The Colored Water Picture Essay

Images are more than just pictures, j-pegs or sketches. Images pass on information, ideas and meanings. In the trilogy, March, illustrator Nate Powell does an astounding job of making John Lewis’s memoir more comprehensible through his illustrations to those trying to learn about a historic time in American history. In this black and white novel about the American Civil Rights Movement, Powell's images help the reader understand the suffering of human segregation. Powell’s images also serve to define the emotions, Lewis is trying to convey. The images show how intense this time was for African Americans struggling to find their rightful place in white America. All while inspiring the readers. Quoted by booklist (stared review) “Powell

The search for one's place to belong is a universal quest. Many people find where they themselves within the communities of religion, culture, and language. Others, do not easily fit into any community, and as a result, are forced to wander and be different, they don’t fit in with the rest of the people like just another puzzle piece in society. This situation applies to both James McBride and Ruth McBride Jordan in the novel The Color of Water by James McBride. In the first couple chapters, James talks about her mother’s oddities (good and bad); one of which caught my attention, her unusual habit of ridding her bicycle everywhere. I believe that the author uses this to explain her unique personality, a fun care free person that is different

     “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,” was written by James Agee and Walker Evans. The story is about three white families of tenant farmers in rural Alabama. The photographs in the beginning have no captions or quotations. They are just images of three tenant farming families, their houses, and possessions. “The photographs are not illustrative. They, and the text, are coequal, mutually independent, and fully collaborative.” (87) The story and the photographs contain relationships between them; in the essay I am going to inform you about the interpretations of the relationships between the readings of James Agee and some of the pictures by Walker Evans.

Black son, white mother. Living in Brooklyn, which is a predominantly black neighborhood, during the 1950’s. Just by analyzing the two main characters and the setting we can conclude that a recurring theme in James McBride’s The Color of Water is racial prejudice and injustice. Racial prejudice and injustice are still present in today’s society. All you have to do to see it is turn on the news.

Throughout The Color of Water, we find a heavy emphasis on obtaining a quality education in order to secure a successful future. Despite having to deal with poverty, prejudice, and single-handedly parenting 12 children, Ruth always championed quality education. “Her motto was, ‘If it doesn’t involve your going to school…I could care less about it and my answer is no whatever it is’” (McBride 27).  However, the word “education” does not explicitly pertain to academic learning, but also covers instruction and learning outside of the scholastic environment. McBride recounts several instances where his mother, Ruth, lectures them about their educations saying things such as, “Educate yourself or you’ll be a nobody!” (92).  Ruth

For one, African American leaders in the ‘90s to the ‘20s attempted to end the disenfranchisement of African Americans, done through poll taxes and literacy tests, by advocating their cause in the more sympathetic North. Later, in the fifties and the sixties, these same goals, enlign poll taxes and literacy tests, were once again fought for by African American leaders, through advocacy and agitation. This shows a major similarity as they wanted to achieve the same things. Furthermore, during the nineties to the twenties, leaders of African Americans sought to end segregation in the South, as caused by Plessy v. Ferguson. Similarly, African American leaders from the fifties to the sixties also fought for the end of segregation, in cases such as Brown v. Board of Education. This shows a significant similarity in that both time periods’ leaders attempted to achieve the goal of ending

It shows how the book is informative on how people treat slaves and whites as not equal, and also sees the daily/ extreme lengths people will go to seek

The two images depict how southern whites found various techniques to ensure that blacks could not vote (Doc C). The democrats understood that African American voters would hinder their ability to regain control of Southern politics and would side with the northern republicans, so they created literacy test to deny suffrage and disenfranchise southern blacks. In addition, a petition from Freedmen on March 25, 1871 explicates how Blacks were being mistreated by the KKK (Doc D). Indeed, Freedmen wrote this petition to Congress because it mostly consists of Republicans, and they believed that republicans would be able to create a law that protects them from the KKK’s atrocious acts. Also, a cartoon that appeared in Harper’s weekly delineates the harsh conditions endured by Blacks in the South (Doc F). The purpose of the image is to shine light upon horrendous acts of white supremacy groups such as the KKK so that these acts of violence could be acknowledged and eliminated. Clearly, reconstruction had a lot more downs than up as Southerners acted to limit Blacks’

