The other night I was with my tutor and we got to talking about my junior theme. I mentioned I was doing it on the topic of African American identity, double consciousness and shaping identity in changing times of American history. He then got to talking about how when he lived in Mississippi the Ku Klux Klan lynched a black man in his front yard, and when they woke up the next morning his mom went out and caught sight of it. The shock stunned her and he said she was never the same. They moved the next year. Its so incredible to me how in 1958-only 50 years ago-things like this were occuring and it was not out of the ordinary. I was shocked to hear this story, and my tutor even further told me that he had witnessed beatings from a distance and essentially grew up in the environment. He is definitely not okay with it and never was, but how could he stand by? I mean, there wasn't much he could do to stop it, but NOTHING was done. And all this just 50 years ago! Racism is so recent to our country's history it is baffling.

The other thing I connected our unit to was a movie I watched last night, The Secret Life of Bees with Dakota Fanning. The movie takes place in the rural south and exemplifies so much having to do with white supremacy. The nanny of the house, an African American named Rosalene, decides that she wants to vote. When she walks down to the town to do so, she is malled by white men and shoved to the ground and spit on. Her head get busted open and she is taken to jail. Her white boss is so embaressed, he won't even come bail her out. The main character, Dakota Fanning, runs away from home for other reasons and decides to take Rosalene with her. They end up at a bee farm owned by three black women. These women put a black Virgin Mary on their honey, which Dakota Fanning, a white girl, is very surprised about. Though I haven't finished the movie, Fanning proves to be a white citizen who goes against the norm, willing to save Rosalene from jail and openly speak out against the violations of the Civil Rights Act. The movie has a really strong connection to the time period we are currently learning about, that is the time in which black men and women are freed, and trying to figure out what to do with this freedom especially because there is most definitely still prejudice.  A quote from the movie is, "It's so ironic how much white people hate us, when most of them were raised by Negro women." This statement is so true. The women who were around for their childhood, who helped them create who they were and come into their own, were black women. And this is how they are treated?