Praying For Sheetrock Book Comparison

556 Words2 Pages

In this essay I will introduced, compare and describe this two following books, “Meet You in Hell” written by Les Standiford, and “Praying for Sheetrock” written by Melissa Fay Greene”. In “Meet You in Hell” the problem was that the friend ship of Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick was about a betrayal that went among both men’s trough out their lifetime. In the other hand in “Praying for Sheetrock” the main point of the book is about racial discrimination something that back in McIntosh County Georgia happened so much. Both books have their own significant, as I mention one book is about a breakdown of two men’s friendship and the other book about a little county that lead to racial discrimination. But both novels gives us a short lesson of life as I will explain throughout the paper. …show more content…

Short after the civil rights movement had appear and changed the South without even growing trough this little county. What I believe and that had begun to turn things around for the County was all because of one black men named Thurnell Alston. He had confronted the people who were in charge of the factory he was working in. he did not pleased that “whites” had the satisfaction of eating and drinking cold fresh water out the refrigerator, unlike them the “black” people had to drink water out of a fountain that was not healthy for them.” The white water fountain was refrigerated, electric the water pure and cold. The black water fountain beside it offered tap water simply piped in from outside” (Greene, 43). And as he grew up he would always remembered what Sheriff Poppell said “Only way you can control the Negroes is to keep them hungry.”(Greene, 38). Tom Poppell was the man who after his father died he became the Sheriff of McIntosh County, he was the one who held the political power. He was a sheriff that would protected the black and

Show More
Related

  • Separate Pasts Sparknotes

    1301 Words  | 3 Pages

    What we see coming out of this time is a dark stain on American Society as we know it, a time in which one group of individuals believed to hold higher power in all aspects of life and demanded that since they hold said power, this group demanded that they are to be treated better than the other group of individuals, the African Americans. The belief of the white people of this small town of Wade is the very definition of Racism. But amongst all of this, a young McLaurin, McLurin found himself in a predicament as a younger child when one incident with a needle set his train of thought into that of the older Caucasian population of the town of Wade.

    Read More

  • It Ll All Come Out In The Wash By Joanne Crutchfield

    1205 Words  | 3 Pages

    The stories that the author told were very insightful to what life was like for an African American living in the south during this time period. First the author pointed out how differently blacks and whites lived. She stated “They owned the whole damn town. The majority of whites had it made in the shade. Living on easy street, they inhabited grand houses ranging from turn-of-the-century clapboards to historics”(pg 35). The blacks in the town didn’t live in these grand homes, they worked in them. Even in today’s time I can drive around, and look at the differences between the living conditions in the areas that are dominated by whites, and the areas that are dominated by blacks. Racial inequalities are still very prevalent In today’s society.

    Read More

  • No Solutions Offered in There Are No Children Here

    1330 Words  | 3 Pages

    The “other America” Kotlowitz describes in his book is the public housing complex at Henry Horner Homes in Chicago. By following the lives of two boys, Lafeyette and Pharoah Rivers, we are exposed to the misfortunes, turmoil and death that their lives are filled with.

    Read More

  • African American History in A Red Record

    794 Words  | 2 Pages

    Ida B. Wells-Barnett is an investigative journalist who wrote in honesty and bluntness about the tragedies and continued struggles of the Negro man. She was still very much involved with the issue even after being granted freedom and the right to vote. Statistics have shown that death and disparity continued to befall the Negro people in the South where the white man was “educated so long in that school of practice” (Pg. 677 Par. 2). Yet in all the countless murders of Negroes by the white man only three had been convicted. The white man of the South, although opposed to the freedom of Negroes would eventually have to face the fact of the changing times. However, they took every opportunity and excuse to justify their continued horrors. There were three main excuses that the white man of the South came up w...

