"Lord in Heaven! God God Almighty! Great Day in the Morning! It's here! Our time has come! We are leaving! We are angry no more; we are leaving! We are bitter no more; we are leaving! We are leaving our homes, pulling the stakes up to move on. We look up at the high southern sky and remember all the sunshine and the rain and we feel a sense of loss, but we are leaving." (Wright 92)
Wright creates this atmosphere of reigning victory and joy with the opening paragraph, implying the duality of nostalgia and future promise the African American masses felt at the end of the reign of slavery. He utilizes repetition, continuously exclaiming, "We are leaving" (Wright 92). The repetition successfully complements the elated moment because of its implied depth. The continuous reappearance of the phrase highlights the awe and utter shock the African American masses felt, giving way to the incredulous emotional response that resulted from abolition. The repetition gives way to a stream of consciousness dictation, as if the collective speaker is in disbelief, repeatedly remarking the idea of leaving, as if in disbelief. Slavery in the South proved to be a time of turmoil and relentless conflict for the emerging cultural group, providing the African American identity with unity on the base of prejudice and prosecution. The simple three words "we are leaving" implies a decisive driving force that they will undoubtedly leave as one, in promise of a better future, these emotions unanimously resonate in the speaker's voice. Wright's repetition of phrase brings the reader to realize the importance of this mass migration of Black people to the North and its historical and emotional impact on the emerging culture as a whole.
Discussion Question:
If the newly freed African American population knew of the prejudice and the hardship they would face on Northern soil prior to the mass migrations which followed abolition, would they have left the South? Why or why not?
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