Essay Samples on African American History

Essay Examples
Essay Topics

Significance of Black Inventions That Changed the World

Introduction Many people have heard about famous inventions, such as the lightbulb, the steam engine, and the iPhone. The list is, in fact, endless and impressive. However, although we use many products and inventions in our lives, we don't give thought to who made it...

The Legacy of Colonialism in 'Half of a Yellow Sun'

Introduction For more than decades, the African continent was no stranger to being colonized by European countries which led to the dubbing “Scramble for Africa”. Colonialism is the act of taking over another country and gaining political control and authority, ultimately exploiting the resources of...

How Slavery Affected African American People

In the current political and social climate, race is being pushed more and more to the forefront. There is much discussion about just how far-reaching the effects of slavery have been to African American people but also, to the United States of America and their...

Economic and Political Role of Slavery in the United States

Behind the cruel, unjust representation of slavery lies a transgressing business that was profitable to the nation. Slavery in the united states significantly contributed to the economic standards of the 1800s. The economy of the South was completely dependent on labor-intensive tasks completed by slaves....

Historical and Legal Importance of Martin Luther King Jr.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta Georgia. The reason why Martin Luther King Jr. is important is his vision for everyone to be treated equally and not be judged for who they are such as their religion, culture,...

The Failure Of Reconstruction In The United States

As humans, we often fear those who are different from us. After the ending of the American civil war in 1865, the priority was to rebuild the south after the abolition of slavery, disruptions of the economy due to war, and renew the political system...

Fight For Equality Inside The Civil Rights Movement

Civil rights are the rights that all citizens possess which protects their legal and social equality. They are formed by a nation or state and can only be undone by a higher power, the Supreme Court. The civil rights movement started in 1954 and eventually...

The Efforts Of The Black Civil Rights Movement

Despite the end of slavery in 1865, even fifty years ago, black people still had fewer rights and were relegated to an almost permanent lower class. However in the 1950s and 60s, African-Americans, along with many white people, mobilized against institutional and societal discrimination and...

The Most Impactful Era For African Americans: Black Civil Rights

The mid 20th century was a dramatic and impactful era for African Americans. It was a time where they had enough and challenged segregation, white supremacists and the federal government. Debating the Civil Rights Movement was written by two dedicated historians, Steven Lawson and Charles...

Defining What Exactly Is The Black Lives Matter Movement

A lot of times certain events occur in history which leave negative impacts on people. These events not only scar people from their current living standards, but also lead on to other negative situations. Many situations have occurred in history which have caused injustice, damage...

Black Lives Matter movement As A Pinnacle Of Protection Of African American Rights

Jean-Jacques Rousseau who once said, “All men are born free.” (Frankel). However, this frankly doesn’t apply to those in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, as well as African Americans in this modern day. Throughout the novel, Orwell uses aspects of the government controlling...

The Fight Of African American People For Black Lives Matter Movement

Black’s fight to end institutionalized racism in the United States has been an ongoing challenge for many years. In response to consistent violence against the Blacks, the Black Lives Matter movement called to action Blacks all over the world to streets to campaign against the...

W.e.b Dubois Vs. Booker T. Washington and Their Influence On America

Throughout history, the negro race has faced trials and tribulations, and through this hardship many great leaders have arissen. The 20th century manifested two of the greatest and most well-known African Americans of modern times; Dr. William Edward Burghardt Dubois and Mr. Booker Taliaferro Washington....

The Spirit Of The African American Protests As Portrayed In Claude Mckay's Poems

Abstract In the past African American people come to America as slave and their descendant never can be separated from the old stereotype. The discrimination that faced by the black people encourage their courage to fight again the situation, they use literature to express their...

Documentation Of African American Struggles During The Slavery Period

African Americans in revolutionary Massachusetts presented five petitions to the state’s government for the abolition of slavery. Each written with genius using the same terminology and buzzwords, to build on past explorations in order to better situate these petitions within their political, social, and legal...

The Role Of Historically Black Colleges And Universities In History

Some people may say black colleges are an outlet to exclude African Americans from other cultures. Black colleges were created to give African Americans the opportunity of being apart of a community of educated individuals who share the same ethnicity and common tragedies. As well...

Nat Turner: The Courageous Leader of a Historical Slave Revolt

Introduction On August 21, 1831, a significant event in history unfolded when Nat Turner, an exceptional man born into slavery, orchestrated one of the most infamous slave revolts ever seen. This notorious uprising took place in Southampton, Virginia, and was masterfully led by Nat Turner...

African American Struggle In "Returning Soldiers" And "Autobiography"

James Weldon Johnson and WEB DuBois, both being of African American descent, present works that encompass the inherent writing style of the Harlem Renaissance period. Although the writings differ between fact and fiction, each text works to prove the inferiority African Americans fought against, both...

