August Wilson's Fences Troy Maxson And Martin Luther King Jr.

The mid-twentieth century was a time of massive upheaval for African American rights activists. After World War II, not only did African Americans have more ways to serve their country in the military, but minority employment was rising upwards. This lead to the advent of the Civil Rights movement of 1960, led by many people including the famous Martin Luther King Jr. In August Wilson’s Fences, Troy Maxson fights for a similar cause during the 1950s, occasionally trying to those who interact with him in the workplace and in general attacking how society treats African American citizens. Fences’ Troy Maxson and Martin Luther King Jr, while having similar views on race relations, have very different rebellious tactics, ultimately leading Troy’s

For one, they both wanted freedom and equality for African-Americans allowing all African Americans to eat in the same restaurants, receive the same job opportunities, etc. However, while Troy mostly just tackles this stuff on his own terms, not blaming a specific entity other than society as a whole, Martin Luther specifically wanted to attack separate but equal laws set in place by Jim Crow in the late 1800’s. For example when Troy complains about how the police locked up his brother Gabriel he says this, “The man done had his life ruined fighting for what? And they wanna take and lock him up. Let him be free. He don’t bother nobody” (Wilson 65). Here Troy argues that his brother was causing no harm by being disruptive and that he should be rewarded for fighting for his country, but he doesn’t really tackle what he thinks needs to be done to fix this problem or who’s to blame. In comparison, Martin Luther is very pointed with what reforms he’s fighting

understood what issues he needed to tackle. Despite years of progress on multiple fronts, Jim Crow was still a big road block in the way of being able to achieve some semblance of racial equality. He knew there were plenty of examples of African Americans who did good work that any other person in society could do. They owned businesses, worked in factories, fought proudly for their country, and his ability to realize this progress and focus on what needed to be fixed in the present is what led to the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 a few months after his death. Troy on the other hand is stuck in the past, with a majority of his concerns being outdated. It’s not like he’s wrong, but his tunnel vision with past issues ends up ruining his family’s life. He refuses to let college administrators recruit his son Corey onto college football teams because he thinks that they're just going to use him as a prop, to which his wife responds, “Times have changed from when you was young Troy. People change. The world’s changing around you and you can’t even see it” (Wilson, 40). Troy believes that African Americans can’t make it in sports, citing his past failures to get in Major League Baseball. However, those days were over eighteen years ago, and him not acknowledging what has improved is what dooms his cause. He can’t change anything since he doesn’t know what he should be fighting for in the here and