Shortly after returning from our extended Europe trip in
2012, it was decided that the next big trip would be a road trip across the
USA. Up to that point, a large part of our history-learning through homeschooling
had been focused on the art, literature, and humanities of Europe and the Old
World. In 2013, we shifted focus to the Americas. Rebecca does a nice job
chronicling some of our pre-work in a few posts that I found and saved up until
now (below.)
Consequently, what enveloped in our study of the Americas
was much broader than we originally envisioned, as we continually grappled with
the question of, “What does it mean to be an American?” Ironically, Patrick was
15 when we began this course of study, which was the exact age that I was when
I moved to Europe, spending the bulk of my adolescent years in Germany and
England, and traveling more in that continent than I had in my own. These are
impressionable ages for adolescents, so described by Erikson as Identity vs.
Role Confusion. I realize now that what started as a way to teach my kids
American history became a larger pursuit for all of us to answer many questions;
such as, “What does it mean to be a citizen?” “What is my purpose here?” and
“Who am I?”
I speak often about how I didn’t really homeschool my kids,
but somehow, we got to this point where they’re holding two college degrees
each at age 19 and 21. I think homeschooling is more of a state of mind than
anything else that it should be called. It is the most certifiable verb for
‘lifelong-learning’ that I have ever encountered.
So here we are now, six years later, many trips have come
and gone, and Mike and I are driving down the I-40 without the kids, embarking
on a 6,000-mile journey that was originally supposed to be another
homeschooling field trip. Because our kids could only negotiate three weeks of
vacation at each of their brand-new jobs, they will be flying in and out of
points along our way, so they can finally see the places that they studied as
part of their education.
I will do my best to highlight places, history, and culture
because sharing those things are important to me, but I’ll be honest – Mama’s
tired. Rebecca tells me that my Erikson conflict is now Generativity vs. Stagnation,
and that is the truth! Stagnating sounds really nice right now. It’s still
surreal to me that I go to work and people call me Professor, and I feel a
tremendous sense of responsibility not only to my students, but also to the
patients that they care for or will care for in the future.
Intel has the right idea offering a sabbatical every seven
years for employees, and I do think it makes better workers. Already, in the
last three weeks, I have gotten a new backyard gate, a garden bench, and countless
fix-its around the house from their employee! 😉 Like all good journey narratives, often the
seeker does not even know what they are searching for, and henceforth, that is
where the adventure begins.
Friday, March 15, 2013
1 year until departure
Pre-Trip Entry #1
Planning and Research has Begun
By Rebecca
We’re still a year out from our next trip,
a driving trip around the United States (similar to our loop around Europe),
but the usual in-depth, multi-media, seemingly-endless, homeschool history
lesson has begun to prepare us for the places we’re visiting. Just this
Wednesday, my mom and I went and spent almost one hundred dollars on US History
books. But that’s not all that we’ve been doing. Remember how I said
“multi-media?”
A little more than a week ago, my dad, brother, and I went
into our local library with a list of over twenty different movies involving
the south, the first place we’ll be visiting on our drive-through. Out of those
twenty, we found seven. Out of those seven, we watched two. But we get point
for trying, right?
Either way, the two movies we
watched really opened up our eyes to the south during its most notable era; the
Civil War era. The movies were “Gone with the Wind” and “The Color Purple.” I
know, “The Color Purple” isn’t technically set during the Civil War, but its
theme is related close enough that I put them in the same bracket. We also
included “Lincoln” and “Roots” in our list of movies to prepare us for the
south since we watched them within the fall of 2012 and now, and because we
remember them very vividly. Each of these movies includes at least one of these
similar themes; slavery, the Civil War, and racism that many associate with the
south.
I’ll start in chronological order,
for both our viewing and for history, with “Roots.” From our last month-long
“field trip” to Europe, we learned much about the Dutch Golden Age and its
shipping companies. One of the two major shipping companies was WIC (West India
Company). WIC has a triangular trade route that starts in Europe and then goes
to Africa to trade European-made guns, ammunition, and other factory-made goods
for slaves. Then they sail to America and the Bahamas to trade their slaves for
cotton, sugar, tobacco, molasses, and rum. Lastly, they take these goods to
Europe to trade for the factory-made things, and then start their circuit
again. Our protagonist of the earlier episodes of “Roots,” Kunta Kinte, is
taken into this triangle from Africa to America.
