Janet Fay Collins: The African-American Dream

Fannie Lou Hammer: Civil Rights Activist Born on October 6, 1917, the youngest of twenty children, daughter of two sharecroppers and the wife of Perry Hamer. A woman by the name of Fannie Lou Hamer was one of the history's wells- known, well-respected activist and philanthropist. March 3, 1977, was the day that the great Mrs. Hamer passed away due to cancer. She had been in and out of the hospital for a great part of her life, but this did not stop her from devoting her life to change. A close friend and colleague Andrew Young, a United States delegate to the United Nations, held Mrs. Hamer's funeral.

Anne Moody was an african american girl born in Centreville Mississippi. Moody was the oldest of eight children in her family, this gave her a lot of responsibilities as she was growing up. She had to get a job at a very young age in order to provide a source of income for her single mother who had split up with her father. Despite all that she faced as she was growing up, Moody was a straight A student in school. She was a very bright young girl that always wanted to know a lot more about the things happening around her.

Lola Akingbade, a St. Louis resident and third year student of Northeastern University, took action after the event of Brown’s death from Officer Wilson. In the event, 18-year old Michael Brown, a black teenager, was shot, unarmed, by white police officer Darren Wilson. This stirred a few problems, but mainly racial issues. Many African-Americans took to violence and started rampaging throughout Missouri. After these protests and riots, Lola decided to survey the people of St. Louis for their opinion on racial issue.

On November 14, 1960, Ruby Bridges made a change in history for being the first African-American to go to an all-white school in New Orleans. Ruby's teacher, Barbara Henry, reported in the Instructor magazine, "Ruby was an extraordinary little girl. She was a child who exuded, I think, courage. To think that every day she would come to class knowing that she would not have any children to play with, to be with, to talk to, and yet continually she came to school happily, and interested in learning whatever could be offered to her."

Rosa Parks is an African American civil rights activisit who became famous when she stood up for what she believed and broke the rules-by sitting down. On December 1,1955, Parks sat in a seat on a bus in Alabama, heading home after a long day of work. She was asked many times by the conductor to move seats but she refused every time the conductor asked. She was arrested later that day for disobeying the Alabama law.

The author’s purpose for writing the text in this way was to show how important Ida B. Wells was to African American history. In paragraph 14 all sentences it states “The conductor disappeared. A few minutes later he returned with two baggage clerks. The three men dragged Ida from her seat while the white passengers clapped. Ida refused to go into the smoking car; instead she got off the train at the next station.

Dorothy height was born in Richmond Virginia on March 24, 1912. Height was a civil rights activist along with a women’s right activist. Over the span of her career height received more than 50 awards from varies local, state, and national organizations. Some her major awards that she received were; Presidential Citizens Medal in 1989, Spingarn Medal in 1993, Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994, Jefferson Awards for Public Service in 2001, Heinz Awards in 2001, and Congressional Gold Medal in 2004. While height was fighting for social reforms for both genders she was mainly focused on reforms for African American women.

In Anne Moody’s Coming of Age in Mississippi (1968), there are many situations that arise throughout Moody’s life, which show hope prevails supporting her ending statement “I WONDER. I really WONDER.” Although there are many stories of murder and racism scattered throughout this story, these events keep a young Essie Mae curious and a young adult Anne Moody determined. Since the curiosity and determination Moody possesses stems from these acts against the Negro population, it ultimately gives her the hope to look forward to the rights she will gain after testifying to the events that have taken place in Mississippi. Every sit-in and protest Moody participates in shows the underlying hope she has that Negros will one day have the same rights as white people.

Besides the more prominent Black male leaders of the Civil Rights Movement both black and white women played an important role in the struggle for racial equality. Women’s experiences in the Civil Rights Movement can tell us a lot about the lives of extraordinary women and their ability to gain power in the movement towards equality. Although Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King were major women leaders of the movement, there were numerous other women that played key roles in the fight for equality, such as Ella Baker. Ella Baker fought for civil rights on the front lines for over half a century. Ella Baker was born in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1903 and grew up in Littleton, North Carolina.

Annie Easley is one of the three spectacular women who helped make modern space travel possible in a time where Jim Crow and the fight for civil rights was rampant. Easley was born to Bud McCrory and Willie Sims in Birmingham, Alabama on April 23, 1933. Being born years before the Civil Rights Movement would come to exist, opportunities, educational and career wise were extremely limited. African American children and white children were separated, or segregated, and more often than not, African American schools were inferior, with hand-me-down textbooks, and school buildings in poor conditions. However, through her hardships, and support from her mother, Annie Easley would go onto change the dynamic of space travel for the better.

Rise of the rocket girls is a book about the success of the Jet Propulsion lab and how women helped achieve success in the field of rocketry. It took place in the 1950’s, around the same time period of Hidden Figures. Hidden Figures is a similar story in the sense that it is also about women in STEM, but instead of the jet propulsion lab, it is about NASA. The one extra perspective Hidden Figures had was racism. Racism was a prominent issue in the 1950’s.

Historically, the Civil Rights Movement was a time during the 1950’s and 1960’s to eliminate segregation and gain equal rights. Looking back on all the events, and vital figures it produced, this explanation is very unclear. In order to fully understand the Civil Rights Movement, you have to go back to its beginning. Most people believe that Rosa Parks began the whole civil rights movement. She did in fact move the Civil Rights Movement to groundbreaking heights but its origin began in 1954 with Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka.

Professor Butler Shaffer describes the major difference between freedom and liberty in his statement “Liberty, he says, is what state (meaning the government) decides to grant you in terms of personal freedom. Freedom, he says, is your individual ability to do what you want with your time, believe what you want, think what you want. Freedom is in your core being and cannot be taken away, even by the most totalitarian governments, although they may try. Liberty is a governmental structure that hopefully allows you freedom of life, liberty and property.” (Millennial Star, July 22, 2011).

Langston Hughes' "When the Negro Was in Vogue" brings light to the issue of racial inequality and cultural appropriation. These topics remain relevant in our modern society, and are present in current cultural trends. Racial inequality is a problem that has always been around it seems; white is portrayed as "good" and black (and every other color for that matter) is portrayed as "bad." The title "When the Negro Was in Vogue" makes the point that during the time of the Harlem Renaissance, it was actually "good" to be black; that was because white people liked what black people were accomplishing and creating at the time. This is something that continues to be an issue, even today.