Amistad
The story of the Amistad has become part of the less glamorous history in the United States and the wider Western world in terms of the human rights violation that was slavery. The story began in February 1839, when Portuguese slave traders violated all the treaties in existence at the time and abducted Africans from Sierra Leone in order to ship them to Cuba to be sold as slaves. In Cuba, 53 African men and women were sold to Spanish planters. The Cuban schooner Amistad would ship them to a plantation in the Caribbean. However, the simplicity of this plan was ruined by revolting Africans, who seized the ship in on 1 July 1839. The captain and the cook were killed, and the remaining crew members were told to sail to Africa. This plan, however, also did not work, as the U.S. brig Washington seized the Amistad off Long Island,…...

The lawyers and advocates for the slaves recognize this early in the film, and it is a common theme throughout. This is also tied to the way in which the Amistad case led to the United States' Civil War. All moral objections to slavery aside, there were very real practical (both economic and political) concerns to ending slavery. This case further hurt the slave trade, promising increased economic issues for the South as their source of cheap labor disappeared.
Had the U.S. not been involved in the slave trade, the country would not have been as successful in its first century of existence. Though this is a terrible truth to admit, the economy of the South was dependent on slave labor, and it helped to drive the nation's wealth. The racial issues in this country would not exist, perhaps, had slavery never reached this continent, but the country itself might…...

According to the movie, the case was important in helping to start the American Civil ar. At one point in the movie Senator Calhoun warns if the Amistad Africans are freed, then the South will have little choice but to go to war to defend its economic interests, in other words, slavery. This is simply not the case, the Amistad case was centered on the Atlantic slave trade which was already outlawed. Spain was breaking international law by transporting kidnapped Africans as slaves to Cuba and its other colonies. The notion that the Africans were tortured and kidnapped as free persons validated their use of force to free themselves from the Spanish. The freedom of the Africans did not endanger America's stability because domestic laws were never even in question. The Spanish slave traders violated International Law and it was this violation that freed them at the end. The…...

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Works Cited

Foner, Eric. The Amistad Case in Fact and Film. George Mason University, 1998. Web. 6 Nov 2011.

Amistad
n 1839 the United States was bitterly divided over the issue of slavery. The House of Representatives had enacted a gag order which effectively blocked any anti-slavery legislation from being discussed. Current President Martin Van Buren was in a tough re-election campaign and was looking to the South for support. Northern Abolitionists were in a state of frustration as every avenue had been blocked for them. nto this maelstrom sailed a tiny ship named the Amistad, which weeks earlier had been commandeered by it's cargo of slaves. This trial over those onboard would turn into a battle over the issue of Slavery itself and tear America apart. (Mintz)

The slaves had been captured illegally in Africa, sailed to Cuba and sold, and then were in the process of sailing to their final destination when the Africans rose up in rebellion, slaughter most of the crew, and forced the remaining crewmembers…...

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In 1801, then president Thomas Jefferson sent an embassy to France to inquire about purchasing the port of New Orleans, instead, in 1803, the United States purchased the entire Louisiana Territory nearly doubling the size of the country. This new territory allowed the United States to expand into the West and was the beginning of the idea of Manifest Destiny; or the idea that the United States was destined to expand across the continent all the war to the Pacific Ocean. It also spelled the doom of the Native Americans who were forced to continually move west in order to make room for American settlement. (Kelly)

Marbury v. Madison

This was a particularly important case as it set the precedent that the Supreme Court of the United States had the power to declare a law unconstitutional. It began at the end of one president's term when John Adams appointed a number of new judges and Justices of the Peace in the last hours of his presidency. Upon taking office, the next President, Thomas Jefferson, not wanting a group of political enemies on important courts, ordered that the appointments not be delivered. One of those appointed as a Justice of the Peace, William Marbury took the official in charge of issuing the appointments, Secretary of State James Madison, to court. After some time, the case made it to the Supreme Court which ruled that the law on which Marbury based his case, the Judiciary Act of 1789, was unconstitutional. This was the very first time the Court had ruled something unconstitutional and it set the precedent which remains to this day. (Findlaw)

