First Semester Summary Speech

          The first semester of our eleventh grade United States history class is now over.  It seems like just yesterday we were walking into this classroom as brand new juniors trying to see if we had any friends in the class.  We were all eager to get to know Ms. Lawson, a teacher that many of us had never met before.  I think I can speak for everyone here when I say we were all extremely pleasantly surprised to watch movies for the first couple weeks of class.  Little did we know at the time, but we were actually learning a lot through watching these movies.  That was the best first impression a teacher has ever had on me, so thank you for that Ms. Lawson.  One sad day when we all walked into class we were all struck with a rather unpleasant surprise when Stuart asked “Are we watching a movie again today?” and Ms. Lawson replied “No, we are actually writing an essay on the movies we watched.”  Luckily, we all learned a lot of reliable and accurate data from the two movies we watched in class and were prepared for the essay.    

            Some of the things I learned this semester will stick with me forever.  For instance, I did my research for one of my blog entries on the collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh in 2013.  The top floors of the Rana Plaza building were garment factories.  Even though the building was in terrible shape, the owners of the garment factory did not let their employees stop working.  When the building collapsed, over two thousand people were busy at work on the top floors.  Unfortunately, half of the people in the building that day died, and the rest were seriously injured.  It is said to be one of the worst accidental collapses of a building in history.

            Conflict that was around in the period of our study can still be seen in our country today.  Racial tension between some black and white people may not be as strong as it was in the early 1900’s, but it definitely is still around today.  Instances such as the Trayvon and Zimmerman case and more recently the conflict in Ferguson really show that there is definitely still racial tension in the United States.  These examples are just a few of many discrepancies between white and black people in our country today, but the extremities of them are far less than those of the discrepancies between the two races that we learned about this semester such as slavery and black people having no rights.

            If I were a historian and had to name the era of 1865 to 1920, I would call it something like the period of “systematization” meaning to arrange into a system or to make systematic.  Throughout every chapter in the book that we have read this semester, the theme of arrangement, building, or creation can be found.  With the creation of the first small towns to the biggest cities the world had ever seen, and from the arrangement of social classes to new political parties, the United States was constantly changing to eventually become the greatest country in the world.

Thinking About Success

1) Opportunity
2) Hard Work
3) Skill
4) Luck

The most important ingredient is opportunity.  You can have all of the skill and have the best work ethic in the world but if you don't have opportunity, its all for naught.  All of that skill and hard work will be wasted without the opportunity to put it to work.  The next ingredient is hard work.  There is a famous quote by one of the best basketball players on the NBA, Kevin Durant that goes "Hard Work beats talent when talent fails to work hard."  A person with tremendous skill but lazy work ethic will get beat by someone who may not have have much skill but has a great work ethic every time.  Skill is important, but how you use the skill and how hard you work is much more important, that is why it is number three on the list.  At the bottom of the list is luck.  Luck can help you but there is no way you can rely on it because you have no idea when it is going to happen.  It is a good thing when you get lucky, but you should never rely on luck for success.
 

What I Learned Today

            I did all of my research today on the collapse of the eight story Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh on April 24, 2013.  It is said to be one of the worst collapses by accident of all time.  Over eleven hundred people were killed during the collapse and over a thousand others were injured.  The eight story building was a garment factory on the top floors and a bank/stores on the bottom levels.  The bottom floors had been closed down due to all the cracks in the building.  But the top garment workers did not stop.  Most of the workers were women.
            The day before the disaster a group of inspectors came to check out all of the cracks in the building.  They said it was a bad idea to use the building anymore but that did not stop the leaders of the factory to make their workers keep working.  Ironically when the building collapsed, the people who made the employees come to work that day were not in the building when it collapsed.  Some headlines read "The Deadly Cost of Fashion"-The New York Times and "Fashion Victims"-Journeyman Pictures.  Even though the building was in terrible shape, the multibillion dollar operation could not be stopped.  After the collapse, many people rioted trying to get the leaders of the Rana Plaza to be executed for killing 1,129 people.

Shortly after the collapse 

Rioting against the leaders of the Rana Plaza organization 

 

A Letter Home

Dear Mother,
          Three months ago you let me embark on the most amazing journey of my life.  Thank you for letting me have the chance to better myself in such a great country as the United States.  The boat trip was quite rough, but I got through it.  When I got to the United States some of the people were very kind and welcoming, but others were not.  Just because of the small tint to my skin color and my religion some people won't even give me the time of day.  My English is getting better but it still isn't perfect, so it's been hard trying to find a legitimate job here.
          I have found a gigantic group of other German people that are just like me.  I have moved into their neighborhood and I am currently attending their church.  The food they serve in this neighborhood is just like the food you cook at home!  It is almost like a little Germany in the middle of this great American city.  It reminds me of home so much.
          Once I leave my German neighborhood it immediately turns into a very foreign place.  Nothing looks or feels anything like Germany.  Everyone looks and acts so much different than the people back home.  I really want to be like them so I am starting to shop for American cloths and food.  I hope you and father are not mad that I want to adopt some of the culture from the Americans.  I want to be able to fit in and socialize, work, study, and eat with people that don't live in the little Germany neighborhood.  Once again thank you for giving me this extraordinary opportunity.
                                                                         Love,
                                                                       Mason      
         

The Homestead Act

The Homestead Act

         In the year 1862, on approximately May 20, Abraham Lincoln signed an extremely important act towards westward expansion.  This act was called the Homestead Act.  The Homestead Act allowed any head of the house, even newly freed slaves, a chance to own 160 acres of land out west by paying a small fee, building a dwelling, and cultivating the land for at least five years.  Nothing like this had ever happened in the United States, so many people were excited to start a new life out west.  With women and African Americans finally shown some freedom to do what they please, this act was the first of its kind.   