During the first part of “Roots,” we often hear the slave
owners talking about “breaking in” a new slave. This means to beat them until
they think of the slave owners with fear and agree to obey their every command.
Kunta is very often whipped. To start off, Kunta is sold and renamed as Toby,
but problems arise when he doesn’t accept his new name because he is too proud
of his heritage. He does not like being renamed, he doesn’t like the demanding
white people, and he doesn’t like being beaten, so many times, he runs away,
only to be found again and beaten. Eventually, he accepts the name Toby, but
the only time he doesn’t think about running away is when his daughter, Kizzy
is born. He is given the opportunity to leave with a drummer man, but he
decides to stay because of his family. Later on, Kizzy is sold to another
plantation for trying to help one of her friends escape. After this, Toby never
stops thinking about running away again until the day he dies. That’s what
stood out to me from the movie; how they could never break Toby’s spirit. No
matter how hard they tried. I loved how this movie told just the story of the
slaves, starting right from when they came over from Africa to the time of
their freedom.
The next movie we hatched focused much less on the slaves and
their story, but more on the behind-the-scenes of the Civil War. “Lincoln”
showed the interior workings of political problems, including the still-used
lobbyist. One thing that stuck out to
me about the movie was how political power has always been used sometimes less
tactfully, to put it gently. One example of this form “Lincoln” is when the
lobbyists are bribing the Democrats with jobs for their votes to pass the bill
that would grant the black’s their freedom. Another is when Lincoln told his
Secretary of State, William Seward, that they had to hold the vote for the bill
before the end of the war so the Democrats would be pressured to pass it. Their
side was losing quickly and they wouldn’t want to lose any more lives. It was
sort of like a much less intense blackmailing, though they weren’t completely
forced to do something. These tactics weren’t exactly very fair, but they were
in support of a good cause which won the black’s their freedom and ended the
Civil War.
More recently, we watched “Gone with the Wind.” Again, its
story has much less to do with the slaves, but it does a great job of shining a
light on the white, southern people. Through this movie, we indirectly see how
some of the Confederates felt about their slaves and why they feel justified owning them, though the
story is mostly a drama about a young woman’s messed up love life. I was mostly
interested by how, even after the war ended and the blacks were free,
Scarlett’s slaves, Mammy, Paul, and Prissy, didn’t leave. When drawing a
comparison with “Roots,” you can see how much better Scarlett treated her
slaves, even though she still wasn’t treating them nicely. But, to be fair, I
don’t think Scarlett treated much of anyone nicely. In one of the later scenes,
her father actually told her that she should be easier on the slaves. We see
that the O’Hara’s think more of their slaves than the slave owners in “Roots.”
The O’Hara’s don’t necessarily respect their slaves (except maybe Mammy a
little), but they still think of them as people, something the slave owners in
“Roots” weren’t as prone to as I saw it. But I don’t believe the people in
“Roots” or “Gone with the Wind” were just owning slaves to be mean and nasty
(at least not all of them), but they felt justified by the fact that they would
starve without the free labor the slaves provided to pick their crops to sell.
So, mostly the southern white people were just very desperate.
The latest movie we watched was “The Color Purple.” This
movie was very interesting to me because it was one of the first movies I’ve
seen about blacks living on their own right after the Civil War. One of the
major things shown was how their past slavery affected how they treated each
other. By then, almost all of the black people had raised on being beaten and
that’s how they started treating their peers. Mostly how the black men treated
the black women. It is true that, at the time, women were much less respected
than men, but the white men hardly ever treated the white women as brutally and
forcefully as the black men did to the black women. A good analogy is that the
black women stay like slaves while the black men became like the slave owners.
The black men probably became like this because they spent a good deal of time
watching and experiencing how the white people treated the blacks, and it
rubbed off on them. They were accustomed to the more powerful person having a
less powerful person to order around and beat on. Unfortunately for the black
women, all women were less respected at the time, so they were automatically
chosen to play the role of slaves again.
