Author: Dayana

05/22/11

African Burial Ground

For my extra credit I visited the African Burial Ground.

This is a picture of one of the graves.

This picture is a sample of the boxes that the bones found were buried in. This box was a mini original made in Ghana (I think! I didn’t take notes on the box :/)

It is a pretty cool place although it is not very big it also included a mini musuem. My friend and I had a lot of fun with all of the interactive activities that they had inside of the museum. My favorite activity was “Record Your Own Experience”. “Record Your Own Experience” allows you to share your museum experience through different questions that you could record your response to.  Here’s a picture of My friend Daniel and I recording what we will say to a slave if one of them were to come back alive.

It is free ! There is a suggestion box but you don’t have to put anything in there. Spend an hour with a group of friends and learn about our African ancestors. It’s an experience you won’t regret. 🙂

Website:  http://www.africanburialground.gov/ABG_Main.htm

The Address is 290 Broadway New York, NY 10007

Phone:  212-637-2019

05/15/11

Obama’s New Deal

The article that I chose is “Obama : Fix Market Regulation” from USA today. Obama came into office at a time of turmoil in our economy. This article is about how Obama and his administration are trying to set new rules and regulations to revive the economy. According to USA today McCain stated “There is a tendency for liberals to seek big government programs that sock it to American taxpayers while failing to solve the very real problems we face.” As you can see that the previous administration believed in very little regulation. Obama stated “Our free market was never meant to be a free license to take whatever you can get, however you can get it. That is why we have put in place rules of the road to make competition fair and open and honest, We have done this not to stifle, but rather to advance, prosperity and liberty.”

 

One of the new regulations that Obama have put in place since he came into office is for credit cards and those who are burdened by debt. An article from MSNBC stated “The new credit card rules… prohibit companies from giving cards to people under 21 unless they can prove they have the means to pay the debt or a parent or guardian co-signs. A customer also will have to be more than 60 days behind on a payment before seeing a rate increase on an existing balance. Even then, the lender will be required to restore the previous, lower rate if the cardholder pays the minimum balance on time for six months.”

 

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-03-27-economy-speech_N.htm

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30884011/ns/business-personal_finance/t/obama-signs-new-rules-credit-cards-law/

04/30/11

“Don’t matter what color, all that matters we gathered together”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ox0Q4YIdnGI&feature=fvwrel

 

The first video is a song originally written by Bob Dylan in the 60’s. It is a song questioning the way things are. For example, the line ‘Yes, how many years can some people exist before they’re allowed to be free ?’ is a question based on civil rights for blacks.The second video is Mosh by Eminem and it was released in 2004. Eminem in this song was trying to encourage people to go out and vote. He wanted to encourage people to try to change and challenge the politicians ( Example: Bush ) that were taking advantage of them. Mosh had more anger being shown than Blowing in the Wind. Mosh is more aggressive.

04/27/11

Practice What You Preach !

Martin Luther King wrote Letter from Birmingham Jail April 1963 while serving a nine day prison term. This letter is very famous. Martin Luther King is originally from Atlanta but in the letter he explained “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” and thats why he was in Birmingham conducting many non violent protests. Birmingham was one of the most segregated cities in the south. I title this post “Practice What you Preach” because in his letter Martin Luther King critized many clergymen for being afraid to support him and help fight for equality. A lot of white moderates and clergymen criticized what Martin was doing and they thought that he was being too extreme. They thought  that the blacks just needed to be patient and eventually there will be equality. Martin disagreed with them in his letter he stated “Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro.” Blacks were tired of waiting; they were ready to fight and the younger generation also more aggressive than before.

During the 1960’s we see a lot more school aged kids fighting for equality. It can be assumed that the rise of protesting by students has roots in the 195o’s era change. I think that many were inspired by the Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954. According to Foner, in May of 1963 when King made a bold decision to send young black school children to protest was a huge triumph for the Civil Rights Movement. Schoolchildren were beaten up by nightsticks and dogs, and sprayed by high pressure fire hoses and this caused a revulsion not only throughout Birmingham or the United States but around the world !

 

 

 

04/26/11

“Race Prejudice + Power = Racism”

I finally understand what people are talking about when they say that the system is out to get them. Institutionalized racism do exist ! Racism is not just prejudice against another race, its is about power. It is about having power, using that power and abusing it to show that the race is inferior.

 

I just wanted to share an interesting article that I found on Institutionalized Racism.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-slayton/institutional-racism_b_384359.html

 

 

04/13/11

What Happened to Rosie the Riveter?

During the 1950’s American quality of life was improving. During this period we saw the middle class grow and many people were financially stable. A big part of the affluent society of the 1950s was consumerism. With consumerism came a lot of advertisement for products. Most of those advertisement made the white male appear superior and some were even outright offensive to blacks and women.

Examples:

What happened to Rosie the Riveter? During the period of  WWII many women had factory jobs and they were supporting the family while the husband was out fight in the war. At that time womenn were doing jobs that were traditionally held by men. Just when you thought women were getting more respect and moving up in society poof and there goes an ad implying that a women can not open up a bottle of ketchup and their only job is to serve the men.

Did the affluent society only pertain to white male?

