The Fisk Jubilee Singers, Henry W. Grady, and George Washington Cable all have some common traits as well as differences when it comes to post-Reconstruction-era representation of the South. Each individual had their own distinctive characteristics, but all understood that race was still an issue at this time.
The Fisk Jubilee Singers was a group of students at Fisk University that started performing songs about the African American life during slavery. This group was “refusing to hide behind a mask of servility or buffoonery.” It was inspiring how at first, it was solely money based, but as time past, it became more about racial equality. The book mentions a story about the bass player expressing his frustration whenever they were denied to stay at northern hotels. This example shows the lack of equality and racism that still existed. These singers offered a glimpse into the past by performing slave spiritual songs and demonstrating the progress the African American race persevering through the hard times of race division.
Henry W. Grady also acknowledged that there was a race division, but took the stand towards white supremacy as depicted as he “unapologetically insisted in an 1887 speech.” Grady claimed …show more content…
Through “his personal journey from white supremacy to racial liberalism was arguably more implausible than any fiction he wrote.” He displayed his opinions about white supremacy through southern literature like in “The Freed Men’s Case in Equality” which made him “well-known for his local-color fiction and his racial liberalism [which] had little patience for the rhetoric of the New South booster.” He viewed the South as having “the greatest social problem before the American people…” while he “highlight[ed] the importance of local-color fiction for the late nineteenth-century Southern Question” about southern distinctiveness and the debate between the