Pre-Civil Rights Era Uses of Language: Epistemic Violence and Legal Restrictions
Since the 1930s, African American attorneys and the NAACP used their legal expertise to fight successfully existing Jim Crow laws that deployed language to oppress and to restrict the freedom and agency of people of color. In the 1960s and 1970s, these legal efforts, as well as literary and artistic efforts, were intensified as great segments of the American collective consciousness was raised.
Let's take a look at some examples of how artists of the written word--novelists, poets, and activists--used their skills and imaginations to "break" the language of oppression.