Why was it that most whites hated blacks with every fiber of there being during America's civil rights era? Were they jealous or intimidated? My answer would be that they were simply ignorant. They chose to oppress their fellow man because of skin color. They discriminated without a basis to do so. African Americans had long proven that they could be equally hard working, intelligent, and caring. This leads me to the conclusion that radical white supremacists were nothing short or stupid. In Hopkins's, "As the Lord Lives, He is One of Our Mother's Children" there is a part in which a white man from Dover City yells, "the only way you can teach these niggers a lesson is to go to the jail and lynch these men as an object lesson... Kill Them..." These were sentiments shouted all over the south at this time, but why? There has never a clear answer. Blacks were often murdered for crimes they did not commit. Acts like this made the country of their birth a hell for some blacks. McKay's writes in his poem
America, "Although she feeds me bread of bitterness, and sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth, Stealing my bread of life, I will confess I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!" This goes to show that even in the face of persecution African Americans still considered this land their home, and in this home they were made to feel like outcasts. McKay also wrote, "For I was born, far from my native clime, Under the white man's menace, out of time." Much like the founding fathers fought for their freedom from Britain, African Americans were willing to fight for theirs. McKay believed that the oppressed needed to rise up against the cowardly white supremacists. In his poem
If We Must Die he wrote, "Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack, pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!" It was up to them to make a difference and fight for their own rights. In all, thousands of innocent black Americans lost their lives to fellow Americans who deserves much less to be identified as such.