Robert Hayden, one of the most important black poets of the 20th Century, was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1913 and grew up in extreme poverty in a racially mixed neighborhood. His parents divorced when he was a child and he was raised by their neighbors, illiam and Sue Ellen Hayden, and not until he was in his forties did he learn that Asa Sheffey and Gladys Finn were his biological parents. During the Great Depression he was employed for two years by the Federal riter's Project, and published his first volume of poetry Heart-Shape in the Dust in 1940. He taught English at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee for twenty-three years, and then at the University of Michigan from 1969 until his death in 1980. Among his other works were The Lion and the Archer (1948), Figure of Time (1955), A Ballad of Remembrance (1962), orks in Mourning Time…...

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WORKS CITED

Bloom, Harold. Robert Hayden. Chelsea House Publishers, 2005.

Fetrow, Fred M. "Middle Passage: Robert Hayden's Anti-Epoch" in Bloom: 35-48.

Gates, Henry Louis and Evelyn Brooks Higgenbotham. Harlem Renaissance Lives: From the African-American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2009.

Kutzinski, Vera M. "Changing Permanences: Historical and Literary Revisionism in Robert Hayden's Middle Passage" in Bloom: 306-21.

They may not be overtly trying to keep blacks down, but I have noticed they it is important in this company to keep whites at the top of the ladder.
For example, my manager, a Caucasian, has been with this company for 20 years, he earns a salary in six figures and has no college experience. It shows. In fact under his supervision our department is collapsing. There is a supervisor who is African-American who tries hard to cover up for his boss's errors of judgment and wrongheaded decisions. He should be the one running our department, but he hasn't been promoted or compensated -- or even given credit for the yeoman's work that he does. The black supervisor has been with the company as long as the white manager, and the black supervisor has two master's degrees, but he can't catch a break in the company pecking order. The…...

"
The Aftermath

Uncle Tom characters were common in both white and black productions of the time, yet no director before Micheaux had so much as dared to shine a light on the psychology that ravages such characters. By essentially bowing to the two white men, Micheaux implied that Old Ned was less than a man; an individual whittled down to nothing more than yes-man and wholly deprived of self-worth. At this point in the history of black films, with some of the most flagrant sufferings of blacks exposed to the American public, the only logical path forward that African-Americans could take was to begin making cogent demands to improve their collective social situation.

Slowly, black characters in film took on greater and more significant roles in film. Sidney Poitier was one of the most powerful film stars of the mid twentieth century. In roles like the 1950 film by director Joseph L.…...

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Reference List

Finlayson, R. (2003). We Shall Overcome: The History of the American Civil Rights

Movement. Lerner Publications Company, Minneapolis, MN.

King, Jr., M. And Jackson, J. (1963). Why We Can't Wait. Signet Classic, New York,

NY.

The book Autobiography of My Dead Brother also deals with the identity crises of youth. It begins with three teenagers attending a funeral of their friend who died in a drive-by shooting. The main characters, Jesse and Rise, are not actually blood brothers, but they consider themselves brothers because of their close friendship. However, over the course of the book, the two young men began to become estranged. Rise becomes more and more interested with making a living on the street, selling drugs and living the life of the sort of people who killed Bobby, the boy whose funeral both young men attend at the beginning of the book. Rise justifies this because Bobby played by the rules and still died -- but in contrast, Jesse finds himself growing apart from his brother and instead finding refuge in art rather than violence. Defining his own values in contrast to those…...

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Works Cited

Crain, W.C. "Chapter 7: Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Evolution. From Theories of Development.

Prentice-Hall, 1985. pp. 118-136. 10 Jun 2008. http://faculty.plts.edu/gpence/html/kohlberg.htm

Cutter, Chris. Whale Talk. New York: Dell, 2001.