    Read More

  • Importance Of Familial Bonds In Octavia Butler's Kindred

    1350 Words  | 3 Pages

    The purpose of this essay is to highlight the issues that Dana, a young African-American writer, witness as an observer through time. As a time traveler, she witnesses slavery and gender violation during 19th and 20th centuries and examines these problems in terms of how white supremacy disrupts black familial bonds. While approaching Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred, this essay analyses how gender and racial violation relates to familial bonds through Dana 's experience in Tom Weylin 's plantation. It is argued that Butler uses pathos, ethos, and in rare cases logos, to effectively convey her ideas of unfairness during the American slavery, such as examining the roots of Weylin’s cruel attitude towards black people, growing conflicts between

    Read More

  • Mississippi: A Closed Society

    932 Words  | 2 Pages

    “It was like a Nazi rally. Yes, it was just that way Nuremberg must have felt.” (Lambert, 114) The Nazi rally was referred to the public address Governer Ross Barnett gave at half time during the football game between Ole Miss and the University of Kentucky. Nazi’s as well had rallies lead by Hitler. They had a notion that Jews were an inferior race, based on the idea of Eugenics. The Nazi’s and the South were alike in that aspect. The South saw African Americans as an inferior race and the only race that could be superior was the white race. In, The battle of Ole Miss: Civil Rights v. State Rights, the author Frank Lambert presents historian James Silver’s idea that Mississippi was a “closed society,” therefore diminishing any other views besides their own. Before one could consider Mississippi as a “closed society,” one must look at the history of what created Mississippi to become a “closed society,” to have strong beliefs of white supremacy and why they tried to sustain those beliefs at all cost. In this novel, Lambert address the issue that made a significant impact on Mississippi and its people. The issue of James Meridith, an African American who sought for high education from a prestigious school, Ole Miss. White Mississippians beliefs of white supremacy towards African Americans extreme. What caused Mississippi to become this society dates back to the civil war, the fear on African Americans surpassing them, and the politics.

    Read More

  • Life of Anne Moody

    1048 Words  | 3 Pages

    Anne Moody's story is one of success filled with setbacks and depression. Her life had a great importance because without her, and many others, involvement in the civil rights movement it would have not occurred with such power and force. An issue that is suppressing so many people needs to be addressed with strength, dedication, and determination, all qualities that Anne Moody strived in. With her exhaustion illustrated at the end of her book, the reader understands her doubt of all of her hard work. Yet the reader has an outside perspective and knows that Anne tells a story of success. It is all her struggles and depression that makes her story that much more powerful and ending with the greatest results of Civil Rights and Voting Rights for her and all African Americans.

    Read More

  • Prejudice Explored in "Black Boy" by Richard Wright

    874 Words  | 2 Pages

    In a country full of inequities and discriminations, numerous books were written to depict our unjust societies. One of the many books is an autobiography by Richard Wright. In Black Boy, Wright shares these many life-changing experiences he faced, which include the discovery of racism at a young age, the fights he put up against discriminations and hunger, and finally his decision of moving Northward to a purported better society. Through these experiences which eventually led him to success, Wright tells his readers the cause and effect of racism, and hunger. In a way, the novel The Tortilla Curtain by T.C Boyle illustrates similar experiences. In this book, the lives of two wealthy American citizens and two illegal immigrants collided. Delaney and Kyra were whites living in a pleasurable home, with the constant worry that Mexicans would disturb their peaceful, gated community. Candido and America, on the other hand, came to America to seek job opportunities and a home but ended up camping at a canyon, struggling even for cheapest form of life. They were prevented from any kind of opportunities because they were Mexicans. The differences between the skin colors of these two couples created the hugest gap between the two races. Despite the difficulties American and Candido went through, they never reached success like Wright did. However, something which links these two illegal immigrants and this African American together is their determination to strive for food and a better future. For discouraged minorities struggling in a society plagued with racism, their will to escape poverty often becomes their only motivation to survive, but can also acts as the push they need toward success.

    Read More

  • Melissa Faye Greene's 'Praying For Sheetrock'

    1108 Words  | 3 Pages

    The title foreshadows the prayer of a women who prayed for sheetrock in order to finish her piece meal home. The confrontment started out for the reason that Mr. Alston didn’t want to drink out of the black fountain that offered dirty tap water. He wanted to be able to drink out of the refrigerated fountain that delivered pure cold water because the hard work he was putting into shouldn’t be rewarded with hot water. The African Americans were given outdated supplies and textbooks that not even Martin Luther King could change the engrained condition of the both societies to get the same tools. From the late 1940s through the late 1970s, McIntosh County was a mini-Las Vegas… where white men came looking for, and found, women, gambling, liquor, drugs, guns, sanctuary from the law, and boats available for smuggling” (Greene). The Sheriff, was the one involved in illegal drug deals, prostitution rings and gambling and was supported by the government he reigned over. In order to get support Poppell used his command of the highway to lift various goods from commercial trucks that either crashes or breaks down in the county. He distributes the stolen goods to the poor residents of the county’s large backwoods African American community, ensuring their

