The Negro Digs Up His Past By Arthur Schomburg

This book is helpful interpretively as it helps the reader understand the relatively recent departure from an interpretation that slavery was an unprofitable and necessary evil in which African-Americans were usually treated well and benefited from their relationships with whites. Such traditions and interpretations have educated many visitors.

The Negro Digs Up His Past by Arthur Schomburg is an article he wrote in 1925, in which he complaint that somehow through the years African American history has been questioned and denied as many claim that Africans have no history at all. He uses this paper to illustrate the importance of recording the collective accomplishments of African Americans and that we must at all costs save any evidence, so that things like this do not happen again in the future. He wants to make sure to leave no place for doubts that African Americans have a history and is irrefutable in the eyes of skeptics and the world. According to Schomburg, “Though it is orthodox to think of America as the one country where it is unnecessary to have a past, what is luxury for the nation as a whole becomes a prime social necessity for the Negro(Schomburg 231).” He emphasizes that blacks have to dig deep into their own history in order to hold their own against the current oppression. He wants to set the record straight and restore the history that was omitted, the history that was denied to them, a history that has somehow been stolen from them forever.

The United States is a immigrant country, which faces varieties of problems. The African American problem is one of the most serious one. Racial segregation is a deep-rooted social problem, which reflects in every field in the United States. For example, education, labor market and criminal justice system. In the aspect of education, most of black children were not permitted to enter the school, because the white children studied there. In the aspect of labor market, the black people 's average wages were lower than the whites. They did the manual work. In the aspect of criminal justice system, the blacks were easily in jail. Badly, their sentences were also more serious than the whites. In general, the blacks live in the bottom of the American society. Martin Luther King delivered the famous speech I Have a Dream, ' ' I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. ' ' (1) However, it was difficult for African American to get the freedom. The 1776 Declaration of Independence announced that everyone are equal and freedom.But black slavery still occurred in the southern states of America. Then the Civil War broke out, African American kept struggling for land and political rights.

“These words sank deep into my heart, stirred up sentiments within that lay slumbering, and called into existence an entirely new train of thought. It was a new and special revelation, explaining dark mysterious things, with which my youthful understanding had struggled, but struggled in vain. I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty – to wit, the white man’s power to enslave black men. It was a grand achievement, and I prized it highly. From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom” (20).

Chapter five in Takaki’s “A Different Mirror” focused primary on the African-American experience 1700s through the end of the Civil War and the failure of Reconstruction. The experience of reading these chapters after learning about the continued degradation of Native Americans lent itself to continued feelings of hopelessness regarding the beginnings of U.S. history. For a moment, I felt deep shame at the actions of the founders of the United States, especially those who were the head of the country, in that time President Andrew Jackson. Slavery was not only a "peculiar institution" but also one that forced landowners to dismiss that they were exploiting fellow human beings for profit. Takaki discussed four major figures before, during, and

Slavery was abolished after the Civil War, but the Negro race still was not accepted as equals into American society. To attain a better understanding of the events and struggles faced during this period, one must take a look at its' literature. James Weldon Johnson does an excellent job of vividly depicting an accurate portrait of the adversities faced before the Civil Rights Movement by the black community in his novel “The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.” One does not only read this book, but instead one takes a journey alongside a burdened mulatto man as he struggles to claim one race as his own.

Frederick Douglass once said, “No man can be truly free whose liberty is dependent upon the thought, feeling and action of others, and who has himself no means in his own hands for guarding, protecting, defending and maintaining that liberty.” Throughout the history of America his words have proven true seeing that those of African descent have been faced with a tremendous amount of prejudice. Whether that be in terms of the basic rights vital to African americans, or the freedom of expression that should be allotted to every human being. They were subjected to endless economic and social prejudice. While at the same time being refused the decencies all American citizen deserved. But most importantly, African Americans were denied the right to decide how their country was controlled and in turn their “liberty”. These atrocities prove that the reform introduced during the Reconstruction era did little to resolve the problems plaguing African Americans or improve their quality of life.

