Summary Of Separate Pasts By Melton Mclaurin

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Separate Pasts by Melton McLaurin main thesis is identifying the segregated south and the background associated with it. Mclaurin seeks to learn the cultural of his race along side with learning and growing towards which people really are in the south. Mclaurin wrote this book to let his readers relate and understand the way people thought back in late 1940’ and the 1950’s. Mclaurin displays and conveys what his childhood era was wrapped around and how segregation affected people in the past and still can be looked at a major problem today in ways. Mclaurin displays how his views of segregation where influenced by African Americans such as Jermone, Street, Jerry and Miss Carrie (just to name a few). Melton McLaurin argues the thesis by looking …show more content…

The book also fits into films and documentaries watched that deal with segregation and events that affected blacks. For instance in Separate Pasts like the Great depression, the Promise land, and the Civil Rights Movement can all be tied into our course material. The Great Depression as what we talked about in class impacted the African American’s greatly leading them to having no work. In the book Mclaurin explains how Street’s dream were crushed due to the Great depression. Just like Street in the book he could be used as a prime example in lecture. Also like the Great Depression, the Civil Rights Movement played many aspects in this book. Mclaurin explains how such events in the book like the 1954 Supreme Court Decision was looked at an impacted. The Promise Land was also mentioned in the book as relating to African American escaping of racial tension. Although these are just some examples of events that can be compared to of what we went over in lecture, they can serve as a better understanding for students to get what actually happened and to grasp the situation more at hand. The book also fits into films and documentaries watched that deal with segregation and events that affected …show more content…

Mclaurin uses vivid details and descriptions to get his thoughts of what each person meant to him, which was strength in the book. However although being detailed was strength in the book I believe that part of Separate Pasts weakness was that the viewpoint was from Mclaurins only. By doing so we only got to see what Mclaurins experiences were and how it shaped his thinking but I think it would have been interesting to see people the others peoples point of views and there thoughts

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