Martha’s Class Blog

Gah, here I go. Sorry it’s so late – I’ve been a busy little bee with bunches of other work and whatnot.

So, I actually really enjoyed the first part of this reading. This topic of what should and shouldn’t be taught to children is quite interesting, because if you think about it, most kids won’t remember much, if any of it… depending on what age you’re teaching them. For example, I remember talking to my mom and she was like, “REMEMBER WHEN WE WENT TO THAT PLACE…. THAT TIIIME… AND WE HAD SO MUCH FUN!!!?!” and I was like, “Err, nope… sorry…” Like, I didn’t remember it cause I was like, 5-years-old, but my parents were good parents to take me out somewhere like that to expose me to that stuff, regardless of if I ever remember it.

Okay – back to the reading, sorry. So at first, as I read the part in italics – the way the Rosa Parks story is told to children – I kept marking it up and was like, “uh, NOT REALLY…” or like, “there’s WAY more to that…” which the reading then went on to point out and explain. The thing that really struck me the most was the paragraph about how the boycott was lead by Martin Luther King Jr., and how it succeeded, and then it goes on to say “Now African Americans and European Americans can ride the buses together in Montgomery.” THAT MADE ME MAD! Angry Gina. I don’t understand how they can just be like, “YUP! WE WIN! NOW ERRAYTHANG IS HAPPY!” Like, that is NOT how it happened. SO much more happened. I mean, like I said, the kids aren’t going to remember all the tiny details, so like, they don’t really NEED to tell them exactly what happened legally in the fights they had to gain this freedom to be desegregated… but still, that IS what happened. And the kids shouldn’t be LIED TO!!!

I don’t know what I’m trying to say, but I just got offended a little, silly me. I just feel like… teaching kids about this stuff is good, yes, but if you’re not telling them the true story… what’s the point!

Another good point that was made in this reading was about how like, not everyone is a hero or heroine, but that only special people can create change. I think THAT’S why we tell kids the Rosa Parks tale in particular, not about the WPC and NAACP and whatnot – kids don’t want to hear that! They want to hear about some lady who did some AWESOME thing, you know? That’s what I remembered as a kid – how amazing Rosa Parks seemed. They worked her up to be some AMAZING human, but after reading this, I found out that like, she was NOT the first to protest the way she did, and that she was really just the tipping point that started the boycotts and whatnot.

• What do you guys think about the 2-sided argument about whether children should be taught this info or not?

• Why do you think they choose ROSA PARKS, of all the people? Why not that woman Jo Ann Gibson Robinson? She did the same thing, and her situation was a little worse!
• It said that MLK Jr. was originally reluctant about the idea to oppose segregation; what do you think about that? It shocked me, for sure.
• Why were these two – Parks and King – chosen to get this fame and to have their stories told? Why not anyone else?

The end.

Banks are kind of like fairies. If no one believes in them, they stop existing. But does that really matter? Are banks really important? yes. Usually, we think of banks as the places we keep out money when we aren’t using it. but really, banks are much more than a gigantic safe. Banks make loans, which keep businesses going, rents paid, and generally keep the economy from dying every time something bad happens. Basically, banks take all the money you put in them and loan it out to people, who then have to pay it back by a certain date (with interest). However, banks do not loan all of the money they have: they keep some of it handy, in case someone wants to withdraw some from their account. Even though they don’t have all of everybody’s money with them, they are fine, unless everybody comes asking for all of their money at once. As long as people trust that everyone won’t go for all the money at once, the banks do well, feeding off interest. But sometimes people don’t want the bank to have their money.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        This is what happened in 1929: the stock market crashed and suddenly people didn’t want their money invested: they wanted it in their grubby little hands. Cold, hard cash. As people realized that the economy had been trying to do the economic equivalent of treading water in an empty swimming pool, the idea of trusting banks with money went away. So everybody took all their money out of banks, all at once. This was called “the run on the banks”, and it was really the moment when the capitalist economy started to look as broken as it was. This wasn’t mentioned explicitly in the reading, but I thought it was important. banks, devoid of money, closed down. Some companies, missing bank loans, shut down too. Capitalism melted down like a Hershey’s bar on a radiator.                                                                                                                                   Thus began the great depression, a period national unemployment. One thing that can be said for the great depression is that it gave America the hobo. Another thing is that it created an entire generation who do not feel comfortable wasting anything, no matter how much money they have (including my grandmother). Also, it finally made American workers so desperate and poor that, having nothing to lose; they implemented radical striking tactics, and revolting totally in some cases. For a short period of time, workers banded together and revolted, and companies had to make concessions. But the idea of a working class rebelling was absolutely terrifying to many Americans, and so was elected FDR: Franklin Delano Roosevelt.                                                                                                                                                                                                 FDR is someone who I have conflicting feelings about. I believe he saved the country by restoring the economy. His “New Deal” program empowered and legitimized unions, and it made many new jobs.  Even so, in the reading Zinn mentions that many of his new deal policies actually helped big corporations more then workers. But FDR was an inspirational figure, and his seeming willingness to help the “little guy” made him even more popular. He appeased the workers with the new deal, and he fixed the economy. But did he actually do anything that helped the workers in the long term? Or was he just trying to make them happy enough that they wouldn’t revolt? Was he making these laws because he thought that the workers needed more rights, or because he wanted to keep them happy long enough for the corporations to gain control again. Did he want social and economic progress, or was he just trying to provide that illusion to maintain the status quo? This is my question: was he trying to help, or just pretending to care? 

