BIOGRAPHY OF THE CANDIDATE Shirley Smith, or better known as Mum Shirl was born on the 22nd of November 1921 on the Erambie mission—a mission near Cowra, Central Western New South Wales. Shirl’s parents worked as drovers in a town named Grenfell. As well as this Shirl’s father was a counselor at the mission however his powers were extremely limited, such is evident in his inability to prevent Shirl’s grandfather’s expulsion from the mission when she was six. Shirl shared an extremely close bond and was heavily inspired by her Grandfather. She describes him as a calm and wise man, who had ethereal connection with the country. Following his expulsion, Shirl’s Grandfather moved to Waterloo Sydney, where his brother helped build him a three bedroom …show more content…
house. After the completion of its construction, Shirl and her mother came to live with him. However after showing a strong distaste to Sydney, Shirl’s Grandfather moved back to Cowra.
Shirl’s education was extremely limited. The education provided at the mission was very poor, classes were take by the mission manager’s wife who was not a qualified teacher. As well as this Shirl was largely excluded from classes due to her epilepsy. After being expelled from the mission, Shirl occasionally attended St Brigid’s School where she learnt most of the alphabet, but didn’t learn to read or write. While living in Sydney, Shirl’s brother Laurie was sent to gaol for breaking an entering. Shirl made frequent visits to her brother during his time in prison, this would influence her contributions to the indigenous community later. After getting married later, Shirl moved to Surry Hills paying ten pounds a week. Shirl later got pregnant and moved to Kempsey to live with her husband’s family. Shirl later discovered that the local hospital was segregated and returned to Sydney, however her husband and daughter moved back to Kempsey whilst Shirl stayed in Sydney. Following this, Shirl decided to seek employment and applied at Mr. Beard’s box factory, with the knowledge that he was a kind man who happily employed Aboriginal women and offered high pay rates. Mr Beard also understood that Shirl had commitments …show more content…
to visiting Laurie in prison. After Laurie was released, Mum Shirl continued to make frequent prison visits in order to comfort Aboriginal prisoners claiming that she was their mum, hence the name “Mum Shirl”. The Child Welfare Department and the Police in Newtown also came to rely on her to help them in court cases involving the Aboriginal community. CHALLENGES FACED IN AUSTRALIAN SOCIETY Mum Shirl dedicated her life to preventing Aboriginal deaths in custody. From a very young age Shirl realised that as a result of the discrimination by English settlers, Aboriginals were forced into a life of violence, self-harm, unemployment, crime and drug abuse. In her book Shirls states that the “black community has got so little, to be shared between so many,” and that situation often leads people to resort to crime. (p.51)Mum Shirl: An Autobiography, with the assistance of Bobbi Sykes, Heinemann Publishers Australia Pty Ltd, 1981, Richmond Victoria. This life that Aboriginals were essentially forced into resulted in the incarceration of Indigenous Australians. According to the Royal Commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody (1987–1991) Indigenous people were 17.3 times more likely to be arrested than non-Indigenous people. As well as this, a large amount of indigenous prisoners were led into insanity due to the isolation from their family, loved ones and as Shirl stated herself “a non-Aboriginal environment”. This would often cause them to become violent and led to multiple Aboriginal deaths in custody. The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths In Custody also stated that Indigenous people were 16.5 times more likely than non-indigenous people to die in custody between 1990 and 1995. Shirl was directly affected by this when her brother Laurie was sent into custody for breaking and entering. While her brother was in custody Shirl frequently visited her brother in order to maintain his mental well being. These visits also caused Shirl to realise the effect isolation had on Indigenous prisoners which caused her to dedicate her life to solving this problem. Shirl began to make frequent visits to multiple different prisons around Australia. She voluntarily provided support for inmates, and organized for the prisoners to have access to musical instruments. In order to visit these prisoners, Shirl claimed that she was their mum. These visits caused Shirl to become well respected amongst inmates and hence, the nickname “Mum Shirl” was created. Prison officers believed that Mum Shirl was some kind of welfare officer, and referred to her in this way. The Child Welfare Department and the Police in Newtown also came to rely on her to help them in court cases involving the Aboriginal community. Mum Shirl befriended those who worked behind the desk at the Corrective Services Department during her visits. As a result of this, she was issued identity card that enabled her to visit prisoners upon free will. As a result of her support, the number of Aboriginal deaths in custody decreased as the violence the prisoners had become accustomed to became compromised by the words of Shirl and the musical instruments she provided. ACHIEVEMENTS IN PARTICULAR FIELDS Mum Shirl’s actions were heavily influenced by her Christian faith, she regarded herself as a “Mad Roman Catholic”.
