It is important to understand what was happening in the US at the time that A Raisin in the Sun is set and the place to start the understanding is finding out... WHO WAS JIM CROW?
Describe this picture of "Jim Crow" and discuss in your group how you feel when you look at it. Are the feelings positive, negative, happy, entertaining, degrading, or something else? Why?
If you were to learn that this image represents a white man dressed up with black paint on his face, meant to mimic the black man, does that change your thoughts about the image at all?
A little background information:
The minstrel show was an American entertainment consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface. Minstrel shows lampooned black people in mostly disparaging ways: as ignorant, lazy, buffoonish, superstitious, and musical. The minstrel show began with brief burlesques and comic acts in the early 1830s and emerged as a full-fledged form in the next decade.
Watch 2 examples of an old Minstrel skit.
As you watch it, think about the following items:
1. Is this type of entertainment appropriate or not?
2. What is the message behind this type of entertainment?
3. Should it have been allowed?
4. What was its purpose?
5. How did it make you feel as you watched it?
6. And finally..... would you have felt differently if you were an African American watching this?
Now look at the following images associated with "Minstrel entertainment".
Are these images examples of FREEDOM OF SPEECH or are they examples of BIGOTRY?
How far does FREE SPEECH "cover" you?
Or are there consequences of our exercising our Freedom of Speech? What are the consequences of things like the MINSTREL SHOWS and these ads?
And what about the consequences of this example of FREEDOM OF SPEECH? Should there be a "limit" to our freedom of speech?
