Professor Al-Kaleem Analysis

Although there were many compelling aspects of this documentary, 13th’s organization of its facts are worthy of mention. 13th moves beautifully through more than a century worth of brutal history while maintaining a clear format that provides information on the racial violence and the unjust justice system. Published in The New York Times, Dargis’s review of 13th obviously agrees. In “The Journey From Shackles to Prison Bars”, Dargis’s review agrees that the way DuVernay transitions throughout the film elicits a genuine and deep emotional response. The order in which they present their facts enabled me to clearly understand their stance on the argument that they were presenting. For instance, DuVernay develops the documentary through the time lapse of African American history. She begins with the days of slavery and works her way through modern exploitation so seamlessly.

The Emmett Till murder shined a light on the horrors of segregation and racism on the United States. Emmett Till, a young Chicago teenager, was visiting family in Mississippi during the month of August in 1955, but he was entering a state that was far more different than his hometown. Dominated by segregation, Mississippi enforced a strict leash on its African American population. After apparently flirting with a white woman, which was deeply frowned upon at this time in history, young Till was brutally murdered. Emmett Till’s murder became an icon for the Civil Rights Movement, and it helped start the demand of equal rights for all nationalities and races in the United States.

Because I 'm older, curious by nature, and an avid reader of research (domestic and worldwide), and because social issues matter greatly to me, I didn 't really learn anything new from the documentary. However, it confirmed for me that my fears and growing apprehension about gun violence and guns in general are valid.

The death of a young African American male in 1955 haunted the south and the African American society. Images of Emmett Till hanging in a tree were plastered on television and in newspapers for Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair Jr., Franklin McCain, and David Richmond to see while attending North Carolina A & T College in 1960. These four African American men would soon become known as the Greensboro Four after instigating a sit-in at a Woolworth’s store in Greensboro, North Carolina. Their courage and determination ignited a movement to end segregation not only in their state but across the nation. History was being made that day as the young men sat at the counter, customers inside watching as the events unfolded, and the impact of this incident permeating across American’s eyes.

In Chapter 1 Assata Shakur makes a profound statement and recollection of the 1970’s, a historical era in our society known for its movement against injustice, corruption, and cruel treatment of minorities by the White citizens and government in America, “the land of the free”. Non-white citizens were denied their civil and constitutional rights as being an American by a nation which glorifies itself for its equality and justice for all, under ‘one’ nation. Instead, acts of harassment, brutality, and illegal incarceration were committed, whether innocent or not. The Black Liberation Army was an organization of people who had the courage to react to the Nazism in America by revealing and voicing the truth about the ongoing malice brought

In the exhibition there was a video playing that discusses racial discrimination and how viola Desmond was treated like she was not a real person. It suggests that her story has changed history, fearless in the face of racism and injustice her story tries to break barriers between black people and white people.

Two drunken white men raped a young black girl, Tonya Hailey, who was walking from a small store where she bought groceries. When the news reached her father, Carl Lee Hailey, he went to their hearing, where he shot and killed the two men, while also wounding a police officer. Carl Lee hires a white attorney, Jake Brigance, to represent him in court. Many people and organizations, such as the Ku Klux Klan, tried to sabotage Brigance’s likelihood of winning the case. With the help of a liberal law student, Brigance successfully acquitted Carl Lee Hailey for the murders of the two rapists.

Among the men and women who have fought this fight there are many famous names, but there are many more who have fought just as hard and their stories have been lost to the tides of time. This is one of those stories. This is a call to remember those names that have been lost to obscurity and a call to further explore the history of black history.

The website Remembering Jim Crow gave useful information on the harsh lives endured by the African Americans in the South during the late 1800’s and mid 1900’s. This information expanded my knowledge of how the racist whites treated blacks unfairly and unjust. Places I visited on this site included “Bitter Times”, “Danger Violence and Exploitation”, and audios such as “Wrongly Accused” and “Mob Attack”. With this information, I was able to understand the cruelty that the African Americans felt. Listening to audios of peoples’ stories made me feel what they were going through, as I heard the fear in their own voices. In addition, I learned how the whites disgraced the blacks, and the blacks were put under the constant fear of the white man, even in their own communities. This material enhanced my understanding of Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird by helping me understand the circumstances of the Finches town and the biased judgement of the Tom Robinson trial due to the color of his skin.

The history of the United States is bursting with instances of extreme racism, discrimination, segregation and prejudice. The gruesome murder of Emmett Till, a 14-year old, Chicago teenager shined a light on these subjects. The Mississippi Trial of 1955 which was the trial held for Emmett Till’s murder, became a sensational case that was watched and followed around the United States. The response followed by the trial would shape the history of racism in the United States, catalyzing many civil right movements, protests. Without massive coverage of the event through the Chicago Defender, the trial never would have become famous, leading to an enormous draw back in civil right movements both at the time and throughout history.

Fascism and Nazism are based on a racial superiority dogma-not unlike the old hackneyed American caste theory-and they came to power by means of persecution and oppression. Therefore, Americans must stand before the whole world in support of racial tolerance and equality”. The famous case of Brown v. The Board of Education, ruled that separate educational facilities were inherently equal. While integration remained largely a court ruling on paper, segregation persisted as a reality in society. African Americans realized that change should be shifted towards the courts of their own communities. Just a short year after the Brown case, one of the most momentous stirrings for racial justice began on December 1, 1955, when a women by the name

There have been many people who have changed history for the better. Melba Patillo Beals is one of those people. Her efforts to integrate Central High School made her a very important person in the fight for equality. Despite the hardships and discrimination that she had to deal with, Melba persevered and integrated Central for a year. She sacrificed her normal life for the furtherment of equality. In “Warriors Don’t Cry,” Melba Patillo Beals presents the idea that emotional strength, faith, and determination are necessary character traits in the fight for equality.

Although I wasn’t in Mississippi during the ‘Freedom Summer’, I had a solid understanding of how life was during the ‘Freedom Summer’. This was years of racism and segregation towards the blacks in the US during the Civil Rights Movement. My aspect type was racism, and I learned of its impact on life through our analysis in the class of The Color Purple (1982) by Alice Walker, an epistolary novel about the lives of black people in rural dominated white racist Georgia during the 1920’s-50’s. Furthermore, we discussed Nelson Mandela’s Inaugural Speech in class, and how Mandela fought for Independence from the white racist government. With extra research of the Freedom Summer project launched by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating

The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. caused racial tensions to escalate even more. “Many whites openly celebrated the murder.” (Westheider 97) “The feeling of anger and frustration did not

History is not about events that have transpired, it is about those events that have been recorded. The first people who author history are reporters, who’s job it is to keep the masses informed of current events. The second authors of history are the historians, who weave together threads of information in order to produce a tapestry of narratives used to illustrate what has occurred. However, as recent events pass into history there are people who are at these watersheds. Such individuals provide a priceless window into these events. One such person is Cheryll Y Greene. Who while is best known for her work on the PBS documentary “Malcolm X: Make it plain” also worked on a number of other major projects about both the history of others and her own personal experiences as a woman of color in her time in a way that is accessible to people from a variety of backgrounds.