Here’s what Helen had to say about Tonight’s Reading:

In the 1920s the American Society began to change. English, lierature, and art began to become more popular among black and white people. Many problems began to emerge in the 20s and 30s. That is because immigrants arrived the U.S and also people had to remember that white people were force to share the power they had. To focus the long reading more, I would like to discuss more about the “Flaming Youth” on page 508. The image of women and men began to change in the 1920s. As jazz was being produced by African Americans it was being danced by white people. A new image of how men are supposed to look and how women are to look like began. Women’s skirts began to get shortly showing that sexy was now “in”. People began to notice that sex outside marriage increased. The Protestant ways on how Americans should live and look changed for the worse or better? How does change in women and men show how people began to break the “American Life” to form something they want to do. What I am trying to say is that America was so focused on trying to change immigrants that in a way it was hard for them to because America itself was changing. Discuss how the laws following the image change try to preserve the Protestant way of living. I just thought it was interesting that America’s decision in the 1920s helped affected America now. People now are able to speak their mind more then they were in the 20s and 30s. If this post seems really confusing because I’m like saying all my thoughts at once let me know!!!

I took a lot of things from this reading. I learned some new words, which I’ll define for you guys also, I realized how the stereotypes have carried over into this generation also, and how the white people back then still puppeted the blacks in America. Okay so first with the puppetry explanation. Well like the weird complex way that I see it is like this, think of the blacks as Pinnochio with strings and the whites as the puppeteers. Each string is a restriction and freedom given to the blacks. So all the important strings are connected to the parts where blacks would need most (Arms, legs, back, and head). The freedoms are in the places where it really doesn’t matter (thighs, forearm, and neck). So in this picture since the whites have restrictions placed on useful places then the blacks don’t get to move the way they want to. And the whites leave some wiggle room by letting the blacks control the forearms and those insignificant places. If you guys have any questions about this part I understand.

The book did a good job with the stereotypes so I won’t go into that; but when I say that it carries over into this generation I’m just saying basically what bayla said in her post, like how blacks are still picked out more on cops and have bad connotations.

As for definitions these are most of the words that I didn’t get:

Incarceration- to put in jail; punish.

Vagrant- to wonder around without lawful or visible means of support.

Peonage- use of laborers/convicts bound in servitude because of debt or redemption.

I thought that this reading was very interesting, and so many new ideas were brought up that I had never heard of before. I noticed a couple things that I wanted to comment on…

1) on page 82 of the reading it stated a quote ” justice is often painted with bandaged eyes…but a mask of iron, however thick, could never blind American Justice, when a black man happens to be on trial” wow, i mean it is so frustrating to be how lenient the justice system/government could be when arresting/punishing whites, but when it came to blacks, nothing could pass them by. what were your reactions when you read this quote, any immediate thoughts or connections? I found it ridiculous the ratio difference between the black and the white convicts in the jails, i mean you would tell just by the numbers that something wasn’t right.

