Plessy v. Ferguson(Week 4)

• Brainstorm what you know about any policy that worked against the rights of African Americans during Reconstruction.

After the 13th Amendment was passed in 1865 were it abolished slavery it seemed like everything would be better off and there would be peace between African-Americans and Whites. However, that was not the case since there were policies that stopped this from happening. One of the policies that worked against the rights of African Americans was the Supreme Court decision passed in 1896 called Plessy v. Ferguson which stated, "separate but equal" meaning that blacks and whites would have equal facilities but in separate locations based on their skin color.

After slavery was abolished it was time to decided how society would play out. Divine states,"Supported by the 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, facilities, segregated schooling added a devastating financial burden to education in the South" (259). It was said that the schools would remain separate but still be equal. That was not the case at all because it was obvious that Anglo-Americans were going to remain with the power they had possessed before hand. Americans would obviously not want their children to be going to school with another child of dark skin. This shows how many Americans were not willing to come to an agreement in treating African Americans as equal but instead wanted to disguise it with "separate but equal".Most schools were segregated based on people's skin color.Divine describes, "In 1890, only 35 percent of black children attended to school in the South; 55 percent of white children did"(259). As the court decision decided "separate but equal", it would make it seem like everything would be equal for whites and blacks but in reality blacks were going to be less fortunate in not having the same high quality services and availability to go to the same locations as whites. An example of this would be when blacks would take the hand-me-down books from whites when they no longer wanted them or they were too old or out of date for them. This shows how it was not equal because blacks were not given priority when it came to their education. They were being left to the end and did not have enough resources to help them achieve their goals. Many African Americans were lacking an education meaning they were illiterate. Divine annotates,"At that time, nearly two-thirds of the black population was illiterate"(259). This shows how many African Americans did not have the knowledge for opportunities in advancement and growth as a person since they were not even able to read a text of paper. The cause of poor education had an effect on voting rights.This affected the voting rights for African-Americans because they were restricted from voting, because they were illiterate. The U.S used these rules in order to limit the ability to give them voting rights. This shows how the U.S. would give them the title of being a U.S citizen, but according to what Mr. Grzymala said " What's the point of having citizenship if your rights are being denied". I fully agree to this statement because it is true that this policy worked against African Americans by setting up new policies pretending that life for former slaves was improving when in reality they were constraining their rights as citizens.

Metacognitive Reflection(Week3)

My reading habits can go either way of reading sections or chapters through the week or reading everything in one day. It always depends on how much homework I have for other classes. That is why I note down on my agenda the times in which I will be doing my reading and also write down the page numbers that I will complete. By doing this, it gives me a set time of finishing my reading assignment without thinking Ill do it later when it can be finished sooner. By organizing my reading time I also avoid procrastinating. My reading habits consists of being in a quiet space so I won't be distracted while reading a text with so much information. I am not the type of person who can concentrate in a loud room so that is why I always try to put myself in a peaceful environment where I know I can get my reading done. I also make sure that I don't have any technology around me because I know how I will be using my cellphone or laptop, and that of course is extremely distracting when doing homework, especially long readings. By eliminating all these distractions I finish my reading assignments at a much quicker pace. The one thing that oddly keeps me focused is music. To me it is not considered a distraction but instead it helps me not get irritated by being bored and at the same time I am  able to do homework and listen to music and getting it all done at the same time. 

I use sticky notes to help me summarize each page that I read. This way it is easier looking back at the text and not wonder what the entire page is about and that way I do not have to re-read as much as I would have if I had not annotated.Annotating to me doesn’t mean to write down the entire page again but instead to make sense of it and how it can relate to the questions that will be given in class. It is much better to rephrase pages by summarizing them in a way that I am able to understand them later on. I do this by using common words that come easily to mind. I can recall my teacher saying when you are using more advanced words be sure you are using them correctly, and if you are not then do not use them at all. She said this because it looks really bad when it seems you are trying to hard and at the end I would not even be able to understand what I wrote.  When I annotate i make sure I define all of the key concepts because those will be the most relevant and important to remember for history class since a lot of them are policies and so forth. Much of the time I highlight the most essential words because those are the ones that have the most significance in relating to prompt questions. 

Schema?(Week 1)

• Write about your experience with U.S. History. What schema do you have to help you learn this semester?

My experience in U.S. History has only been about one year, my junior year of high school with my teacher Ms. Bolthouse. Modernization was creating urban cities and a better living condition for most people. My classroom experience was very interesting because my teacher taught in a visual way. She would always show video clips and also work in groups. Many of the times we would also do presentations in class so that everyone would be able to remember what we had been studying that week. What I can recall the most were the images of what we were studying and the big cartoons that we would have to analyze to describe what the meaning is. I noticed how even though its the same context of reading from high school and college now that there are major differences in how they are taught to students. This is because many teachers in college not only give you the good side of U.S. History but also let you know the negative sides of the government. What I can remember from learning in my high school history class was that, Industrialization was a more economic change and had to do with technology innovation and increase of manufacturing. The U.S started to form factories and that was when a lot of the people started to move from rural areas to an urban environment. the working conditions were not great and there was lot of child labor at the time as young as eleven years old and poor working conditions and the misuse of the mechanics and many people will get injuries and even at times death. A lot of the hygiene would cause health problems for  the workers. We talked about the Great Depression and how the U.S. economy had fallen down because the stock market crashed. During that time social security wasn't established and that was when they formed the Social Security Act to establish a economic security. People were doing "buy now pay later". I also learned about Rockefeller one of the most powerful and wealthy man of the time, he controlled the railroads which the transportation method and he taxed very high so the producers and sellers had barely enough profit from it. I also learned about the Jim Crow laws that were explained to me as segregation of blacks and whites. I can recall the court case of Plessy v. Ferguson were it was okay to be "separate but equal" meaning that the U.S decided segregation was going to be taken into action. The classroom settings for whites was that there was one teacher and nor more than twenty students with new materials, and they had many more resources in contrast to African Americans who had one teacher teach more than a hundred students in a crowded house. Many times grades were combined because they did not have enough money to separate the children by age group.


 My schema to help me learn this semester will be to keep up with my readings in history class. This will be beneficial for myself because I will be up to date with the lectures in class and will be able to write more descriptively in my blogs and also have more evidence supporting my claims. I will also take legible organized notes so that later on when I have tests or quizzes about any topic I can go back to them and not be confused about phrases that i had written but instead write complete thoughts so I'll be able to understand it fairly easy. On my blogs I will write a lot of evidence of what I need to know for the class so when I need to study or refresh my memory of a concept I can look back at previous blogs. I will make sure that I annotate as much as I can on the readings, this way I can check important dates in history and remember to use them for a prompt if it is useful. Overall, if I am consistent with all of these ideas I will be set for this semester.