Last Post

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. 

Langston Hughes

My People

The night is beautiful,


So the faces of my people.



The stars are beautiful,


So the eyes of my people.



Beautiful, also, is the sun.


Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes work usually portrayed the everyday lives of working class African Americans. In My People, Hughes uses the night, the stars, and the sun to make comparison to the beauty of African Americans. Hughes was writing in a time when racism towards African American was elevated and with his beautiful, profound, insightful poem he shows his pride and his love for his people. The poem is meant to uplift and inspire his community, and it was truly a love letter. So simple and so beautiful, it is one of my favorite poems of all times.  

W.E.B. DuBois

“Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season. It is today that our best work can be done and not some future day or future year. It is today that we fit ourselves for the greater usefulness of tomorrow. Today is the seed time, now are the hours of work, and tomorrow comes the harvest and the playtime.”

W.E.B. DuBois

       William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B.) DuBois’s (1868-1963) was one of the most important African American figures in American history.  Dubois was a scholar who became the first African American to earn a Ph.D in history.  He studied in German and got his PHD in the prestigious Harvard University. In the lecture, Black Progressives and the Early Civil Rights Movement, it is discussed that he was a political activist, who sought to “expand the work of African Americans.” With that in mind, he fought for African American’s equality, for civil rights, and education. His writings inspired and confronted   the myth of white supremacy, and debunk them one at a time.” He also created intuitions and voluntary associations with the goal of mobilizing the African American Population. 

         DuBois was critical of Booker T. Washington, and publicly opposed to what he called, Washington’s submissive attitude.  Contrary to Washington DuBois  thought that African Americans should fight for their rights. He strongly believed that education was the best means to African Americans had to better themselves. He is one of the most influential African American figures in the United States then, and is still  admired today.

1870: 15th Amendment to the Constitution adopted

"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

The 15th amendment grants African American men the right to vote. It confirms that all American men has the right to vote, hold office, and specifies conditions in which are illegal to deny men to vote. It states that no men should be denied their right to vote based on race, color or being a former slave. According to ourdocuments.org, it was passed by Congress on February 26, 1869, and ratified February 3, 1870. As it was discussed in the article, the 15^th Amendment was, for the African American community, the beginning of a long and hard battle for equality and acceptance as American citizens. But it was a great victory and a profound moment in the American History.

Social Darwinism

“But, whether the law be benign or not, we must say of it, as we say of the change in the conditions of men to which we have referred: It is here; we cannot evade it; no substitutes for it have been found; and while the law may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department. We accept and welcome, therefore, as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves, great inequality of environment, the concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of a few, and the law of competition between these, as being not only beneficial, but essential for the future progress of the race” (pg. 328.)

Andrew Carnegie believed on the principles of Social Darwinism or the survival of the fittest, as he discusses in Essay. I am sure his great success coming from a poor young man to a wealthy man, who helped to revolutionize the American Industry in the 19^th Century, had something to do with his view. What he did not  recognize  was the fact that those principles only benefit a few people who had the fortune to be one of the “survivors.” It only allows people who have accumulated much much more than they can ever spend not to feel guilty about. It does not help society, since the poorest of the population being neglected and left to fend for them selves is inhumane and only contributes for a cycle of uneducated, unhealthy, unhappy population. What people call “survivor of the fittest,” it is nothing but merciless, greediness, and unkindness. How can people with good morals abandon children to fend for themselves? What kind of society would we be if we turn our backs to the elderly and the sick? There is such hatred and contempt against the underprivileged that did not ask to be in this position that sickens me. As a future Social Worker my values goes so much against these principles. My instinct is always to help the less fortunate, to empower, and inspire people to become strong and live a better life. We don’t need to compete like animals. There is enough for everybody. 

African American Soldiers

On January 1, 1863, Abraham Lincoln declared with the Emancipation Proclamation that all slaves on the Confederacy parts of the country were free. The Emancipation Proclamation also stated that slaves were free to serve in the Union army and navy. Although African Americans had been serving already, since the beginning of the war. Many thought that allowing African American men to fight in the war was a step towards equality for all. For the African American men serving had a much different meaning, since they were fighting for their own freedom.

According to the article The Civil War, there were “one out of every eight” African Americans soldiers on the Union by the end of the war. This picture they say, is significant because it shows African American soldiers standing in front of a building were slaves “were held for auction, stripped, examined, and bought and sold before interested purchasers.”

