The African American Dream
Introduction
As any broad survey of American literature can attest, the notion of the American dream has often meant something different to African Americans than it has to any other segment of the population. This is due to the changing status of African Americans in society and to fundamental changes in the collective viewpoint of white Americans over the past three centuries. Even in this ever-shifting human landscape, however, the core concepts of equality and identity have been enduring components of the African American view of the American dream.
Freedom
Since many of the first Americans of African descent were brought to the United States as slaves, the African American dream in its earliest form is perhaps best expressed by a single word: freedom. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789) was the first widely read autobiography written by a former African slave. In his narrative, Equiano tells of his early life in what is now Nigeria and of his horrific journey to the New World aboard a slave ship. His was one of the first well-known descriptions of a slave ship as experienced by one of its slave passengers:
The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us….
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