untitled- Mixtape

 Caitlyn Griffin 

December 1st, 2025

Dr. Harris

ENGL 2016- 44378

Major Project

The reason I chose the topic of individualism versus invisibility is to showcase the art that you can make if you allow yourself to creative freedom. People are needed to work in the industrial field; however, it is important that we allow people to branch out and be great on their own. Not everybody needs to work in a factory, we need teachers, beauticians, songwriters, and even writers. This mixtape will showcase the difference and how much greater it is when you have that creative freedom.

Invisibility

  • Working on a Building – Swan Silvertones

  • A Change Is Gonna Come – Sam Cooke

  • Chain Gang – Sam Cooke

  • Working in a Coal Mine – Lee Dorsey

  • I Wish I Knew How It Would Be to Be Free – Nina Simone

  • Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child – Odetta

There is nothing wrong with working within the industrial field. Matter of fact, I can make an argument that is very important. However, not everybody needs to work in that field and not everybody is called to it. The argument that we need to build ourselves up and make ourselves established in the country sounded good on paper. However, black people are not just black people, they are human as well. They are creatives, smart, and they deserve to grow in other places other than just the industrial field. We would be financially stable in the industrial field, but we would grow personally and more socially if we start putting out things that were more artistic. We need people being teachers and putting more into the country other labor.

Individualism

  • Hall of Fame – The Script (feat. will.i.am)

  • To Be Young, Gifted, and Black – Nina Simone

  • Someday We’ll All Be Free – Donny Hathaway

  • Golden – Jill Scott

  • Fight The Power – Public Enemy

  • DNA. – Kendrick Lamar

  • Rise Up – Andra Day

Showing people that we have individualism is necessary. Black people create wonderful art that people at that time wrote off because was written by an African American. Creativity was an outlet for people to express what they were going through and where they planned on going. African Americans deciding to be artists, teachers, writers showed that black people have the skills to make something of themselves and think for themselves. It did not matter at the time if they weren't making the money that they needed to make. They were putting out things that made a change, not only in the African American community, but in the entirety of the United States. African Americans should have the right to express their creative freedom without someone saying they need to work in the industry field as well.

The goal for economic stability will always be there. However, Artistic and intellectual creativity was needed for black advancement at that time. If they had kept doing what they always have done, there was going to be no big change. Showcasing our skills and our talent brought forth that we are talented and we can be more than just workers.

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