Video Reaction Post

Booker T Washington 

After watching the AI videos today in class that where played I learned a lot. Firstly we watched a video about Booker T. Washington. He was a worker in the coal mines as a young kid, at 16 he traveled over 200 miles to find a new job as a janitor to also pay for his college tuition. At 25 he had made a place for African American's to gain practical skills, like farming, trades, and learning the importance of hard work. in 1895 he gave a speech in Atlanta and was talking about how people should learn so that they could gain respect. He was an advisor for president Roosevelt and Taft; and was the first black person in the white house to have dinner.  

For the second video, we learned about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, when he was planning to give African Americans, mainly the ones who fought in the war the right to vote; Booths realized that instead of just kidnapping the president he would kill him. Lincolns death was not only a tragic event; but it was life changing for the reconstruction era; Johnson who took over after Lincolns death completely didn't follow the ideology that Lincoln had and easily forgave the south and did nothing for African Americans. Eventually Congress took over reconstruction because they realized that Johnson was doing a horrible job, and he eventually got impeached. This had an everlasting effect on the struggle that African Americans faced and prolonged their complete freedom and rights. 

The third video was about sharecropping, basically slavery under another name. This was a labor style that didn't just hurt black people, though it mainly targeted them, it also hurt poor white people. When they farmed they had to give a large percentage of their crops to the land owner and they also had to rent the tools they needed from them at a ridiculous 60% interest rate; leaving the people who delt with this broke and basically a slave. Some would think that this would only last a few years, however share cropping lasted all the way until the 2000s in some areas. The end of slavery didn't mean the end of racial oppression.   

The fourth video was about black political participation, in 1865 for the first time ever America had black people in positions of power and also had a huge voter turnout from black people. While these times were great sadly, after the reconstruction era with the introduction of Jim Crow laws these times ended for a while until black people eventually fought again for their rights. 

The fifth and final video was about the great migration, over the spam of a little less than 50 years over 5 million people migrated from the south to the north and western areas. The main reason for moving was because they firstly offered more money in the north after world war 1; but also because they weren't treated anywhere as bad in the south and north compared to the south. While they didn't have the best treatment it was still leaps and bounds better, and while it did take a while they would preserver for their rights.