Northern whites with their public smiles of liberal acceptance and their private behavior of utter rejection wearied and angered the immigrants. Graduation, the hush-hush magic time of frills and gifts and congratulations and diplomas, was finished. Maya Angelou was a poet and author known for her 1969 memoir, ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.’ Read about her poems, books, quotes, quarter, and more facts.
Many members of that early band of twentieth-century pilgrims must have yearned for the honesty of Southern landscapes where even if they were the targets of hate mongers who wanted them dead, they were at least credited with being alive.
They began to find their lives minimalized, and their selves as persons trivialized. Unskilled and undereducated black workers were spit out by the system like so many undigestible watermelon seeds. On caring for others: If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded. The climate which the immigrants imagined as free of racial prejudice was found to be discriminatory in ways different from the Southern modes and possibly even more humiliating.Ī small percentage of highly skilled and fully educated blacks found and clung to rungs on the success ladder. On reciprocity: Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option. Sadly for the last thirty years, those jobs have been decreasing as industry became computerized and work was sent to foreign countries. On the night she died, I went to the hospital. And remember - you can always come home.' And she continued to liberate me until she died. You know the difference between right and wrong. Explore our collection of motivational and famous quotes by authors you know and love. The sense of fulfillment arose from the fact that there were chances to exchange the dull drudgery of sharecrop farming for protected work under unionized agreements. My mother had said me, 'All right, youve been raised, so dont let anybody else raise you. Discover and share Graduation Quotes By Maya Angelou. Their expectations were at once fulfilled and at the same time dashed to the ground and broken into shards of disappointment. They were drawn by the heady promise of better lives, of equality, fair play, and good old American four-star freedom. At the turn of the twentieth century, many African Americans left the Southern towns, left the crushing prejudice and prohibition, and moved north to Chicago and New York City, west to Los Angeles and San Diego. “After generations of separations and decades of forgetfulness, the mention of the South brings back to our memories ancient years of pain and pleasure.