Freshwater Road By Denise Nicholas

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Black Panther Party (BPP) are two of the most influential organizational groups. They both fought for desegregation and stood for justice. They fought day in and day out to get equal social, economic and political rights for African Americans. During this time of desegregation, lynching, organized hate crimes organization such as the KKK and police brutality caused African Americans to protested and stand up for what they deserved. The SCLC was created in 1957 and believed that they could get their voices heard without violence. Bayard Rustin and Ella Baker along with Martian Luther King organized the protest in Alabama, the Montgomery Bus Boycott. They also joined local movements

Monkey Beach by Eden Robinson gave me incredible insight into the world of Aboriginal people. While you often hear stereotypes about these people, it is often difficult to really understand what their lives are truly like. I believe that because the aboriginal communities have had such a large impact on the history of Canada, especially in the northern communities, we should receive more information and education in our schools about their history. Many textbooks do include brief stories about residential schools, but they do not allow us to see what the impact of those schools has had on their communities as a whole, and how it effects many generations. Adding stories like Monkey Beach into high school curriculum would allow a broader understanding

The short story “Greasy Lake” by Tom Boyle is about a young man and his friends who thought they were some real bad characters. The main character and his two friends got into a series of events that started with almost killing a young man for no reason, to almost raping a young woman which made them reconsider how they wanted to live the rest of their adolescent life. During that night, the narrator underwent a series of events that caused the destruction of his mom’s car and the shattering his self-image. Throughout the short story “Greasy Lake”, you can find points that Boyle’s use of the first person colors the story in some situations while causing bias views to show though in others.

Anne Moody’s autobiography, Coming of Age in Mississippi, depicts the various stages of her life from childhood, to high school, then to college, and ends with her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. In the novel, Anne tells the reader her story through events, conversations, and emotional struggles. The reader can interpret various elements of cultural knowledge that Anne Moody learned from her family and community as a child. Her understanding of the culture and race relations of the time period was shaped by many forces. Anne Moody’s family, community, education, interactions with various races, and her experiences outside of her hometown, shaped her into a devout activist for equal rights. As a child, the most important

Planning began late in 1963 when the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) decided to recruit several hundred northern college students, mostly white, to work in Mississippi during the summer. Furthermore, the SNCC shunned the concept of powerful leaders. It made all its important decisions as a group, and conceived Freedom Summer as a grass-roots movement of people rising up to seize control of their own destinies. More than 500 individuals worked on the project full-time during the summer of 1964. One of those key individuals was Robert

On Easter weekend in 1960, as a college student, Bond wound up as a pioneering member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The committee which grasped on all the

The short story On The Bridge by Todd Strasser is about two boys, Adam and Seth, who are hanging out after school on a bridge that overlooks the highway. Seth was the character that demonstrated maturity towards the end of the story. He showed some examples of this when Adam got them into some trouble. For example, when Adam flicked his cigarette onto the windshield of a car below the bridge, the drivers came up behind them. “But suddenly he [Seth] noticed that all three guys were staring at him. He quickly looked at Adam and saw why. Adam was pointing at him.” It was this point where Seth started to question his friendship with Adam, because they had gotten into trouble because of Adam, and then he blamed it on Seth. After the men left, Seth

In 1962, Noonan attended a joint SNCC and Students for a Democratic Society (which she was a member of at the time) conference, where she spoke with various SNCC workers (Noonan 484). These conversations convinced Noonan of the logic and practicality of their organization’s vision, and the members’ welcoming spirit convinced Noonan to join SNCC’s work with the Southern Freedom Movement (Noonan 485).

African Americans were able to gain much attention and sympathy through their various protests and they were also able to advance politically and economically with their enactment of civil rights laws. In the 1960s nonviolent protests were prevalent among African American; in 1960 students in North Carolina started the sit-in movement after being denied service at Woolworth’s lunch counter (which was segregated). Thereafter the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was formed to maintain this movement where students would deliberately get arrested for sitting in restricted areas. This movement facilitated the

On August 26, 1962, Ms. Hamer attended her first activist meeting, where she heard the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) advocating about all people having the right to vote. After this meeting Ms. Hamer a 44 y.o. field worker was forever transformed and inspired by their words. She then decided to devote her life to civil rights. Ms. Hamer wanted to see place people be able to participate in the political process in Mississippi. She attended many other meetings advocating for the rights of blacks to vote.

John Lewis was one of the most notably influential leaders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, SNCC. SNCC was founded in the 1960s in Releigh, North Carolina and initially consisted of black students as its members (Murphree 2006:11). The first members of this organization made use of nonviolent ways of protests such as sitting in and occupation of certain public places. The organization was successful in making other people aware of the injustices that black people were usually exposed to. Moreover, SNCC supported more nonviolent protests such as the Freedom Rides in 1961 and the March on Washington in 1963 which paved the way for the amendment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

SNCC strategy was to organize mass demonstrations, boycotts, sit-ins and freedom rides. They used the newspaper to reach the homes of the people, went to their houses and traveled state to state to publicize and raise money for the organization. One of their focuses was to get blacks to vote. The committee organized non-violent mass demonstrations to provoke the government so they would eventually intercede. They based their beliefs off the beliefs of the SCLC whose leader was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Eventually, they saw no progress and began to aggressively protest under a new “Leader.” Since the original goal of the group began to fade away many of its members lost interest and drew away from

Coming of Age in Mississippi is an autobiography by Anne Moody. It is the story of a black girl growing up in Mississippi at a time when racial discrimination was taken for granted and the NAACP movement had no formal name. In her autobiography, Anne Moody displays the hardships of living in the "rural south" while the Negroes were just starting their fight for equality. Her story is amazing. Life was difficult for all poor Southerners. But for a poor black family with little hope and living with the constant threat of harm and loss of life, her optimism is awe-inspiring. I found this book to be very moving and easy to read, though the structure of her writing was very distracting.

SNCC was a group of young protesters that wanted change immediately. John lewis along with Diane Nash and other leaders created a group for non-violent protesting. They made the sit-ins at lunch counters so that African Americans could have equal rights in the diners. After a while many people started joining in the the sit- ins across the states. They may say that the sit-ins only played a small role in the Civil Rights Movement

Firstly, many civil rights activists were not well received by local Blacks. Many Blacks in Mississippi were afraid of losing their jobs if they were suspected of joining civil rights organization. It is important to understand in Mississippi the State government was highly involved in enforcing Jim Crowe laws and segregation of the races. Blacks who joined were beaten and killed and their homes were vandalized. It was a real challenge for SNCC/COFO staff to get local Black residents involved, but eventually, they succeeded. Eventually, the civil rights organizations grew in Mississippi and in the Summer of 1963 the leaders of COFO organized one of the largest registration drives ever attempted. Their goal was to empower local Blacks to vote and show the state of Mississippi that Blacks had the desire to vote, contrary to popular belief. COFO succeeded in making a point. Soon there was major National media coverage on account of the White college students who had come from up