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Total word count 2200-2800 words.  Due April 7, before your spring break.  This project will be a part of your final  6000 word portfolio.   Note however due to emergency circumstances of this semester, I will grade accordingly and give you as much credit as possible for all work you do.  So don’t worry about the exact word count.

Write a review of Hannah-Jones, Intro to 1619 Project, “The Idea of America.”

https://pulitzercenter.org/builder/lesson/reading-guide-quotes-key-terms-and-questions-26504

Also available here:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html

and Wilentz’s

American Slavery and ‘the Relentless Unforeseen’ _ by Sean Wilentz _ NYR Daily _ The New York Review of Books

Review two additional sources.  As a student researcher and inquirer, you find your own articles.  You can share sources on the blog.  The blog is also for bringing up discussion points and questions.  Here are the articles, I’ve found as a result of my “research as inquiry,” two of which we’ve discussed already.  You can use these articles or research and ask questions and look for the sources that will inform you on what you want to know.

Magness.

https://www.aier.org/article/fact-checking-the-1619-project-and-its-critics/

Lindsay.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomlindsay/2019/08/30/after-all-didnt-america-invent-slavery/#20161df37ef6

Here’s an excerpt from Frederick Douglas writing about advising President Abraham Lincoln that shows us what the situation was during the Civil War for free African Americans.  Question to ask is: how does this relate to Hannah-Jones’ view.  This whole website is worth looking at for the role of African Americans in the Civil War.  You can also read the wikipedia entry on Frederick Douglass.

Douglass, Frederick. “Secession and War.”  (The date on the website must be a mistake, as the text discusses events during the war. Douglass’ “Autobiography” was published in several editions, each time the author adding discussion of recent events.)

http://www.learningabe.info/Douglass_article_3.html

And here is a super interesting entry to Wikipedia on the famous 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, one of the Color Brigades in the Civil War.  The wikipedia entry can be discussed itself, but also can serve as a source for your own further research/inquiry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/54th_Massachusetts_Infantry_Regiment

The movie, Glory depicts this regiment.  If you want to see it on Youtube or Netflix or Amazon, you can use it in your research as inquiry project.  Perhaps write a review of the movie, and discuss the historical accuracy, or simply a reflection on it and what you did or did not know about this topic.  And of course, relate it back to Hannah-Jones and Wilentz.  You’ll note that Frederick Douglas in the article above is discussing recruiting African Americans into these special brigades.

Here’s a video, it’s long, of 3 professors, discussing the Reconstruction Period after the Civil War.  Very interesting and probably necessary to understand racism in the U.S. today.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?404528-1/150th-anniversary-reconstruction

And here’s a link to the Wikipedia entry on the Civil Rights Act of 1968, arguably the 3rd founding of the U.S.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1968

Lastly, I want to link an outline of the U.S. Constitution.  We should especially look at the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments.  Researchers and inquirers should do a wiki search on each and also compare to the wartime “Emancipation Proclamation.” We will discuss this in the blog and on Zoom.

https://www.fortheteachers.org/File%20Cabinet/United%20States%20Constitution%20Outline.pdf

 

 

 

We can discuss and write about the ongoing health epidemic, so please feel free to write about your experience and concerns.  This is obviously part of the social context of this writing, and you may include reflection writings on this ongoing situation in your portfolios.

What are you doing and what are you observing?  Please use effective writing style for online display!

You will get credit for your participation and you can use your reflection posts, revised and slightly repurposed in your 6000 word final portfolio.  So please remember to keep a file of all your writings and graphics and images and video and audio files that you can use in portfolio!

Please follow this blog, as we will do the rest of the semester online.  You will of course be able to pass the class if you turn in your portfolio.  I will take into account the unusual and unanticipated interruption of the semester and grade accordingly.  So don’t worry.

Probably the main thing we can do is practice our effective writing in this genre, a very important one, the online blog and response.

We can discuss and write about the ongoing health epidemic, so please feel free to write about your concerns.  This is obviously part of the social context of this writing, and you may include reflection writings on this ongoing situation in your portfolios.

