Freedom Walkers Reflection

629 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Racism throughout history

In this reflective piece I am going to answer the questions “why is it important to know the beliefs and tradition of those who came before us?” And “what could happen if we ignore the past?” I am going to answer these questions using the following passages Freedom Walkers, Jo Ann Robinson and I am a Native North American. I am also going to talk about how if we don't study the past, we can miss a big turning point in our lives. In the selection Freedom Walkers ( page 413) it supports my though because it talks about how the color of your skin matters. If you were a different color than you couldn't do anything together, for example if you were a Negro that Negro person couldn't play checkers with a white person they couldn't even sit next to each other in a movie theater. In Jo Ann Robinson (page 414) the story talks about how she was going to visit her relatives in Cleveland, Ohio for the holidays. She was waiting for a ride back to the airport the bus rolled up and she got on the bus put her dime in the dime machine and saw the bus nearly empty only 2 people were on the bus a black man in the back and a white woman in the third seat to the front. She sat on the set 2 rows behind the white woman then the bus driver told her “ if you can’t sit in the 5th row from the front seat of the other buses in Montgomery,” “suppose you get off and ride in one of them”, but she didn't hear him so he got up and went to her and yelled “ get up from there”. So she got up and left the bus. Saying that“ I felt like a dog”. …show more content…

The narrator also says “ Love will help us live a better life and without it they live in a world like they do know, full of hatred.” For example, it says “ Love is something that you and I must have and that love gives us

Show More
Related

  • Love In The Sonnet By Edna St. Vincent Millay

    973 Words  | 2 Pages

    The title of the poem “Love is Not All” asserts the impression that suggests the unimportant of love to its reader at first. However, the ending of the poem reveals the ironic truth that love is worthwhile. Millay’s intention is not to confuse readers by using a title that forcefully disrespects love. However, she projects the title of the poem to ascertain the grounds for her argument that love is important. The first six lines of the poem highlight the incompetence of love when compares with the basic supplies for life.

    Read More

  • The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

    1407 Words  | 3 Pages

    “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek to find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

    Read More

  • Strength and Racism in 'The Secret Life of Bees'

    662 Words  | 2 Pages

    The segregation in South Carolina happens everywhere and every day. Indeed, racism is manifested through the media, the law, which legitimizes segregation, and the perceptions that white and black people have of each other. Because of the laws against colored people, Rosaleen, as a black woman, lives with constraints in her life. For example, she cannot live in a house with white people (Kidd, p.8), she cannot represent Lily at the charm school (Kidd, p.19), or even to travel with a car with white people (Kidd, p.76). The media is also influenced by racism, and constantly shows news about segregation such as the case of Martin Luther King, who is arrested because he wan...

    Read More

  • Individualism in Habits of The Heart

    2761 Words  | 6 Pages

    ...t create ourselves. That we owe what we are to the communities that helped form us”(Bellah et. al., P. 295). We have a long history in this country of others who gave and sacrificed so much so we could have our present. We must understand that life is to be shared, it is not a race whose only “goal is to he foremost” (Bellah et. al., P. 296). It is to be lived. We must be committed to those we love, and to our communities. Maybe the longing for nostalgia in this country can help to return to a time when family, friends, community, church and more were important and we all knew we were part of something greater than ourselves. We must however not live in the past, we must use the past to build and focus on the future.

    Read More

  • Messages from Point of View in Langston Hughes’ I too

    1046 Words  | 3 Pages

    The author states, “I am the darker brother” (2.2) Here Hughes is clearly speaking on behalf of the African American race because during the early and mid 1900’s African Americans were oppressed because of their darker skin color. No where in the writing does Hughes mention the word racism, segregation, discrimination. No where in the poem are words like Civil Rights Movement or Harlem Renaissance read. Yet, the reader knows exactly what Langston Hughes is referring to. This is because the writing talks about a darker brother being told to eat somewhere else.

    Read More

  • The Various Perceptions of Love in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet

    1217 Words  | 3 Pages

    ' Here's much to do with hate, but more with love.' Act 1 scene 1.

    Read More

  • The Back Of The Bus Analysis

    648 Words  | 2 Pages

    Mary Mebane used her own experience on the bus to show how segregation affected her life. Mary Mebane points out, white people “could sit anywhere they choose, even in the colored section. Only the black passengers had to obey segregation laws.” When Mebane was young, she saw a conflict on the bus. The driver asked a black person who sat in the ‘no-man’s-land’ to move back to colored section to give the seat for the white person who was standing on the bus because the bus was full. Segregation on the bus represented how white people unequally treat black people. When black people refused this driver to move, the driver try to send them to police. Black people were living in the shadow of racism and segregation at that time. However, that situation still affects school system and community now. Mebane asserts, “It was a world without option.” Black people have lower economic and social status because they are restricted to a small box because of segregation. “In Six Decades After Brown Ruling, in US Schools Still Segregated”, Dexter Mullins claims that in some schools like Valley West Elementary School in Houston, about 90% of people are not white people. These kinds of schools do not have enough funds to support adequate school resource to these students, and these students have lower opportunities to contact with cultural diversity. Both reasons negatively impact on the

