Tuesday, January 22, 2013

EXP3: An Era to be Recognized

"I'm a fighter, and we'll continue to fight, i'm not sure i'll be able to… But we're gonna keep coming until we can ride any place in the south." Jim Zwerg was resting in his hospital bed as he confidently, yet painfully, delivered this statement. 

The fact that anyone had to utter that statement is baffling. It's easy for us to forget that there was a time in history where brutality towards a specific race was accepted, better yet encouraged. When glancing back at the civil rights movement, there are a few things that surface first: Rosa Parks, The Freedom Riders, riots and violence, Plessy vs Fergeson and the eternally recognized Martin Luther King Jr. The amount of courage, determination and pacifism that these individuals displayed is un-fathomable. To think that some of our biggest problems were to be "accepted" in high school,  african americans couldn't even participate in the simple joys of life without harassment. All of the footage really stood out to me because it put all of my knowledge into a visual display. The way that the Freedom Writers had to remain calm and resist the violence of the tyrannical bunch, was an incredible lesson. It was such a drastic change that had to be made, despite the fact lives were at stake, the civil rights era embodies a movement that could  never be compared to (and thankfully, will never have to be).

2 comments:

  1. To quote a phrase, "just as a single grain of rice can tip the scale, one man can stand between victory and defeat." I just one person is willing to stand up for what the believe in, there is a fighting chance that what they believe will come to light.

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  2. This quote spoke to me as well. I was particularly surprised at the strength of his integrity since he was not of African American ethnicity. The visual was also eye opening since most of the time we read about this information. It was nice for these people and events to gain faces.

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