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The Acts of Racism In The 20th Century Essay

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The Act’s of Racism In The 20th Century      Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou were very well known authors of the early 20th century. Most of their writings were concerned with racism and equality. During that time period there was much evidence that African Americans had been treated unfairly, unjustly, and as if they had been beneath the whites. Segregation of schools, churches, bathrooms, and stores were only a few of the many things wrong with this ere. Racism was very apparent in the two short stories “Graduation” and “One Friday Morning”. In one of these, a young girl is put down because of the color of her skin, and in the other, a whole class and audience were made to feel lower than they should have. …show more content…

     She was treated very differently, and this caused her to have a different outlook on the atmosphere in which she was living. The scholarship being taken away from her, for this reason was unfortunate because she had worked hard to be recognized in the contest, and had succeeded in winning it, only to have it taken away form her because she was not a young white girl. Her friends and her mother were expecting to hear a wonderful surprise from her in her speech at the assembly. Racism came into play because this was the reason why she did not receive the scholarship. Embarrassment also came into play because she had to go through all of that public humiliation. At first her situation was a positive one and then it became negative because of the ignorance of a few shallow white supremacists.      In Maya Angelou’s short story “Graduation” racism was also evident in many ways. The story started off happy, and then it had a very sad ending.. A group of eighth graders at an all black school were anticipating their graduation. They could hardly wait for it. The whole town was excited. This was a very big deal, and a lot of people had been looking forward to it.      The day had finally arrived, and everyone was seated in their chairs at the ceremony waiting for the speaker. His name was Mr. Donleavy. He was a white male, and

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