Other Perspective of the US

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/28/what-the-world-thinks-of-us_n_1631833.html

Before watching this video, I never really thought about what other countries thought of the United States. In a way I kind of assumed that other countries wanted to be just like us because of the fact that we have so much freedom. As a citizen I don’t have to worry about fighting for my right, I don’t have to worry about whether or not my family will make it through a night. My worries compared to some of other countries, are nothing but little petty thoughts. This video has showed me that not everybody shares my views on America. It was kind of of shocking to see how many countries actually looked down upon us. This video has really showed me that the US isn’t a country that is as well loved as I thought it would be. 

Chapter 30

Chapter 30 contained a lot of new information, but it did click in my head. Growing up I’ve always heard about the drama surrounding Clinton’s presidency, I grew up learning about the war going on in the Middle East, but I never really understood what was really going on. I guess growing up history was a class that I just slid by in. Now after reading chapter 30, I felt like I learned a lifetime of information in the forty-five minutes that took me to read this chapter.

            The most interesting thing about this chapter was the fact that the United States Military was involved everywhere. In this chapter I found out that the US military was in Nicaragua, Cuba, Vietnam, Honduras, Costa Rica, Afghanistan, etc. It’s crazy to think that our military was all over the country and now I understand why the US is thought to have one of the strongest armed force. It makes me think back to the recent senate debate as to whether or not we should send armed forces to Syria. I don’t think that it was a smart decision to have our forces to be spread out so much and I guess congress didn’t want to make the same mistake twice. They would rather stay out of other people’s issue so that our armed forces could be used where they are needed. It was also interesting to read about why the war in the Middle East is going on, when the Twin Towers were struck on September 11, I was in the third grade. I had no idea that it was a terrorist attack and I could not comprehend why it was such a big deal, and then growing up we learned about why we are still in the Middle East still fighting. Reading this chapter has made me understand why it started in the first place. The good thing about history is the fact that you will always learn something new everyday.

Chapter 29: A Time of Upheaval

       Reading this chapter has helped me to comprehend all the things I didn’t understand prior to this class. There were things like the Watergate scandal that I have heard about before but I have never understood. So now that I actually understand what really happened during the Watergate scandal, it makes me question the true intentions of some of our presidents. I’m pretty sure if Nixon didn’t worry too much about losing the election and if he actually paid attention to what the people needed, he wouldn’t have had to resort to his tactics. It’s crazy to think that one man’s insecurities lead to such a big reveal. Reading this section did make me wonder how the law would work against our presidents. I know that Nixon was not impeached because he resigned, but what does impeachment involve? It seems like Nixon got the better end of the stick, because the other people involved either went to jail or they fined.

            This chapter was also really interesting because it’s in a time era that is familiar to this generation, yet it is still something completely different than my generation. Reading about the hippies and the Woodstock concerts makes me think about how different people are in this generation. We don’t have people that revolt against violence; instead we are stuck in a society that is filled with gang violence and terror. The only thing that I can really be proud of is that fact that our generation is filled with acceptance.  When gay marriage was legalized, I was pretty excited because I know how long the LGBT community has been fighting for their right to marry and be happy. I can’t wait to see how the world will change in the next 50 years.

Primary Sources

Testimony of Fannie Lou Hamer
Credentials Committee, National Democratic Convention
Atlantic City, NJ
August 22, 1964

