Fences Presentation

Close Reading Chart

Fishbowl Discussion Blog Reflections

 For Dalton Clifford:
Your participation in the fishbowl today really showed the influence of blues well. I especially enjoyed your comparisons between the blues and modern forms of music, as well as showing the influence of blues such as the blues note. I agree with you in how the evolution of blues served as a foundation for modern music. Your use of your sources made your points especially clear and easy to understand as well. I feel like I learned a lot about the blues that I never would have known without the discussion, and you definitely played a big role in it.

For Sam Johnson:

I really enjoyed your comparisons between modern day schooling and school in the 1950's. Particularly interesting to me was how much more money we spend on educating on students, but how teachers receive roughly the same salary. Like you mentioned, I think technology was a definitive part of it, and perhaps there is a greater volume of teachers teaching different things. I can't say for sure, those are just some ideas. These comparisons between past and present are very useful because they put the events into perspective. I also liked your comparison with the technologies. Overall I would say you brought a lot of strong points to the discussion and definitely helped to further our understanding of schooling in the 50's.

Fences Fishbowl Blog Discussion: Pre-civil rights America/Civil Rights movement

 For this discussion I want to focus on the impact that Martin Luther King had on the Civil Rights Movement. Would the Civil Rights Movement have succeeded as it did without him? How did he and Malcolm X relate? I think it is fairly evident that the movement in a way hinged on King being a part of it, because it was his rallies that brought in and inspired the people, and he fought to truly bring the races together. This can be contrasted with Malcolm X, whose methods did not see the same degree of success, and despite Malcolm X originally being a critic of MLK, he ended up supporting some of his movements realizing that King's methods were effective. Another point I want to look at is how the Civil Rights Movement impacted politics as a whole. The NAACP was able to rise as one of the most powerful organizations in politics for years to come, and many of the movements such as Brown vs Board directly impacted the way we viewed our government, and how the government would have to view itself.

"It was while studying here, that King learned about the non-violent methods used by Mahatma Gandhi against the British in India. King became convinced that such methods would be of great value to the civil rights movement." (Trueman) 

"The final speaker was Martin Luther King and it was here that he made his legendary 'I have a Dream' speech which was heard throughout the world and did a huge amount to publicise the civil rights movement in America across the world." (Trueman) 

"Not long after the conclusion of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, King wrote 'Stride Towards Freedom'. This was read by some students at Greensboro, North Carolina and they started the student sit-in of the Woolworth's lunch counter which had a policy of not serving African-Americans... The same tactic - a non-violent response to violence - was also used by the Freedom Riders in their campaign to desegregate transport." (Trueman) 

"The NAACP’s anti-lynching campaign of the 1930s combined widespread publicity about the causes and costs of lynching, a successful drive to defeat Supreme Court nominee John J. Parker for his white supremacist and anti-union views and then defeat senators who voted for confirmation, and a skillful effort to lobby Congress and the Roosevelt administration to pass a federal anti-lynching law. Southern senators filibustered, but they could not prevent the formation of a national consensus against lynching; by 1938 the number of lynchings declined steeply... the NAACP emerged from the campaign as the most influential civil rights organization in national politics and maintained that position through the mid-1950s. " (Janken) 

"Far more was at stake for these activists than changing the hearts of whites. When the sit-ins swept Atlanta in 1960, protesters’ demands included jobs, health care, reform of the police and criminal justice system, education, and the vote." (Janken) 

"Malcolm X proposed to internationalize the black American freedom struggle and to link it with liberation movements in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Thus the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s was not concerned exclusively with interracial cooperation or segregation and discrimination as a character issue." (Janken) 

"Malcolm rejected integration with white America as a worthwhile aim (deriding it as "coffee with a cracker") and particularly opposed non-violence as a means of attaining it. "That's what you mean by non-violent," he said, "be defenseless." (PBS) 

"King himself took the higher road, rarely criticizing Malcolm but also refusing to publicly debate him. King would not debate, his secretary told Malcolm, because 'he has always considered his work in a positive action framework rather than engaging in consistent negative debate.'" (PBS) 

"He accepted an invitation from the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee to speak in Selma, Alabama, and had conciliatory words for Coretta Scott King, whose husband was then in jail. 'I want Dr. King to know that I didn't come to Selma to make his job difficult,' Malcolm said. 'If the white people realize what the alternative is, perhaps they will be more willing to hear Dr. King.'" (PBS) 

Works Cited 

Janken, Kenneth R. "The Civil Rights Movement: 1919-1960." TeacherServe. National Humanities Center, n.d. Web. 13 Apr. 2014. <http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/freedom/1917beyond/essays/crm.htm>. 

PBS. PBS, n.d. Web. 12 Apr. 2014. <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/malcolmx/peopleevents/e_civilrights.html>. 

Trueman, Chris. "Martin Luther King." History Learning Site. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Apr. 2014. <http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/martin_luther_king.htm>. 

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