Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The lazy, laughing SouthWith blood on its mouth …And I, who am black, would love herBut she spits in my face.And I, who am black,Would give her many rare giftsBut she turns her back upon me.So now I seek the North–The cold-faced North,For she, they say,Is a kinder mistress,And in her house my childrenMay escape the spell of the South.(extract from Langsten Hughes, “The South,” 1926)The history of the United States has always been characterized by a succession of heroic and sometimes tragic narratives of shifting populations. From the arrival of the European settlers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, to the great wave of adventurers and pioneers making their way westward in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to the massive influxes of immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the Far East in the twentieth century, one basic element of the American adventure has been and remains that of restlessness and mobility, of following one's desire to the possible other life which can only be found elsewhere.These positive versions of the great American movements of populations have their dark counterparts, such as the driving of Native Americans from their tribal lands and into either death or a kind of internal exile on reservations; or the triumph of agribusiness, which has pushed the small farmer close to statistical extinction in the United States; ... log in or subscribe to read full text