Discuss the Role of Art in Political Activism Dealing with Race Relations in the United States.

In the United states the Reconstruction era was marked by the notorious compromise of 1877   whose impact upon black American lives culminated in the 1896 Supreme Court decision, Plessy v. Ferguson, which practically obliterated the gains African Americans had made with the signing of the 14th and 15th Amendments. From then on the African-Americans would have to take action and strive for race equality in American society.
Political Activism is defined by any intentional effort to promote, impede or direct social, political, economic, or environmental change. Activism can take a wide range of forms from writing letters to newspapers or politicians, political campaigning, street marches, strikes, sit-ins or economic activism such as boycotts. This set of documents deals with the role of art in political activism dealing with race relations in the US.
Four documents were here assigned to me the first of which is a video of Louis Armstrong’s performance of Black and Blue at a concert in East Berlin in 1965. The second document is an extract of the Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel entitled the invisible man. Document C is composed of four images, two fairly contemporary works of art by Kara Walker. One out of the four murals from the Aspects of Negro Life series entitled Song of the Towers painted by Aaron Douglas in 1934. The fourth image is a drawing entitled “The New Negro” done by Allan R. Freelon which served as the frontispiece to the 1928 number of the Carolina Magazine heavily influenced by Alain Locke. Alain Locke is the author of the fourth and last document which is an article that came out in the first volume of Harlem.   was an American writer, philosopher, educator, and patron of the arts   regarded as the "Father of the Harlem Renaissance”.   In this three fold analysis we will attempt to answer the following question: To what extent can artistic flourishing endow a minority with the necessary stamina to gain a respectable position in society? In our first... [continues]

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