 

Hannah-Jones’ introduction essay to The 1619 project brings up many valid points. One of these points being that African American’s pushed the way forward for an America for where everyone would be equal no matter race, gender or sexual orientation. Jones states “black rights struggles paved the way for every other rights struggle, including women’s and gay’s rights, immigrant and disability rights.” Women and Black Americans to this day are still fighting for equality. There are the LGBTQ+ movements that are going on every year. I do not necessarily agree with the statement that “without the idealistic, strenuous and patriotic efforts of black Americans, our democracy… might not be a democracy at all.” I think this is a biased viewpoint and wrong. It is true that things would be very different today, but there is no doubt in my mind that this country would not be a democracy. I am not downplaying the impact of black people and their fight for equality, because everyone knows how important that was to the system we have today.

I do not think the USA is an “evil” society. Unjust? Yes. Racist? Yes. Evil, however has a certain Hitler, Mussolini connotation which I just don’t see or feel in the US. No one is born racist or with prejudiced thoughts. They’re all picked up at the home and neighborhood you grow up in. My position is that everyone should be treated the same because we are all God’s creatures put here to love and be loved. The hatred from one race to another, one religion to another, one sexuality/gender to another should simply not exist. How can we be a “just” society when everything is Darwin’s idea of “Survival of the Fittest”? Natural selection already evolved humans into complex systems that can think. Now we should all think together on how we can all step up, instead of stepping on others on the way to the top. Everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) has the idea that they’re better or smarter than someone else because of their background. While some may be smarter in terms of books and degrees, there is still a lesson to learn from every person you meet because they’re living their own life that’s just as complex and important as yours. Basically what I’m getting as is to just treat everybody with the same respect whether they be the boss or a low level assistant.

In American Slavery and ‘the Relentless Unforeseen’ reading by Sean Wilentz. I can see that he not only sees Americans as those who contributed to the speech of other slaves. Talk about why society was so cruel and hypocritical in allowing all these abuses towards people who couldn’t defend themselves how they had that heart to use them that way to mistreat them like that. He talks about slavery in Europe is essential to a European settlement in the New World. He connects with Hannah Jones because like her he expresses that the European slaves also helped to improve the country with their effort and work. In the same way, they were humiliated and belittled when they did all the heavy lifting. The author talks about what the brutal slave trade was like in the Atlantic since there was no political interest in this. My question is why governments allowed that. What was the purpose of mistreating people? They were unscrupulous people who had no family or who did not feel well inside. Having that hard heart of not taking importance towards the suffering of others. Does money make people hard and without feelings? Everything seems to change decades later where anti-slavery activists appear. Where they carry out various types of reforms where they blame that slavery is considered pure evil. These activists were people with power or slaves? How they managed to reach so many people and make a change for the slaves. What motivated them to want to make a change. Back then there were still good people who did not want to do any harm to poor and defenseless people. Not because they had money they despised slaves, instead they used their money and power to convince other politicians to eradicate the degradation of property. The slaves fought hard to give the new world a symbolic meaning which was that of rebirth, the whole fight, the transformation on their part made all this change possible.

Slavery helps the foundation of the nation because of the ideals of the revolution. All of this triggered a desire for freedom for all. There was a time when the southern United States became the world’s most ambitious slavery regime. Slavery in the United States had not completely disappeared until emancipation arrived where a “new birth of freedom” was developed that was made by Lincoln in 1863. Slavery grew enormously after the Revolution, where they dominated national politics due to a very well organized slave power. Americans justified racism as an aspect of life. To this day, many Americans agree that people not born here cannot have the same privilege that they do. But the problem is that those ideals that they have come from the past are people who have not suffered and have not had a hard life, they are people who come from good families. Families with money that have all the opportunities so they do not see the effort that undocumented people make to get here, many of them leaving everything in the country of origin. Many people are raped, outraged or even beaten for having the dream of a better life. If those people had good opportunities in their own countries they would not risk as much, but they did not have the same opportunities as the Americans to grow up in a family with money and opportunities. Many Americans look down on immigrant people for not studying or not knowing English. But that is something that must change. I hope that in time these things improve and this country continues to give more opportunities to the least needy.