Many government officials arrested blacks for very little crimes , if crimes at all because the white population was getting scared of the blacks being able to vote. If the blacks were arrested, then they wouldn’t be able to go out and vote, causing less of a threat to the whites. Although it does make sense in the eyes of the whites, it is ridiculous, i mean the blacks have just gained a right, and now it is just being taken away again in a blink of an eye. what do people think about this “loophole”

2) A main part of this reading was about the convict lease system. I thought that it was veryy similar to slavery and even worse. The “convicts” were working for southern farmers and weren’t being paid at all. (just like slavery) However, the southern farmers could work them until they literally died. This was defiantly worse than slavery, because in slavery, killing a slave meant a large loss in money, but with this new system, they are “leasing” the convicts so they could just get a “new one” without any loss of money or business.

The blacks must have felt such pain, after all the joy of finally becoming free, and then being arrested for some silly little crime, that if committed by a white person wouldn’t even matter. Then being leased off to the people that used to own you and having to go back to working for them again, but this time, they worked you even harder because they didn’t even care if you died on the job. Do people agree that it was worse than slavery or do you think slavery was worse?

This reading invoked alot of feelings of anger and confusion in me. I know this is going to be long, so I’m going to number these paragraphs so that when you respond you can say which # and therefore (hopefully) make more clear exactly what you’re responding to and easier for other people to reference it.

1. One thing that angered me was the hypocrisy that (during reconstruction) Kentucky didnt have to re-analyze it’s treatment of ex-slaves because it had been part of the Union and so was immune to the reality checks that the south was being asked to do..

2. One huge thing that angered me was how the Black Codes/Jim Crow laws were completely unconstitutional; As per the 14th amendment, Blacks were naturalized citizens and as such deserve the guarantees made to citizens by the Constitution, to name a few:

• The 1st Amendment prohibits the government from abridging “The right of the people peaceably to assemble”
• The 14th Amendment which said “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunites of citizens of the United States nor shall any state deprive any person of life liberty or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws“
• [I'm also gonna go out on a limb and argue] The 9th Amendment which says “The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” In which it basically says (as interpreted from my mom-a lawyer) that just because something is left out of the Constitution doesn’t mean it is neccessarily allowed (OR not allowed) ex. The constitution dosn’t bluntly state that murder is illegal, but you still shouldn’t do it. For sake of my argument I’d say that just because the Constitution didn’t (then)have a clause that the rights are awarded, specific to or regardless of, Race, that they should be awarded regardless of race even though that’s not specifically said.

3. Another thing that “hit my buzzer” so to speak was that the book itself (A Place at the Table) didn’t directly mention the violence done by the Ku Klux Klan. It hinted by calling them a “terrorist organization”, but only said that they sought to “drive Blacks away from the polls”. Then follows a random sentence “Newspapers throughout the South carried accounts of racial violence almost daily” The relavance and placement of this sentence is questionable to me. It is unclear as to whether they’re saying that the KKK ran all the newspapers and this was one of their intimidation tactics to “keep Blacks in their place socially” OR if the writing is mentioning the newspapers hoping that you’ll infer that the violence they speak of is being perpetrated by the KKK.

4. I’m also unclear as to the usage of a word said by the Officer in Elizabeth Jennings Graham’s recount of her incident(pg. 37). In it she says the officer “tauntingly told me to get redress if I could” (based on that and later usage of the word in this chapter i looked it up- Redress is defined as “to rectify or make amends to”. His meaning was lost to me at what she’d be having to redress for? and and to/for whom she’d be redressing?? ———-What’d you guy think about that…or did you at all…I know its a small technicality but being who i am, i’m determined to understand his intention/meaning in all..

5. I was also stricken by the story of teen Carey Duncan who was threatened and beaten [in front of a police officer!!] and who was charged with disorderly conduct after his efforts to retaliate against his assailants while the white boys who attacked him were set free.

6. -This somewhat leads into one other small grumble I had with the book- it refers to many of these civil rights campaigns as non-violent even-though some of them fought back after being provoked. While I don’t agree with attacking in the 1st place I believe physically retaliating is not practicing non-violence and is basically no better then that of the attacker. (Again this might just be a matter of personal interpretation but) i think non-violence is not practicing any violence.