Her faith caused her to give the little she had to others in need. According to Shirl, her pension was spread very thinly to help as many people as possible.Shirl consistently took foster care of kids whose parents had been imprisoned or were unable to take care of. Shirl encouraged these children to go to school so they would not have to live a life of poverty and could become activists like her to promote civil rights. During her time living in Redfern, Mum Shirl also became increasingly involved in political activism, particularly regarding the indigenous community. In order to address the need of better medical care for Aboriginals, Shirl establish the Aboriginal Medical service. Shirl also established the Aboriginal legal service so that Aboriginals could have proper representation in court. Increasingly, Shitl was relied on to represent the growing number of politically active Aboriginals. Despite having an improper education, Shirl gained a firm grasp of the democratic process. As a result of this, before the 1972 election, Shirl spoke in front of three thousand people with Gough Whitlam. The Whitlam government was subsequently elected. In february 1975 (after three failed attempts in November 1973, April 1974 and October 1974) , the racial discrimination bill was introduced into parliament. This was ultimately passed in June
1975 A LASTING IMPRESSION — THEIR LEGACY To this day, Mum Shirl’s legacy and life purpose is still current even after her death. To this day, there are still many Aboriginals who are displaced as a result of the poverty cycle they are stuck in. Mum Shirl aids these Aboriginals posthumously through her establishments which still operational, including the Aboriginal Medical Centre and the Aboriginal Legal Centre. In addition, the issue of the influx of Indigenous arrests and deaths in custody was brought to the attention of the Government and public through her prison visits. As a result of this the Australian Government Introduced a Royal Commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody was introduced. Although the problem hasn’t been solved, Shirl played a vital role in starting the movement by resurrecting the problem and making an effort to fix the problem herself. Shirls actions and beliefs also inspired a large public movement against indigenous deaths in custody. Many groups have protested against the issue backed up by the evidence of the Royal Commission and Mum Shirl’s life. By bringing attention to this issue, Mum Shirl has created a legacy for herself through the Royal commission and public protests. References Green Left Weekly. (2018). STOP BLACK DEATHS IN CUSTODY: PROTEST. [online] Available at: https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/stop-black-deaths-custody-protest [Accessed 24 May 2018]. Ia.anu.edu.au. (2018). Biography - Shirley Coleen (Mum Shirl) Smith - Indigenous Australia. [online] Available at: http://ia.anu.edu.au/biography/smith-shirley-coleen-mum-shirl-17817 [Accessed 14 May 2018]. Smith, S. and Sykes, B. (1981). Mum Shirl. Richmond: Heinemann Publishers Australia Pty Ltd, p.51.
Candice Millard’s Destiny of the Republic is a historical novel that explains who James Garfield was, how he became the United States’ 20th president, as well as his assassination. Millard explains how James Garfield started out as a child in a poverty-stricken family who overcame poverty to later become President of the United States. In this novel, Millard shows the kind of people person James Garfield was in comparison with the type of person his assassin Charles Guiteau was. Destiny of the Republic takes a personal look at whom the United States’ 20th president was, his family, his assassin, and the medical care he received after he was shot. Candice Millard brings up many good arguable points and essential thesis elements in this historical novel. Perhaps the most important thesis elements in Destiny of the Republic include the character of James Garfield, the level of security deemed unnecessary at that time in history for the president of the United States, and the errors made by doctors following the shooting. As an author, Candice Millard developed her thesis elements well and in an intriguing way throughout the book, which can be difficult for writers to do who also strive for historical accuracy. For some readers, the characters in Destiny of the Republic might appear to be
Orwell himself is the one who coined the term of political purpose, and because of this, he seems to be the best person to compare other writers to when discussing political purpose. Orwell defined political purpose as, “Desire to push the world in a certain direction,” and he writes, “…no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude” (3). Orwell, therefore, believes that art is ultimately political in purpose whether that was the intention or not. He believes that no work can be “free from political bias.” He seems to be of the opinion that art must have political purpose or else it will be “lifeless,” much like his earlier writing. Alternately,
1. On June 27, the villagers of a small town got together for the town lottery. There are only 300 people in this village. The summer just started and everyone in the town collected stones together. Then families stand together. Mr. Summers ran the lottery because he does things for the village. A black box is brought out in front of everyone. Mr. Summers mixes up the slips of paper in the box. Then he calls everyone’s name in town. After he finishes calling names, everyone in town opens their papers. Bill Hutchinson received the winning ticket and Tessie protest against the lottery. Then everyone in her family redraws and it is Tessie who drew the paper with the black dot on it. Then villagers grab stones, and point them at Tessie. Finally, Tessie says it’s not fair and is hit in the head with a stone.
