Week of 12-1-14

When going through the various sources for my annotated bibliography, I read about the motivation behind the activism career of Mary Church Terrell, the woman I'm studying about. Apparently, the initial inspiration to become an activist was the lynching of her childhood friend, Tom Moss. This made me think of the current events that are being referred to as "modern-day lynchings." Most of you probably know what I'm referring to - Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, the list goes on. When I was looking into case after case of black civilian shootings by white police officers, I saw something that stuck out to me. It was a post on Twitter.

It made me start thinking. All of these people that we've chosen for National History Day, all of the people that we're learning about in American Studies, they all succeeded in making a difference. So what's going on? Why hasn't a single officer been convicted of a crime? Even after witnessing the outrage of the country at the verdicts of previous cases, each jury either finds the officer not guilty or doesn't indict. The jury for the Trayvon Martin case had only one non-white member. 75% of the jury for the Michael Brown case was white. In Eric Garner's case, there was actual video footage of the police officer using an illegal chokehold to take Garner down, despite the fact that he was largely outnumbered and could be heard on tape saying "I can't breathe" eleven different times. I don't know how it's possible to find that officer not guilty of anything, and clearly the trials for Martin and Brown were ruled by predominantly white jurors.

All over the US, people have been taking to the streets to protest. It's a present-day version of the time period we're studying for NHD, with protests and marches and all kinds of issues that turn ordinary citizens into activists. We just need to be as successful as the leaders we write about in our endeavors to make a difference.