7. One more thing…..I was disturbed to read that “some historians trace the 1st use of the term “Jim Crow” to segregated railroad cars in the North” and that it would seem that not only was the North involved in the problem, but that it(the North) might have been the beginning of the segregation problem..That was just so saddening to me. Because not that I look down on the south as like “oh racism’s only a problem there” but its kind of sad to know that the north, which has always somewhat been the center of civil rights activists in America, was also somewhat responsible for the installation of all these laws that for so many years deprived so many people of equality.

I’m done. i’m going to sleep. hope some of this has made sense.

This post is based around the reading that we’ve done in our textbooks, pages 301 to 312.

Rather than doing a summary of said work, I’d rather state what struck me about the reading, and why. This particular reading had quite a few underlying messages that I may or may not be making up, but bear with me.

First, just in the first page I found something that reminded me of the discussion we were having earlier today, about Lincoln and his motivations. I made a comment about how we need to consider whether it even matters what his motivations or intentions were – did he act on his own, or on the people’s? We may never know how much either force played into his decisions, but even if we did, what way do we see as the “right” way? Shouldn’t a leader represent his country – does that mean blindly following the majority, or using his own judgement? How much of either?

On page 301, it states that “Lincoln had no power to enforce the emancipation in areas still controlled by the Confederacy. Lincoln’s wording of the proclamation, however, was quite deliberate. He knew he could not afford to antagonize the slaveholding border states and drive them into the Confederacy. For that reason, the proclamation was not a resounding moral denunciation of slavery.” This quote no only illuminates the purposes behind the proclamation, but that Lincoln was very conscious that he couldn’t make moral statements, or the Union would become much weaker. So he made a decision – for the good of the people? – that would, ultimately, help his “side” stay stronger.

The second and slightly unrelated thing that jumped out at me was the underlying theme of the draft. I have had many a discussion with my friends, US citizen and otherwise, about the drafts in our respective countries, gender differences in war, and so on.  The US draft was discontinued in 1973,  with the end of active US ground participation in Vietnam. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_the_United_States, though I cross-checked with much more reliable sources.) Throughout the rest of this section, there is an increasing unwillingness to serve – up to the point where people desert the army, or just refuse to turn up at all. The downfall of the South, or one of the contributing factors, was that the people became too divided. The South was already divided by gender and race, but once the draft was put into action – a draft that the richer among them could avoid by paying their way out of it – the people became even more divided and mutinous. There is power in numbers, and when the people were separated by personal motivations, rather than united by their group’s common goal and aspirations, the forces were weakened.

Along with the “All for one, and one for all” theme, there is Ulysses S. Grant. A vicious and cunning general, Grant put the common good, and the Union’s cause over the lives of the “little people.” Because of that, the Union did find victory, though they lost tens of thousands in some battles, and over 360,000 thousand soldiers in action in the war. So that leads to the idea that I have been blathering about all along – what is a leader? How do they represent you, by what you are thinking, or by what is their opinion of the right thing to do? What matters more, the country, or the people that make it up? And how can you build a strong country, how can you have good representation? Is the greater good a good enough reason for small atrocities, is the whole more then the pieces?

(By now I’m just blathering. I apologize to you all, especially Chace, who was so excited to comment. Thanks for reading,

Emma.)

alrighty, so i wanted to comment about a couple things that i noticed in the reading over the weekend. I learned a lot of new information about how Mexico actually owned a lot of the land that is part of the U.S. today. That being so, we really pushed a lot of people out of their homes, not only the Native Americans but also the Mexicans. I also noticed a key fact that all of the southern plantation owners seemed to believe, and that was that in order for slavery to survive, they needed to be able to spread westward and expand. But the slave owners weren’t the only whites living in the south, and they didn’t want the poorer whites to start agreeing with the North. so they told them lies and said that they could have more control and have a better life if they moved west. But i was wondering what actually happened to those whites. Did they become more prosperous or did things just get worse? I alos really liked how the reading described the fugitive slave law, saying that “no territory could interfere with the right of his slave-master to own slaves” It was a shocking but completely true statement. I was also really shocked at the extreme that the senators went to in their disagreement, i mean they were physically fighting. And they both were high class and had a big position in the government, and they resolved to physical fighting. I guess it shows how intense the opinions of each side were at the time, and how big of a barrier stood between the slavery supporters and the abolitionists.