In today’s society, many have come to believe what they have been instructed over the years, whether it is fiction of facts. Living in a world, where only certain race can be seen as superior to others. Schomburg was a pioneer beyond his times. In the article “The Negro Digs up His Past”. The beginning of this essay revealed a powerful statement, “The American Negro must remake his past in order to make his future” (Arthur Schomburg). It is very clear, Schomburg realized the importance of being knowledgeable on your true history. “History must restore what slavery took away, for it is the social damage of slavery that the present generations must repair and offset”. Therefore, I acquiesce with such statement, it is up to the present generation to fight, and to aspire on restoring what was taken away. As we acquired more intelligence, today’s generation must continue on indoctrinating one another on our true history. However, let’s not forget, slavery was not the onset of the Negro history; when in fact, slavery interrupted the Negro history. Meanwhile, long ago, before slavery, Africans ruled the world, built nations, mastering in architectural ideas, philosophies, etc. Nonetheless, it is crucial for the Negro to dig up his past, for from it; today’s Africans shall conceive their true potential, and their ancestor’s greatest achievements. Just as Schomburg found his motivation after being told “Negroes has no history. On the other hand, he then stated “The Negro thinking

The “new” negro no longer embodied “old” characteristics that defined a black man. Society had always taught a black man how to act; however, now he was adapting to the world. Locke declared that ‘the Old Negro’ had long become more of a myth than a man” (Locke, 1). A furthered and detailed definition of an “Old Negro” was that he “was a creature of moral debating historical controversy” (Locke, 1). The four

In the novel "The Book of Negros", the theme that is presented is appearances are a faction of the individual and results in a misinterpretation of oneself . This theme is shown throughout the chapters that I have read and is even present in the first few pages. Such as when Aminata was explaining about herself to a little girl, "She asked why I was so black. I asked why she was so white. She said she was born that way. Same here I replied." (Hill 3-4). This conversation continued "My grandfather says he bets you eat raw elephant. I told her I'd never actually taken a bite out of an elephant, but there had been times in my life when I was hungry enough to try." (Hills 4). As this quotes show, Aminata's appearance has shrouded the child mind

Knowledge is a primary factor in the attainment of personal freedom. This includes not only scholarly education but also awareness of historical heritage and familial legacy. The fact that African-Americans were held in human bondage cannot

Even though freedom has been our nation’s identity for its entire existence, our nation has suffered “dark ages” when the freedoms of African Americans were repressed. During the period of slavery, African Americans were forced to labor under often cruel and gruesome conditions, for their white masters. Solomon Northup, a free man forcefully made a slave, describes his thoughts on slavery in his 12 Years a Slave:

The dichotomy of freedom and slavery in rhetoric and rise of the United States of America has long been an enigma, a source of endless debate for scholars and citizens alike who wonder how a nation steeped in the ideals of republicanism could so easily subjugate and enslave an entire group of people. The Chesapeake region was home to America’s great statesmen, men who espoused ideals of freedom and liberty from tyranny. Yet at the same time, these men held hundreds of men, women, and children in conditions of lifelong bondage. How then did this dichotomy arise? The dangers posed by indentured servants that became freemen resulted in the development of a system of African-descended chattel slavery in the Chesapeake, a system whose creation and continuance was aided by a continuum of racial thinking and racial prejudice aimed at Africans in Virginia.

Even if the white southerner’s sense of security and freedom was all deception, they liked their feeling of freedom; they were not ready to give it up. Because of this, the African American people remained imprisoned to the thoughts of slavery and societies prejudices.

The shift from slavery to freedom meant so much to the four thousand hopes and prayers of the then former slaves. Free slaves meant free man, new form of communication, interaction and respect was also demanded, and from this the slave problem became the negro problem. Post-emancipation writers aided in creating the necessary knowledge to assist in shaping the future of race relations. Not to long after this black criminality emerged, diseases, all this were yours to scale the weight of African American inferiority. To this