Martha’s Class Blog

A weroan or great Lorde of Virginia

Engraving by De Bry (printed 1590) based on watercolor by White.

Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.

“I have thought that I could find no better occasion to declare it,
than taking the pains to cut in copper (the most diligently and well
that was in my possible to do) the Figures which do lovely represent
the form and manner of the Inhabitants of the same country with their
ceremonies, solemne feasts, and the manner and situation of their
Towns, or Villages. Adding unto every figure a brief declaration of the
same, to that end that every man could the better understand that which
is in lively represented.”

–From a 1590 letter from Theodor de Bry to Sir Walter Raleigh—A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia

More De Bry engravings can be found here.

How did the English picture the native peoples of America during the early phases of colonization of North America? Where did theseconceptions come from and how accurate were they? How much influence did they have on the subsequent development of relations between the two groups?

Yay last post!!!!!! (lol)

So in the last 30pgs of the book a lot of dramatic things occured. Tea Cake got sick out of the blue and was struggling, but trying not to show it to Janie. Their love showed a lot in the ending because they stuck by each other through a lot. Janie tried her best to make him better and once realized that he was going to die she tried to keep him comfortable. The doctor who diagnosed Tea Cake told her that he could go mad and she should watch out for herself. She thought she could handle it, but she kept her self prepared with a gun knowing Tea Cake had one as well. One day when she noticed he was acting extremely wierd they started arguing and he aimed his gun at her. She had been smart nd emptied out most of his gun so she would have time to react if this situation happened. In a loving manner she tried to calm him down, but when that didnt work she had to shoot him! She killed Tea Cake, but out of her safety and for him. She wanted the evil part of him to move on and that was the only way it would happen. Its sad that people acused her of murdering him on purpose! Why would she do that? All that he ever did for her was love her and she loved him back. They should be helping her through this time! The one thing that struck me the most out of the end is after the trial was over and she was declared not-guilty she started to leave, but stopped when she overheard some white men talking. They said that the only reason why she was let go is because Tea Cake was black. If he was a white man she would have been found guilty. WHile reading this i became disgusted to know that people truly thought that way; that who cares about black people and wheter they are alive or dead! Its a horrible thought and if true just shameful. This book gave a lot of messages/morals and overall was a good book.

Peace out!!! (in 4 hours we will be JUNIORS!!!!!)

For my final project i looked at the Atlantic Monthly’s list of the Top 10 “most influencing” people. On that list there are only men and dominatly white men. They all have different reasons for being on that list and it makes sense, but where are the women? I researched women and found that there are alot of people missing from that list. For example, Jo Ann Robinson. She was a major part in the Civil Rights Movement. She was behind the scences, and did the planning of the Bus boycott. Even though MLK lead the movement and made wonderful speeches he didnt make the movement, “the movement made him.” If so many woman were apart of the biggest events/movements that changed the lives of people, why are women still degraded? Why can’t people of sexes and race be equal? Why don’t we learn about these people who worked behind the scences?

While Martin Luther King’s stance on non-violence is probably one of the most famous legacies of the Civil Rights Movement, there were many black activists who had a different view of things. Please examine these resources and respond.

Mos Def reading an excerpt “Message to the Grassroots”, a speech by Malcolm X which explains Malcolm’s position on self-defense:

If you have time to listen to Malcolm himself speaking for longer, here is one of his most famous speeches “The Ballot or the Bullet”.

Here is Fred Hampton, a prominent member of the Chicago Black Panther Party also talking about self-defense:

This is a link to the Black Panther Party 10 Point Program (”What We Want and What We Believe”) from 1966.

Here is part of a movie called “The Murder of Fred Hampton” which focuses on Fred Hampton’s life until he was killed by the FBI. If you start at 1:10, you can watch Fred Hampton and Bobby Seale speak and then there is a little coverage of the “Free Breakfast for Kids” program that the Panthers ran. Watch as much as you can:

What jumped out at me the most in this reading was when the author was saying that the fight for black rights, for things like more black teachers and students and books writen about them, were just small parts of a bigger picture, a “larger democratic movement.” And the fact that these small things helped black people strive toward being able to “…participate in the crucial process of defining the good, the true, and the beautiful in our society…” Because at that point, white people had all the power, so they were defining all the good, true and beautiful things in their own ideal way.

