sunday, november 28 2010

                Night john is a story of the struggles of slavery, and the treatment of the African Americans during times of slavery. Sarney is a young female who trades pinches of tobacco for reading lessons with John. John is a slave who escaped to the North and late came back to the south plantations in order to teach slaves how to read and write,  so the black people could ensue that no one would forget how they were treated. This story takes place on a plantation in Texas, prior to the civil war. Mamey took care of everyone on the plantation. throughout the story I felt that she has given up on freedom. The plantation owner is a mean old man who loved to call the dogs on people and let them tear people up. his name was old Waller.

                Mascot is the story of Malcolm X and his struggles to fit in. This Particular story takes place in Michigan. Early on Malcolm tries his hand at boxing, and basketball, he is not as successful as his brother at sports because of his awkwardness. This bugged him so much he acted out, because of this  he was sent to a reform school in Alma Michigan. he was 1 of 2 black children there. He liked it there, he was at the top of his class for grades and was elected class president, here he was accepted. Later on when his teacher  Mr. Ostrowski asked him what he wanted to be Malcolm answered he wanted to be a lawyer, his teacher said this could not be possible due to his skin color and asked him to set his goals realistically. when he went to his sisters in Boston he fell in love with the big black community environment. This is because he was accepted. when he began to feel segregated at the reform school he later than moved with Lyones Family. He loved being with them because when he was with the Loynes family he realized that there are no limits in this world.

                The Great Debaters is similar to these stories in the sense of racism is always fighting against the good of blacks. In all of these stories The protagonists always prevail and end up the better person for just turning the other check. Although there are many similarities there are quite a lot of differences within the plots. For one the time in these are all different ranging from before the civil war like in night john and after the civil war. The Great debaters lets us know about how hard and uncomfortable it must have been to be African American before the Civil Right Movement because of the harsh treatments and even lynching's.