First Presentation

We are listening to a presenter discussing the rise of the Civil Rights movement. As an English teacher, I'm a bit out of my element with all the history teachers here, but here are the two things that come right to my mind when I think of the Civilr Rights movement.

Rockwell's brilliant take on Brown vs. the Board of Education

And Langston's Hughes' amazing poem called "Harlem" (often known as "A Dream Deferred.")

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Langston Hughes

Now we are discussing the Freedom Rides.

Here are a couple pictures of the buses that were bombed by hate groups.

I wonder what today's students would think of these images.

I could just imagine them thinking, wow. America was not all that different from the Middle East today.

And maybe that would be a great lesson to learn.

Provided that this is included in our history textbooks. But thanks to pressure from Texas, whose new history standards and textbooks barely mentions the term "Jim Crow," this might be something students simply don't learn about.

Now these pictures, from various Civil Rights demonstrations, might cause our current students to think, wow. America once wasn't that different from Egypt or Libya today.

And remember. Americans did this to other Americans. As radical as I think the hardcore Tea Partiers are, I could never conceive of violence like this breaking out. The Koch brothers and their ilk may want to practice genocide on the middle class, but I can't imagine actual violence like this erupting today.

And such violence and hate even happened here in MN.

The Duluth lynchings. (My mother would be quick to note that the only person who fought to free the men was a Catholic priest, who actually scaled the telephone pole in an attempt to cut them free. However, the mob subdued him.)