So, as you can see, we’ve learned a lot from just watching
(at least partially) fictitious movies. It’s been getting a little busier
around here lately as we’ve started up our history of the America (and since
we’ve been trying to prepare for a play that’s being performed in May), but
it’s good to know that it will only get busier! I wonder what we’ll be learning
next…
Saturday, March 23,
2013
1 year until departure
Pre-Trip Entry #2
Black Women Walking
By Rebecca
Last week, my mother, brother, and I
went to see the play “Black Women Walking” at the Phoenix Center for the Arts.
The purpose of the play was to inform the public (admission was free, so it
really was very public) about the African-American women who impacted the
country (whether majorly or not) throughout history. Each woman came onto the
stage and told their story, one after the other. These historical women were,
in order of appearance; Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Mary McLeod Bethune,
Zora Neale Hurston, Bessie Coleman, Marian Anderson, Willie Mae Ford Smith,
Sister Elizabeth, Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Wilma Rudolph.
In 1843, Isabella Baumfree changed
her name to Sojourner Truth. She was a slave born in 1797, but earned her
freedom in 1826, a year before New York (her home state) abolished slavery, in
a deal with her slave owner. She had to leave most of her children behind,
though, because, at the time Truth was leaving, the bill had not been fully
passed yet, and a slave had to work as a bound servant into their twenties to
legally be freed under the emancipation order. She is well-known for being one
of the first black women to have gone to court against a white man and won the
case when her son, Peter, was illegally sold by her former slave owner to a
plantation in Alabama. She’s also even more famous for the many speeches she
made to civil rights groups; her most famous being called “Ain’t I a Woman?”
This speech was performed in “Black Women Walking” as the very first story. I
believe this speech was a great way to start off the night because it applied,
at least in some way, to every one of the women presented. It was a great
speech; very straight-forward, fiery, and, at many points, very witty. Which I
think is also a good way to describe Sojourner Truth.
Harriet Tubman (born Araminta
“Minty” Harriet Ross in 1820) is best known for helping more than 70 slaves
escape to northern anti-slavery states and Canada through the “Underground
Railroad” and for being the first woman to lead an armed expedition in the
Civil War. She led the Combahee River Raid which freed hundreds of slaves in
South Carolina. After the war, she retired to New York to take care of her
parents. Later on, she founded the “Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged,” and
resided there until she died. Tubman was a truly influential figure in history
because of the great risk she took in saving all of those slaves and then
leading an expedition in the Civil War. He will always be remembered for how
tough and driven she was through all of her life.
Best known for creating a school
for African-American children, Mary McLeod Bethune was born in 1875 to two former
slaves. As a child, she had a high interest in her own education. She attended
college in hopes of becoming a missionary in Africa, but instead she started a
school for African-American girls in a little house in Florida in 1904. She
chose Daytona, Florida because it was a becoming an avid tourist destination,
which could come in handy for donations. The school was called the Literary and
Industrial Training School for Nero Girls. In six years, the enrollment of the
school went from six to 102, and by 1920, 351 students were enrolled. In 1923,
the school was merged with the Cookman Institute for Men and became the
Bethune-Cookman School. It rivaled the segregated Daytona High School in
education. As well as being a part of many other important political groups,
one of the most important was her forming the Black Cabinet. The Black Cabinet
was an organization created under President Franklin D. Roosevelt as an
advisory board for his administration concerning issues for the black’s in
America. Bethune was an important figure in history because she was an
educator, and educators are the people who shape the future. She provided
hundreds of African-American kids with just as good of an education as the
white kids got; which was rare in those days. Not only was she an educator and
a strong, black woman, but also an advisor to the president. Mary McLeod
Bethune affected America greatly.
Zora Neale Hurston was born in 1891.
She is best known for being an author, a folklorist, and an anthropologist. Her
most notable work is Their Eyes Were
Watching God, which was written in 1937 about a young, African-American
woman as she passes through life. She also wrote four other books and many
essays, plays, and short-stories. She was also a very political person. She was
often called “America’s favorite black Conservative” and supported Robert Taft
in his 1952 presidential campaign. She was always strongly against Franklin D.
Roosevelt as president. She was also against desegregating the schools. She
felt that physical proximity to white students would not help further the black
children’s education (especially since most colored schools were equal with the
white ones) and that the children wouldn’t be taught the cultural traditions
that the black teachers would have. I feel that Hurston is an interesting
character mostly because of her political ideas. I find it interesting that a
black woman would be so strongly against Roosevelt; what with the Black Cabinet
being created under his term and all the things he did to benefit
African-Americans. Overall, I found Zora Neale Hurston incredibly interesting
because of her strong point of view.
