Reading Questions
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1. It was taken from a song, reportedly overheard by a black man and performed by Thomas Dartmouth Rice, a White performer who was one of the first to wear “blackface” makeup.
2. After the year 1900 the term “Jim Crow” became indentified with the racist actions and laws that made sure African Americans were not able to have the same civil rights as whites, because it was believed white people, were superior to black people.
3. The Supreme Court case that upheld segregation, or “separate but equal” was the Plessy v. Ferguson case in 1896.
4. man born into slavery, Booker T. Washington firmly believed that if blacks just accepted the segregation between blacks and whites, and did farm work, it would help blacks avoid terror and violence. He aided to found many black schools and colleges often funded by white philanthropists, which taught blacks on agriculture, and trained black teaches. He believed that his efforts and the efforts of others from his race, would bring an equal society, and black people could earn the title of “middle class” and avoid the terror of Jim Crow.
5. The Harlem Renaissance was the name of the literary movement which featured “new negro” literature and poetry.
6. Many black people attempted to resist the Jim Crow laws, by accepting segregation and working hard on farms and such, they believed that if they worked hard enough, they would begin to be accepted throughout society. Many other black people believed that attacking white supremacy through defiant acts would help resist the Jim Crow laws, when it only caused more lynchings, and several of the defiant blacks were forced to flee their towns. Many blacks resisted Jim Crow by hoping for when they could escape the Jim Crow South, like their ancestors used to Underground Railroad to flee slavery by following the north star. Thousands of blacks left for Oklahoma and Kansas in the 1880s and 1890s, the move to Kansas was named the “Kansas Exodus” and to this day, there are still several almost all black towns in this state. Some African Americans attempted to establish all-black towns in the south, in Mississippi delta, and Mound Bayou in hopes of completely getting away from whites while staying in the region of what felt like home.
7. Black Thursday refers to certain events which occur on a Thursday. The name given on the 24th Oct, 1929, when the stock markets crashed. It was the start of The Great Depression.
8. October 24th, 1929
9. The stocks crashed and everyone lost a ton of money and their jobs. Unemployment reached the highest numbers ever and it ruined the economy. It all started with the initial loss of money through the stock market crash.
10. The dust bowl farmers packed up their families and their few personal possessions and searched for work in the agricultural fields or cities of the west, this meant they gave up the privilege of being an independent land owner forever.
11. The farmers and their families left their homes because they began to question the things which they based their lives – democracy, capitalism, individualism. It came to them, that a better life could be lead in California.
12. The two presidents who governed during the 1930s were Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
13. With funds supplied by the WPA, Gutzon Borglum was able to create his Mount Rushmore Memorial sculpture.
14. When viewing the painting “American Gothic” looking at the two farmers, they looked distressed and weather worn people. The two are well dressed, almost as if they were going to church, but the man is holding a pitch fork, which portrays that they could quite possibly of been farmers, and that was something they held dear to them. Their emotions in their face look stern, and unpleasant, although you can almost see a kind of warmth in the womans eyes although she is looking off into the distance. In the background of the painting you can see there is an old typical 1930s farmers house which looks also quite weather worn, and on the side of the painting you can see a part of an old red barn. I believe