The reading said “The struggle for Black Studies…was an attempt to open the arena, to say that there is more to American history than white-defined history, more to American liturature than white-established canons, more to “the American People” than a collection of blond and blue-eyed Norman Rockwell creations.” For some reason, this reminded me of the “Nuclear Family” in that these ideas of American history, and literature and people are very “normal” and clean cut and contained, like the nuclear family. And the black people fighting for their rights and trying to get a say in these “norms” were like the urban world that the suburban families tried to close themselves off from.

Anyway, do you guys think that black people have successfully gotten say in American history and all that other stuff, and the ”larger picture”? Or are they still struggling, because young children are taught that “there was segregation” and not many of the details are explained. And any other thoughts you have, about stuff i didn’t mention, write em.  

For some reason this reading struck me as particularly interesting.

1. Firstly, I would like to make the point that statistics, and “facts” are pretty much crap. The simply state that people polled voted the fifties the best decade. Only later do they tell us that it was actually only thirty-eight percent. Which is technically a majority because there were a bunch of options. Also, they then tell us that this was mainly the vote within people of the ages that they grew up in the fifties. Which would be the baby boomers, so if everyone is voting for their own decade, and there are more people in one, then there you go. Another thing is that most of the statistics given throughout the reading applied only to whites, minorities were left out of the polling.

2. There was a point somewhere that the fifties were a “more family-friendly economic and social environment” I think that the lack of this now is mainly due to the technological boom. When you think of t.v. back then, you picture a little black and white t.v. that gets four channels. Mom and pop sit on the couch with the kids lying on the floor. The show is “family-friendly” no sex. Drugs, or any non child appropriate material, some good polite laughs for mom and dad. There was a woman’s account about how when she was little she went to the library and the librarian told her she couldn’t check out a book because it was not appropriate for her age. The woman then laughed and said that she couldn’t imagine doing that at the movie store with her son. Well, that is the difference between movies and books. There is so much graphic, both violence and sex, in movies today, that just wasn’t present then. With the advancing of special effects and such, you can do so much more.

3. There was an interesting part about the nuclear family. It said that “modern” women were putting their parents in “good institutions” when they got old instead of having them move in with them. To be a family-driven, good mother you had to distance yourself from your own mother. The distraction of having to help out your parents would ruin your chance to have the ideal family for yourself.

4. It came as a bit of a chock when they said that the rate of children being born into make breadwinning households had reached an all-time high: sixty percent. That didn’t seem that bad to me. Sure, fifty-fifty would be preferable, but there are so many writings that make it out to be this horrible thing; that no women will be hired, that the job industry is solely for men. But if sixty-forty is the all time high, then it’s not actually as bad as it is made out to be.

5. there was a strange thing about teen pregnancy. According to this, when teens became pregnant, they just dropped out and got married. Maybe dumb shit like that helped to keep divorce rates high? On the other hand, it said that job opportunities for high school dropouts were much better than they are today. A lower percentage of people graduated from high school, but still managed to find adequate jobs to support families. Also, raises in minimum wages helped with that.
6. When comparing between now and then, you can’t really do it. No enough factors are comparable at the same time. It is like comparing two experiments; both with seeds, but the seeds have too many variables to be adequately compared; one is smooth, one rough; one orange, one grey; one weighs twice that of the other; the one that has twice the mass, has only one half the volume; and then you put one in soil and one in water, one in the sun and one in the dark. How can you compare those?

(If I make this less of an incoherent rant and more of an essay, and find a way to make it relevant to my thesus, i may put this into my paper as a last-minute addendum.)

Okay, so i was looking back on the blog posts and i  noticed how many parallels people made in both comments and posts between some point in history and the iraq war/”war on terror”/ 9/11. (Perhaps this just goes to show how repetitive and unoriginal history is getting.)

Anyhoo, so for my project, I researched Japanese-American Internment during World War II. It recently struck me just how similar the motives, goals and fears of the american government were then to how they are now. If I’m not mistaken, until 9/11, we hadn’t had an attack on homesoil since Pearl Harbor. The two attacks have been compared numerous times before. Both attacks were disorienting for the nation and prompted an explosion of paranoia and xenophobia. The nation at both points in time suddenly came to assume that every person with a drop of (in the forties) Japanese or (now) middle eastern blood in them is a bloodthirsty terrorist or a spy. In fact, it was actually blatently said at some point that any Japanese individual was assumed to be a spy. Some time after the  the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians sent out a report saying that [and i quote] “not a single documented act of espionage, sabotage or fifth column activity was committed by an American citizen of Japanese ancestry or by a resident Japanese alien on the West Coast.” Yet hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans were evacuated from their homes on the sole basis of race. They were subject to governmental victimization and got many of their constitutional rights taken away because A NEED TO PROTECT THE NATION against the different. *cooooooough gag wheeze* PATRIOT ACT. in both situations it was announced that the innocent have nothing to fear.

