Since the end of the Civil War, African Americans have been involved in an attempt to strategically present their race in way that would foster equality. In class, we have seen this done through many art forms, two of which are manuscript and song. The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson and The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. DuBois use both of these two art forms. Each author uses their stories and the music that goes along with them in very different ways. While DuBois makes frequent use of the Sorrow Songs, which are serious and straightforward pieces, James Weldon Johnson utilizes ragtime music, a lighter and more secularized form of the Sorrow Songs themselves. The actual text of the two works differs much in the same way as the accompanying music does. While Souls uses dramatic, poetic, and heroic characters to tell its story, James Weldon Johnson constructs a more complex and imperfect protagonist through which he transmit his message to the......
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Approximate Word Count: 2158
Approximate Pages: 9 (260 words per double-spaced page) |