Realism, Naturalism, Modernism: Illustrated Short Answer Exercises

Most of the following questions begin with a short thematic introduction, and all include at least one image. Please note that some questions ask you to read a primary or secondary text that is not included in your anthology.

Washington vs. Du Bois?: The New Negro

Du Bois had already described the position of the "New Crowd Negro" when he wrote in The Souls of Black Folk of a class of African Americans "spiritually descended from Toussaint the Savior, through Gabriel, Vesey, and Turner," who "represent the attitude of revolt and revenge." In the text that follows this passage, Du Bois distances himself from this class, allying himself instead with "men like the Grimkes, Kelly Miller, J. W. E. Bowen," and others.

1. According to Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk, what does this latter class of activists demand, and how are their demands different from those of Booker T. Washington? How are their methods different from those of activists with an "attitude of revolt and revenge"?

2. The term "New Negro" is often used in conjunction with the Harlem Renaissance, largely because of Alain Locke's influential 1925 essay "The New Negro." Read this essay and read Henry Louis Gates’s essay, "The Trope of a New Negro and the Reconstruction of the Image of the Black" (Representations 24 (Fall 1988): 129–55). Locke begins his essay with a discussion of the "myth" of the Old Negro and then defines, in his own terms, what constitutes the New Negro. Henry Louis Gates Jr. observes that "Locke's New Negro . . . transformed the militancy associated with the trope and translated this into an apolitical movement of the arts." Do you agree with Gates that Locke's primary interest in his essay is to transform the New Negro into an aesthetic rather than a political movement? Use at least two quotes from Locke's essay to support your answer.

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The Ethics of Living Jim Crow

This photograph of a "colored waiting room" demonstrates how starkly color lines were drawn in the South. Segregation such as this was upheld by the Supreme Court decision Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896), which declared segregated facilities constitutional. The case began when, in 1892, Homer Plessy purposely violated Louisiana's law that mandated separate "Jim Crow" railroad cars for blacks. After refusing to leave a white car, Plessy was convicted and the case rose on appeal all the way to the Supreme Court. In the majority opinion against Plessy, Justice Henry B. Brown wrote, "We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff's argument to consist in the underlying assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction on it." The Supreme Court didn’t begin to reverse its thinking about the constitutionality of segregation until the 1950s with Brown vs. Board of Education (1954).

1. Richard Wright's "The Ethics of Living Jim Crow" begins with the line "My first lesson in how to live as a Negro came when I was quite small." What does Wright mean when he says he had to learn "how to live as a Negro"? Explain this in your own words, and then give two examples from Wright's essay to illustrate your explanation.

2. Ernest J. Gaines's "The Sky Is Gray" also deals overtly with the theme of racial segregation. Unlike Wright's autobiographical work, however, Gaines's story is a work of fiction, and is therefore more self-consciously symbolic. Choose two symbols you believe Gaines is working with in this story, and write a paragraph about how they contribute to Gaines's overall commentary upon the effects of segregation.

3. Recall another text you have read this semester in which the effects of racial segregation are a prominent theme. What is unique about the way the writer approaches this topic? Try to give at least two examples from the text to develop your response.

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