REFERENCE AND INSTRUCTION ASSIGNMENT
I used the following set of characteristics:
North Carolina—Minister (wife)—female—secondary school—Baptist—African American—Young adult—World War I
HOW I FOUND DOCUMENTS:
There are two ways to approach searching the manuscripts collection. You can use the site specific google search on the Manuscripts Department website, or you can search the library catalog and limit the results to the Manuscripts Department. I chose to use the search engine on the Manuscripts Department webpage because it includes brief snippets from the results that allowed you to quickly look at some description and rule out the results that are totally irrelevant to your search without having to open each one individually. As you look at search results, you will notice that the results have names like papers and collections. This is because archival and manuscript materials are organized by provenance rather than subject. What this means is that materials are grouped together the way they were received. All of an organization’s, individual’s, or family’s papers will be grouped together and as much as possible they will be kept in the original order that the creator stored them in. This means that most collections have materials related to a wide range of subjects and gathering all the material on a particular topic or person requires looking at multiple collections.
It is unlikely that one collection will meet all the characteristic you are assigned. I began my searching by thinking about what group of characteristics would give me a good number of results without becoming overwhelming. I chose to search for African American and religion. I did not specify gender because collections will generally include materia...
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...ambles. People are rarely clear and to the point in letters to loved ones. He also references events and many different people that are unexplained in the letter or the finding aid. Some of these people come up in other letters, but for the most part you are left guessing or piecing bits together to figure things out. For instance, he spends quite a while explain to his wife how he had trouble on the train when someone tried to charge him twice, but you never really get a full picture of what happened.
Each of these letters provides details about the lives of middle-class married African American women living in the Upper South in the early twentieth century. By looking at these documents along with the finding aids that explain the collections they are a part of one could get a good sense of what life was like for a fictional woman of similar circumstances.
To begin with, there are many events in United States history that have shaped our general understanding of women’s involvement in economics, politics, the debates of gender and sexuality, and so forth. Women for many centuries have not been seen as a significant part of history, however under thorough analyzation of certain events, there are many women and woman-based events responsible for the progressiveness we experience in our daily lives as men, women, children, and individuals altogether. Many of these events aid people today to reflect on the treatment of current individuals today and to raise awareness to significant issues that were not resolved or acknowledged in the past.
Historically, the job of women in society is to care for the husband, the home, and the children. As a homemaker, it has been up to the woman to support the husband and care for the house; as a mother, the role was to care for the children and pass along cultural traditions and values to the children. These roles are no different in the African-American community, except for the fact that they are magnified to even larger proportions. The image of the mother in African-American culture is one of guidance, love, and wisdom; quite often the mother is the shaping and driving force of African-American children. This is reflected in the literature of the African-American as a special bond of love and loyalty to the mother figure. Just as the role of motherhood in African-American culture is magnified and elevated, so is the role of the wife. The literature reflects this by showing the African-American man struggling to make a living for himself and his family with his wife either being emotionally or physically submissive. Understanding the role of women in the African-American community starts by examining the roles of women in African-American literature. Because literature is a reflection of the community from which it comes, the portrayal of women in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) and James Baldwin's Go Tell it on the Mountain (1952) is consistent with the roles mentioned above.
and the academic endeavour, to illuminate the experiences of African American women and to theorize from the materiality of their lives to broader issues of political economy, family, representation and transformation” (Mullings, page xi)
JoAnn Marshall - The Roles of Southern Women, Black and White, in Society. Lillian Smith provides a description of the typical black woman and the typical white woman "of the pre-1960's American South" (Gladney 1) in her autobiographical critique of southern culture, Killers of the Dream. The typical black woman in the South is a cook, housekeeper, nursemaid, or all three wrapped up in one for at least one white family. Therefore, she is the double matriarch of the South, raising her own family and the families of her white employers: "It was not a rare sight in my generation to see a black woman with a dark baby at one breast and a white one at the other, rocking them both in her wide lap" (Smith 130). The southern black woman's duties extend far beyond rearing children, as she also serves as a family counselor, confidant, and nurse for the entire white family (Smith 129) and her own if time permits.