Alright so first real post, yay? So one thing that came up in my head over and over again is how do these people make good role models for the country and for the public. It confuzzled me how this country could publicly abuse white and black people, leaders, and the poor. If you guys look at the cartoon on page 38 then I think you guys can see what’s going on in my head and the heads of the british.

The role models back then were the northern capitalist, the pioneers, and the southern slaveholders. I don’t know about the pioneers but the other two were violent and manipulative. In the North you had proslavery activists kidnapping and catching slaves while at the same time you had the abolitionists using violence to push the kidnappers away. This all being viewed by the public eye. And in the end I want to know what the hell were the bystanders thinking.

So I’m gonna lay some questions that maybe you guys could answer to cause I know that helps me.

1. What would go through your mind if you saw this kind of violence today?

2. What do you think the British thought of all of this?

P.S. Great Job Emma you were hilarious and the play was great.

    Often, I read history and it just feels like an endless stream of dates, treaties, and wars.  This reading stood out because it had treaties at the same time as wars, with the same people, and often in the same year.  I must admit that I sometimes was confused by the reading, as I found it horribly repetitive.  I found myself thinking: “wait, hadn’t they already massacred the Creeks a few pages ago? I thought they had already removed the cherokee, already fought the seminole…etc.” I started to get annoyed with the repetition, until I remembered that I was reading history, not fiction.  It was a little scary to realize that reality can be so relentless, that the same atrocities can happen over and over.  I know “history repeats itself” but this seems to take that to a ridiculous extreme.

Here is my version of the basic Indian story. “Whites bribe/threaten Indians into signing a treaty, usually giving up a good chunk of their ancestral land.  In return, they promise to be really nice to the indians.  Later, when the whites decide that they really want some more land, specifically the pieces they forgot to take form the indians, they “kindly” tell the indians to give them the land, leave their homes forever, and move west.  The indians either do try to make the journey, and at least half of them starve or succumb to diseases that are now not found in the first world, and have their spirits broken. The other option is to refuse to move, and after making that decision the chief of the tribe delivers some beautiful speech on how the land is their home, and they will never leave.  They play to the sympathy of the white settlers, but sadly the settlers have no sympathy, only a gigantic military.  They march in the huge army, and either force march the indians or start a war that is basically over before it begins. Either way, the remaining indians end up moving westward.

what i really love is when the US government (I’m looking at you Andrew Jackass) decide that they will make promises to the indian tribes.  of course they never intend to carry through with these promises, but few enough people actually care about the indians that they got away with it.  (It’s easy to pick on people when they can’t vote against you in the next election. see “Illegal Immigrants”.  Anyway, they make these outrageous promises, the best example being Jackson saying to the Choctaws and Cherokee: “as long as the Grass grows or water runs. I am and will protect them and be their friend and father.” given that he then embarked on what some might call “borderline genocide”, this statement might have been a little untrue.

Honestly, i could rail against what the US did to indians for days, but you already read a packet doing just that, so i will spare you any more suffering. i urge you to go back to the packet and look at all those impassioned speeches made by desperate chiefs, as they are tragic, profound, and poetic. (but there are also many of them, and i don’t feel like typing them all out, and i can’t pick a favorite.)

another question: is it just me, or does the seminole war sound exactly like the iraq war? america really wants to get at some economic resources that it doesnt have, so its hawkish rich-kid president tells everyone that it is harboring people who are a threat to america, and uses that as a pretense to send its huge army to invade. The enemy uses their knowledge of the terrain to compensate for their inferior armament and numbers, so the battle takes much longer then thought, and many soldiers and officers become disillusioned, and leave. (also, they are literally fighting in a quagmire!) After many years and heavy casualties, the president finally gets what he wants, and decides it was victory.  If you doubt that this is a description of the seminole war, look back in the packet.  It’s all there. To finish, here is the end of the surrender speech of black hawk.

“Farwell, my nation!… Farewell to Black Hawk.”