responses

Between the World and Me

While reading this poem, I felt very emotional. It’s very upsetting that people did these things to one another. Especially since they found it to be entertaining. The people gathered around with their snacks, all dressed up to watch a man be humiliated and brutally killed. While reading this poem, I thought of the movie, The Green Mile. Sure, the person being killed may have done something horrible, but isn’t being murdered bad enough? Do they really need to be publicly slaughtered? In the Green Mile, the people gathered and cheered while watching criminals (and an innocent man) be electrocuted. This is a lot like what happened in this poem. I found it surprising that people could even bare to witness this. I know that I personally, would not even want to see this. Between the World and Me has made we see history in a very different way.



Granddaughter’s Sled

This short story surprised me. I couldn’t believe that people treated the elderly that way, even if it was only a tale. The author makes a great point. The old people in our society are extremely valuable and deserve respect. Why should they be forgotten and left to die just because they are unable to do what they were once able to as far as physical, and often mental activities go? The elderly have seen a whole life time, and whole chunk of history that most of us were not around to witness. They know what needs to change and what is right. They know how to raise a family, plant a victory garden, or, as is Granddaughter’s Sled, end a famine. I don’t understand why you would ever want to do this to someone, especially if they worked hard to take care of you your whole life. I believe that they deserve to be repaid for that.



Water Fountain

This photo proves that United States has really changed in the last few decades. It is shocking that people treated each other so badly. The fact that white and black people were so prejudice against one another that they could not even drink from the same water fountain is very unfortunate. I remember learning about this in elementary school each for the first time in second grade. I was very surprised at this, but to young to understand how much this really affected society. I am very happy that some brave individuals were able to change these horrible ways. Today, black and white people share everything and we’ve come to understand that we are all people, despite our skin color. It’s very sad that people could have so much hated, and I hope we can continue to live together peacefully.






Separate Entrances


Like the Water Fountains photo, the Separate Entrances photo reminds us of the unfortunate past of our country. We can see how our country singled out differences, and tried to keep the races separate. Why would people go through all of this trouble to keep the black and white people from breathing the same air? I personally think that building separate bathrooms, doors, water fountains, etc is ridiculous. What did the people think? If a black person walked through the same door as a white person, what would happen? We do it today, and it has yet to affect anyone. The whole, thing seems childish and immature to me. It’s upsetting that people couldn’t learn to work together, and that race didn’t matter. The United States is known as the “Melting Pot” today. It’s a good thing that we’ve learned how ridiculously we acted, otherwise we would have to have 6 or 7 entrances by now.



Rosewood Massacre


I don’t understand why people kill. It doesn’t ever solve any problems. The person you dislike is dead now, but you’re probably on your way to jail and eventually, Hell. Killing seems pointless to me. This article is very eye-opening. First of all that these six people were killed, and second that this whole thing was completely ignored. Everyone just looked in the other direction, and overlooked the six lives that were lost. It was reported, but not documented by many. That means that everyone was just planning on forgetting the whole thing. They didn’t want to be bothered with this. It’s very unfortunate that this massacre went unmentioned until 1980. It seems as if no one took anything from this. No one realized how stupid they had all been acting. It people weren’t so obsessed with race, those people would never have been killed that day. It’s disappointing to know that the Rosewood Massacre was not spoken about for 57 years, and segregation was nt put to an end for many more years after that. You would think something like this would make American citizens say, “Hey, maybe we can try to work together.” Or “Maybe skin color doesn’t matter; there are both black and white murderers out there.” But they didn’t. Segregation went on for far too long.