The larger historical picture.

We can see 3 periods of American history in the context of racism.

1.  The 1776 period, the  1st founding.  Here, the founders of the USA, breaking away from the English monarchy, asserted their rights to be free of unjust rule.  The idea of “human rights” was coming to the fore for the first time in modern history.  This is the 1740-1750 period Wilentz mentions.  We can understand this as the move away from feudal peasant / lord power relations to the “idea” of rational, responsible human beings with rights.  The problem of course is the US founders, in declaring independence, did not extend “all men are created equal” to the enslaved population. We rightly call them out on their hypocrisy, as did people at the time.
2. The 1865 period, after the civil war.  This was the end of the bloodiest conflict in US history, with 600,000 dead.  Only as a result of this war, did the US achieve its “2nd founding,” or 2nd beginning. Here we have the abolition of slavery in the 13th amendment (1865) and the “Rights of Citizenship” in the 14th amendment (1868), which were hotly contested and barely passed.  https://www.fortheteachers.org/File%20Cabinet/United%20States%20Constitution%20Outline.pdf    This 2nd beginning can also include the Reconstruction period, in which the Union enforced a biracial government on the southern states.  https://www.c-span.org/video/?404528-1/150th-anniversary-reconstruction   Unfortunately, this was not able to be maintained, as the southern states refused to allow equality to African Americans.  This is the period which saw the beginnings of groups like the KKK.  At first, the newly created US Justice Department enforced legal rights for African Americans.  By 1877, however, end of Reconstruction period, Jim Crow, legal discrimination, lynching, and outright white supremacy was the law of the land.
3. The modern civil rights period.  Civil rights act of 1968.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1968  This is the third attempt to create the US as a democracy with equal rights.  It’s possible that this era ends with the Presidency of Barack Obama and now with the presidency of D. Trump, we are seeing another attempt to justify racism.  Once again, the question is, do we make history, or are we the victims of some kind of dread fate and can do nothing about it?

Please remember, though, at the end of the semester, you must have a portfolio of 6000 words with some audio or video or graphic display, all on an electronic file, separate and independent from this blog.  So make a copy of all your writings and keep a file from which you can build your portfolio.  We will be discussing the next larger project soon.  Remember, the portfolio is your work, writing and images and audio, and you will have quite a bit of freedom to build it as you see fit.

We see a different historical perspective in Hannah-Jones vs Wilentz.
Especially important, as students of history, is the idea of “relentless unforeseen.” We do not know what our actions will lead to. This is true for African Americans who fought for their freedom and “white” abolitionists who believed slavery was a crime against God, as man is created in the image of the divine.

Reflect on the possibility of human freedom in history. Do we have the power and freedom to make history, or are we the victims of some powerful evil fate, which always oppresses us?

Note, Hannah-Jones believes human beings are free to create their own destiny.  Her main focus is to remind us that African Americans played the main role in this in the U.S.

I read most of your reflections.  You have a view of Hannah-Jones’ main point.

Before you write your next post, by Wednesday, around class time–it’s ok if it’s later that day– please take the time to read some of your classmates’ reflections.

Of course, you may agree or disagree and you can discuss that, politely, please.  But more importantly, as you’re reading the other students’ blog posts, ask yourself, what makes a more effective post?

This “genre” of writing is now very common, electronic web display, and I think we can focus on how to improve our writing on a website, blog, email, etc.

The first thing we notice, is that if you break up your post by skipping a line, the reader can follow your sequence and flow of thoughts better.  Look closely at how other writers do this, and try it yourself.

Perhaps it’s best to think about the visual display of the written text.  Spacing.  Graphics.  Use your visual sense to get your point across.

Next, how can you bring to the front, shine light on, or simply state your point as affirmatively as possible?

Yes, you may want to qualify it, limit what you want to say, and bring up exceptions, but nevertheless, an effective communication needs to make clear your message.  This can be fun and it is always intellectually stimulating.

It’s not necessary to be offensive, or use vulgar language.

Sometimes however it is necessary to say what you are for, and also say what you are against.  Even if you may change your mind later.