    Read More

  • The House Behind the Cedars by Charles W. Chesnutt

    991 Words  | 2 Pages

    The author distinguishes white people as privileged and respectful compare to mulattos and blacks. In the racial society, white people have the right to get any high-class position in job or live any places. In the story, all white characters are noble such as Judge Straight lawyer, Doctor Green, business-man George, and former slaveholder Mrs. Tryon. Moreover, the author also states the racial distinction of whites on mulattos. For example, when Dr. Green talks to Tryon, “‘The niggers,’…, ‘are getting mighty trifling since they’ve been freed. Before the war, that boy would have been around there and back before you could say Jack Robinson; now, the lazy rascal takes his time just like a white man.’ ” (73) Additionally, in the old society, most white people often disdained and looked down on mulattos. Even though there were some whites respected colored people friendly, there were no way for colored people to stand parallel with whites’ high class positions. The story has demonstrations that Judge Straight accepted John as his assistant, Mrs. Tryon honor interviewed Rena, and George finally changed and decided to marry Rena; however, the discrimination is inevitable. For example, when Mrs. Tryon heard Rena was colored, she was disappointed. “The lady, who had been studying her as closely as good manners would permit, sighed regretfully.” (161) There, Mrs. Tryon might have a good plan for Rena, but the racial society would not accept; since Rena was a mulatto, Mrs. Tryon could not do anything to help Rena in white social life. The racial circumstance does not only apply on mulattos, but it also expresses the suffering of black people.

    Read More

  • Theme Of The Racist Eyes Were Watching God

    1846 Words  | 4 Pages

    During the early 1900’s, the time period in which the story took place, racism was rampant throughout the entire nation. While African Americans technically were equal by law, they were anything but, in action. Laws such as “separate but equal” were used to justify blatant discrimination, laws that were coined as “Jim Crow Laws.” (Wikipedia, Jim Crow Laws) Jim Crow Laws were local and state laws that were used to “legally” discriminate and segregate African Americans. Perhaps the most well-known Jim Crow law of that time was “separate but equal,” a law that opened up the gates to decades of racial tension and discrimination.

    Read More

  • A Deeper Look: Langston Hughes's 'Ballad of the Landlord'

    786 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...ites a short 33-line poem that simply shows the barriers between races in the time period when racism was still openly practiced through segregation and discrimination. The poem captures the African American tenant’s frustrations towards the landlord as well as the racism shown by the landlord. The poem is a great illustration of the time period, and it shows how relevant discrimination was in everyday life in the nineteen-forties. It is important for the author to use the selected literary devices to help better illustrate his point. Each literary device in the poem helps exemplify the author’s intent: to increase awareness of the racism in the society in the time period.

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Love In Sappho's 'Deathless Aphrodite'

    1804 Words  | 4 Pages

    Sappho, who is very well the speaker and author of the poem, clearly recognizes the substantial impact that love creates in relation to the amount of happiness people experience. Those who are successful in the game love, whether it be by giving it or receiving it, are far happier than those who confront despair and rejection. Finding love means finding the acceptance, companionship, and most of all, happiness that everyone strives to receive in their lifetime. As a result, love becomes a weapon for power, superiority, and control.

    Read More

  • Harlem by Langston Hughes

    672 Words  | 2 Pages

    explains how equality and freedom is sadly not what the African-Americans of Harlem experience. For

    Read More

  • Ideology Of Colorblindness

    1184 Words  | 3 Pages

    Statements like ‘I don’t see color’ and ‘I accept you despite your race’ conveys a major implication. These statements imply that color is a problem. I believe there is no problem with color, but there is people who have a problem with color. Walker’s encounter with a WASP-looking Jewish student that invalidates her racial identity by asking if she is “really black and Jewish” (25) and “how can that be possible” (25) makes her question if her biracial identity is a problem and if “[she] is possible” (25). Ralina Joseph, author of "Performing the Twenty-first Century Tragic Mulatto: Black, White, and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self" believes the conflict that arises from the farce of “colorblindness is the reality of tragic, mixed-race blackness.”(Joesph). According to Joesph, Walker’s invocation of Movement Child, and the tragic mulatto becomes the means through which she “demonstrates the impossibility of the racial ideology of colorblindness” (Joseph). I agree with this. Walker’s biracial experiences prove that society has yet to move past race. I can only imagine Walker walking into different classrooms and everyone looking at her trying to analyze what other race she is mixed with; this other race not being the norm, which leads to the social exclusion Walker faces.

    Read More

  • Past experiences shape identity

    1955 Words  | 4 Pages

    Many believe that whatever situations have happened in the past should be left in the past. To others, the past holds a special place in their hearts because it has helped in shaping the person they have become today. One should always appreciate his or her ancestors and the struggles they have gone through throughout history such as slavery in order to bring us to where we are today. Though negativity can affect past experiences one should not dwell on it, but learn to move forward and look for the positive aspects of life. Without the past there wouldn’t be any great myths, any personal memories, and nothing for our future generations to learn from. Past experiences also helps people to learn from their mistakes in the past so they will know not to repeat them. One should also remember the good memories that the past has brought forth and should learn to appreciate them and the people who helped us to gain them. (Maya Angelou, author of the excerpt “Mary”, Zora Neal Hurston, author of the essay “How it feels to be colored me”, Gwendolyn Brooks, author of the poems “Sadie and Maud” along with “We Real Cool”, and Annie Proloux, author of the essay “The half Skinned Steer”, proves that through past experiences, whether negative or positive, the memories or struggles that people have encountered influences the way that people live their lives in the future and helps in shaping the individuals identity.)

    Read More

  • Love In Romantic Love

    983 Words  | 2 Pages

    Victor Hugo once said, “The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.” Whether in Shakespeare’s tragic play about lovers doomed by fate, Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare’s sonnet describing love, “Sonnet 116”, or O. Henry’s age old The Gift of the Magi, love motivates the characters and authors to make decisions that have a weighty impact on their lives. Throughout these works of literature, authors use love’s power to drive the plot forward to create good events within the characters’ lives. Love is a force for good because it makes people willing to forgive each other, it brings the best out of people in bad situations, and it

    Read More

More about Freedom Walkers Reflection

Open Document