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Author Archives: rbanik
Posts: 6 (archived below)
Comments: 9
Screenplay: The Great American Journey of Marcus Washington
This is a story about a young boy named Marcus who grows up in northern Mississippi during the late 1800s. Marcus represents the voice of Southern working-class blacks, who despite the promises made by government and civil activists, realizes that everyday is a struggle for survival for him and his family. In living a life of near poverty, he is unable to develop into a functioning member of society and instead lives a very simple working life.
The latter part of the movie is centered around the stockyards of Chicago, Illinois where Marcus witnesses first-hand the hardships of life in the meatpacking district.
Posted in 1900-1916
Tagged Chicago, Illinois, muckracking, slavery, stockyards
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Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle
The Jungle is a 1906 novel written by journalist Upton Sinclair. Sinclair wrote the novel to highlight the plight of the working class and to show the corruption of the American meatpacking industry during the early-20th century. The novel depicts in harsh poverty, absence of social programs, unpleasant living and working conditions, and hopelessness prevalent among the working class, which is contrasted with the deeply-rooted corruption on the part of those in power.
The book was a key piece of literature that led to the Food and Drug Act and helped to shine light on the terrible conditions in the Chicago meat-packing district.
Posted in Uncategorized
3 Comments
The Baby Boom (1946-1964)
Young males returning to the United States, Canada, and Australia following tours of duty overseas during World War II began families, which brought about a significant number of new children into the world. This dramatic increase in the number of births from 1946 to 1964 (1947 to 1966 in Canada and 1946-1961 in Australia) is called the Baby Boom.
In the United States, approximately 79 million babies were born during the Baby Boom. Much of this cohort of nineteen years (1946-1964) grew up with Woodstock, the Vietnam War, and John F. Kennedy as president; thus they had major implications on the social and cultural developments during those decades. Baby Boomers are now middle age and entering senior years. In the economy, many are now retiring and leaving the labor force.
(US birth rate (births per 1000 population) <U.S.BirthRate.1909.2003.png>
Posted in 1945-1953, 1953-1960, 1960-1968, June 21 assignment
Tagged 1946, 1964, Baby Boom, Post WWII Events
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Asian American Movement of the 1960s (and 1970s)
Richard Aoki (1938 – 15 March 2009) was an American civil rights activist and was one of the first members of the Black Panther Party.
The Asian American movement began in the late 1960s and early 1970s during one of the most tumultuous eras in post-WW2 history. In the Bay Area, the Year 1968 marked a wave of Asian American activity. Three distinct Bay Area events earmarked the beginning of this local movement.
1. The 1968 formation of the Asian American Political Alliance in Berkeley.
2. The 1968 San Francisco State University and 1969 UC Berkeley Third World Liberation Strikes.
3. The International Hotel tenants’ first eviction notice in December 1968.
As with other social movements of the 1960s, the Asian American Movement owes a debt of gratitude to the Civil Rights movement for exposing the gap between the country’s image of itself and reality of how it treats its citizens: Instead of a land of equality where a person could achieve success trough individual effort, the United States was criticized as a land of inequality where racial discrimination degraded African Americans and other people of color. In fact, the AAPA got its roots from the Black Power movement.
Asian Americans crossed the color line to embrace the ideals of the civil rights movement. Out of a sense of moral outrage, they participated in efforts to eliminate racial discrimination and segregation of blacks from the rest of society. But in working to attain legal rights for African Americans, they came to realize that the struggle for social justice in America was more than an African American and European American issue; it involved other people of color. Asian Americans too faced discrimination ad prejudice; as a group, they too had been victims of institutionalized racism and had been excluded from mainstream society.
Below is a poem that was found while researching the Asian American movement. <http://aam1968.blogspot.com/>
You Hadda Be There.
The Sixties and Seventies, I mean.
You had to be there, sensing the world turning upside down.
It wasn’t remote or academic at all.
On our TVs and in our newspapers we witnessed Asian faces rising up to finish off the latest colonial occupation.
An entire quarter of humanity,
once dismissed as clinging to a colorful past
while waiting for some foreign missionary power to take it under its protection,
had now stood up,
an enormous Red banner of self-determination.
Every American guy graduating high school stared right into the gun barrel of the military draft
and had to decide for himself what the world was about
and where he stood in it.
Political assassinations that shocked the nation and sparked frightening riots happened right here in our own cities.
There was no irony in a militant Black Power salute
or a gentle wave of “Peace, man”.
It was real.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged 1960s, 1970s, Asian American Movement, Asian American Political Alliance, Civil Rights Movement, Richard Aoki, you hadda be there
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Nelson Mandela freed.
This is original BBC content–taken from YouTube.com–of an interview done with Nelson Mandela after his release on February 11, 1990. This marked one of the most significant changes in political history for South Africa; much of the world was also affected by this event. Four years later, Mandela became president in the first ever democratic election in South Africa, ending a system of state-sponsored racial inequality.
Norman Borlaug: He Fed The World
This picture is taken from the Dallas Observer News Blog. It’s a rather famous autographed picture of Norman from his younger days working/researching in the fields. <borlaug-young.gif> or <http://www.agbioworld.org/images/borlaug-young.gif>
The man in the picture, the agricultural scientist Dr. Norman Borlaug, died on September 13, 2009 at the age of 95. It was Dr. Borlaug’s work in creating high-yield crop varieties and improving agriculture in the Third World–in villages across Mexico, India, Africa and countless others–that brought him the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal, and the Padma Vibhusham, India’s second highest civilian honor.
He spent his life fighting famine in developing nations. He is often referred to as the father of the “green revolution” and credited with saving 1 billion lives from famine. His contributions, though forgotten (or often not even realized) in developed nations, will continue to have ever-lasting effects for lifetimes to come all over the world; particularly in such developing nations which comprise South Asia.
Posted in 1969-1988, 2001-present
Tagged 1970, Borlaug, crop yields, Fed the world, Nobel Prize Winner, Norman, Norman Borlaug
1 Comment