Historical Significance Of Jourdon Anderson's Letter: A Free Man's Letter

Jourdon Anderson was once an enslaved African American whose former owner was Colonel P.H. Anderson. Colonel Anderson had written to Jourdon sometime after Jourdon became freed around August 7, 1865 and wanted him and his family to come back to Tennessee and work for and...

The Effects Of Migration On The African American Population In The United States

Throughout history, many religious groups, families and cultures have migrated internationally in hope to spread word of their newfound saviour, or in many cases, seeking new a life. However, for some this choice is not theirs to make referring to what we call “forced migration.”...

Understanding White Privilege in Tim Wise's Works

White privilege, a concept used by Tim Wise, an anti-racist writer, and educator, establishes that the whites enjoy more economic and social benefits as compared to people of color. Tim Wise has various videos, which are an attempt to understand the origin of white privilege,...

Aftermath of Failure of The Reconstruction Era

The Reconstruction era was a complete failure. In any case, Reconstruction flopped by most different measures: Radical Republican enactment at last neglected to shield previous slaves from white oppression and neglected to incite essential changes to the social texture of the South. At the point...

The Downfall and the Uplifts of African Americans

Introduction Have you ever had a goal, a goal you couldn't overcome or acheive ? Well African Americans had a goal of equality. They wanted to achieve this equality because of unfair treatment. African Americans somewhat achieved equality by many things. America was somewhat a...

Analysis of an Article Mistaking Africa: Curiosities and inventions of the American Mind: American Ignorance About Africa

“For many Americans, the mention of Africa immediately conjures up images of safaris, ferocious animals strangely dressed “tribesmen,” and impenetrable jungles. Although the occasional newspaper headline mentions authoritarian rule, corruption, genocide, devastating illness, or civil war in Africa, the collective American consciousness still carries strong...

Ruby Bridges: First African American Girl in All-White School

Imagine being the only person that looks like you, in a place where it is obvious you are not wanted. The scene described above is what Ruby Bridges experienced at only six years old. Ruby Bridges was the first African American girl to integrate an...

The Idea of Economic Stagnation Because of Racial Prejudice W.E.B Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk and Simone De Beauvoir’s Novel The Second Sex

Although some may argue that economic power is the key to liberation, according to W.E.B Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk, one must recognize that there are other factors such as racial prejudice that doesn’t allow economic growth to even be attempted. Economic growth...

The Theme of Double Consciousness in The Souls of Black Folk and A Passage to India

In The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois depicted the presence of a Veil that separated the different races and presented the notion of “double consciousness.” He argued that African Americans have a dual identity rooted in their awareness of how white Americans see...

Maya Angelou's Poetry: A Voice of Hope For the Colonised

Post-colonial literature is not only interested in issues regarding power and dominance but also freedom and empowerment (Critical Anthology,2015), Angelou manages to comment on these issues through her expressive poetry, which is manipulated to support cultural difference and diversity (P.Barry 2002). Angelou’s poetry gives us...

Women In Slavery: Harriet Tubman, Ellen Craft, Harriet Jacobs, Sojourner Truth

Slavery is defined as “a condition compared to that of a slave in respect of exhausting labor or restricted freedom a condition compared to that of a slave in respect of exhausting labor or restricted freedom.” (MiriamWebster) Slavery was an act of dominance by people...

The Common Themes of Marginalisation and Colonisation in Marcus Garvey

“Marcus Garvey” by Rupert Lewis, is a book which illustrates the struggling yet accomplished life of a black African man by the name of Marcus Mosiah Garvey; how each factor of his life played a major role in the fight of Racism not only in...

Marcus Garvey: Finding the Identity of African People

The book entititled “Marcus Garvey” is a life story that tells about him. Sarah Jane Richards and Marcus gravy senior the parents of Marcus Garvey who was born in St.ann’s bay Jamaica on the 17 of august 1887,Marcus Garvey was a social activist, protestant of...

Police Brutality and the Ethics of Force: Introduction to the Topic

Law enforcement in any country has the important task of identifying. preventing, rehabilitating, and publishing individuals that do not follow the rules that have been put in place to govern our society. However, the society today has witnessed a situation in which the police have...

The Overview of Atlantic Slave Trade

A primary driver of the exchange was the provinces that European nations were beginning to create. In America, for example, which was a state of England, there was an interest for some workers for the sugar, tobacco and cotton manors. Paid workers were costed excessively,...

History of the Atlantic Slave Trade

The history of the Atlantic is one of the most important aspect of history due to the fact that it is what produced the Americas. From 1400 to 1800, millions of African slaves were forcibly moved from Africa to the Americas. Where Africans came from...