04/4/11

McCarthyism: Proof that Our Government is Run by Idiots

I am actually happy that Joseph McCarthy existed in history. He won election to the senate with an idiotic campaign where he claimed that he knew communist supporters in the United States. McCarthy’s downfall in 1954 showed that Hey! The people of the United States are not that oblivious to stupidness. I think that if McCarthy didn’t exist there will have been many other people taking advantage of the anti-communist hysteria for their own selfish benefits.

03/21/11

The Depressed Economy and Happy Food

(Picture from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.)

During the Great Depression most were very poor and could barely afford food which they needed to survive. The picture shows a very long food line in New York City. In the video I have chosen Clara who lived through the great depression showed us how her mom made pizza. On nights when mom made bread she will take a piece of the bread dough and they will have dinner for the night. Their budget conscious pizza makes my pizza look very high class. My first cooking book actually was a book full of recipes from the Great Depression era and I notice that they try to substitute anywhere they can for cheaper products and they used lard to replace butter and oil. I feel like the messages that these two sources communicate about the Depression is that although times where tough people still found away to make it thru and they looked forward to the little things like the way Clara describes about how her family gathered around the lamp.

03/21/11

FDR’s Favorite Sock Puppet : Supreme Court

February 12, 1937, New York Herald-Tribune, “Qualifying Test For Supreme Court Jobs”

Many people were very critical about the Supreme Court’s willingness to accept the New Deal. This cartoon was drawn at the time when FDR won his second term as president with a landslide victory.The cartoon shows FDR saying a command and the Supreme Court Justices abiding by what he said. The artist of the cartoon depicts the justice scales and the Constitution in the trash can.

According to Foner, “the court’s willingness to accept the New Deal marked a permanent change in judicial policy” and many begin to worry that FDR was becoming more of a dictator and making way for presidents after him to become dictators. Some felt that the court became more supportive of the New Deal because of FDR’s “court packing” proposal that he made to Congress (which was rejected). I think that some of the justices felt that FDR might replace them.

02/14/11

Grants Justify Exploitation?

This a letter from a library trustee to Andrew Carnegie asking for a grant to open a public library in Riverdale, California. According to Foner, “Carnegie dominated the steel industry and had accumulated a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars”. As we all know Carnegie gave much of his fortune away. My question is why couldn’t Carnegie also use his “hundreds of millions of dollars” to pay his workers more or  provide better working conditions for them?

Carnegie  was only one of many business employers that gave most of their fortune away but still took advantage of their employees. How are they “promoting the advancement of society” while exploiting their workers? Doesn’t their exploitation take away from the workers quality of life? I believe they could have promoted the advancement of society by letting workers organize unions and give them a safer work environment. Also, the government could have helped the workers fight for their rights more.

02/9/11

Black Sister Sit Down and Rest Your Weary Legs and Heart!

The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a turning point in history. Rosa Parks was a Black Woman and she was standing up for her rights (or rather sititng down). I feel like that she  empowered other black women to continue fighting for their rights during the Civil Rights Movement.

02/9/11

“Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin. “

The David Blight book sound very interesting because it sound like a different book that’s not only expressing different views but also questioning them. Its a book about the story behind a story. I think that anyone reading the book will benefit from it because they might learn something new and change their perspective on what really happened during the Civil war. From the reading the book review I realized that memory is a very important part of history. For example, before books history was passed down from generation to generation through stories that were  told from memory.

I believe that all shared experiences are remembered in different ways. For example, the war in Vietnam. Some people might say that the war was justified but others will say that it was  not only a waste of money and time but many lives were lost unnecessarily. Also, one can say that the war in Vietnam was worth it because it showed that the US was not a force to be reckoned with.  The war in Vietnam was politically motivated because it was during the time of the Cold War. During that time there was a lot of political tension between the communist and democratic countries.

Afterthoughts:One of the main points of the book review is there are different memories of the Civil War. In these memories some facts were suppressed and others facts were turned simply into something that couldn’t be further from the truth. Since “memory is a product of history” is history just simply a figment of our imagination since its building blocks are made up?

Citations:
Title is a quote from Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams.

02/2/11

Privacy….What Privacy?!

Uncle Sam must be out of his mind! He reads my emails, listens to my phone conversations and now he wants to record my Twitter post????

The government regulates almost every aspect of our lives in one way or another. Isn’t that enough? Twitter is a place where people vent, share useless information about everything and nothing, and what they are doing at the moment. Twitter for the most part is public and almost anyone can view a person’s tweet unless its private, which don’t happen often. Just cause one is willing to share a tweet like ” I am watching Zack and Cody !”  with the twitter world that does not mean they want a historian from the year 3000 reading it ! What happens on Twitter in 2011 stay on Twitter in 2011!

Technology keeps on developing and changing. This (forever being renewed) technology is providing evidence for future historians about our way of life during this present time in ways that we couldn’t even begin to imagine ten years ago. Its cool for current historians to find unique meaningful messages on walls of caves or tombs and other artifacts from centuries ago. Too bad for future historians it will be less cool because instead they will find an archive full of twitter messages stating what a person had for breakfast and “failed tomato sandwiches”. Thats not exactly the way I want the future to learn about the present.

TWEETS AS HISTORICAL EVIDENCE : FAIL !

Mind Your Business Uncle Sam !