First, the important facts that this artifact presents is the different laws that were put on colored people that were enforced in many states around the U.S. These laws showed that colored don’t have the equal right to do what whites can do even go to the same places without being separated. Some of these laws included colored to sit in the back of the bus or even being separated by a solid partition that extended from the floor upward to a distance of seven feet or higher. This list of the laws were very mean to the colored because of their racist they got judged and had different laws even though they were only human.The list of Jim Crow Laws are really long and show the least amount of freedom they had on colored. In the end, these laws

They struggled for equality and took part in some of the greatest civil rights movements ever known. Although the civil rights revolution came as a surprise, the causes fought for were necessary. According to Foner, “the United States in the 1950s was still a segregated, unequal society with half of the nation’s black families living in poverty.” (902) Many whites paid little attention to segregation because they felt it had no impact on their everyday lives. Segregation impacted blacks, especially in the South, on a daily basis. They had separate restrooms, drinking fountains, schools, entrances to public places, and were unable to enter many public institutions altogether. (902) The arrest of Rosa Parks sparked a year-long bus boycott and marked the beginning of the civil rights movement in the South. (904) With Martin Luther King Jr. leading the movement, the freedom of justice and equality finally seemed within reach. According to the text, “King was a master of appealing to the deep sense of injustice among blacks and to the conscience of white America. He presented the case for black rights in a vocabulary that emerged the black experience with that of the nation.” (906)

Cullen utilizes imagery throughout the poem, to illuminate the racism African Americans endured and impact racism carries. The speaker in the poem is an eight year old in Baltimore. In the first stanza, Cullen describes the child as “heart-filled, head-filled with glee.” This image portrays the speaker as innocent and joyful. Then the speaker notices a boy staring at him, the speaker believes there’s little difference between them, that the kid “was no whit bigger.” The speaker gets a rude awakening after the boy “poked out his tongue.” A seemingly playful meaningless gesture is met with the boy calling the speaker “N****r.” Cullen contrasts these two experiences because it depicts how racism comes out of nowhere and effects those you wouldn’t expect. The last stanza, the speaker “saw the whole Baltimore. The image of seeing is not just visual, but a metaphor for the loss of innocence where the speaker now is exposed to the hate. Cullen masterfully uses imagery so that readers understand the incredible impact that words have, especially when used for hate.

“From the conclusion of the Civil War to the present moment, the hegemonic system of white supremacy has represented a ubiquitous challenge for survival for members of the black community (McLeod).” A lot of his images were inspired by Gordon Parks, a photographer that was popularized during the civil rights era that captured photos of the lives of black people. Scenes like the man teaching his son how to throw a punch was inspired by a photo parks took of Muhammad Ali teaching a young boy how to fight. Although it was inspired by parks, this scene symbolizes how black men are taught to fight. In another scene, Lamar show black men throwing punches in a uniformed fashion as if it was something that is taught scholastically. Another important symbol in this is guns. There is a scene of a young dark skinned boy pointing a gun in the distance. This symbolizes how darker skinned black people are viewed as more violent than other people. He also had a scene where a black man that was beaten up by police officers. This is apparent because of the blue and red lights flashing. This was to show that when we encounter law enforcement, there is a high risk of mistreatment for doing something small like not stopping all the way at a stop

This photo called attention to the issues in civil equality that are still prevalent today, it was the start of a very long fight for equality.

In the light of, the director makes good points through the whole movie about what they went through. I like this movie because it gives me more information of the people who were involved or who were there during that time. Like, Ann Lee Coper (Oprah Winfrey), Martin Luther King (David Oyelowo), and the rest of the people who help fight for African Americans to be able to vote. The movie also shows the difficult and the happy time they went through. Even the problems with their family. No matter what’s going on, they were still focus and full invested in having freedom. What I learned from this movie was that they did not let all the obstacles of what they went through mess up their main goal because of that I am able to take those lesson for my

4. What aspects of these images by Life photographer Charles Moore transformed American sensibilities regarding civil rights? How did people like Birmingham police chief Bull Connor and organizations like the Ku Klux Klan participate in changing the hearts and minds of many American’s, if not the right to sit together on a bus?