As the first female pilot in the
entire world of African-American descent and the first American (of any
ethnicity or gender) to get an international pilot’s license, Bessie Coleman
lived a very notable, short life. Born in 1892 as the tenth of thirteen
children, Coleman spent most of her life living in Texas and trying for an
education. At the age of 23, she moved to Chicago with her brothers and worked
as a manicurist. Here is where her want to fly came from. Returning pilots from
World War I were always telling stories about flying during the war. The only
problem was that no U.S. flight school would admit her for being black and a
woman and she couldn’t find any black aviators that were willing to train her.
So she chose to study abroad. With some financial help from a banker and the
magazine the Chicago Defender, she
took a French language class from Berlitz School in Chicago and then was off to
Paris to learn how to fly. In 1926, Coleman was flying passenger with her
mechanic when a wrench fell into the gearbox and jammed it. Coleman, who did
not have her seatbelt on so that she could look out the windows, fell 2,000
feet and died. She was a very influential person because, not only was she a
“first” for black woman, but also a “first” for Americans with her
international flying license. And Bessie Coleman taught us the importance of a
seatbelt.
Marian Anderson was a highly
talented contralto (the lowest of the female classical singing ranges) who was
born in 1897. She is highly respected for her patience and determination during
a time of racial prejudice in America. She was brought fully into the public
eye when the organization “Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR)” refused
to permit Anderson from singing at Constitution Hall. I find Marian Anderson to
be an incredible person because of that patience and determination, but also
because of her incredible talent.
One of the most famous
African-American Gospel singers, Willie Mae Ford Smith (born in 1904) has been
well respected since 1922, when her and her sisters sang at the National
Baptist Convention. This convention widened their popularity considerably,
especially Willie Mae’s. She was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame in
1990. Willie Mae Ford Smith was the founding mother of Gospel music as we know
it today and is a person who will be remembered.
The most well-known black woman in
U.S. history is, without a doubt, Rosa Parks. Born in 1913, she is considered
both the mother of the freedom movement and the first lady of civil rights. She
became known in 1955 when she refused to give up her seat to a white person and
was arrested for it. She worked in collaboration with Martin Luther King Jr.
and quickly became the face of the civil rights movement, where she remains
this day. For this act of civil disobedience, she was arrested and fired from
her job. But she still did not give up. And that is why Rosa Parks is the
“poster child” (if I may) of a strong, black woman.
One of the most enduring of black
women, Fannie Lou Hamer was born in 1917 as the youngest of 20 children in a
poor Mississippi family. She is well known in her activism in getting blacks to
vote. For this, she was taken to jail and savagely beaten. She was also an avid
Democrat. She participated in the Democratic National Convention for many
years. She also helped create a grass-roots level Head Start program and
supported Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Poor People’s” campaign. She also spoke out
many times against the Vietnam War. When she died in 1977, one of her most
famous quotes was engraved on her tombstone; “I am sick and tired of being sick
and tired.”
“The Tornado,” “La Gazzella Negra”
(Italian for “The Black Gazelle”), and “La Perle Noir” (French for “The Black
Pearl”) are just a few of the names that Wilma Rudolph earned after leaving the
1960 Rome Olympics with three gold and one bronze medals in track and field.
She was born in 1940 as the 20th of 22 kids. As a child, she got
infantile paralysis from the polio virus. After she recovered, she had to wear
a brace until she was nine, but still had to wear an orthopedic shoe for
another two years. When she was twelve, she was finally able to be like other
children. After the Olympics, she was considered the fastest woman in the
world. She’s respected by me for not only that, but also because, even after
all her bouts of sickness and physical handicap, Wilma Rudolph still pulled
through and followed her dreams.
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
1 year until departure
Pre-Trip Entry #3
“Glory”
By Rebecca
Last night, my family and I
watched the movie “Glory” (over a dinner of Food City marinated steak – yum!).
