My_Arkansas

My Arkansas "My Arkansas" by Maya Angelou, discusses her remembrance of an old Arkansas where she had spent some time as a child with her grandmother, in a rural segregated part of the state. An Arkansas where discrimination against blacks was an every day occurrence, and to this day, still has strong racial discrimination. The speaker, who is also the writer, talks of past crimes that had occurred against black people. "My Arkansas" gives a glimpse of what it must have been like for a black person living during that time experiencing the atrocities of their civil liberties trounced. "My Arkansas" tells of how civil liberties and discrimination had been abused by members of our society. The speaker begins by giving an allusion of a very violent past in this poem. The speaker is a black woman who hints at this violent past, and remembers it well. Maya Angelou is also a civil liberties activist. She understands the discrimination that was the cause of this violence and puts it in the past where it belongs. Racial discrimination is still present in Arkansas and everywhere else in the country. Civil liberties, society is still abusing them today. In the first stanza, the speaker talks of a "deep brooding," meaning that the crimes of the past still haunt those in Arkansas. It talks of "moss pend," crimes not forgotten, arkansas, past, liberties, crimes, civil, people, black, society, discrimination, speaker, hate, against, violent, today, time, talks, stanza, poem, day, been, woman, witness, violence, very, trees, tomorrow, tells, red, realize, racial, present, person, pain, overshadowed, need, must