“An individual has not begun to live until he is able to rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. » This quote from Martin Luther King Jr. helped shape America into the great country it is today. Without individuals standing up for the rights of others, this country would still be struggling with discrimination. In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston; discrimination is a key factor in the lives of each of the characters. Hurston very accurately describes the constant discrimination between ethnicities and genders in the 1920s. Tea Cake, who is Janie's lover, invites her to come out to the porch to play a simple game of checkers. This was something she had never done before, due to the restrictive men she meets in the book. In each chapter, we can see her daily struggle as an African-American woman at the bottom of the totem pole. Hurston presents this struggle as it would have been during that era, transforming this novel into realistic historical fiction. In the 1920s, racism was at an unprecedented level and it was only getting worse. In the 1900s, 257 African Americans were lynched solely because of the color of their skin. Most of these lynchings took place in the 1920s, due to the Sacco-Vanzetti Affair of 1921. Whites would storm and attack black neighborhoods looking for men and women to hang. At this time, the Klu Klux Klan was growing exponentially and every lynching that occurred would go unreported. On June 29, 1921, a nineteen-year-old white girl shouted hysterically to a group of white men that a black man had tried to assault her in public. Without a shred of evidence or even a witness, a mob of white men engaged in a savage massacre...... middle of paper ... Martin Luther King Jr. pushing for change, we would still be a country segregated and ignorant, surrounded every day by racism and sexism. This book has helped us move forward in the fight for equality and humanity. As Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “We must accept limited disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” » Works Cited Hurston, Zora Neale. Their eyes looked at God. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1990. Print.Korobkin, Laura H. "Legal Narratives of Self-Defense and Self-Effection in 'Their Eyes Were Watching God.' (Critical essay). Studies in American Fiction 31.1 (2003): 3+. Literary Resource Center. Internet. January 30, 2014. Loyola LA International and Comparative Law Journal 12 (1990), 82143, and Jennifer M. Scherer and Rita J. Simon, Euthanasia and the Right to Die: A Comparative View, (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999), 13-17.