The Fight For Equality Continues

          Discrimination and equality will most likely forever be an issue in this world. During the late nineteenth century, things along the lines of equality and acceptance seemed to  be headed in the right direction. However, taking a closer look into the events involving the buffalo soldiers and native Americans can prove otherwise.

          Our class followed the same routine as last lesson to learn about this topic. We watched a series of abc clio videos to introduce us to the topics while also providing us with key information. We then broke off and looked into the documents we had been given through our class edline and finished the lesson off by coming up with an essential question that was appropriate for the lesson.

          After the Civil War, The Indian Removal Act, initiated by Andrew Johnson, is initiated in order to move the Native Americans in the South to West of the Mississippi River.  As time passes, white Americans continue to move westward in search for gold. This leaves the Natives upset and they decide to fight back against the U.S. citizens starting years of wars described as the Indian Wars. In order to fight off the Natives, congress approves to create six regiments of black troops. The ninth and tenth cavalry have become well known as the buffalo soldiers. These two groups, the buffalo soldiers and the Native Americans, sparked our idea for the essential question. We came up with the question : Were federal policies against the Native Americans and Buffalo Soldiers intentionally discriminatory or well intentioned?

          Toward the 1870s, the U.S. government decided it would be best to give the natives an area as a reservation where they could live so the fighting would end. The U.S. thought that they were being reasonable by giving them land however I don't think they realized that they just forced them out of their own land where they had been living for no good reason other than to expand the nation. A lot of the natives still didn't like this and decided not to follow what the government said. From this you get the Battle of Little Bighorn.

          Following the Battle of Little Bighorn, the Dawes Act is created and in which gives citizenship to the natives as well as a specified amount of land. The U.S. thought that in doing so they were protecting the natives and helping the become civilized Americans. They also gave them each a good portion of land to farm with. However, the natives did not want to become U.S. citizens. They wanted to keep living their own culture. They also weren't used to having specific organized lands and such because it wasn't part of their culture. To add, the Native Americans were not farmers. They were hunters and gatherers for the most part. In 1879, the Carlisle Schools are created by the government to provide an education for the Native Americans. These schools I believe were created with good intentions and the thought that the country was doing something good for these native peoples. Although they were organized with well intentions from the U.S., they Americanized the Natives and broke apart their family units. 

          In my opinion, the U.S. and their federal policies started out as being intentionally discriminatory toward the Native Americans, but once they found that the natives weren't going to give in so easily, they tried their best to do what they thought was helping and protecting the native peoples  even though they were really doing significant damage to them.  They were discriminating them with somewhat well intentions if that makes sense.

         Then we have the buffalo soldiers. A job in the military was appealing to many freed slaves after the Civil War because it was a steady occupation that allowed them to move westward instead of sharecropping in the South. They were given uniforms, horses, supplies etc. However they weren't given quite the best supplies. They also were discriminated by their white commissioners because whites still weren't accepting and fair to the blacks. At the same time you have to realize that the government was providing them with occupations, supplies even if the weren't the best, and they recognized them for their successes in the future. I do not think that the federal policies and actions of the government toward the buffalo soldiers was intentionally discriminatory.  

A timeline from ABC clio of the events discussed above.

 

Things Aren't Always as They Seem

                   Our class took on the lesson this week different from the usual set up. To begin our lesson on Rockefeller and Carnegie, we watched a series of videos as a class while taking notes on a google doc that was shared with everyone. We split the notes into key people, key terms, main ideas, key events as topics and were assigned a topic in groups. We then continued to learn about the lesson through documents that were provided for us on our edline page. After we felt like we knew a lot about the lesson. We gathered as a class to come up with the essential question for this lesson that we thought would fit. We came up with a question that asked how Carnegie and Rockefeller monopolies had affected the common worker.
                 To answer this question, first you have to know what a monopoly is. A monopoly is when someone or one group of people have control of a certain commodity or service. When talking about Rockefeller, this was oil, and when talking about Carnegie, the commodity is steel.

This image shows Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company as a powerful Octopus crushing his competitors.

