Phongsai, Jariya
Eng 101.0786
Prof. Spatafora
May 30, 2008
Phongsai, 1
“A Son of Harlem”
“Society is a grouping of individuals characterized by common interests
may have distinctive culture and institutions”(Society,2008). Members of a society may be from
different ethnic groups such as many communities in The United States. Obviously, the politics
of society created the roles for all of us. Also, the African-American people in Harlem were
played the roles and maintenance by society as well.
During the 1950s’, Harlem was the Mecca for African-Americans. The
blacks who moved to Harlem from the South, the West Indies, and the midtown slums of New
York looked upon Harlem as an enclave of opportunity. James Baldwin who was born and raised
in New York City, in black district known as Harlem, he said “ I was born and raised in Harlem
and, indeed, as long as I live I’ll never be able to leave Harlem”(Baldwin, 17). Most blacks felt
that Harlem was a safe haven for them. The blacks believed that out side the Harlem blacks
would never had the rights to do anything as well as whites had. In Harlem, blacks felt relief
from the frustrations of working in professional setting where whites do not always value their
abilities. Also, the district was racially segregated and culturally distinct from the rest of New
York and unfamiliar to all but a few whites. Harlem is iconic in the popular imagination of
blackness and African- American identity and Harlem also stand for the urban core of Black
African and the American racial imaginary. Although, many black people thought of moving to
another neighborhood which might be safer and better opportunity for them as Sonny’s thought
in a short story called “ Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin.
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“ Sonny’s Blues” is the story of two African-American brothers from Harlem who
cope with their pain and suffering in different ways. During the 1950’s when the story takes
place, black people were forced to live in a world of prejudice, discrimination, poverty and
suppression. The Baptism and Christian religion were prominent in the community. Harlem was
predominately black and poor neighborhood. Most African-American people were poor educated
therefore, it was difficult for seeking to find better jobs and wages for them. Also, drugs were an
obvious problem in the community.
As people know, there were inequality and racial segregation between blacks and whites
in the society during the 1950‘s. “ The first time I was called nigger when I was seven years old.
It was a little white girl with long black curls” (Baldwin,61). The words such as “nigger” and
“negro” play a big role of racial segregation in the community. Many African-Americans felt
uncomfortable to live out side the Harlem and they also thought that they were taken advantages
by whites.
Most African-Americans tried to deal with their pain and suffering in different ways.
They needed to escape from their everyday lives. Some African-Americans found that tragedy
and suffering can be transformed into a communal art such as blues music. Blues music is a form
of cultural expression whose very ground was the unjust and painful relationship between blacks
and whites in the segregation. It is also a music that helped to heal the wounds of segregation
during the post civil right era. As LeRoi Jones’s blues people says that :
“As I began to get into the history of the music,
I found that this was impossible without, at the same time,
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getting deeper into the history of the people. That it was
the history of the Afro-American people as text, as tale,
as story, as exposition, narrative, or what have you, that
the music was the score, the actually expressed creative
orchestration, reflection, of Afro-American life, our words
the libretto, to those actually lived lives. That the music
was an orchestration, vocalized, hummed, blown, beaten,
scatted, corollary confirmation of the history.” (Jones, 1)
In fact, blues are not only blacks’ voices, the way of expressing the suffering, and releasing their
pent-up feeling but it has helped erode what remains of the color line by bringing blacks and
whites musicians and audiences together into a series of local sub cultural communities.
The blues music indicated a distinctive and valuable culture for African-American
people. Harlem’s resident regarded themselves as the makers of a special place, in the words
“Mecca of New Negro”.(Corbould, 4)
Jackson argues that “race in the context of African American communities is typically
understand though symbols and practices that mark an authenticity that reproduces people as
ossified objects rather that nuanced, desiring, vulnerable, and changing subjects” .(Shipley,2)
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However, in the early 1960’s also was the beginning of the civil rights movement. People
in the country struggled for racial justice and blacks forged a new political identity. They were
beginning to demand their rightful place in American society and taking step to shape the future
of race relations in the country. The best way to improve social conditions for blacks was to use
nonviolent protest methods to gather popular support for racial integration and equal opportunity.
The historic moment in Massachusetts represented “the hope of a humanity that doesn’t separate
one soul from another and a polity that doesn’t divied one citizen from another…..AfricanAmericans have to be who we are …..This is the way we’re to heaven”. (Russell,2)(sic)