What Lies Beneath

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What Lies Beneath

Humans are all created equal, but people make different categories to separate themselves from each other. Race, gender, religion and culture are main categories, which separate humans and make the World an unstable place to live. As time goes by, people learn to get along with each other. This separation was demonstrated during the 1960’s, when African Americans were treated different than whites. After much suffering, blacks started to fight for their rights. The Black Panther Party For Self-Defense was one of these organizations, that flued the Civil Rights Movement. This organization, whose name was shortened to BPP, was founded in October 1966, in Oakland, California by Henry P. Newton and Bobby Seale. Eventually BPP had started spreading eastward through the black urban ghetto-colonies across the country. One city, in the middle of this racial evolution, was Richmond, California.

Mrs. Dextra Christiansen and her family were white family living in Richmond, in a pure black neighborhood during the Civil Rights Movement. As a child of a poor family from the South, Dextra experienced the winds of racial change, which had blown through the United States at that time. Due to the lack of white people living in Dextra’s neighborhood, she started making friends with the black kids. Her parents witnessed a murder of a white neighbor killed by the Black Panthers. Consequently, Dextra’s parents did not want her to be around African Americans. Dextra eventually become a friend with black kids, even though she was the only tall blond girl interacting with them. Everyday when Dextra and her friends played basketball her parents feared for her safety. They specifically had forbidden her to interact with others fro...

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...erican nation, and movements, which will change people lives forever in the future. While feeling that equality between all people from all races needs to be delivered in her teenager years she was marching proudly for the rights of all people.

The interview I had with a mother of my American friend was very interesting and inspiring to me. This interview was such an inspiration, it opened a door beyond the knowledge of the historian books I have read. Speaking with Mrs. Dextra Christiansen made me realize there is more to history then what we read in the books and watch on TV. As a young historian I felt I know too little about a real truth which lies beneath the dusty historian papers and books. I am glad that I had expanded my views on some of the major historical events in American History and that I could share some magnificent moments with my interviewee.

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