“Should we seduce their limbs with a sweet flute, / Not always bow to a subtler brute; / We were not made to cry forever. (Cullen) A majority of African American culture had been enslaved in the South until the Civil War. After the end of slavery, the emancipated group began to fight for political equality, marking the beginning of a long series of events that would ultimately end with the Harlem Renaissance, a period during which a large majority African Americans moved to urban areas. of the northeast and midwest United States. From the beginning, there was a noticeable difference between black neighborhoods and white neighborhoods, and this difference sparked an incredulous influx of literature and art. This material was often a reflection of both universal human aspirations and direct representations of the African American community. Gwendolyn Brooks's text, The Explorer, and Robert Hayden's text, Frederick Douglass, reflect both the archetypal idea of ​​universal human need and the social interpretation of strictly African-American culture. The social vision of The Explorer allows a very broad look at people's lives. African Americans living in urban areas in the mid-20th century. There was, and still is, a stark cultural divide between the lives of the colored and white communities in the United States. This separation is so great in fact that the two communities lead almost opposite lives at this time. Andrew Wiese describes this evolution best when he says: “Race and class emerged in the form of devastating material and spatial inequalities – differences marked on bodies and inscribed in the earth: skin coppered by the sun and hunched posture...... middle of paper ......something that will always remain a terrible problem, this has paved the way for some absolutely incredible literature and art, which definitely shows the potential for change, in least a day. Works Cited Cullen, Countee. “From the Dark Tower.” Prentice Hall Literature. the American experience. 11th grade. Comp. Prentice Hall Literature. 2nd ed. Np: Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 2002. 926. Print. Douglass, Frederick. Account of the life of Frederick Douglass. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999. Print. Hanh, Thich. The art of power. New York: HarperOne, 2007. Print. Hughes, Langston. “Refugee in America.” Prentice Hall Literature. the American experience. 11th grade. Comp. Prentice Hall Literature. 2nd ed. Np: Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 2002. 907. Print. Wiese, Andrew. Places of their own: the African-American suburbs in the twentieth century. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2004. Print.