of racial terrorism.

• A mob takes the law into its own hands by acting as judge, jury, and executioner of an accused person.

MEET JIM CROW

• In 1954, the historic Supreme Court case, Brown vs. The Board of Education, resulted in the ruling that segregated schools were not equal and therefore were unconstitutional.

MEET THE PLAYWRIGHT

• Lorraine Hansberry was born in 1930, grew up in Chicago, and died in 1965 of cancer at the age of thirty-five.

• She is most well known for her play, A Raisin in the Sun, which was produced on Broadway in 1959.

MEET THE PLAYWRIGHT

• Hansberry’s parents were Civil Rights activists who moved the family into an all-White neighborhood when she was only seven.

• They were consistently terrorized for living in this neighborhood. On one occasion, a brick was thrown through the window of their living room barely missing Lorraine’s head.

MEET THE PLAYWRIGHT

• Lorraine’s father Carl Hansberry was involved in a Supreme Court case entitled Hansberry vs. Lee which resulted in the ruling that African Americans cannot be banned from living in “White” neighborhoods.

MEET THE POET

• Langston Hughes (1902-1967) was a prolific writer during the Harlem Renaissance, the African American artistic movement in the 1920s which celebrated black life and culture and was centered in Harlem.

• Hughes was a poet, novelist, playwright, children’s author, and essayist.

I, Too, Sing Americaby Langston Hughes

 

I, too, sing America.I am the darker brother.They send me to eat in the kitchenWhen company comes,But I laugh,And eat well,And grow strong.Tomorrow,I'll be at the tableWhen company comes.Nobody'll dareSay to me,"Eat in the kitchen,"Then.Besides, They'll see how beautiful I amAnd be ashamed--I, too, am America.

HARLEMby Langston Hughes

 

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?