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Authors

Abigail Hilbig

Keywords

Ellett Robinson, African American, Alabama, prejudice, twentieth century

Abstract

To look deeply into the lives of individuals is to begin to understand the intricacies of American life. Ellett Robinson was an African American woman, born at the inception of the twentieth century. Like the century she lived through, Ellett’s life was defined by sociocultural concepts that began long before she came to be. Perceptions of race and the family were being transformed throughout the 1800s and 1900s. Born into this tumultuous time, Ellett was destined to experience the prejudice that existed against African Americans in the South. With slaves having been freed just thirty- six years before Ellett’s birth, millions of African Americans began to exercise their human rights for the first time. Southern politics were characterized by adjustments to this new way of life, oftentimes White supremacists doing their best to limit the rights their Black neighbors had just been granted. Ellett’s birth state, Alabama, was at the heart of these issues.

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