ery divided the nation in the bitterest battle ever fought between the shores of the country. The Civil Rights Movement threw the nation into turmoil and riot never before experienced between her borders. No, black people would not quietly submit and accept the unjust conditions imposed upon them. They would not rest as long as they were enslaved and dehumanized. They would not quietly submit to separate-but-equal inequality. They would (and they will) overcome.Black rage, coined and defined in the heat of the Civil Rights Movement, has existed throughout the history of America. While rage may be defined as expressed solely in acts of physical violence and fury, rage also indicates a violence of feeling, desire, or appetite . . . a violent desire or passion (Websters 1187). And this is exactly what constitutes black rage. William Grier and Price Cobbs, in their 1968 revolutionary analysis Black Rage, relate the rage experienced by the black community to the intensity of their feelings about the oppression they have experienced. They write, Observe [that] the amount of rage the oppressed turns on his tormentor is a direct function of the depth of his grief, and consider the intensity of the black mans grief (210). [THESIS:] Throughout the history of the United States, as seen through an analysis of African-American literature and rhetoric, black rage has not only existed, but has grown. As the momentum toward equality is clearly evident in the black races struggle, the question of where (or when) this rage will subside (if ever) remains unanswered. In examining black rage, four distinct periods of American history should be considered: slavery, Reconstruction and Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Era, and contemporary America.Slavery in AmericaThe oppression imposed by the white race upon black humanity in America has not been without consequence. The oppression has caused a state of rage, black rage, within the heart and soul of ...
