The Future of Education

Race and gender play a great role in shaping the history of the nations. In the United States, race is still a crucial issue that affects the lives of many Americans. Between 1874 and 1975, Jim Crow's segregation law separated the white and the black races in the South, causing great suffering to the black people. African-American women were the most persecuted and oppressed due to this law. Women activists rose in defense of the African-Americans in general and of African women in particular. The short stories of Maya Angelou, Toni Cade Bambara, Alice Walker, and Langston Hughes spoke volumes of the oppression against African-American women. This thesis aims to highlight this suffering and expose the African-American women's struggle for freedom, which lies at the core of the African-American activism movement.

These four short stories will be analyzed by African American literary criticism, which divided racism into three types; institutional racism, Internalized Racism, and interracial racism. In addition, this thesis attempts to answer the following questions: 1) How is the process of race portrayed in these four short stories? 2) What is the influence of these issues on the black? and 3) How do they affect them?

By answering these questions, this thesis will develop a critical study to race and gender in the United States as well as the role of literature and literary activists in reflecting their suffering within their literary works, especially short stories, since these stories give a clear manifestation of the daily life experience.

Keywords: Race, Gender, Activism, and Short Stories