“Glory” is about the first colored regiment (as defined by Dictionary.com; “a unit of ground forces, consisting of
two or more battalions or battle groups, a headquarters unit, and certain
supporting units.”), specifically the 54 Massachusetts regiment that was
created during, of course, the Civil War (very surprising, right?!). I can
officially say that we have not watched two movies for this lesson that deals
with the same general point of view even though they all take place around the
same time period in the same half of the country. This story was a little
different because most of the people were from the North, which had already
abolished slavery, so the only black person who knew what it was like being a
slave was Trip (played by Denzel Washington), who had escaped from Tennessee
when he was twelve.
Judging
from the fact that after seeing “Black Women Walking,” I started talking like
some sassy, black lady, it shouldn’t be very surprising that one of the major things
that stood out to me was how the colored regiment acted (especially compared
with the other regiments). From the very beginning, they all had some sort of
brotherly bond (though I do personally believe that being in any army would
force some sort of bond). But their bond was strong from the very beginning,
and it mirrored the bonding of the slaves in some ways. Now, this probably
shouldn’t be too strange considering that they’re all black guys with recent
ancestry as slaves, but most of them never worked in a field. They were from
the north. So my question is; why do the black people act so connected with
each other? Most of them had the same experiences as many white men, so why did
they all have that same “togetherness” as was shown by the slaves to one
another? Is there something that’s been engraved into their DNA? Or does it
come from much farther back; their roots in Africa?
I will
continue to ponder this question as we watch more Southern U.S. History movies
and read more Southern U.S. history books (as I’m more than positive we will).
Even though there were many other things in this movie that could have perked
my interest, I chose the topic of “cultures and peoples” again. Naturally.
Friday, April 5, 2013
1 year until departure
Pre-Trip Entry #4
Mexicans in America
By Rebecca
Over the past week or so, we’ve
taken a step back from the Civil War and have started looking into Hispanics in
the U.S. We started off by attending the annual Latino Film Festival at the
Arizona Latino Arts and Cultural Center. On the night that we attended, they
showed two short films, “Ballad of an Unsung Hero” and “A Mexican Sound.”
“Ballad of an Unsung Hero” is a 28
minute documentary that tells the story of a popular radio personality in Los
Angeles during the 1930s, Pedro J. Gonzalez. When he was younger, he fought
during the Mexican Revolution in 1910 alongside Pancho Villa. After the war, he
became one of the most popular Mexican-American recording artists of the 1930s.
In 1934, he was sentenced to between 1-50 years in San Quentin prison on
charges of rape. The woman who had accused him later admitted that she had been
forced to lie about the rape, but this was not considered as new evidence and
Gonzalez ended up staying in prison for six years. He was very active in
promoting for Hispanic-American rights and social justice, and it is believed
that this caused political motivation behind the case. Even after he was freed,
he was deported to Mexico. This movie showed how Hispanics in America have been
very wrongly and unfairly treated. They are stuck doing hard labor, having
their every move questioned, and being wrongfully deported back to Mexico,
where many of them have never even been before. Gonzalez’s started this fight
for social acceptance in America nearly a century ago, but we are still unable
to treat Latinos equally to this day.
The next movie we watched was only
15 minutes long and was called “A Mexican Sound.” This movie captured the
history and cultural impact of the Hispanic music style called el son huasteco,
a style of folk music that is characterized by fast violin solos, falsetto
singing, and, probably most importantly, the sound of rhythmic dancing and
stomping on a tarima (a wooden platform). This music is very important to the
people of eastern, northeastern Mexico where this music originated, so
important that the people if the villages get together and dance on the tarima
to at least a few songs of el son huasteco music every weekend. I liked the
style of music; it has a nice energy to it. It reminded me a bit of a mix of
your typical mariachi music with a touch of an Irish jig-y feel from the
exciting violin. It was very fun to listen to.
While still at the Arizona Latino
Arts and Cultural Center (ALAC), we also looked through their Cesar Chavez
exhibit, and a couple days later, when we were at home, we watched “A Fight in
the Fields,” which is a documentary about Chavez. We learned about how he
started the movement of equal rights for all farm workers and his help in
founding the National Farm Workers Association (now the United Farm Workers
union). This year, his birthday (March 31st) fell on Easter, and
there was a large amount of outrage directed towards Google for using a Google
Doodle celebrating his birthday rather than Easter. It’s sad to know that, with
all that Chavez did to influence Latino communities and, mainly, labor workers,
people get this upset about someone’s choice to appreciate him. It shows that,
no matter what they do or how hard they try, Latinos are never fully respected
in our society.