*sigh* fear and thusly predjudice is what it comes down to in both of these situations. It’s a good thing that bush isn’t going to be in  office for much longer because i wouldn’t actually doubt that the internment camps could make a return. i mean, it’s for the *good* of the nation now, isn’t it?!

http://www.archive.org/details/Japanese1943

this is such stunning propaganda.

if you ever wondered:”how could the US justify doing this?” then this is your answer. and it is kind of a scary answer at that.

title is self-explanitory. i will try to type out my family tree, but it will sort of fail.

The Rommeleys

Mary Rommeley-Francie’s grandmother, Katie’s mother. A saint. The main soruce of advice aboout the upbringing of Katie’s children. She was the one who told Katir to read them a page of Shakespeare and the Bible every night, and to keep a tin can bank nailed to the floor for saving up to buy a piece of land 

Thomas Rommeley-Wanted kids to stay unmarried and work to make money for him. Cruel, intolerant, racist, speaks only German.

Their children:

Sissy-Oldest Rommeley child. I think one of my favorite characters in the book so far. What today we would call a slut, to put it blatently. sleeps with many men and calls them all John. Had ten futile births. A “slut” but the most tender, loving, motherly person one would ever meet. Brings up a lot of issues of polarization and labels.

Eliza-was not pretty or interested in life so went to a convent that she wasn’t allowed to leave except when her dad died to go to his funeral. the story told is that francie wanted to be a nun, until, when she was smaller, she saw Eliza at Thomas’ funeral and decided that she did not want to be a nun because Eliza had hairs growing off of her chin, and Francie thought that was what nunhood entailed XD.

Evy-married to Willie the horseman, who is basically a goofy screw-up, but he plays guitar, so she was like *sigh*. They have 3 children. She really wanted the children to learn music. Rommeley women love musicians.

Katie-stops working in her clothing factory to marry Johnny. they begin working at a public school as the janitors. This is the happiest point in their lives. Katie is Francie and Neely’s mother.

The Nolans-

Ruthie Nolan-she and her husband are froom Ireland

Mickie Nolan-dies shortly after his first child’s birth

All of their cihldren were handsome, musical boys:

Andy-Oldest, handsomest, died of consumption, had an epic “sickness pillow” that Georgie and Frankie puchased.

Georgie-died in drunkie freak accident.

Frankie-also died but i don’t remember how

Johnny-Francie’s dad. A bit of a drunk, though charming. Fell in love with and married Katie.

Then the next generation

Francie Nolan-The protagonist

Neely-Francie’s brother. Born a stronger baby than Francie but doesn’t become one.

The section of reading we did was mostly a family tree. It says at the end the part where it constructs a family tree something along the lines of “Francie was all of the Rommeleys and all of the Nolans”. It also says that the difference between Katie and Johnny is that they both know their lives are over, but Katie refuses to accept it and she perseveres.

It also outlines the part of Johnny and Katie’s life up until this point. They were janitors at a school at night during the happiest part of their lives. Johnny lost them the job, though, the night that Katie gave birth to Francie. He went out drinking instead of tending to the school. I see this passage as the part when Johnny’s drinking really starts to rolls downhill. It oulines Neely’s birth and Katie’s thoughts that she will love this stronger baby better, but she mustn’t let Francie know this. During chapter 11, Katie tries to get Sissy to help with Johnny’s drinking problem, and she lies with him all night and tends to him like a baby. During this chapter, it is said that Sissy’s ttwo great fails are that she’s a great mother and a great lover. I think the two are related and that Sissy excellent at both simply because she has so much love inside her. sissy has a tendancy to make everyone around her happy.  after sissy tends to him, katie inquires as to whether they’ve slept together, and sissy makes it apparent that they haven’t, but she tells katie not to nag him. in the 12th chapter, they move apartments because katie is so embarassed by johnny’s drunken wailing that keeps all of the neighbors up. I think that the family tree buisness will serve as some sort of forshadowing. For example, in one part it says that all of the Rommeley women love men who are musical. I think this will play out either in Francie falling for a boy who is musical or will explain her great love for her father. Also, now her love of her father more than her mother sort of makes sense seeing as her mother loves Neely more.

