Finishing this week with only 1 week before AP testing starts, I’m beginning to have a panic attack because the tests will be incredibly hard and drawn out.. why do they have to be all in like a 2 week period?.. it makes literally no sense.. thanks college board.
This week I managed to read close to 200 pages by finishing Al Capone does my shirts and starting Having our Say. I didn’t get to read much of either book at home throughout the week because I was occupied with 30 pages for an apush chapter and had Band UIL rehearsal for most of the 4 day week. However, I was able to knock out Al Capone does my shirts with an hour of reading on Friday and got to page 82 in Having Our Say. Out of the 70 mins of in class reading time I got through 72 pages between reading both books. I was truly inspired by both Bessy and Sadie’s optimism and strength in Having our Say so I wanted to learn more about the history many African American women like themselves lived through to find equality in a world against such thing.
In Having our Say, both sisters are faced with the challenge of being both African American and female in a time when Civil Rights and Women’s rights were just gaining real attention and importance socially and politically. To be both a segregated majority and an unequal, yet completely the same, human in the eyes of the US government, Women like Sadie and Bessy faced oppression and abuse throughout their entire lifes that not many women on this planet today can relate to. The push for equal rights for Women and African Americans started to gain support with Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation proclamation in 1863 and the Seneca Falls convention in 1848 within only 15 years of each other. However, to most African American women during the 20th century, feminism came after racial equality as “it seemed to me that no matter how much I had to put up with as a woman, the bigger problem was being colored”(part 5, chap 2). In fact it took nearly 100 years after the beginning of the Women’s rights movement for an organization solely for African American women to be created. The National Council for Negro Women created in 1935 helped to shed light on the job discrimination, racism, and sexism women like Sadie and Bessy experienced. For African Americans of all genders “”education” became the rallying cry of those seeking to improve the lot of former slaves” and gain degrees and middle class jobs (Part 3, page 39).
After flipping through TV channels I came across a series on the History of Jazz and found Ella Fitzgerald, a famous African American Jazz singer who, despite her fame and talent, was still segregated through Jim Crow laws for color. Ella experienced being the only African American women on her tours, giving her no special accommodations for her gender because of her colors. At times Ella was forced to sleep in different hotels besides the ones she was performing at because the owners did not want to alert the guests. Ella produced some of the most popular music of the 50’s and her documentary and life story can be seen here.
Book Blog 2016 