Taking a quick little trip back
through history, the next thing we learned about was the Mexican-American War. Officially
started on April 25, 1846 under the presidency of James Polk, the war lasted
until February of 1848 when the two countries signed The Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo. This treaty gave America California and the Southwest in trade for
$15,000,000 to Mexico. It was decided that the border was the Rio Grande. There
was a lot of controversy over this war. It was believed by many that the point
of the war was only to create more slave states, but the supporters of the war
felt their cause was justified by their “manifest destiny;” the words of
newspaper editor John O’Sullivan who thought that we should expand as much as
we could because it was our God given right. This war is a fundamental factor
to remember while we deal with many of the arguments about Hispanic
“immigrants” these days. A large number of Mexicans we see walking the streets
today have never even seen Mexico, or have at least never lived there. A common
slogan among Latino communities is “we didn’t cross the border; the border
crossed us.” Which is completely true. Most of the western U.S belonged to
Mexico until the war started. We now call these people “illegal” and “aliens,”
when a large number of them actually aren’t.
Just to put all these dates into
perspective with all of our other studies so far (*cough, cough* Civil War
*cough, cough*), I thought I’d take a break to include the dates all together.
First is the Mexican War, from April of 1846 to February of 1848, quickly
followed in 1849 by the California Gold Rush.
Next was the Civil War, which started on April 12, 1861 and ended in
May, 1865. Then, we had the Spanish-American War start in 1898. Next was the
Mexican Revolution that lasted about a decade, starting in 1910, that Pedro J.
Gonzalez fought in. And in 1966, Cesar Chavez led his first grape strike in
California to demand better pay for farm workers.
As just mentioned in my little
timeline-like review, we also learned a little about the Spanish-American War.
It was actually started in 1895, when the Cubans rebelled against the Spanish
rule of the island, but the Americans got involved in 1898. At first, it seemed
unlikely that America would participate in the war, but after the American
battleship, the Maine, was destroyed
in an explosion in the port of Havana, President McKinley and Congress declared
war and sent troops to Cuba. America won the war in three months, but the
rebels who started the revolution against Spain were never even mentioned by
the American military. No Cuban was even allowed to sign the treaty made with Spain.
They were told, after they were “freed,” that they would be able to make their
own constitution and government, as long as they agreed to include the
American-made Platt Agreement into their constitution. This agreement basically
allowed the American government to become involved in Cuban affairs whenever
the heck they wanted. Pretty much, the Cubans were no longer ruled by Spain,
but instead were taken over by America. We joined the fight under the
justification of helping them to become a free nation; like we were doing
during the Revolutionary war. But then we just take over their government,
don’t acknowledge their input, and ultimately become the biggest group of
hypocrites ever.
The latest movie we’ve seen for
our American History was “Harvest of Empire.” It told the stories of the major
countries that Latinos are immigrating from over the past couple decades. These
seven countries are Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, El Salvador, The Dominican
Republic, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. It was a very deep and involved movie, so I
will not try to summarize it at all, but the overall message was very easy to
grasp; the Latinos should be welcome here. They didn’t just decide to come
here; they had to. Nobody wants to leave their home and their families. They fled
from horrible social and political problems happening in their countries, many
of which were caused by America. We have no right to shin these people out of
our society with all that they had to suffer through to get here. And even more
unjustly, we have no right to deport them to a place that we’ve messed up.
Many times we’ve come back to
study more about Latinos in America and someone are able to learn something new
every time. I strongly believe that there is no reason to deport the Latinos
back to Mexico when there is nothing for them there. What happened to the Great
American Melting Pot? We are one of the very few first world countries (maybe
even the one) of the world to make people to be a citizen to stay here. We
should be questioning each every one of the Latinos, either, because many of
them are from America, but not when it was America. They did not cross the
border; the border crossed them. We need to learn to respect the greatly
increasing number of Latinos that are living alongside us. And why shouldn’t
we; they bring many neat cultural traditions that should be appreciated as any
other culture. I know I like the Latinos; they brought me fajitas and
enchiladas!