This book as a historical source-

The gender roles of the time period, i believe, are acknowledged in this book, but not exemplified. The book, with it’s sort of…accepting…i guess…nature, sort of defies some of the set roles of the times. For example, it is acknowledged in multiple places that Sissy is often called a “bad girl” for her sexual exploits, but it draws a rather clear connection between her promiscuous behavior and her nurturing, motherly side. Also, there is a part when Johnny wonders to himself how someone who is a “bad” girl can be so good.

Also, emma pointed this out yesterday after we looked at the pictures from the depression. Women have always been interpretted as being “the weaker sex” or what have you, but in all of the pictures from the photo essay of the depression, the stronger people are predominantly the woman, by far. They are holding their children while walking for miles, preparing food, etc., and the men in this same photo essay repeatedly look like they are giving up. In a tree grows in Brooklyn, it bluntly says that the Nolan men were very weak and a dying breed and that the Rommeley women were all very strong people (think “I will survive” XD). I don’t know whether this means that the book reflects the reality of gender in that era, whether it defies it, or whether both the author of the photo essay and the author of a tree grows in brooklyn are just biased because they’re both opressed women, or something.

I also noticed the topic of homogenization come up. Thomas Rommely spoke only German and Mary was bilingual, i believe, in German and English and she wanted her kids not to be able to speak any German so that they could a. have the same opportunities as all of the other kids b. not be able to speak to their verbally abusive, racist father. She sent them to a school that taught only English so that their culture would be drowned out. I noticed this is particular because we’d been talking about immigrant assimilation and opportunities.

Family roles were also different then. Both Thomas Rommeley and Ruthie Nolan wanted their children not to marry and instead to work and make money for the parents. I thought this was interesting, because it shows a bit of a change between then and now.

This book gives a good sense of the cost of things then. I was at first sort of pissed, honestly, at how it felt a little like a historical textbook because it had all of these references of how much stuff costed, and what exactly they wore and the names of it, that it was obvious it wasn’t written in the actual time period. As Emma pointed out though, it’s really just trying to set a mood and setting. I realized that it must have been written in this time period for a reason. Anyway, it does give a fairly good sense of how much things cost, because rationing money is a large part of the Rommeley/Nolan household. For example, the midwife charges 25 cents, which is sort of a lot. also Mary describes how much money you would have saved in coal by not burning it for an hour as 3 cents. also, in their janatorial job, i beleive katie and johnny make about $50 a month, which is considered quite a good deal for people of their class. I was baffled as to why a night custodial shift paid so much XD.

alright if i come up with anything else, i’ll post it as a comment on this. peace. *ps, i fixed the eratic spacing

sorry its late….but here it is

I think its good that people were able to get jobs and become artists and what not, but there was one thing that struck me when i read “Getting By” in our class workshops.

Within this reading this black man was talking about blacks in general compared to whites. He was saying that blacks do not complain about any financial problems, and if anything they would complain or fight about women problems or random fights. The black men worked and would get $25 and then a white man would get $60 and yet the blacks were still just working and not complaining as much. The blacks never got mad about what food they were eating and the little things that were not worth complaining over. The whites on the other hand would complain when the wife came home with beans rather than steak.

This is all in my opinion, but its how i feel and i want people to know that im writing this in a general sense and not breaking the ethnic groups to the max. SO basically when i read this the thing that struck me was how things to me havnt changed. Especially when i look around at CSW. At this school it seems that the whites take a lot of stuff for granted. That seems harsh, but it is what it is. Obviously everyonnnnneeee complains at times, like when theres bad food for lunch not everyone wants to eat it, but when it comes to those other little things that are so easy to do or not do “whites” are the ones to like complain and what not. There are so many complaints that are just plain dumb have the time and its like how bout you suck it up and just do your work.

“The American white man has ben superior so long, he can’t figure out why he should come down.”(getting by)

(I don’t want it to seem like i hate white people because i mean i do have a white family but also its just the societys fault how things are now)!