Mr. Chairman, and the Credentials Committee, my name is Mrs. Fanny Lou Hamer, and I live at 626 East Lafayette Street, Ruleville, Mississippi, Sunflower County, the home of Senator James O. Eastland, and Senator Stennis.
It was the 31st of August in 1962 that 18 of us traveled 26 miles to the country courthouse in Indianola to try to register to try to become first-class citizens. We was met in Indianola by policemen, Highway Patrolmens and they only allowed two of us in to take the literacy test at the time.
After we had taken this test and started back to Ruleville, we was held up by the City Police and the State Highway Patrolmen and carried back to Indianola where the bus driver was charged that day with driving a bus the wrong color.
After we paid the fine among us, we continued on to Ruleville, and Reverend Jeff Sunny carried me four miles in the rural area to where I had worked as a timekeeper and sharecropper for 18 years. I was met there by my children, who told me that the plantation owner was angry because I had gone down to try to register. After they told me, my husband came, and said that the plantation owner was raising cain because I had tired to register, and before he quit talking the plantation owner came, and said, "Fanny Lou, do you know — did Pap tell you what I said?"
And I said, "Yes, sir. "
He said, "I mean that" He said, "If you don't go down and withdraw your registration, you will have to leave." [He] said, " Then if you go down and withdraw," he said, "you still might have to go because we are not ready for that in Mississippi."
And I addressed him and told him and said, "I didn't try to register for you. I tried to register for myself." I had to leave that same night.
On the 10th of September 1962, 16 bullets was fired into the home of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Tucker for me. That same night two girls were shot in Ruleville, Mississippi. Also Mr. Joe McDonald's house was shot in.
And June the 9th, 1963, I had attended a voter registration workshop; was returning back to Mississippi. Ten of us was traveling by the Continental Trailway bus. When we got to Winona, Mississippi, which is Montgomery County, four of the people got off to use the washroom, and two of the people — to use the restaurant  — two of the people wanted to use the washroom.
The four people that had gone in to use the restaurant was ordered out. During this time I was on the bus. But when I looked through the window and saw they had rushed out I got off of the bus to see what had happened. And one of the ladies said, "It was a State Highway Patrolman and a Chief of Police ordered us out."
I got back on the bus and one of the persons had used the washroom got back on the bus, too. As soon as I was seated on the bus, I saw when they began to get the five people in a Highway Patrolman's car. I stepped off of the bus to see what was happening and somebody screamed from the car that the five workers was in, and said, "Get that one there." When I went to get in the car, when the man told me I was under arrest, he kicked me.
I was carried to the county jail and put in the booking room. They left some of the people in the booking room and began to place us in cells. I was placed in a cell with a young woman called Miss Euvester Simpson. After I was placed in the cell I began to hear sounds of licks and screams, I could hear the sounds of licks and horrible screams. And I could hear somebody say, "Can you say, 'yes, sir,' nigger? Can you say 'yes, sir'?" And they would say other horrible names.
She would say, "Yes, I can say 'yes, sir.'"
"So, well, say it."
She said, "I don't know you well enough."
They beat her, I don't know how long. And after a while she began to pray, and asked God to have mercy on those people.
And it wasn't too long before three white men came to my cell. One of these men was a State Highway Patrolman and he asked me where I was from. I told him Ruleville and he said, "We are going to check this."
They left my cell and it wasn't too long before they came back. He said, "You are from Ruleville all right," and he used a curse word. And he said, "We are going to make you wish you was dead."
I was carried out of that cell into another cell where they had two Negro prisoners. The State Highway Patrolmen ordered the first Negro to take the blackjack. The first Negro prisoner ordered me, by orders from the State Highway Patrolman, for me to lay down on a bunk bed on my face. I laid on my face and the first Negro began to beat. I was beat by the first Negro until he was exhausted. I was holding my hands behind me at that time on my left side, because I suffered from polio when I was six years old.
After the first Negro had beat until he was exhausted, the State Highway Patrolman ordered the second Negro to take the blackjack. The second Negro began to beat and I began to work my feet, and the State Highway Patrolman ordered the first Negro who had beat me to sit on my feet — to keep me from working my feet. I began to scream and one white man got up and began to beat me in my head and tell me to hush.
One white man — my dress had worked up high — he walked over and pulled my dress — I pulled my dress down and he pulled my dress back up.
I was in jail when Medgar Evers was murdered.
All of this is on account of we want to register, to become first-class citizens. And if the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?

Thank you.

 http://www.crmvet.org/nars/narshome.htm

I'll Never Forget Alabama Law
William "Meatball" Douthard (1947- 1981)

Originally published in The Liberal News, February-March 1965

[William Douthard was a CORE and SCLC activist in Alabama 1961-1964.]

