Final Reflection

When I first entered this class, my knowledge on the civil rights movement was scarce. The names that came to my mind when I first heard the words “civil rights” on Monday were Martin Luther King Jr., and Rosa Parks. After three days my knowledge on the civil rights has expand. I learned that segregation was a big deal in the 1960s, and there were progression of events that led to the civil rights movement. From Brown versus Board of Education to the boycott in Montgomery, Alabama they were all contributing factors. The murder of Emmett Till was inhumane, the doll study in Brown versus Board of Education, and Wrights’ “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow,” all had one thing in common; they all displayed African Americans’ position in America. The case of Emmett Till was severely beaten up to the point in which his face was mutilated, and it was hard to believe that another human could’ve done it to a 14-year-old child. The doll study had many aspects to it and there was a recurring pattern of the black child choosing the white doll over the black and brown doll. Wrights’ encounter with the “white folks” ended in him getting stitches and his mom saying he oughta be lucky that he didn’t get killed. All these events displayed the blacks inferiority during this time period. I was always interested in having a class that focused on a particular part in history, and this class fulfilled that. Usually when we have a normal history class we usually just quickly go over the events during the civil rights movement, but in this class we went in-depth into the events and examined it. Overall, this was a great class and I hope that it will continue during the spring time.