– Continue the idea of values. What ideas are being presented in these protest songs that echo back to the older works we’ve looked at?

These poems contain values which we saw in older works we have been looking at over the past week. In Aint Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me 'Round, we see the black who won't let anyone put him down. He's got an attitude similar to the character Shine in Shine and the Titanic. He's got a dream and he is going to fulfill it, which in this case is 'the freedom land' or the North.

These three poems are filled with hope for a better future. In We Shall Overcome, the idea there is quite simple to understand. They, the black slaves, will overcome their difficult situations and live a better life. They have much hope. They believe that will 'walk hand in hand someday', having equal rights and status with everyone else. This element of overcoming tough situations rivals the ideas present in songs/poems as NY State of Mind and The Message. In both songs the narrator talks about their situations and how they won't let it get to them; however, it is close to pushing them over the edge.

It(NY State of Mind and The Message) also echoes the content contained in Strange Fruit. The author of Strange Fruit gives a detailed explanation of what slavery is like in the South. Lewis Allen went into great detail how the south produces strange fruit. He compared the strange fruit to the hanged bodies of black slaves, and the bloody roots and leaves to all slave blood spilled by the southern whites. This explanation of the slaves' hardships echoes the hardships Nas spoke of in his song NY State of Mind and The Message.