Community Stories

An Account of Experience with Discrimination

            “The old slave holding spirit” can be related to the idea of community shaping a person and their beliefs, because “the old slave holding spirit” is one of those ideas. When something like slavery is ended, the beliefs of people do not just end right along side it.  When you instill a belief in someone’s mind and you drill it into their heads, that’s all they know. They simply cannot just stop believing what they believe because a change in the law. They must free their slaves but they still feel the same way about them. In their minds a black person is still a slave, they still have no rights, and since the white people were still in charge there was seldom anyone powerful enough to force a change of opinion upon them. The American communities had a strong effect on what the people believed because people are influenced by others around them. It is easy to believe something when everyone else around you believes the same thing.

            Primary documents such as this story differ from a reporter of short story in the perspective they give on the community because those people were not there. A primary document has a greater influence on a person because they can give an exact account. They are not telling a story from the outside in, they have personally lived through the event. When someone else tells the story, such as a reporter they can only recreate the scene at best.  They have gathered their information from other people, articles, and try to relate it to their own experiences, but I also think that there is some benefit from having these kinds of documents. Sometimes when a primary source tells about their accounts they are biased, or can be tainted by what the person would like to believe, which can cause a story to be less than credible in the end.

Word count: 324

To Be Young Black and Gifted

            Hansberry feels that life in Chicago was difficult due to poverty.  She says her people are “poor, tired, and determined to live.” She explains that the houses were dull and shabby, but expresses that they are still proud through the example of their clean white linens hanging high over their gray beaten down houses.  Hansberry feels that living on the Southside was also fun. She explains the games that they played with other children in the neighborhood, and how they used to lie in the park on hot nights and tell stories.  Hansberry also talks about her family. She says her family is not of the loving type. They were passionate and did not like to take part in the embracing each other for fear of seeming weak. They only time they openly showed “weakness” was when her father passed away and her mother hugged her children. That was the first time she had ever seen her mother do such a thing.  Her father she talks about more so than the rest. She calls her father brilliant. He was knowledgeable about anything and everything.  Hansberry is shocked to realize that even her father must know fear because to her he seemed so smart that there was nothing he could possibly fear.

            The attitudes Hansberry’s family instilled in her were to never betray family and race (which was the most important). They were also taught that “they were better than no one but infinitely superior to everyone. Their parents said that there was nothing enormously difficult about life; that one succeeded as a matter of course. Life was not a struggle- it was something that one did. One won an argument because, if facts gave out, one invented them- with color. The only sinful people in the world were dull people. “

            The effect of being the Youngest on Hansberry was that she was used to being alone. Hansberry was significantly younger than the rest of her siblings, so she had no one to play with when she was young. She says that her siblings thought of her as a nuisance, that being with her was more so a chore than fun, so they preferred to not hang out around her.

            There are several aspects of community and family experiences that are represented in Hansberry’s letter. The family aspects represented are the need to protect the family, and the need to provide for the family. The aspects of community shown in the letter are the aspect of sticking together, the aspect of fighting for equality, the he aspect of fighting for what you believe in, and the aspect of sacrifice for others.

Word Count: 447