The Summer of 1963 was very hot in the South, especially Gadsden, a northern Alabama city of 75,000 of which 28-30,000 are Negroes. It was there that local and state law enforcement officers waged their most vicious and brutal assault upon negroes protesting the inaccessibility of public facilities, voting rights and public accommodations in their city.
It was there the "cattle prod," a battery powered instrument used in most stockyards, capable of rendering a shock from 18-24 volts, was introduced as a weapon against civil rights demonstrators. It was there the theory of brutally beating Negroes in large numbers as a means of creating a blanket of fear in the community was initiated in the grandest of Southern style.
It was there that two CORE. field secretaries and three field representatives (myself and one of the latter) along with staff personnel of SNCC and SCLC learned the viciousness directed at Negroes seeking their rights.
I was relegated the task of directing the demonstrations which attempted to illustrate basic and constitutional rights denied Negroes in that city. From June 11-August 5, we demonstrated almost daily in an effort to bring the town to recognize the justice in our demands and the injustice of their denials. And in those weeks, I saw men, women, and children senselessly beaten without provocation, and then jailed for daring to ask for what was already theirs.
Vividly I remember the night of June 19, when over 500 Negroes, men, women, and children, assembled on the grounds of the County Courthouse and jail, to hold a vigil of prayer in protest of the arrest of some 600 students and adults the previous day. While watching from my top floor cell, I saw over 300 law officers of the city, county and state surround the protesters and begin their systematic beating of all. As the Negroes broke and ran they were chased on foot and in cars, overtaken and beaten again.
Leaving jail on bond, I resumed my job as director of demonstrations. By this time the pattern of resistance had formed and we were able to anticipate actions by the city and state authorities. What we didn't expect was the continuous beatings.
After sending out some 200 pickets, I left our workshop hall and started to walk two blocks to our office. Lined along 6th Street were scores of Highway Patrol (State Troopers) cars with two to four men. Not more than 3 feet in front of me, one driver, S. Trooper Brown, got out of his car and said, "Get in the car, boy." He then walked across the street and picked up CORE. Field Secretary Marvin Robinson, and placed him in the back seat with me.
Ironically, Marvin was walking to the Federal Building to protest to the FBI a merciless beating inflicted upon me the day before by State troopers while a crowd of about 200 whites watched. After placing us in the car, Brown, while the other trooper in the car watched us, called Col. Al Lingo, Director of Alabama State Highway Patrol, and said:
"I've got Robinson and Meatball here, what do I do with them?" "Bring them in," said Lingo, to which Brown replied, "On what charges?" "Disturbing the peace or anything," said Col. Lingo. We were then taken to the back of the Etowah County Courthouse, where awaiting us stood Col. Lingo and his driver, Maj. Allen.
From our first encounter, Col. Lingo set the pace for our trip from the basement to the fourth floor via elevator. Approaching the steps to the basement of the courthouse, I was prodded by Brown. As we walked inside I mistakenly walked by the door that Lingo apparently intended for us to go through. Lingo then reached out, turned me around and slapped me through the door.
Marvin then made his mistake, by walking up the stair instead of down the corridor toward the elevator as I did. He paid for his mistake. Allen ordered Marvin down, and then began punching him in the stomach. After Allen had punched Marvin about four times, Brown began prodding him toward the elevator.
Marvin and I were then herded into the alcove opposite the elevator. Brown then began to consistently alternate in prodding Marvin and me. While leaning against the wall under pressure of the prodding, Marvin's leg gave in and he slipped to the floor. Immediately they pounced on himAllen punching and kicking while Brown held the prodder to Marvin's chest. When Marvin started yelling in pain, Allen ordered a halt until we go in the elevator so as to minimize the chances of being heard. After entering the elevator, we were constantly punched and prodded until we reached the fourth floor.
This was Gadsden, July, 1963.
http://www.crmvet.org/nars/gadsden.htm

PDF file of The Story of Kathryn Fentress – A Journey of the Spirit

http://www.crmvet.org/info/staug4.pdf

More stories located here:
http://www.crmvet.org/nars/narshome.htm

Chapter 24: The Great Depression and the New Deal

      This chapter on the great depression really hit home. It reminded me of the time Wall Street crashed and everybody kept telling me to get ready for the depression part two. After briefly reading about these people had to go through, I hope to never have to go through it. It’s saddening to read about how some people couldn’t deal with the depression and their only option was to commit suicide. Some ideas that I couldn’t stop thinking about while reading this chapter was how similar Obama is to Roosevelt. I understand that since they’re both Democrats they would both have similar ideals and passion but reading about how they both had to clean up the mess of the prior president. Obama and Roosevelt came in at a time where US citizens needed a change and being new Presidents they were expected to fix whatever problem they are dealing with now. In a way I felt like it was a bad timing for both Obama and Roosevelt to come into office because if they bring change and it doesn’t work out they would be rejected by the citizens. But if they a change that’s too big and drastic some people may not want to be involved because they’re afraid of change. Being the cleanup crew has got to be the worst situation ever because you can face backlash whether you succeed or not. 

Chapter 23

      Reading about the 1920’s has really made me think about what has changed since then and what has basically stayed the same. There were some obvious things like equality for women and the struggle that immigrants have to face that we are still struggling with, but there has been huge stepping-stones that has allowed us to get over these obstacles. Although there are a lot more opportunities for women in present day society, women still face the difficulties of equal pay and the difficulty of balancing a life at home and a life at work. I feel like its a lot harder for women present day then it was back in the 1920’s because majority of women have to play the role of both mother and father and still struggle to provide for their family. In the early 1920’s women who got pregnant were often married and they relied on their husbands to provide and work, but present day women have to worry about finding daycare and they face the issue of maternity leave. Most women would love to stay home with their newborn but realistically they know that they can’t afford to stay home, so after a few weeks these new mothers are often working.

            Another issue that seemed to have played out well is the opportunities for immigrants. In the 1920’s immigrants were looked down upon and they were not wanted but now there are programs like the Dream Act that helps support immigrants and their families. The Dream Act is an act that will help students that are not citizens of the US pay for school. It is an act that will allow students to stay in the US until they finish their degree. Its great to see such big changes and how some people’s point of view has changed.