The Emancipation Proclamation

On January 1, 1863, Lincoln subjected the Emancipation Proclamation. The proclamation declared, "…all persons held as slaves within any States, or designated part of the State, the people whereof shall be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free."

 The Emancipation Proclamation only freed the slaves living in the states that were not under the Union control. The proclamation also allowed African American soldiers to fight for the Union, and that was really important to them.

It is strange to see this picture where the powerful Abraham Lincoln is writing the Emancipation Proclamation in a room full of clutter, with an old flag on the window serving as a curtain. The artist , David Gilmore Blyrthe, did have the president with his hand on a Bible, resting on a copy of the Constitution, which made the picture even more interesting.

The Second Inaugural Address

"With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations."

Abraham Lincoln was president on one of the worst, if not the worst time in the history of the United States. He took over office the first time right before the Civil War. Needless to say that that was a time of great division in the country and when fellow Americans fought against each other. We now know that that was a necessary war, but to be in the President’s position must had been a nightmare.

Lincoln was a powerful president. Besides George Washington, there has not been a more influential figure in this country’s history. As it was discussed on the Lecture, because of the overwhelming division in the country and civil war, he had to “extent the power of the executive branch.” And it is also pointed out in the Lecture that the president’s power increased by Lincoln and never decrease again.   

In Abraham Lincoln Second Inaugural Address, he spoke about the war and the affect it had in the country.  It was one of the most powerful words stated by a president, and has been inspiring people since then. In the speech he was surprisingly humble, and asks for a American union. It is a profound, but short speech, sounding more like a reflection or a sermon. It was exactly what the country needed to hear at that time. Sadly, Lincoln was assassinated shortly after his Second Inaugural Address, but his words became even more profound and powerful after his death. 

  

Racial Conditions in the North

“Race prejudice seems stronger in those states that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists, and nowhere is it more intolerant than in those states where slavery was never known. 

It is true that in the North of the Union the law allows legal marriages between Negroes and whites, but public opinion would regard a white man married to a Negro woman as disgraced, and it would be very difficult to quote an example of such an event. 

In almost all the states where slavery has been abolished, the Negroes have been given electoral rights, but they would come forward to vote at the risk of their lives. When oppressed, they can bring an action at law, but they will find only white men among their judges. It is true that laws make them eligible as jurors, but prejudice wards them off. The Negro's son is excluded from the school to which the European's child goes. In the theaters he cannot for good money buy the right to sit by his former master's side; in the hospitals he lies apart. He is allowed to worship the same God as the white man but must not pray at the same altars. He has his own clergy and churches. The gates of heaven are not closed against him, but his inequality stops only short of the boundaries of the other world. When the Negro is no more, his bones are cast aside, and some difference in condition is found even in the equality of death (Tocqueville p. 343).

Reading Tocqueville words were very alarming to me. But it makes sense, if we think about the way African Americans had to fight for equality for so many years in this country. Also, we know that mixed marriages between African Americans and whites, were not accepted since not long ago. And of course we read about the opposition to African American students to enroll in white schools and the battles people had to go through to overcome this absurdity. It was not a long time ago that African Americans suffered segregation and to this day this population suffer racial discrimination. It was interesting though that people with common sense would bravely point out the hypocrisy of the people in the North who felt so superior to the people in the South, but were not good examples of moral conduct.

Harriet Beecher Stowe's Mighty Pen

"The Book That Made This Great War"

Harriet Beecher Stowe is the author of a very influential anti-slave book called, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. According to http://harrietbeecherstowe.net, she was brought up in Connecticut, and did not see slavery growing up. When Harriet learned about the atrocities of slavery she became terrified. She was a an educated woman, who was a teacher at Hartford Female Seminary, where she first discovered her passion for writing. She wrote many essays, articles, and short stories, which were many times published, on Newspapers and journals.

Stowe started to write her most famous and controversial book Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1851. She was hired to by The National Era’s publishers to write a book that would “paint a word picture of slavery.”

Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped people understand better the realities of slavery. 

It tells a story of a slave, named Tom owned by an evil plantation owner who were used to beating and treating his slaves worst than animals. Tom is a kind man, who is loved by all the slaves in the plantation, and in the end is beaten to death by his owner.

The book became a bestseller around the world, and made Harriet Beecher Stowe famous. Because of this book many people decided to join the anti slave movement for the abolition of Slaves in America. 

Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin had such an impact that it was stated that when she met President Lincoln, he said to her, "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war."