One misconception I believe that people have about the era of the civil rights movement is that every black person in America at the time took part in it or acknowledged it. I thought this to be true before because obviously every black person was affected by racism at the time, so it makes sense that everyone would take part in a movement that fought for rights and equality. In reality, social class divisions between the black community played a crucial role in determining the involvement of black people in the civil rights movement. The black people that tended to work with the movement were more “well to do” than the ones that didn’t get involved. We always hear about the big leaders of the civil rights movement such as Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks who can be described as middle class in the black community, but unusually in history do we encounter a prominent figure for civil rights from the lower class. As a character in poverty, Bigger Thomas serves as an example as to why many lower class black people were not involved in creating change for black people.
The environment in which Bigger was raised in confined him from being aware of things happening beyond the city of Chicago. Living with the four members of his family in a one roomed apartment, he was forced to think more about how to make the life of him and his family's better rather than black lives as a whole. Although in the story we see that Bigger did not constantly fret about survival and spent his days watching movies or playing pool, he was still only trapped within the confines of about a ten mile radius, disabling him from being aware and conscious of the movements taking place. He remained uneducated about the outside efforts to help black people, which was evident in the scene when Mary asked him what a union was but he did not know.
Additionally, Bigger's low education serves as a cause for his lack of involvement. At the time, education served as a means of learning about civil rights activism, inspiring students and essentially producing the next leaders of the movement. It was in school where black kids learned about people such as Booker T. Washington and W.E.B Dubois. It was at school where black kids were taught more about what was going on around them. Because Bigger did not have that opportunity, he was unable to learn and was unknown of the significance of civil rights movements.
Even though Bigger had no involvement in the civil rights movement, he ends up creating a movement of his own. When Bigger accidentally kills Mary, he felt that he was equal to white people in society, that he had a new power and sense of pride which he previously thought was never possible. Never would Bigger have joined any movement as an effort for equality, so it makes sense that the killing of Mary was his only way of “joining the movement”.
I agree with the idea that Bigger ends up just taking for granted the environment and society he grows up in, without being able to become involved in the Civil Rights Movement. The beginning of the book highlights this idea for me, when Bigger is talking to his friend (Gus) about his future and what he might have wanted to do if he had the chance. He says he might have been an airplane pilot if “he had the chance,” but then they both end up laughing about it and changing the subject. Wright never really mentions any of Bigger's thoughts being associated with wanting to fight for the injustice he experiences and he never really becomes involved in the cause at all. And like you said, many other lower class black people weren't involved in creating the change either.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your the ideas that you expressed in your blog post. And I think Richard Wright would as well, because it goes back to the idea of naturalism and who Bigger is a direct result of his circumstances. Some people in class were dissatisfied that Wright made it seem like the choices that Bigger had were simply black and white. Didn't he have the option of fighting for equality that didn't involve violence? But to Bigger that was not an option because of how and where he lived. To him the choice of peaceful protest was not a choice. Bigger responded in the only way that he knew how to.
ReplyDeleteYou and Ha Il make a good point about how his circumstances didn't allow him the opportunity to get involved in the civil rights movement. I thought your last paragraph was a really interesting point and it got me thinking about how he was creating his own civil rights movement. He was rising up against the white people, but like Bledsoe and the Narrator in Invisible Man, he was putting up a facade so the white people wouldn't realize what he was truly thinking. He was playing the game, and by doing so, he had the power to control how the white people saw him.
ReplyDeleteThis is a really thought-provoking post, I hadn't really considered Bigger's life in the context of the larger civil rights movement until I read this post. It's easy to take a simplistic view of the civil rights movement, ignoring things you mention such as class divisions, education and environment, but your post does a good job of explaining how Bigger's life was affected by all of these factors.
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