I do not believe one can talk about blacks in America without first analyzing the lives of blacks in Africa. They too went through and are still going through a period of modernization, colonialization, and social change. This is evident in Chinua Achebe's novel No Longer At Ease, a book about colonialism in Africa. Throughout this book, we see Africans having to cope with modernization. To further advance their diminished culture in the new way of society, they must find the elite or the intellectuals amongst their own tribal people who will be able to succeed in the white man's world. Among their people, they find one Obi Okonkwo who was part of the black elite in his tribe. He was intellectual and capable of learning the way of the white man. Here, it is clearly evident that it is up to the black intellectuals of the middle-class sects to further our kind into receiving social equality. Obi is sent to England for education so he can obtain a law degree. With this degree, he would better his tribe's chances of survival in the new society. He would be able to fight the white man for land they had seized from his tribe upon their arrival in Africa. Being educated in the white man's land, Obi began identifying himself with the white culture. He ended up attaining a degree in literature. In being associated with white culture, Obi corrupted himself; he fell into the category of the assimilationists. He fell out of touch with his people and became more involved in the capitalistic side of living only to fall into extreme debt, thus involving himself in the crimes of the white man by accepting bribes. Through the analysis of No Longer At Ease, one should see the unimportant role assimilationists blacks will play in this new revolution for the final insertion of black culture into today's society. Africa is Black America's source of learning on how to adjust and fit into the world of today.

Later on in life, Denmark would get the chance of a lifetime, when he enters a lottery drawing worth $1500. Luckily, Denmark wins the lottery drawing, and furthermore, he wins his freedom. Now, Denmark can easily access the black middle-class and intellectuals now that he has his freedom. It would be up to this middle-class nationalist black to help out the blacks held in slavery by their white masters. Denmark would incorporate himself into places of high social standing amongst the blacks such as the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the Second Presbyterian Church. Denmark always remained connected to the people of his color, and was never influenced by the white culture. In fact, Denmark Vesey, "despite his literacy and his mutlifluency, is consistently described as a freed black man (Robertson 44)." Furthermore, "Vesey saw nineteenth-century Charleston's sizable population of freed mulatto citizens as his class enemy, and he rightly judged them as presenting the greatest danger of betrayal of his planned slave revolt (Robertson 44)." Rightly so he would believe this. As I before said, in a time of a Black revolution, it is only right to depend on the nationalists or the Black middle-class intellectuals for help in the advancement of Black culture in a mainly white-cultured society. The white-identified blacks, or in Denmark's case, the mulattos would be of no help in any kind of revolution. In the end, in trying to carry out his plot of a slave revolt, "Vesey's plot

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Approximate Word count = 2299
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)