Nellie was born in Missouri in 1876. “She was the sixth child and the first daughter of James and ‘Lizzie’ Tayloe” (Scheer, 2). Nellie was very private about her childhood and little is known about the family from which she came. The only story of her childhood that she ever shared was of her home being destroyed by a fire (Scheer, 1). In 1902, she became Nellie Tayloe Ross after marrying a successful lawyer and future governor of Wyoming, William Bradford Ross. Nellie was a stay at home mother with their four sons; twins George and James Ambrose, Alfred, who died at the age of ten months, and William Bradford II (Mackey, 26).
The author, Elizabeth Brown Pryor, wrote her biography of Clara Barton with the intent to not only tell her life, but to use personal items (diary and letters) of Clara’s found to help fill information of how Clara felt herself about incidents in her life. Her writing style is one that is easy to understand and also one that enables you to actually get pulled into the story of the person. While other biographical books are simply dry facts, this book, with the help of new found documents, allows Pryor to give a modern look on Barton’s life. This book gave a lot of information about Ms. Barton while also opening up new doors to the real Clara Barton that was not always the angel we hear about. Pryor’s admiration for Ms. Barton is clear in her writing, but she doesn’t see her faults as being a bad thing, but rather as a person who used all available means to help her fellow soldiers and friends along in life.
The idea of “family” is almost entirely socially constructed. From grandparents, to friends, to wives and fiancés, the means by which we decide who is related to us and who is not is decided by the person and their milieu. In Mignon R. Moore’s “Independent Women: Equality in African-American Lesbian Relationships”, Eviatar Zerubavel’s Ancestors and Relatives: Genealogy, Identity and Community, and Franz Kafka’s The Judgement, this idea is tested. Who do we consider close enough to us to share our most intimate details and how do we choose them? Each piece offers a different view, which is the “right” way for each of the people described, whether broad (as in Zerbavel’s reading) or specific (as in Moore’s reading), but there are also many similarities in the ways family is defined and actualized.
Abigail Adams an American Woman was written by Charles W. Akers. His biographical book is centered on Abigail Adams the wife of John Adams, the second president of the United States, and the mother of John Quincy Adams, the sixth president. She was the All-American woman, from the time of the colonies to its independence. Abigail Adams was America's first women's rights leader. She was a pioneer in the path to women in education, independence, and women's rights.
While Bessie was young, and her older brothers and sisters started to work in the fields, Bessie took on some new responsibilities. She would now look after her sisters, and sometimes even help her mother in the garden. Bessie started school when she was six years old and walked four miles to school everyday. In school, she was very intelligent and excelled at math. Then, in 1901, when Bessie was nine, her life changed dramatically, her father George Coleman left his family. It was said that he was tired of the racial barriers that existed, and so he returned to Oklahoma (Indian Territory as it was called then) to search for better opportunities. When he was unable to convince his family to come with him, he left Susan and his family. Shortly thereafter, her older brothers also moved out, leaving Susan with four girls under the age of nine. This caused Susan to have to get a job, which she found very soon. She became a housekeeper for Mr. and Mrs. Jones, who allowed Susan to still live at home, and they would also give her food and other handed-down clothing. Since her mother was now at work, Bessie took on the responsibility of acting as a mother and a housekeeper. Every year at the cotton harvest, Bessie’s routine was changed because she now had to go out into the field and pick cotton for her family to be able to survive. This continued on until Bessie was twelve, and this was when she was accepted into the Missionary Baptist Church, where she completed all of her eight grades.
