American Flag Stands For Tolerance By Barbara Jordan

The first collection of the textbook revolved around relating and interacting with other people, and is inspired by Barbara Jordan’s quote, “We, as human beings, must be willing to accept people who are different from ourselves.” All of these texts involve people not treating others the way they would like to be treated, essentially breaking the golden rule, whether it by discrimination, disagreement with opinions, and going by tradition even if you’re going to hurt someone in doing so.
To begin with, in American Flag Stands for Tolerance, Ronald J. Allen talks about the release and dropping of charges of Gregory Lee Johnson, a man who burned an American flag during a government protest in 1984. The newspaper editorial supports the Supreme

Court’s decision to let Johnson off, due to the fact that Johnson was protected under the First Amendment right to freedom of speech. However, what the text does not speak about is how Johnson was treated. The question is, should Johnson have been arrested at all? The police force on duty at the 1984 Republican National Convention restrained Johnson, kicking and screaming, as shown in the picture accompanying the text. They arrested, jailed, and fined Johnson because they disagreed with his opinion that burning the flag was necessary to the protest. He was different from the police officers in that he believed his actions were protected under the Constitution, they didn’t believe that, and intervened. Therefore, it makes sense that Gregory Lee Johnson was treated differently than the other protestors because the police didn’t agree with his beliefs and actions.
Furthermore, Barbara Jordan’s quote applies quite a lot to the main plot of To Kill a Mockingbird.

In this story, a white lawyer in 1930s Alabama must defend an African-American man accused of raping a white woman. At first, the black man’s case doesn’t seem to stand a chance against the word of a white woman. However, as the trial goes on, it appears that Tom Robinson, the defendant, has solid evidence that he is innocent. But at the end of the trial, Tom Robinson is found guilty of a crime he did not commit, simply because of the fact that he is black. The blatant racial discrimination expressed by the jury is shocking, but unfortunately not at all unexpected. Every single trial that involved a white person against a black person in that time period was ruled in favor of the white person. It is obvious that even though the events of the novel are fictional, they are extremely realistic, and the quote by Barbara Jordan ties directly into the novel To Kill a

Mockingbird.
In addition, Barbara Jordan’s quote applies to the short story, The Lottery, in the sense that everybody in the village where the plot takes place conforms to a sadistic tradition even though someone is killed every year because of it.

On lottery day, everybody politely and cheerfully converses with one another, making jokes and laughing. But when it’s time for everyone to open the slip of paper they drew from the old box, things definitely take a dark turn. The head of household that draws the one paper with a black dot on it must make the other members of their family draw a slip. The family member that draws the second dotted slip is stoned to death as a sacrifice to help ensure a good harvest, whether that person is a toddler or an elderly man or woman. One of the sickest parts of the whole ordeal happened after Tessie Hutchinson drew the paper that sealed her fate: one of the villagers handed Tessie’s young son Davy a stone to throw at his own mother. The people that had been casually speaking with Tessie just minutes beforehand are now taking her life, solely because they believe it will make the fall harvest plentiful. There isn’t discrimination in this text as much as there is conformity. The people of the village are ready and willing to stone someone to death because tradition has told them that it was a good thing, so they follow through with it, even though they’re committing murder. Everybody has their traditions that other may find weird, but brutally killing

someone once a year is probably taking it a few steps too far. People that “win” the lottery may not be treated any differently than the next guy but on lottery day, all bets are off.
Ultimately, Barbara Jordan’s quote, “We, as human beings, must be able to accept people who are different from ourselves,” applies to every text in Collection 1 in several ways. However, these applications stand out in American Flag Stands for Tolerance, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Lottery the most. In the first text, Gregory Lee Johnson was treated differently than the other protestors because he did something the police didn't agree with. In the second text, a black man is convicted of committing a crime that he never did, simply because he was black. In the third text, an entire village suddenly turns and murders a woman who “won the lottery” so they can keep an old tradition alive. The authors of the three texts all seem to agree that people should not be treated differently than others simply because of their opinions, race, traditions, or anything at all. These texts that were part of Collection 1 can really teach people some things about how you should and should not interact with others.