Water Fountains

At first i was suprised that the link was to a single picture, and not a poem or short story like the other links. It took me a while to understand what the picture was showing. It shows the segregated water fountains that blacks and whites had in this time period. This made me realize that if this is the quality the white water fountains were in, then i can't imagine what the black water fountains looked like. I can't believe even the government and the people who made laws in America, allowed blatant segregation like this to take place. This also made m realize how far we have come since then. Althoug some people still have stereotypes and opinions about other races, racial segregation like this has mainly been erased in America.

"Between the World and Me"

“Between The World and Me” by Richard Wright is a poignant poem about a tar and feathering. The poem is VERY graphic and VERY gruesome. It explains, in great detail, the horrifying real occurrences of the time. While, to us, nowadays, something like this may seem like a sick and heinous crime that would never happen, but in the 1960’s, during the civil rights movement, stuff like this happened all the time. That is very scary, in and of itself. The poem describes this prejudiced crime in great detail, in my opinion, probably because the author experienced these things first hand, or knew someone else who experienced these things.

Granddaughter's Sled

In “Granddaughter’s Sled, the beginning tells of how old people were useless and were better off dead. But by the end they realize that old people may not be able to help do chores nor do labor, but they have something more valuable: wisdom. Wisdom is acquired from a lifetime of experience. Intelligence is knowing something because it is commonly known to be true, but wisdom is having the experience. The village would have starved to death if the grandfather hadn’t known where more grain was. Old people are great advice givers; they have lived through all the good times and bad times and know exactly what to do under certain circumstances. Elder people are not useless, people just need to learn to appreciate them for the knowledge they have.

"Between the World and Me" Response

The poem “Between the World and Me” by Richard Wright was pretty descriptive and kind of disturbing. It reminds me of several things. First, it reminds me of that AT&T commercial where it shows a scene in the future and then rewinds to another scene in the past and it goes back further and further until it shows a scene where a guy uses an AT&T phone to switch his ticket and get on a different train. Anyway, I can just picture this dude walking through the forest with all these things around him and then everything around him starts to rewind until the scene of the poem is happening, and it also just happens to be the time period where our book takes place. Anyway, in that time period racism was even more abundant than it is today and it was very common to have public killings of blacks. These were not very good things but they were what people did for fun on the weekends instead of playing COD for 5 hours in a row. They sound horrible but they were allowed and sometimes even promoted. We learned about this time period in Social Studies. I think the guy in the poem gets tar-and-feathered. I always thought that would be a fun thing t have happen but I guess it's apparently not. I guess I can cross one thing off the list of things I want to do before I die. Also, if the killing wasn't bad enough, the people also leave all their trash and litter in the forest. I guess the time period is full of jerks who kill people and leave their trash everywhere.

Grandaughter's Sled

I think the main theme of this story is relatively similar to the theme in " Between the World and Me". The man named Ivan is just foloowing the same ideas as everyione else, and bringing his elderly father into the woods to die. But when his daughter begins asking questions and finding problems with why he is doing this, he decides to return home with his father. Although the man did eventually give in to his daughters pleas, it was not the thought of leaving his father alone in the wilderness that made him return home, It was leaving his daughters sled. Often in times such as these, when adults just follow protocol and do what everyone else is doing, it takes an innocent mind, like a childs to make them realize that what they are doing is wrong. Althoug this is not exactly what happened in the story, Ivan's decision paid off in the end. The elderly man was patient and understaning when he did not get food, and contributed to the society when his chance came. From then on, because of the little girl's sled, elderly people were respected for their wisdom in their society in the story.
The idea of all people being equally respected, and understood in society, has been presented to American's before. Althoug it has not completley happened yet, American's have made progress in destroying segregation, and discrimination. Maybe we need the actions of a child to make American's realize that all people no matter what race, can contribute to society.

"Between the World and Me"

“Between the World and Me” by Richard Wright was a graphic poem about a man who was murdered and his soul left his body. I could picture it in my mind of how time turned back and he could see how he died. It was like a movie flashback. At first he was having fun, drinking and smoking, and by the end of the night he was a pile of bones and ashes. It was interesting how at first it seems like the narrator found a pile of ashes while walking in the woods, but by the end of the poem you realize that he was looking at what had been his own body. It wasn’t until I had read the poem again that I finally understood what had actually happened. The narrator kept referring to his blood as “black blood” and described how he had been hot tar and feather, then burned alive. It seems like he was a black man who had been attacked by white men who tarred and feathered him. The scene probably took place in the south then, where those events were more common when blacks and whites were segregated. To me this poem was very moving because at first glance it is just a poem of a man being killed, but it’s in the details and individual words that you finally realize exactly what kind of event had happened.

This poem by Richard Wright may mean different things to different people. It also may come across as hard to understand for some. For me, towards the beginning i didn't really understand what was happening very clearly. I knew that the character saw the remains of people that had just died. towards the end i started understanding the rest of the poem more. I realized that these people were tarred and feathered, and then tied to trees and burned. The character sort of went back in time, and experienced what these people did.
As far as relating this poem to the time period when " To Kill a Mockingbird", was written, there is only one thing i can relate this to. The time period around the 1930s, was a rough time for minorites, and they faced discrimination. The only guess i have at what the poem is describing, is a lynching of some sort. This makes sense, and relates to the overall them of the book. I have read this story before and i know that it discusses issues the rights of African Americans. In some ways i can invision the main character and narrator of this poem, as being Atticus Finch. He sees what is happening to these people, and then puts himselves in theyre shoes, and understands what they are going through. He then has the desire to help them more, and accept them as equals. This was a tough thing to do in a time period when almost no one did this.