The Color Purple: The Oppression and Fight for Equality of African Americans

While The Color Purple isn’t your traditional slave narrative like Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl or Our Nig, the novel is still representative of a more contemporary form of slavery of the time. Walker created characters who fit the archetypes of post-slavery. For example, Celie and Mr. are bottom-class farmers, thus are unable to leave the South that enslaved their ancestors. In addition, the legal status of African Americans was worsening, and African Americans were still seen as the “inferior race.”

Harsh restrictions were heavily imposed on African Americans who didn’t fit the mold of the manipulable slaves the world had previously seen/was used to seeing. In The Color Purple, Sofia, a strong and independent black woman is sent to prison for mouthing off to a white woman, and striking said white woman’s husband- who also happens to be the mayor. In turn she is beaten so badly, she’s lucky to be alive. While in prison, Sofia starts working in the prison’s laundry room and says that she’s “just like Celie now,” - subservient, and she serves the remainder of her prison sentence working for the mayor’s family. Thus, even after African American women were freed in accordance with the Emancipation Proclamation, they were still forced into slave-like conditions. This is a recurring theme all throughout the novel. While African Americans were free by law, they were still enslaved- binded by the laws of society.

The Color Purple aligns with the traditional slave narrative in other ways. During the slave era, black people were silenced. Unallowed to express their trauma and ugliness imposed on them, they found other ways to be heard. They did this through song, through prayer, through story-telling and a “code” unrecognizable to their masters. This is parallel to Celie’s experience, she turns to writing letters to God as a way to be heard. Through those letters she was able to speak freely and unapologetically, she tells her story and is able to discuss her abuse and how she spent almost all of her life in modern slavery.

Celie’s entire life has consisted of men repeatedly berating and oppressing her; being enslaved by Alphonso and later being sold to her husband, who does not value her as more than an object of sexual gratification. It is through these letters that we see Celie go through a tremendous transformation, she finds her voice and her strength through her writing and is able to break the chains her ugly world bound her by her entire life. This is similar to those of the slave era, they found their strength through unity, and possessing something their oppressors couldn’t take from them: their spirit.