                Rockefeller and Carnegie can be seen to affect the common worker negatively in some aspects while also be seen as positively impacting the common worker. They each dominated in their individual industries, shutting out most of their competitors. Rockefeller would do this by reducing his costs until the competitor was run out of business, then boosting his prices to gain a profit. Carnegie took the lessons he learned from Sir Henry Bessemer back to America. These lessons helped keep the quality of steel high , while keeping the cost low. In doing so Carnegie took control of the steel industry. As both Carnegie and Rockefeller were dominating their separate industries, many workers were faced with unemployment as their company was shut down. Both individuals gained a sense of hatred from the public.
                   However, despite their public views and individual wealth, they continued to better the nation. They largely contributed to helping the economy in America. Carnegie helped the country become the country with the largest steel production in the world, surpassing Great Britain. Rockefeller started exporting his oil to other countries, also helping the American economy. In addition both men donated extremely large portions of their wealth to universities, charities and much more. Many of Rockefeller's donations went unnoticed by the public. Rockefeller once said in an interview with William Hoster, " I believe the power to make money is a gift of God ... to be developed and used to the best of our ability for the good of mankind. Having been endowed with the gift I possess, I believe it is my duty to make money and still more money and to use the money I make for the good of my fellow man according to the dictates of my conscience." I think it's safe to say Rockefeller stuck to his words when it has been said that he gave away 500 million  of his 900 million dollar fortune. He gave a sum of money to Spelman College in Georgia which educated African- American women, founded the University of Chicago, helped provide relief after World War I, and like Carnegie put his money toward philanthropic institutions one of which helped cure yellow fever. Carnegie put his money toward libraries, church organs, benefits and funds for his former employees, and much more. The Carnegie Corporation of New York was created in 1911 in order to distribute his money for educational and research purposes. "Rags to riches" is a concept proven true by the one and only Carnegie who rose to being one of the wealthiest men in America from living his earlier years in poverty.  The duo demonstrated to others how to become a successful business man and how to distribute one's fortune respectively even though being negatively perceived by the public.
                  In the end, I think that Rockefeller and Carnegie positively impacted the society and common workers, more than they negatively impacted them. I believe that the negative public opinion was out of envy and jealousy of their wealth and successful business tactics. Society should consider both the positive and negative actions of an individual before coming to a conclusion about them. This concept isn't as easy as it sounds, but it is always important to at least give it a try.

Picture and quote document here.

Freedom from Where?

This lesson, we were presented with the essential question " Who 'gave' freedom to enslaved  Americans? Did freedom come from above or below? To what extent were Abraham Lincoln's actions influenced by the actions of enslaved Americans? To begin, we needed to know the difference between freedom from above and freedom from below. Freedom from above is when someone of a higher class or someone with power is giving the freedom to the people or someone from a lower social status. Freedom from below is the people in the lower class gaining their own freedom without the help of a greater power. Next, we looked at two images and decided if they were freedom from above or below. The images are shown below. 


The first picture looks like Abraham Lincoln is lifting up and freeing the person. Since Abraham. Lincoln has a social status that is above the slaves, and he is doing the freeing, it is considered freedom from above. The second image is the opposite. It looks as if the slave has picked himself up and given himself freedom without any help from someone who has more power in which case it would be freedom from below. 

Next, we analyzed documents from Abraham Lincoln and tried to figure out if they were examples of freedom from above or freedom from below. The documents we looked at were excerpts The Emancipation Proclamation, The Gettysburg Address, Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, and his reply to an open letter from Horace Greeley in the New York Tribune. The excerpts can be found here. The quote that really capture Lincoln's opinions toward slavery at the time is as follows, "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union and is not either to save or to destroy slavery." . Lincoln wasn't so much as concerned about slavery as he was the Union staying in tact. We also took a look at two other documents. Document Y showed how the South was outraged and didn't acknowledge Lincoln as their President. Document x shows an example of freedom from below because the slaves are pouring into cities and towns to make their cause known which is upsetting the people in the cities.  Lastly, we took a look at the Thirteenth Amendment which is created to abolish slavery.

I think that in the end, freedom came from above just as much as it came from below. Even though it was formally abolished by the man who had the most power in the nation at the time, without the slaves making it known what they wanted, Lincoln may have never thought to end slavery considering he was a slave owner himself!

Two years ago Jason Collins became the first player of a US mainstream sport to announce that he was homosexual. The NBA player was taking a big chance by coming out because he knew he was going to be all the media was talking about, and he didn't know how his teammates and coaches would now think of him. There is a lot of debate on equality and marriage for gay individuals over the last couple of years and I think this is an example of freedom from above because you now have this well known sports figure who can help other sports players and individuals everywhere make the decision to come out, live the way they want to, and fight for their equality. To view more see the video below.