Blacks in Florida Term Paper

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Jim Crow Florida:

Views expressed by James Weldon Johnson and Zora Neale Hurston

This paper will examine the lives and beliefs of James Weldon Johnson and Zora Neale Hurston as well as exploring each of these individuals interpretation of class and gender in relation to race. This paper will answer the question as to whether their personal reflections of Jim Crow Florida were similar or different and how so.

Zora Neale Hurston, novelist, dramatist, folklorist, and anthropologist was born in, Eatonville Florida, on the day of the 7th, she "heard tell," of January in 1903. It is fairly certain that she was the fifth child born in a total of eight to her parents. That which Hurston, "heard tell" were her brothers different versions of her date of birth appearing to her that none of the brothers actually remembered exactly when she was actually born.

Her father, after her mother died, remarried and the young Zora Hurston was sent away to other family, here and there and finally to a school in Jacksonville. While in Jacksonville Hurston met "racial segregation" for the first time.

Eatonville historically remembered due to being the first Black Town to incorporate was a very small town comprised of nearly all blacks. Hurston reveals in her writing the diversity, as well as adversity experienced in daily life in the reality of lives experienced by African-Americans at the time in which she grew up.

James Weldon Johnson, black poet, musician and political activist expressed through his outlets of poetry, music and political activities.
After having spent two summers in Georgia teaching black children he decided he would dedicate himself to bettering the African-American status. Johnson's beliefs, published by the NAACP were simply this:

will not allow one prejudiced person or one million or one hundred million to blight my life. I will not let prejudice or any of its attendant humiliations and injustices bear me down to spiritual defeat. My inner life is mine, and I shall defend and maintain its integrity against all the powers of hell."

The Jim Crow Laws: The Views of Johnson and Hurston

Hurston and Johnson were alive and interacting as black individuals during the time of "Jim Crow." "Jim Crow" was the name given to the so-called "rules" and "regulations" of blacks during that time period. Basically, Jim Crow made a caricature out of all individuals who were black regulating them to second-class citizen status. The Jim Crow laws gave legal right for the abuse, discrimination, assault, disregard for and even sometimes death of the black individual.

The summer of 1919….....

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https://www.aceyourpaper.com/essays/blacks-florida-177113