Exposing the violence on African American people by white supremacist ideology: Poetry of Sterling Brown and Esther Popel

The history of African American Poetry is inextricably linked with the capitalist demand for workers from the already established slave market in Africa through the notorious trans-Atlantic slave trade. For example, one of the first poets of African American literature is named Phillis Wheatley but this was not her actual name. Phillis was the name of the slave ship on which she was brought to a foreign land and Wheatley was the name of her white masters who took her as property. The modus operandi of white supremacy was inhuman and extremely violent. Terrorist groups like the Ku Klux Klan terrorized African Americans. One of the cruel methods of alienating African Americans was the practice of lynching. By this way the black body was converted into an object, which the white ‘master' could discipline and punish. In this paper, I have discussed the African American resistance to the practice of lynching using poetry. The poets whose works have been discussed are Sterling Brown and Esther Popel.