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I would like to thank everybody who read and commented on my blog. This was a fun, and very educational class. I have learned a great deal. I also was impressed with all the other student's blogs, and how they were well written, well design, and how knowledgeable many of the students were. I loved reading the blogs, and wish I had more time to comment. 

I would also like to thank Professor Murdaco for his guidance and support throughout the course. I hope everyone enjoyed the class as much as I did. I'll keep reading the blogs.

Thank you everybody and good luck.

Lidia

Barack Obama Inauguration: President Takes The Oath Of Office For Second Time

"Turning the page on years of war and recession, President Barack Obama summoned a divided nation Monday to act with "passion and dedication" to broaden equality and prosperity at home, nurture democracy around the world and combat global warming as he embarked on a second term before a vast and cheering crowd that spilled down the historic National Mall."

(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/22/barack-obama-inauguration_n_2524251.html)

President Barack Obama took the Oath for Office for the second time this past Monday, January 21, 2013. Monday was Martin Luther King Day, making this historical event even more meaningful. Martin Luther King died fighting for African American's equality, and having an African American President for two terms, is a sign growth.

 Having President Obama talk about gay rights in his speech was also a great sign that things are changing for the better, and people are becoming more accepting. I was very surprised, proud and an emotional mess. 

President Obama has a lot of problems to solve, and it is going to continue to be a challenge. In his speech he talked about broadening equality. It made me think of Du Boise and Hughes and how they would agree that the word, “broaden” was adequate. 

My hope is that the President can find a way to work with Congress, and that the parties get somewhat unified to make the improvements that we desperately need.

Migrant Mother

The photograph that has become known as "Migrant Mother" is one of a series of photographs that Dorothea Lange made in February or March of 1936 in Nipomo, California. Lange was concluding a month's trip photographing migratory farm labor around the state for what was then the Resettlement Administration. In 1960, Lange gave this account of the experience:

I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean- to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it. (From: Popular Photography, Feb. 1960).
Source

      This picture taken by Dorothea Lange showing a mother with her four children destitute, migrating somewhere in, America is the picture of The Great Depression. People like her lost everything and ended up trying to find a place where they could find work, housing, or any kind of help. 

      This picture was taken in 1936, but if a photographer would want to he or she could find a woman or even just the children, in the same situation today, in several places around the world. It is wonderful that America overcame this horrendous crisis, but people should remember that many other countries did not have the same faith. The Mexican population for instance, which is America's neighbor, have people young and old in the same kind of situation, and without much hope for to future either. In Brazil, where I am from,  there are areas where children live in the streets as beggars and one can find houses made of wood and garbage where families who can't afford housing live. 

      Looking at the picture of this poor woman in this horrible situation makes me weep. And I wonder how can some Americans be so hateful agains immigrants, usually Latinos, who are just poor souls, much more like this woman. I would think that a horrible  tragedy like this would teach people to be more empathetic, want to help out, and remember that something like this can happen to anyone. Life is strange and money is volatile. The most important lesson I personally learned, working with homeless people, with battered women hidden in shelters, and the elderly is that we are all the same. We are all people with the same feelings, and we all want the same things.    

The Great Depression

As John Steinbeck wrote in his 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath:

"And then the dispossessed were drawn west- from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out, tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless - restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do - to lift, to push, to pull, to pick, to cut - anything, any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying for work, for food, and most of all for land."

(http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/depression/dustbowl.htm)

The Great Depression started in 1930 when president Hoover was president, and as it was said in The Progressive Era Lecture, he’s strategy  “was to do nothing basically and let the market work itself out.” But that attitude only helped the Depression intensify, and become harder to defy as it only ended around 1939. The causes of the Great Depression are still being debated, but one fact everyone agrees with is that there were several causes that happened simultaneously. It's interesting that the causes that many point out, seems to be very similar to the causes that caused the economic crisis of the moment. Causes that are usually listed are: over production, over spending, bank failure, and the stock market crashing.

 The Great Depression caused masses of people to loose all of their assets, and that included the very wealthy, as well as the poorest of the poor. Many companies went out of business, and a great number of people lost their jobs. There were an overwhelming mass of people that were left without food, housing and medical care and even schools. Many of these unfortunate people were children and elderly.

Droughts and dust storms became much worse during the Great Depression, forcing farmer to abandon their land and try to find work in other parts of the country, which was already overwhelmed with people. In response to this devastating crisis, Franklin D. Roosevelt had to create new social institutions, and change American politics in order to make the Federal State take more responsibilities to help the people in need.

The Great Depression was the worst economic crisis America has seeing, and we were all very scared that it was going to happen again in 2009. There is always going to be debates for the causes and the way President Obama handle this last crisis, but it seems that now at east we know it is not going to be another Great Depression. The economics of the country it is not in good shape though, and it is sad that America did not learn with its mistake, since the causes of The Great Depression look a lot similar to this last crisis’. We should be getting smarter and learn with history, since that is a way to honor the people who died and suffer through those horrible times. Let a Great Depression never happen again. 

Franklin D. Roosevelt

"The one supreme objective for the future, which we discussed for each Nation individually, and for all the United Nations, can be summed up in one word: Security.

And that means not only physical security which provides safety from attacks by aggressors. It means also economic security, social security, moral security—in a family of Nations."

Franklin D. Roosevelt 

Franklin D. Roosevelt in his 1944 State of the Union Address declared an Economic Bill of Rights. President Roosevelt called it a  “second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.” Very different from the first Bill of Rights since includes education, medical care, housing, and job rights.

Roosevelt was the president during the worst Depression in the History of this country, and he expressed great worries for the less fortunate or as he puts it,  “forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid. ”Roosevelt was able to create benefits that the American people still have today. With Roosevelt’s New Deal, it became a Federal obligation to assure a minimum wage, social security, to limit to hours of labor , it gave people the right to form and join unions, and more.   

President Roosevelt also increasingly raised taxes, during his presidency, beginning with the wealthiest of the population. That important, since the necessity to built schools, new houses, create jobs, and provide medical care needed to be funded.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt had his heart set in the right place, and accomplished a great deal, especially taking the time when he was president in consideration. He believes were contrary to the Social Darwinists. He believed that people who need a hand should be helped by the ones who have in abundance. And Also, that it was the Federal Government’s responsibility to “prevent the concentration of wealth in large monopolies” (prof. Murdaco.)  As it was discussed on The Progressive Era lecture, the role of the Government in job creation, education, housing, and medical care are still being debated today, but  there is no debate over president Roosevelt’s contributions to the country. 

Booker T. Washington

Booker T. Washington was an important and inspiring African American figure. He was born a slave in Virginia in 1856, and with a lot of effort put himself through school to become a teacher. He founded the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, an African American University.

He was an important business and political figure as a writer and advisor. He was criticized, especially by W.E.B. DuBois, for submission and silence to the African American’s civil and political rights. But to this day he remains one inspiration man, who made a great impact and who worked to improve African Americans to his death in 1915, while still head of Tuskegee Institute. 

Victorious Soldiers Return

Alfred R. Waud.
Mustered Out.
Little Rock, Arkansas, April 20, 1865.

This drawing by Alfred Waud shows the return of the African American Soldiers and the joyful reception by their families. It is such a happy drawing, and it brought tears to my eyes. One can only imagine how wonderful happy returns like this one must have been, and how incredible it must have felt for the soldiers after such a horrific war, and to the families who also had to endure in a different way. And to think of the significant impact this war had for these communities, it makes the drawing even more profound.