Reconstruction to the New Negro Renaissance: Suggested Paper Topics
Paper Topics on the Reconstruction to the New Negro Renaissance
Questions that can serve as the starting point for an essay.
- Wallace Thurman’s popular Harlem Renaissance novel The Blacker the Berry confronts some of the same social and political issues as Charles Chesnutt’s earlier short story “The Wife of His Youth.” How do these two novelists navigate race and class issues differently? How are their respective treatments of the themes similar, in spite of the temporal and aesthetic contexts in which they wrote?
- In turn, the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments abolished slavery in the United States, recognized formerly enslaved blacks as U.S. citizens with equal and due protection of the law, and restored voting rights to black men. How do various authors of the Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction era represent the ideals of one or more of these Civil War amendments in their literary works? How do these authors celebrate the collective triumph of these amendments? In what ways do authors of this period use their texts to expose the limitations of the U.S. government to uphold these amendments?
- Identify and discuss some of the most effective rhetorical strategies developed by two or three African American writers of the Reconstruction era to encourage the laudatory goals of postbellum institutions such as the Freedman’s Bureau and the Civil Rights Act of 1875.
- Read Marcus Garvey’s “Africa for the Africans” in conjunction with Du Bois’s theory of double consciousness. Determine whether the conflicted self that Afro-Caribbeans can be argued to experience is comparable to the double consciousness Du Bois attributes to African Americans.
Research Paper Topics on the Reconstruction to the New Negro Renaissance
Paper topics that require research.
- Booker T. Washington spoke before a mostly white audience at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta. The "Atlanta Exposition" speech was widely regarded as having far-reaching influence on U.S. race relations. Consider the key tropes and ideas of the speech, and research their influence on the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson in the following year.
- Read the anthology excerpts from Locke's The New Negro in conjunction with Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk. Consider the chronology of these two texts, and decide whether Locke answers any of Du Bois's questions about black life in the twentieth century. Does The New Negro raise any of the same questions as The Souls of Black Folk? In what key ways are these two groundbreaking texts different from one another?