Reflection
Through this project, I did learn more about the economic and social state of the country, such as the rapid growth of the stock market in the 1960’s, the effect of the growing feminist movement on the workforce at the time, as well as the impact the Beatles made on American pop culture. I also learned more about discrimination in everyday life for people of colour when I was reading a book titled The Help. I understood that while discrimination and racism was not always bluntly outright, it was always present and always a source of despair for people of colour. I also noticed a few similarities between the social issues regarding discrimination in the 1960s and those in the present day United States, especially with regards to police brutality and continued discrimination and distrust against people of colour, immigrants in particular.
I feel like we have come a long way from the unwarranted and unjust persecution of people based on their race or the colour of their skin. Even though we no longer condone outright displays of discrimination, we all still do hold prejudices about other people in our minds. The alarming majority of police brutality is still directed towards African Americans, and we do continue to judge a person’s character just by what they wear or what they look like. And now, even our president is prejudiced against immigrants, especially those from the Middle East. In that respect, we still have a ways to go as a nation. I think my personal favourite artifact produced by my group was the book of speeches from the 1960s that we compiled and edited. Many of them are still able to be related to this day and age with regards to some social issues that we still face. All of these speeches in some way or the other express the desire for complete eradication of prejudice and discrimination, not only from public and government-funded facilities and institutions, but from the minds of the citizens themselves. This is something that still definitely applies to today’s world because though we have abolished unfair laws involving public segregation, there those who continue to harbor prejudice and hate for people of colour or just different people in general. We cannot continue to grow and prosper as a nation when there are people with such stagnated and medieval thinking. Rather, we must take it in the interest of our country’s future to help them become more accepting and tolerant members of society. After all, as America’s Declaration of Independence so famously stated, “all men are created equal and independent, and from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Through this project, I learned a great deal more about the social and political situation in the 1960s. As I mentioned earlier, The Help brought to my understanding the difficulties of life in that time period as well as the culture. Back then it was common for women to drop out of college to get married and not to go on to pursue a professional career. However, this did change in the 1960s as the feminist movement steadily grew. More young women graduated college and started careers because they didn’t want to be bound by the societal norms concerning gender roles and wanted to choose their own lifestyles. This greatly contributed to the economic growth during that decade. I also learned more about the rising popularity of the Beatles and how that affected American pop culture and influenced the youth of America for decades to come. If I could change one thing about this project, it would be the mural, because I believe that the final draft could have turned out much better. There were still mistakes in facial features and not all the lines were clean or well defined. I could have also come up with a better title for it and used brighter colours to make it stand out more. The evening news broadcast that we filmed could have been more properly edited given more time, and we could have though out its script more and added some humor into it. In general, our artifacts were considerably well done, but have much room for improvement. Given more time, we could have perfected them even more and made the project even more successful because of it.
The book that we read as a group is called The Help by Kathryn Stockett. It centers around the lives of the three main characters who narrate the story. They are Aibileen Clark and Minny Jackson, who are two African American maids and Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan, who is an aspiring journalist. All three of them live in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1960s. This book mainly describes the hardships of being a colored maid working for a white family through the perspectives of Aibileen and Minny. We learned about how they always live in constant fear of being persecuted by their employers. Skeeter is one of the few white people in the community who wants to do something about the continuous unjust treatment the maids face on a daily basis, so she contacts a publisher in New York and pitches her idea of writing about the maids’ lives in order to spread awareness through the white community about how their actions impact the lives of their hired help. This relates strongly to the civil rights movement going on throughout the country as well as the time period because it changed the course of the story. As a whole, I did enjoy learning more about the 1960s through this project and hope to continue to do so.
I feel like we have come a long way from the unwarranted and unjust persecution of people based on their race or the colour of their skin. Even though we no longer condone outright displays of discrimination, we all still do hold prejudices about other people in our minds. The alarming majority of police brutality is still directed towards African Americans, and we do continue to judge a person’s character just by what they wear or what they look like. And now, even our president is prejudiced against immigrants, especially those from the Middle East. In that respect, we still have a ways to go as a nation. I think my personal favourite artifact produced by my group was the book of speeches from the 1960s that we compiled and edited. Many of them are still able to be related to this day and age with regards to some social issues that we still face. All of these speeches in some way or the other express the desire for complete eradication of prejudice and discrimination, not only from public and government-funded facilities and institutions, but from the minds of the citizens themselves. This is something that still definitely applies to today’s world because though we have abolished unfair laws involving public segregation, there those who continue to harbor prejudice and hate for people of colour or just different people in general. We cannot continue to grow and prosper as a nation when there are people with such stagnated and medieval thinking. Rather, we must take it in the interest of our country’s future to help them become more accepting and tolerant members of society. After all, as America’s Declaration of Independence so famously stated, “all men are created equal and independent, and from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Through this project, I learned a great deal more about the social and political situation in the 1960s. As I mentioned earlier, The Help brought to my understanding the difficulties of life in that time period as well as the culture. Back then it was common for women to drop out of college to get married and not to go on to pursue a professional career. However, this did change in the 1960s as the feminist movement steadily grew. More young women graduated college and started careers because they didn’t want to be bound by the societal norms concerning gender roles and wanted to choose their own lifestyles. This greatly contributed to the economic growth during that decade. I also learned more about the rising popularity of the Beatles and how that affected American pop culture and influenced the youth of America for decades to come. If I could change one thing about this project, it would be the mural, because I believe that the final draft could have turned out much better. There were still mistakes in facial features and not all the lines were clean or well defined. I could have also come up with a better title for it and used brighter colours to make it stand out more. The evening news broadcast that we filmed could have been more properly edited given more time, and we could have though out its script more and added some humor into it. In general, our artifacts were considerably well done, but have much room for improvement. Given more time, we could have perfected them even more and made the project even more successful because of it.
The book that we read as a group is called The Help by Kathryn Stockett. It centers around the lives of the three main characters who narrate the story. They are Aibileen Clark and Minny Jackson, who are two African American maids and Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan, who is an aspiring journalist. All three of them live in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1960s. This book mainly describes the hardships of being a colored maid working for a white family through the perspectives of Aibileen and Minny. We learned about how they always live in constant fear of being persecuted by their employers. Skeeter is one of the few white people in the community who wants to do something about the continuous unjust treatment the maids face on a daily basis, so she contacts a publisher in New York and pitches her idea of writing about the maids’ lives in order to spread awareness through the white community about how their actions impact the lives of their hired help. This relates strongly to the civil rights movement going on throughout the country as well as the time period because it changed the course of the story. As a whole, I did enjoy learning more about the 1960s through this project and hope to continue to do so.
The links shown below are to the presentation that we presented in class, the news broadcast video that we edited, and to our CYOA story
docs.google.com/presentation/d/1vNmDzNWLCtow6tvL-8ZkakXL52DFhuSFWqJtabZzRzA/edit - 1960's Washington D.C. Presentation
drive.google.com/file/d/1Me6GD0h9eB8lohJm9SByrBcO9zdvNMNx/view - DC60 News Broadcast
whatwouldyoudointhe60s.weebly.com/ - CYOA story