Sammy was obviously near the bottom of the class ladder, a place where he was extremely unhappy. His dead-end job at the grocery store, where lower class citizens are the prime patrons, was not a place he felt he belonged. He wanted to be a member of the family where the "father and the other men were standing around in ice-cream coats and bow ties and the women were in sandals picking up herring snacks on toothpicks off a big glass plate and they were all holding drinks the color of water with olives and sprigs of mint in them" (Updike 1028). Sammy realizes that Queenie comes from this sort of background, a very different one from his. When Queenie is being harassed by Lengel, Sammy sees that "she remembers her place, a place from which the crowd that runs the A & P must look pretty crummy" (Updike 1028). Queenie’s family was in the class that he envied, that he admired, that he wanted to become a part of.
Throughout the world, in history and in present day, injustice has affected all of us. Whether it is racial, sexist, discriminatory, being left disadvantaged or worse, injustice surrounds us. Australia is a country that has been plagued by injustice since the day our British ancestors first set foot on Australian soil and claimed the land as theirs. We’ve killed off many of the Indigenous Aboriginal people, and also took Aboriginal children away from their families; this is known as the stolen generation. On the day Australia became a federation in 1901, the first Prime Minister of Australia, Edmund Barton, created the White Australia Policy. This only let people of white skin colour migrate to the country. Even though Australia was the first country to let women vote, women didn’t stand in Parliament until 1943 as many of us didn’t support female candidates, this was 40 years after they passed the law in Australian Parliament for women to stand in elections. After the events of World War Two, we have made an effort to make a stop to these issues here in Australia.
Jane Addams was an upper class woman who thought it was her job to help others. Addams was an advocate of immigrants, the poor, women, and peace. In 1889, she created the Hull House, to help female immigrants become assimilated to the American lifestyle by helping them get a job, learn the language, and receive an education. It was no surprise that in 1915, Jane Addams wrote the life-changing article “Why Women Should Vote.”
The contentious little book titled Women, Power, Politics maintains politics to be devalued, acknowledging the fact that only few people do vote, and women are unable to achieve within the realm of Canadian politics. Sylvia Bashevkin, the author of the book argues that Canadians have a profound unease with women in positions of political authority, what she calls the "women plus power equals discomfort" equation. She evaluates a range of barriers faced by women who enter politics, including the media's biased role of representing the private lives of women in politics, and she wonders why citizens find politics is underrepresented in Canada compared to Belgium. In clear, accessible terms, Bashevkin explains her ideas on how to eliminate “low voters turn-out,” “devaluation of politics,” "gender schemas," and "media framing.” She outlines some compelling solutions to address the stalemate facing women in Canadian politics which are; contesting media portrayals, changing the rule of the game, improving legislative quotas, electoral reform, movement renewals, and so on. This response paper would addresses the reality of a political mainstream, actions which should be taken against the oppressive elements of reality, and the awareness it brings through economic, social, and political environment.
The book Mary Reilly is the sequel to the famous The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, is a stark, ingeniously woven, engaging novel. That tells the disturbing tale of the dual personality of Dr. Jekyll, a physician. A generous and philanthropic man, his is preoccupied with the problems of good and evil and with the possibility of separating them into two distinct personalities. He develops a drug that transforms him into the demonic Mr. Hyde, in whose person he exhausts all the latent evil in his nature. He also creates an antidote that will restore him into his respectable existence as Dr. Jekyll. Gradually, however, the unmitigated evil of his darker self predominates, until finally he performs an atrocious murder. His saner self determines to curtail those alternations of personality, but he discovers that he is losing control over his transformations, that he slips with increasing frequency into the world of evil. Finally, unable to procure one of the ingredients for the mixture of redemption, and on the verge of being discovered, he commits suicide.
Marianne Craig Moore was born in Kirkwood, Missouri on November 15, 1887. She was the second child of John Milton and his wife Mary Warner. John Moore invented a smokeless furnace but failed. He collapsed mentally and was institutionalized before Marianne was born, son she never knew him (Parrish 1). Moore grew up in her maternal grandfather’s home. Moore spent her first seven years in an affectionate, close-knit environment. Her family encouraged serious reading and had a tolerant attitude toward diverse religious beliefs (Stone 2).
The first major hardship the Shimerdas faced was the death of Mr. Shimerda. He shot himself in the mouth and committed suicide. This hurt the family tremendously. Antonia was given the responsibilities that her father had and growing up for her changed in a matter of seconds. She could not join her fellow classmates in school because she had to tend to the work around the house.