Autobiography Of An Ex-Colored Man
The American dream is seen as opportunity and high achievements, but this wasn't always the case for those who lived in America. For those of African and Native American decent the American dream was anything but a dream. These two races received discrimination, false hopes, and experienced turmoil. In the writings of Zitkala Sa (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin) and James Weldon Johnson these troubling times are explained from the perspective of those living or witnessing these wrong doings. The African Americans and Native Americans experienced America as less than equals while enduring discrimination, as objects that needed improvement, and as very intelligent human beings held back by their race. When it comes to being an equal it means to be
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The main character in “The School Days of an Indian Girl” becomes very successful in her schoolwork and goes on to win many prestigious awards. The the whites worked so hard to hold back the blacks and to make better the Native Americans. Instead, they were really enriching the black with motivation to succeed and the Native Americans with the want to be great and to prove that they were nothing less than the palefaces. The man who is narrating “From the Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man” is astonished at the fact that the man of color was a physician and “a graduate of Howard University, Washington” as well as had completed “post-graduate work in Philadelphia” (Johnson pg. 1013). All this time people were thinking of colored men as not capable of being equal when in reality they were achieving the same as any white man. They were experiencing America as success stories that were not celebrated. It is said that the friends of the black man were “all men of education” being they all held a position is society that was far greater than their race (Johnson pg.1013). In “The School Days of an Indian Girl” we are made aware by the author that the main character becomes very intelligent and when she enters an oratorical contest she is “awarded first place” by the judges. (Sa pg.1099 - 1100). Later in the tale we also become aware that she had entered another contest “as the college representative” where she was awarded one of the two prizes (Sa pg.1100). With all the odds against these two races and all of the negative they received, the Native Americans and African Americans still succeeded and achieved
The main character in “The School Days of an Indian Girl” becomes very successful in her schoolwork and goes on to win many prestigious awards. The the whites worked so hard to hold back the blacks and to make better the Native Americans. Instead, they were really enriching the black with motivation to succeed and the Native Americans with the want to be great and to prove that they were nothing less than the palefaces. The man who is narrating “From the Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man” is astonished at the fact that the man of color was a physician and “a graduate of Howard University, Washington” as well as had completed “post-graduate work in Philadelphia” (Johnson pg. 1013). All this time people were thinking of colored men as not capable of being equal when in reality they were achieving the same as any white man. They were experiencing America as success stories that were not celebrated. It is said that the friends of the black man were “all men of education” being they all held a position is society that was far greater than their race (Johnson pg.1013). In “The School Days of an Indian Girl” we are made aware by the author that the main character becomes very intelligent and when she enters an oratorical contest she is “awarded first place” by the judges. (Sa pg.1099 - 1100). Later in the tale we also become aware that she had entered another contest “as the college representative” where she was awarded one of the two prizes (Sa pg.1100). With all the odds against these two races and all of the negative they received, the Native Americans and African Americans still succeeded and achieved