Now that you have finished reading Chapters 1 and 2 in Anderson and Stewart, and Chapter 1 in Hill-Collins, take some time to reflect on their significance. What does reading this material make you want to know more about? List three facts presented in these chapters that surprised you, and list 3 questions about the assigned chapters that I and your classmates can respond to further.
The reading material of Chapter 1 in A&S makes me want to learn more about David Walker's Appeal: To the Coloured Citizens of the World. I want to know how the book marked an end to moral suasion to end slavery and why it was followed by violence and oppression. In Chapter 1 of A&S, I was very suprised to find out that Mary Ann Shadd Cary graduated and became the first Black female lawyer at the age of 60. It suprised me when i read in Chapter 2 of A&S that in Little Rock, Arkansas, President Eisenhower had to enforce the law and let Black students to enter thier own high school. Finally, I was suprised to read about all of the Third World student organizations that support the strike by the Black Student Union.
What is the Montgomery Improvement Association?
How inspiring are the students of San Francisco State College to African American students today?
Do you feel that Maria W. Stewart has substantially influenced African American women to become politically involved?
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The impact of David Walker's appeal was so great that the reaction against it was also very intense. As a statement by a black man who had been enslaved, but had learned to read and write, and was able to use his book knowledge to express what he had learned about the world from his experiences as an enslaved person, it was not only a very powerful statement, but it was the first published statement in the U.S. presenting the view of someone who had been directly oppressed by the system of slavery. By doing so, Walker proved that the pseudo-intellectual arguments being made about black people's intellectual inferiority and about their enslavement being ordained by God were wrong. Only those who benefitted economically and politically from the system of chattel slavery had reason to protect it and promote it, but the problem was that these were the ones with the political and social power to do so. And the later committment by Cary to become a lawyer even at at advanced age, as well as the later application of federal law that Eisenhower had to enforce as a result of the Brown decision, shows how important knowledge of legal principles is to being able to protect rights and make equality a reality.
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