CJ's Blog

Brown v. the Board of Education was a groundbreaking case. Brown's case was a 14th amendment case about how schools were segregated and black schools and white schools weren't equal. The states had to make these schools equal because in the 14th amendment this is necessary. Brown had an argument based in law, but it can also have an economic base as well. Thinking in the way of how black people could contribute to society with the same education as whites. This makes the economy better and gives black people what they want. Everyone wants to be educated equally in this time. According to the board of education, blacks were so far behind whites in their education that there was no way they would catch up in time to be in the same schools. They also claimed that a stigma would become very prevalent. A stigma that black kids are not smart enough to be in the same classrooms. They said that black children would get bullied, resulting in poor self esteem.  Education is one of the m...

Lynching was the act of hanging somebody from a tree. From 1877-1950 white people saw this as a suitable punishment for 3,959 black people. The victims of Lynching were killed because they had committed some type of social transgression, like bumping into a white woman, or if they were accused of a crime. They were not given due process in court for real crimes. Instead, they were hung by their neck from a tree. The people who committed these barbaric acts were never charged with any crimes. In any case of lynching, the people who would lynch these people would essentially just get away with murder.                                                        Georgia had the most lynchings with 586 people killed, Mississippi followed close behind with 576 killings, and Louisiana came in 3rd with 540 total lynchings. ...

      There were many day in history that people love to forget. March 9th, 1965 or  Bloody Sunday  was one of these infamous days. It began with a peaceful march by the Southern Christian Leadership Council, or SCLC , along with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC . These African American people with the help of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who had met with president Lyndon B. Johnson a few days before to discuss his voting rights act was forced to stay in Atlanta where he would meet with the other marchers somewhere along their 54 mile journey from Selma, Alabama to the states capital Montgomery.  The March took place on March 9th with around 700 people in attendance. Led by Hosea Williams of the SCLC and John Lewis of SNCC, the peaceful participants of the march began to walk up a very famous bridge with the name of a famous confederate and well known Grand Dragon of the KKK, Edmund Pettus. They didn't know that this bridge would be gro...

Plessy v. Ferguson was an argument from a black male who entered a whites only train car. Technically he was 1/8th black making him a black man in an all whites train car, but also this was something that needed to happen in order for segregation to come to a halt. The hate and cruelty given to black people at this time was wrong. Giving another race, that was oppressed constantly, an inferior train car is wrong. So no matter how wrong the law is it was still broken. Being 1/8th black as little as it is would technically make him a black man. So he was in the wrong lawfully, but morally he was not. The lawyers who paid him to take this charge and tried to make sure that they won this case based on his rights, were trying to invoke change in their society and trying to make a better world where people are not separate, but they're together and equal. They are pushing for an integrated society. The real fight wasn't for this integrated society though. The real fight and the more ...

cGone With The Wind Part 1, captures the civil war from the perspective of a rich southern girl. This movie was very historically accurate when it came to certain parts of the movie, but when the character known as Prissy comes onscreen there is a very different type of feeling. This character was a house slave that belonged to our main character Scarlett O'Hara. She was portrayed as a dim witted house slave who couldn't keep control of her emotions. She became a character that I found a little disrespectful to the black community. The movie was made in 1939 so the basic explanation for this was that things change, but I think that in reality this is just an excuse for things that are old and slightly racist or things that are outright racist to be considered alright for public viewing because people are scared of change. We know they were capable of making Prissy a smarter person because the character of Mammy, played by Hattie McDaniel, is a smart, strong, and somewhat author...

    John Mann was charged for shooting a slave woman named Lydia who wasn't his property, but she was on loan to him. He was charged with assault and fined $10. Lydia survived this shooting and she went back to her owner, but the case was not finished. John Mann said that he could do whatever he wants with his property and that he deserves his $10 back. The state claims that since it was not fully his property and the person who owned Lydia would have economic fallout because of this shooting that Mann was not allowed to shoot a slave he didn't fully own. Mann's argument rooted from law and from religion saying that the Lord was alright with slavery quoting a bible verse that talks about slaves and masters. They argued from law saying that a slaved that is loaned is still a slave with no rights. The reasoning on the side of Mann is not was adequate as that of the state. The one great point on the side of Mann was that technically Lydia was ru...