Harder, Arlene. "The Developmental Stages of Erik Erikson." The Learning Place. 10 Jun 2008.  http://www.learningplaceonline.com/stages/organize/Erikson.htm

Slave Dancer: How to teach the book, how to teach about slavery, race, and ethics
The Slave Dancer by Paula Fox, viewed from the eyes of a student, is an adventure tale with a young protagonist who can be easily identified with, in the eyes of a young reader. Plot wise, the book tells the story of a young, thirteen-year-old boy in 1840, when the American slave trade was still legal. The boy, Jessie Bollier, has recently lost his father. He makes money for his family by playing his fife on the docks of New Orleans. Suddenly, one day, he finds himself on board a ship called "The Moonlight." The Moonlight is a slave ship bound for the coast of Africa.

An exciting story from the point-of-view of a student, but a potential lesson in history and ethics in the eyes of a teacher, for Jessie, as compelled by the crew,…...

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Work Cited

Fox, Paula. The Slave Dancer. New York: Random House, 1974.

Wassynger, Jane. The Slave Dancer: Teacher Support Site. Retrieved 9 Dec 2004 at.   view=tghttp://www.randomhouse.com/teachers/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=0440404029& ;

reparation being paid to descendants of African America slaves is certainly not a new argument, eiter for or against. Te world is full of people wo in black and wite see te need for reparations, be tey financial or oterwise. To many, te ideals or affirmative action and oter civil rigts reforms are a form of reparations. Yet, te question is often raised as to wy te rest of te culture sould pay for a mistake made by a small percentage of te U.S. population, more tan one undred years ago. Additionally, witin tort teory states tat te federal government ad te power to abolis slavery and yet did not and it terefore owes for damages. It is clear, witout a doubt tat someting is owed to te descendants of te African-American Slaves, yet te question as always been wo sould pay and ow muc.
" ... Te government is…...

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Toni Morrison's Beloved
This story works to capture the essence of slavery's aftermath for its characters. It tells a truth created in flashback and ghost story. It aims to create mysticism only memory can illustrate. "The novel is meant to give grief a body, to make it palpable" (Gates, 29). The characters are trapped in the present because they are imprisoned by the horrors of slavery. They are literally held hostage in their home, isolated from the outside world. In many ways Beloved represents a geographically realistic neo-slave narrative by presenting in flashback the experiences of Sethe. This story also has the fantastic element of a ghost who later becomes flesh and bone. The paragraphs below explore the characters memories and the magical realism of a ghost.

Memory affects the character of Sethe in a way that illustrates the pain and grief of her past enslavement. Sethe is living with the memory…...

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Works Cited

Gates, Henry Louis and Appiah, K.A., ed. Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. New York: Amistad Press, Inc., 1993.

Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Penguin Books, 1987.

Still it is not completely unheard of for a name to be derived from a longer epitaph of Nat, property of man, Mr. Turner. This is how many people's last names resulted in ending with "man."
Nat Turner was born a slave in Virginia in 1800 and grew to become a slave preacher. He did not use tobacco or liquor and maintained a clean, disciplined life. He was very religious man and became passionate about the Scripture. He began preaching to slaves in and around the area of Southampton County, Virginia in 1828. As a result he became well-known and liked in the area. It was at this time he began having visions. It was these visions that inspired him to revolt. hile he waited for further signs, unrest was already evident in on plantations, in the hills and on boats in ports of call (Greenberg, 85). Gradually he built…...

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Works Cited

Short History of Salvador da Bahia, Brazil. Bahia-Online. Retrieved December

10, 2004 from the World Wide Web:  http://www.bahia-online.net/history-bahia.htm .

Gates, H.L., & Appiah, K.A. (Eds.). (1994). Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. New York: Amistad Press, Inc.

Goldman, S. (2003). Nat Turner Revolt of 1831. HistoryBuff.com. Retrieved December

lack Consciousness came about because many African-American individuals were dissatisfied with the treatment that they were receiving from Caucasian individuals and the organizations that were designed to protect them were really not doing enough to ensure the protection of African-American individuals. Various works have been created that deal with lack Consciousness in different ways. Much of it is being read in schools today so that all people can gain a better understanding of their own culture and other cultures. One of these works is "Amistad 1: Writings on lack History and Culture" by John Williams and Charles Harris. This particular work was written in 1970, but it still has much relevance today for black consciousness, and it deals with many different interpretations regarding Western culture. Also looked at in this work is the philosophical validity of African-Americans when they discuss their interpretations of…...