To the modern white women who grew up in comfort and did not have to work until she graduated from high school, the life of Anne Moody reads as shocking, and almost too bad to be true. Indeed, white women of the modern age have grown accustomed to a certain standard of living that lies lightyears away from the experience of growing up black in the rural south. Anne Moody mystifies the reader in her gripping and beautifully written memoir, Coming of Age in Mississippi, while paralleling her own life to the evolution of the Civil Rights movement. This is done throughout major turning points in the author’s life, and a detailed explanation of what had to be endured in the name of equality.
Subject B is a middle-aged African-American woman living in a suburban area and is a member of the middle class. She was born in 1968 and she and her five siblings -two sisters, three brothers- were raised by a single mother. She currently lives with her fiancé. Subject B is a member of Generation X.
As progressive era reforms advanced from the 1880s to t 1920s, women took on a significant role in political change with specific regard to the ratification of the 19th amendment and social conditions with emphasis on women’s reproductive rights and restraint from alcohol.
Black Status: Post Civil War America. After the emancipation of slaves in 1862, the status of African-Americans in post-civil war America up until the beginning of the twentieth century did not go through a great deal of change. Much legislation was passed to help blacks during this period. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 prohibited segregation in public facilities and various government amendments gave African-Americans even more guaranteed rights.
Smith, J, & Phelps, S (1992). Notable Black American Women, (1st Ed). Detroit, MI: Gale
The essay begins with a phone call between Yackel and a Social Security Office worker. Her mother had just recently passed and Yackel was attempting to retrieve the $255 death benefit. As she is left on hold, she begins to reminisce her mother’s life and the struggles she endured. This form of dialogue both began and concluded the narrative. It is a unique form of telling the story of Martha Ruth Smith and the dedication to her family. She was first employed as a manager at the general store where she worked full time. It was thereafter when she was “wooed” by the man she had been conversing with via mail and married in February 1921, even though she dreaded the consequences that would come from being a “farmer’s wife.”
I believe it is time we, as a nation, start speaking about the truth behind racism and the origin of one of the most aggressive proponents against one race in particular. Hatred and abhorrence of the African American race spawned the birth of Jim Crow laws and the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and many other racially charged groups. It all started in the 1870’s where Jim Crow laws were penned as bylaws that continued well through the 1920’s. With these bylaws in effect racially charged groups such as the fearsome KKK felt the need to strike fear into the hearts and minds of all African Americans in order to keep race separation.
Women have been deemed property by men since history can remember, but now they have begun demanding equality through protests and education. There has been great progress throughout the development of the modern United States we all know today. As known by anyone in California who has taken a history class in the eighth grade, first we have unjust wages during the industrial revolution, which then extends to World War II, empowering women to take on different roles. This in turns uncovers problems to modern working rights for women, such as non discriminatory positions and equal opportunity in education. Women in the United States are frequently fighting for their rights; although there has been some progress made, there is still much to be done.
Between the years of 1776 and 1876, a key change came about in America over the women. Before these dates, women were not considered to be very important to the community. The only major role they played was raising children and bringing food to the table. Since the years of the Revolution and the Constitutional Convention, however, the nation nearly doubled its geographic boundaries and its population. When the Market Revolution hit America, many people felt isolated and cut off from traditional sources of comfort and community.
These four journal writings were chosen because they share a common theme in women’s studies. Each writer expresses the oppression that women face, whether it is in childhood, as a homemaker or as a woman of color. The selected journals were written about “What It Would Be Like If Women Win,” “Feel Me. See Me. Hear Me. Reach Me,” “Deadlier Than the Male” and “The Problem That Has No Name.” Each journal reflects the differences of how men and women have and still are treated within society. In being a woman of color like Gay, an African American, or from a Native American tribe, people place limitations through prejudice. They are even more discriminated against, as they are not viewed as equals to Caucasian women. In general, girls are taught to aspire to be a housewife, through their toys and play. Once a woman becomes a housewife she is viewed as submissive to her husband and denies her vocation. Society is structured to keep women oppressed and these four journals are the evidence throughout women’s history.
The African American Civil Rights Movement was a series of protests in the United States South from approximately 1955 through 1968. The overall goal of the Civil Rights Movement was to achieve racial equality before the law. Protest tactics were, overall, acts of civil disobedience. Rarely were they ever intended to be violent. From sit-ins to boycotts to marches, the activists involved in the Civil Rights Movement were vigilant and dedicated to the cause without being aggressive. While African-American men seemed to be the leaders in this epic movement, African-American women played a huge role behind the scenes and in the protests.