The poem The Road by Helene Johnson illuminates the fight Blacks needed to keep their pride in the face of racism. Helene Johnson expresses a road that is “brown as my race is brown, your trodden beauty like our trodden pride”. The road symbolic of Blacks dignity is an intangible that many were searching for up North. In The Warmth of Other Suns, Ida Mae fought to keep her dignity. She exemplified the spirit of the New Negro in her early years by her fearless attitude and ability to think for herself. Ida Mae understood there was a Southern caste system that kept everyone confined to certain rules. Ida Mae was fearless and worked to keep her pride despite this caste system which imprisoned both Blacks and Whites. For example, Ida was placed in an extremely dangerous position when she was desperate for money, but she still had the courage to walk away with the situation with her dignity. Ida took a one week job cleaning a wealthy White couple’s apartment and she was unaware that the husband would demand sex. Ida expressed that, “ He didn’t say no more’ cause he seen I wasn’t that type of person” (p 336). Ida Mae understood from the stories she heard in the South that this type of incident was common but some new fire inside of her would not allow her to be stripped of her self-worth. She was fearless and demanded by her presence that she was going to as Helene Johnson exclaimed “rise to one brimming golden” and not allow her pride to be bruised down.
The caste system’s unwritten or invisible rules allowed for Black women to be stripped of liberties and for the ruling class to not face any consequences. The militant spirit in the New Negro allowed for Ida to break away from these invisible rules and stand her ground.
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