    Read More

  • Liberty And Justice In Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow Laws

    1297 Words  | 3 Pages

    She first presented her insights with an elaborate historical background of how, a century later, the Jim Crow Laws are still present in our society. Alexander introduces us to the Cotton family who were denied their right to participate in the American electoral democracy on not only one or two occasion, but on several occasions. Alexander suggests that this denial is a generational wrong by the government, as she highlights the injustices that the Cotton family encountered as black individuals born in the United States. Jarvious Cotton’s great-great-grandfather could not vote because he was a slave. His great-grandfather was beaten to death by the Ku Klux Klan for attempting to vote. His grandfather was highly intimidated by the Ku Klux Klan. His father was subjected to a literacy test that prevented him from voting. Now, Jarvious Cotton cannot vote because he, like many other black men in the United States, has been labeled as a felon and is on parole (Alexander 1). According to Alexander, once one is given the title of a “felon” the old forms of discrimination arise: unemployment, housing, education, public services and denial of the right to vote the list goes on and on (Alexander

    Read More

  • Sappho's Roles In The Negro Woman And The Negro Community

    1285 Words  | 3 Pages

    At a meeting of the American Colored League, where turn-of-the-century Boston’s black citizenry, along with delegates from all over the country, have gathered to confront a wave of Southern lynchings, Luke Sawyer rises to deliver an impromptu speech detailing the brutalities of southern racism. Scheduled speakers at the meeting are the transparent representatives of these leaders: Du Bois in the figure of the radical philosopher Will Smith and Washington in the person of Dr. Arthur Lewis, the “head of a large educational institution in the South devoted to the welfare of the Negros” and a man who advocates peaceful accommodation with southern whites (242). Luke Sawyer takes the podium and begins to preach by criticizing the previous speakers (the corrupt Mr. Clapp and his lackey, John Langley) for their “conservatism, lack of brotherly affiliation, lack of energy for the right and the power of the almighty dollar which deadens men’s hearts to the sufferings for his brothers” (256). Rather than engaging in the rational debate form (as represented by Clapp and Langley), Sawyer passionately narrates a personal story of his own family’s suffering, a history in which his father is punished by a lynching mob for operating a successful black business in

    Read More

  • Social Issues In A Red Record, And The New Negro

    1156 Words  | 3 Pages

    Over historical progression, African Americans have faced a surfeit of injustices that are addressed throughout numerous works of literature. One of the most frequently discussed themes in African American literature related to these injustices is social issues in an interracial community. With various literary techniques, the central topic of social issues due to race portrayed. Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s A Red Record and Alain Locke’s The New Negro address the social issues of racial brutality, inferiority and social controversy in an interracial society.

    Read More

  • Racial Discrimination in The Help by Kathryn Stockett

    1125 Words  | 3 Pages

    Today, blacks are respected very differently in society than they used to be. In “The Help”, we see a shift in focus between what life is like now for the average African American compared to what it was like for them to live in the 1960’s.“The Help” teaches readers the importance of understanding and learning from our history. The novel is a snapshot of the cultural, racial and economic distinctions between blacks and whites in a particularly tumultuous time in American history. “The Help” encourages readers to examine personal prejudices and to strive to foster global equality.

    Read More

  • Decadence in Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily"

    745 Words  | 2 Pages

    The south was the picture of excess in pre-war times, and although after the war this changed, old ideas and prejudices died slowly. When the construction company came to the town with "niggers and mules and machinery," those old views were evident. (83) The treatment of the blacks in the south remained a vestige of that decadence for years to come, as evidenced by the need for the civil rights movement. This corruption illustrates the townspeople's willingness to look the ...

    Read More

  • Invisible Man Essay: Identity and Invisibility

    1163 Words  | 3 Pages

    Black Fiction: New Studies in the Afro-American Novel since 1945. Ed. A. Robert Lee, a.s.c. London: Vision Press, 1980. 54-73.

    Read More

More about Praying For Sheetrock Book Comparison

Open Document