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Black Consciousness helps with a realization of several things. The two most important of these are the awareness that being black actually involves a mental attitude, and stating that one is black works toward that individual's emancipation and freedom. Those that embrace black consciousness do not allow themselves to be oppressed or mistreated by others based on the color of their skin. There are various definitions of black consciousness, but one of the best and most comprehensive definitions is that black consciousness is when a black person realizes that there is a need to rally with other black individuals regarding what causes their oppression, which is the color of their skin, and to work together as a group so that they can rid themselves of what still holds them down and binds them into servitude. In other words, by trying to 'act white' they are insulting the Creator's intelligence in making them black. Instead of doing this, they should embrace who and what they are and try to ensure that they are treated fairly and equally with those of other skin colors and ethnicities. Black Consciousness came about because many African-American individuals were dissatisfied with the treatment that they were receiving from Caucasian individuals and the organizations that were designed to protect them were really not doing enough to ensure the protection of African-American individuals. Various works have been created that deal with Black Consciousness in different ways. Much of it is being read in schools today so that all people can gain a better understanding of their own culture and other cultures. One of these works is "Amistad 1: Writings on Black History and Culture" by John Williams and Charles Harris. This particular work was written in 1970, but it still has much relevance today for black consciousness, and it deals with many different interpretations regarding Western culture. Also looked at in this work is the philosophical validity of African-Americans when they discuss their interpretations of Black Consciousness.

Horizon in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes ere atching God
The horizon is the line which forms the apparent boundary between earth and sky. The horizon is as far as you can see. The horizon appears to be the furthest point you can reach, but is not a place you can actually travel to. The horizon blurs at the line between earth and sky. The horizon is always present, no matter where you are or which direction you are facing. The horizon is where the sun rises and where the sun sets, representing a process coming full circle. These are all features of the horizon and they are all relevant to Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes ere atching God.

The novel suggests the importance of the horizon because it begins with it and ends with it. In the opening of the novel, Hurston writes:

Ships at a distance have every man's wish…...

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Works Cited

Barbeito, P.F. "Making Generations' in Jacobs, Larsen, and Hurston: A Genealogy of Black Women's Writing." American Literature 70.2 (1998): 365-95.

Bond, C. "Language, Sign, and Difference in Their Eyes Were Watching God." Zora Neale Hurston: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. Eds. K.A. Appiah & Henry Louis Gates. New York: Amistad Press, 1993: 204-217.

Hurston, Z.N. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1990.

Lillios, A. "The Monstropolous Beast': The Hurricane in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God." Southern Quarterly 36.3 (1998): 89-93.

The hierarchical society, which characterized the new nation, was another aspect, which would soon be transformed. "The political rulers had come largely from the social elites. The churches were supported by those elites. and, in most cases, the churches had been officially sanctioned by the political structures of the states. Social, political, and religious authority had been tightly interwoven in the same small group of elite leaders." [

Ira Chernus] the Electoral voting system and the cultural changes initiated by the new political situation created a new wave of social and moral reforms.

Racial amity

Another major social change that started to happen was the dissolution of apartheid. Though it must be understood that racial segregation continued in existence much long after the abolition of slavery, the cause for desegregation was initiated in the 1830's. Oberlin College, started in 1833, became the first ever College in the U.S. To admit black students and…...

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Bibliography

Howard Cincotta, "An Outline of American History," USIA, May 1994,  http://www.let.rug.nl/~usa/H/1994/ch6_p4.htm 

Bonnie Eisenberg & Mary Ruthsdotter, "Living the Legacy: The Women's Rights Movement 1848-1998," Accessed Sep 10th 2006, available at http://www.legacy98.org/move-hist.html

James Brewer Stewart, 'Abolitionist Movement', Accessed Sep 9th 2006, available at  http://afgen.com/abmovement.html 

NPS, 'National Abolitionist Movement', Accessed Sep 9th 2006, available at http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/amistad/connecticutabolitionists.htm