The Soul of America, Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass was a social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman from the United States. He became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York after escaping from slavery in Maryland, taking note of his oratory and incisive anti-slavery writings. Frederick...

People's Fight for American Civil Rights in the Civil War

Subsequent to the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in April 1865, President Andrew Johnson entered the White House as the 17th President of the United States (1865-1869). During his impeachment trial, Johnson was described by Senator Charles Summer as the ‘impersonation of the tyrannical slave...

African-American Experience as Seen by James Baldwin

August 1, 2019 James Baldwin was an African-American novelist and activist in which his works the complex racial and class distinction in the world but most of his work focuses on the times of civil rights America where African-Americans were fighting for their civil rights...

The Complicated History of African-American Newspapers

Newspapers are a crucial source of information on a daily basis. They were a convenient form of communication before the advancement of technology newspaper. It provided tangible information, and one can store them for references as they were printed. The African-American newspapers were established in...

The Struggle of African-American History Through Art of Hip-Hop

The word ‘struggle’ has many different meanings and connotations to different groups of people. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as “strive to achieve or attain something in the face of difficulty or resistance”. Perhaps no other ethnic group in the world has faced more difficulty...

Black Oppression in America: Jim Crow Laws to Today’s Society

The project will include how black men and women have struggled and fought for equal rights under Jim Crow laws, segregation, and police brutality from then to now. It will also include the racially prejudice occurrences from 1876 compared to current events in our more...

The Reconstruction and Jim Crow Eras: Analysis From an Afrocentric Perspective

During my educational journey from K-12, the historical accounts of the Reconstruction and Jim Crow Eras were inadequately presented. The significant chapters in American history, especially African American history, were downplayed and portrayed as mere periods of America's rebuilding and progress as a unified nation....

History of Establishing First African American Newspaper

African-American newspapers appeared before the Civil War as a declaration of abolitionist assessment. African-American newspapers were the focal portrayal of correspondence of African-American culture. There were various of newspapers that worked as the channel through which African-American news moved at once white America disregarded everything...

The Color-Blind Ideology as a Tool to Hide Racism

In the decades since the Civil Rights Movement, many scholars have aimed to understand why racial inequalities have persisted in the U.S. Although new changes have been put into place following this movement, such as the abolishment of slavery or the removal of state-sanctioned forms...

Racial Oppression and Discrimination Combined with Race Theory

Introduction Racial oppression and discrimination are identified as a prominent and critically vital subject in the American lives and all through the American history. Over 150 years following the 13th Amendment obliterated slavery in America, majority of the American citizens claim that the legacy and...

The New Jim Crow and Locking Up Our Own in Conversation about Racism

Michelle Alexander and James Forman address fundamentally the same as issues in altogether different ways. The New Jim Crow The arrangement of mass detainment in view of medication charges was made as a type of racial control and exists as an approach to keep minorities...

The Ku Klux Klan as a Political Force Behind True Americanism 

The Ku Klux Klan, which will be later referred to as the KKK, revived in 1915 in South America and was on the rise from the 1920’s across South and eventually North America. By 1925 the Klan had become a national political force with around...

Black Opinion on Immigration, Citizenship & the Role of White Supremacy

In Niambi Michele Carter’s book American While Black, she analyzes black responses to immigration, developing a term “conflicted nativism” that she uses to describe black views on immigration and citizenship. This term is developed throughout the book through historical analysis and a case study approach...

Different, Yet Similar Beliefs of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X

In a debate about student sit-ins during the Civil Rights Movement, Malcolm X argues that when it comes to the Black man in America, it is unarguable that the Negroes in America are discriminated more so compared to the whites in America. The moment that...

Malcolm X's Role in the Fight for African-American Rights

In the 1960s and the early 1970s, America saw the rise of an important social and political movement amongst many African Americans. That movement is known as Black Nationalism. It is a movement that advocates for the economic and social empowerment of African Americans. It...

Angela Davis' Powerful Speeches During Civil Rights Movement and Women's March

Angela Davis’s life was politicised the moment she was born. Growing up in Birmingham, Alabama in the 1940s, in an area dubbed “Dynamite Hill” due to the many African American homes that the Ku Klux Khan had bombed and terrorised, meant she was introduced to...

Martin Luther King's Role In The Independence Of African Americans

Regardless of the number of years that have passed since the abhorrent mistreatment of African Americans was deemed acceptable, there appears to be an ongoing need to continuously raise the standards to achieve true justice for them. The Emancipation Proclamation marked the start of a...

Need writing help?

You can always rely on us no matter what type of paper you need

Order My Paper

*No hidden charges

/