    I learned many things throughout the presentation of the pro and anti slavery representatives. One thing I learned was that Abraham Lincoln was both Pro-slavery and Anti-slavery in his life time. He began saying things that would resemble pro-slavery comments in public, but it seems that he said most of these things so he would gain popularity and when he was elected was when he used his power as president to create real change in the  government. I learned that there were men on both sides like Thomas Jefferson as well who was persuaded by a friend of his to enlighten himself and begin fighting for the anti-slavery movement because he wrote that all men were created equal, but he owned many slaves and heavily profited from them. He changed his mind and freed his slaves. People change throughout life and it is happened many time in history. I also learned of people who's minds were changed for the worse like John C. Calhoun who went into colle...

     My name is Zephaniah Kingsley Jr., I am a Quaker. Born in Bristol, England on December 4th 1765. I was the son of a British Loyalist, Zephaniah Kingsley Sr., who was also a Quaker from London. My father moved my family to the colony of South Carolina in 1770 when I was just 5 years old. I grew up in Charleston with my father being a successful merchant. Then the revolutionary war happened and, my father, being the loyalist he was, was forced to move our family to New Brunswick, Canada. When I was 28 years old in 1793, I moved back to Charleston where I pledged my allegiance to the United States. I moved to the southern Spanish colonies, which is now Jacksonville, Florida. I built several plantations here. I am a firm believer of polygamy and I owned around 200 slaves at once. Four of these slaves were my wives, but the only one I ever told anyone about was my wife Anna Jai. I emancipated her when she was 18 and had 4 children with her. In the Spanish Colony of Florid...

     The vandalism and destruction of Frederick Douglass' statue was a childish and pointless act. The people who committed this act may not have had political motives, but with the current social climate it is hard to think that they didn't. Personally, my thought process on this subject is that it was probably politically motivated and it was another act of racism. This has been happening all over America. Whether it is political groups. taking down statues that they find racist or insensitive or others taking down statues for their own personal motives. These acts could be that of perceived righteousness or they could be childish and racist acts by people who may not even be educated on the significance of abolitionists like Frederick Douglass.      People need to educate themselves on the significance of people before they take aggressive action like this against their memorials. Frederick Douglass was a very important figure in our history as...

     The movie Glory is a portrayal of the 54th Massachusetts infantry regiment in the Civil War. This group of men was never meant to be great. They were never meant to see combat. They were just a bunch of former slaves and freemen who believed in the cause that the North was fighting for. They were led by a man who, in his first battle was too afraid to get up after being clipped in the neck by shrapnel. They were never destined to be glorious, they weren't even supposed to get uniforms, but throughout the movie the men of the 54th Massachusetts showed everyone how much they could really bring to the table. Their story wasn't as easy as it sounds though. Even in the armies of the North A regiment of colored soldiers wasn't exactly popular. They were still not given the treatment of whites. They weren't given uniforms until the quartermaster was hounded by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the leader of the regiment, who demanded that his men be given everything a white sold...

 The video about  the Supreme Court  was mostly informational and gave a lot of insight into the way the Supreme Court works. It talked about the 9 Supreme Court Justices and their powers to change the law with every decision they make. From this video I was able to learn very many things about the Supreme Court. I learned that they get on average 100 cases every single week. Which averages out to about 7000 cases every year. Supreme Court Justices are Nominated by the acting president. They serve for life with the average time of service being 16 years even though most spend double that time as a justice. They make up the most powerful judicial body on earth and their ability to rule whether the laws should be changed or conserved gives them great power over all the people in the United States.           The Supreme Court has been protecting people under the constitution for a very long time. In that time they have made mistakes and the...