History in Southern Literature
...gory, even after segregation was ended. “With the substitution of segregation, the white child was educated to regard race as more important than humanity and the black child was educated to imitate a white world as superior to his and thus taught to hate himself.” Margaret Walker does a great job of capturing details of the racial era in this writing. The Ethics of Living Jim Crow by Richard Wright is a story about the childhood of a young black boy. In the story, Richard Wright describes the distance blacks and whites kept between them during the civil rights era. “Our house stood behind the railroad tracks. Its skimpy yard was paved with black cinders. Nothing green ever grew in that yard. The only touch of green we could see was far away, beyond the tracks, over where the white folks lived.” Wright also writes about the hatred the two races had for each other. “I never fully realized the appalling disadvantages of a cinder environment till one day the gang to which I belonged found itself engaged in a war with the white boys who lived beyond the tracks. As usual we laid down our cinder barrage, thinking that this would wipe the white boys out. But they replied with a steady bombardment of broken bottles.” Wright has these descriptions to capture the fierce hatred that the white boys had for the black boys, and vice versa. He achieves that by using strong words. He uses such words like: war, cinder barrage, and bombardment. These words give you the impression that this “war” is more than just kids fooling around. Richard Wright brilliantly captures the action between the whites and blacks through the racial era throughout the story. The Future of Southern Writing by Donald R. Noble is another story that looks at the racial issue from American History. Instead of talking about race in the past, Noble writes about race being an issue in southern literature in the future. He also states that church will play a big role in characters lives in southern literature, and future characters who will be living in the south will have more important jobs than the stereotypical jobs of historical southerners. The reason for more important jobs is due to people coming from many different places, and bringing their diverse kinds of work with them. Noble also writes about what changes to southern literature these new southerners will cause. “Because many of them will not have southern accents, and because radio and television are having their effects on regional speech, there will be less dialect in Southern literature.” This piece also includes information about past writings...