Overview
Metamorphosis in Poetry and Speeches is a demonstration of how they evolve from one time to another. This paper will outline the same by using the works of three of the most inspirational African Americans. They include Douglas Fredrick’s 1852 speech, The Meaning of the Fourth of July; Malcolm X’s WeDidn’t Land on Plymouth Rock; and Tupac’s song (poem) “Keep Ya Head Up.” Since they occurred in different years, they help the development of this article in demonstrating the evolution of the metamorphosis in poetry and speech.
Douglas Fredrick’s The Meaning of the Fourth of July
Douglas speech was rhetoric, comprising a set of well-structured questions that also acted as the answers themselves. During this era, the officials (whites) did not allow the African Americans to attend the celebrations of 4th of July, especially those held in the slaveholding regions of the South. Apparently, many slaveholders of slavery feared that such events could give the Blacks the concept of freedom. In addition to that, the shareholders discouraged the Black residents from the North from attending the same festivities (Joe 1).
For these reasons, Douglas felt the need to safeguard himself as well as that of the other African Americans in attendance, who would suffer from the backlashes of the slavery lords if Douglas attacked them with his speech. Therefore, he decided to disguise the intentions of his speech by directing questions to the audience. Being a Black, he did not have much freedom to express his feelings about the celebrations, let alone attend them. One of the questions that Douglas asked was, “Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?” He knew that the Blacks did not have the same freedom the whites enjoyed, but he still made that query (Douglas 1).
Malcolm X: We Didn't Land On Plymouth Rock
Malcolm's speech came 110 years after that of Douglas. Unlike the latter, Malcolm spoke with much freedom just as the other African Americans had were freer than the Douglas’s era. He did not hold back his feelings and talked to the crowd about courage, explaining to the Blacks that they needed to stop having much hope in having much freedom as the whites because the United States was not their country. He said:
“We (blacks) are not Americans. We are former Africans who were victims of kidnap and brought to the United States the kidnappers did not bring us brought here to become the mates They did not bring us here to make us citizens of the United States” (Miller 200).
Tupac: Keep Ya Head Up
Tupac is not only a legendary musician, but also one of the iconic rappers that coined Hip Hop. One of the ways by which he did that is his imaginative use of words in his lyrics while also creating songs about the life struggles that the society faced. Since the United States had become a free nation for the blacks by 1993 when Tupac released his song, he had the freedom and courage to sing about anything he wished. In fact, he only recalled how life was hard in his childhood, but he also reckons that the blacks did not have a torrid time as it might have been during Douglas’s era. Tupac sings: “And suddenly the ghetto didn't seem so terrible. And though we had it rough, we always had enough”, meaning that the hardships the Blacks faced had begun to disappear and their lives improved (Nicole 1).
Works Cited
Douglass, Frederick. "Frederick Douglass - Analysis of the Hypocrisy of American Slavery." N.p., 2016. Web. 10 May 2016.
Joe. "Frederick Douglass: The 1852 Speech on the Meaning of the Fourth of July -." Racism Review. N.p., 4 July 2009. Web. 10 May 2016.
Miller, Keith D. "Plymouth Rock Landed on Us: Malcolm X's Whiteness Theory as a Basis for Alternative Literacy." College Composition and Communication (2004): 199-222.
Nicole. "2 PAC – Tupac Shakur – Keep Ya Head Up “Keep Ya Head Up”–TUPAC." N.p., 10 Mar. 2010. Web. 10 May 2016.
