Freedom Summer

In my opinion, "Freedom Summer" is a great book, and deals with the civil rights of African Americans. I believe that everyone, not just African Americans should have equal civil rights. In this book, as African Americans tried to gain equal civil rights, they also went through many hard times. Many African Americans were scared to attempt for equal civil rights because of the fact that they did not want to take a chance of getting there family hurt or even killed. African Americans weren't the only people fighting for civil rights neither. Caucasians were also helping the African Americans fight for civil rights. Well some Caucasians. Many Caucasians were punished if found to be helping African Americans. In my opinion, this alone helped bring some African Americans and Caucasians together.

Freedom Summer 2

There are many instances where the people that fought for civil rights struggled through challenging situations which must have changed their outlook on life. Some good examples of this rest on page 81. The author states, “The fact that about 17,000 blacks traveled to the courthouse attests to the persistence of the volunteers and the extraordinary courage of those attempting to register.” He goes on to say, “The many instances of delay, obstruction, and harassment of the applicants were duly recorded by the volunteers, thus providing the evidence for several important voter discrimination suits.” As if this time wasn't tragic enough, on page 98, the author says "It turned out that Neshoba County Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price had coordinated the kidnapping and murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner." The fact that people would kill to stop someone from having basic rights is wrong. It did not matter if these three were African American, Caucasian, Asian, or otherwise, they deserved the right to speak their mind and not die for it, just like every African American deserved their civil rights.

These instances, along with other moments throughout the book, would have had a great impact on, and still do impact, the lives of those people. Not only has these instances impacted them, but they have also impacted us as a future generation. We were not alive to witness these events but it does do us all good to know them and to know our countries history, because an event like this should never have happened and, hopefully, will never happen again to anyone.

Nathan Dennison

Freedom Summer

As I began reading “Freedom Summer,” I had no idea about this event. It is my belief that all U.S. citizens should have civil rights and those civil rights should be protected. In order to protect those rights, people, Caucasian and African American, put their lives at risk. Looking at this situation from an African Diaspora, I could not believe that that many non-African Americans wanted that kind of change. With that said, I believe that even though those people were helping with the civil rights movement, there was still a lot of distrust, not only between races, but within them. Certain Caucasians hated the ones that were registering African Americans to vote, and even killed a few of them. At the same time, I’m sure African Americans were hesitant to go through with this process for fear of their and their families’ lives. Many people risked a lot to make sure that everyone had basic civil rights. Those people deserve to be recognized as American heroes in my opinion.

Nathan Dennison

Baldwin Post

I agree with Nathan. I think that Baldwin would have been very proud of our country and the steps that we have taken in order to get to where we are now. Of course racism will never be totally gone from our society. There will always be some type of racism in some type of form, but that does not mean that it is not getting better.

Baldwin

I believe that Baldwin would be amazed at the strides our society has made in the years since his book. Racism, though still prevalent in our time, has diminished greatly. He would have enjoyed what the civil rights movement brought forth and been prouder to live in this time period. Of course our society still has problems but no where near the extent to which that time had. In the past year, this country has elected an african american as president of the United States.

Nathan Dennison

Nobody Knows My Name

This book is extremely hard to follow and I believe that the author is very racist. He, along with the people that he talks about, insults white people. Yes, he has a valid point in talking about how badly white people acted in the past, but it is in the past. Points may also be brought up about not forgetting the past but let’s not start problems from past mistakes. One good thing about this book, however, is the historical things that are happening during this book. The Conference of Negro-African Writers and Artists and the Cold War happened through his life. The one question that I have, however, is: What is with all the racism?

Nathan Dennison