            The new, uncultivated land out west was like a gold mine for many people.  If a family wanted to take this extraordinary opportunity to move out west, the first thing they had to do was get the head of the household to file their intentions at their closest Land Office.  They then had to pay a small ten dollar fee to claim their land, and then pay two dollars to the land agent.  After this easy process, the land was almost theirs, but work still had to be done.  Once the family moved to their newly acquired land the first thing to be done, was of course build a house.  Once a house was built the land around it had to be properly farmed and maintained for at least five years to keep their land.  After a couple weeks on the new land, the land agent had to ask a couple neighbors of the newcomers to vouch for their treatment of the land.  If all the rules were followed and everything went per code, six dollars was to be paid to the land agent and the process was finally over. 

            The act was obviously trying to promote the United States’ manifest destiny, or westward expansion.  With the act only having good intentions, some bad things came out of it.  Not to say that the act was a completely terrible failure, some good things certainly came out of it, but sometimes those things are unfortunately over looked by the bad things it brought.  The act did successfully add to westward expansion.  The act also caused the discovery of coal, gold, silver, timber, and oil, all of which were located in the western region of the United States.  The act bringing people to all corners of the United States also helped increase the railroad and how far things could be shipped.  Not all people were jumping up and down with enthusiasm to take part in this act.  Some people were very skeptical about what and who was out there because of the little knowledge we had of the west in 1862. 

Unfortunately for many people who took this chance to move out west, they got hit hard by unexpected weather, disease, and famine.  Moving through the western states in January of 183, when the act was in full swing, was not an easy thing to do.  The blizzards, intense winds, and sometimes even tornadoes taking lives of many of the homesteaders made many more people want to stay where they were on the east coast.  The requirement of cultivation of the newly acquired land seemed like an easy thing to do, but the homesteaders had no idea about western farming.  Many of the crops planted either died or produced very little.  With no other way of making money and putting food on the table, many of the women had to turn to prostitution for their source of income.  Not to mention the disturbance of the Indians, many of the buffalo were being killed off for their fur and meat, and are nearly extinct today.  Only 80 of the 500 million acres of land actually went to homesteaders and their families, the rest went to cattlemen, miners, timber men, and railroad builders. 

All of the bad things that happened to some families make people think this act was a terrible idea.  Those people need to understand that the Homestead Act spread the population of the United States to all corners of its borders.  The act also spread the railroad through the whole country, making it possible to ship good across the entire country.  Yes there were some loses in this feat but it is just like a war, you cannot save everyone from dying in a war, but it has to be done for the good of the country.  The Homestead Act truly stretched our great country to its full potential by spreading people to all of its corners, and made the United States more advanced than it had ever been before.      

Advertisement of the Homestead Act 

Signed by President Lincoln on May 20, 1862

Family moving west to take advantage of The Homestead Act

Famous painting by John Gast depicting westward expansion 

Land held by whites vs. Indians over time 

Actual states and land included in The Homestead Act

Homestead Act- Sources

Homestead Act

I used this source as a primary source and I also used it to find other primary sources since it had many different links at the bottom of the page.

Homestead Act- Info

This source helped me with almost all of my research aspects (all information, dates, people, how to acquire land, etc.) and even had pictures and scanned copies of the actual document.

Homestead Act- How to acquire the land

I used this source to find out how one could acquire land during the Homestead Act.

Definition of a Homesteader

I used this source to define and understand the word “homesteader”.

Positive and Negative effects of the Homestead Act

I used this word press site to put the positive and negative effect of the Homestead Act side by side. 

Homestead Act (1862) information

This source came from a different view point than all the others, it had more of how and why the act was unsuccessful and what actually happened and what didn't work.

The Homestead Act of 1862 (document)

This source is the actual Homestead Act document, I used it to read and better understand the act. (Primary Source)

Film Essay

Mason Jennings
9/12/14
Film Essay
USH
Learning History through Film
Some people say that you cannot learn real historical facts from a movie, but they would be wrong.  Sure you can go see a movie that is just meant to be silly and funny and doesn’t really teach you anything at all, but there are also movies that are packed full of amazing information.  Like in the two movies: 12 Years a Slave and Glory.  These two movies both revolve around slavery and racism.  Both of these movies are packed full of cold hard facts and information that can really stick with you throughout the rest of your life.
In the movie Glory, which is about the 54th regiment in the civil war, which was one of the first regiments to allow African American people to fight, has many real life facts about the civil war era.  Many African Americans, be it they were free-men or maybe even a few run-away slaves, flocked to sign up for this extraordinary opportunity.  In the film there were many doubts about this regiment and people were starting to wonder if it was worth training these men with little to no battle skills, which was exactly what happened all those years ago.  All the battles and casualties in the movie match what actually happened almost perfectly.  The way some of the higher ranking officials treated the soldiers was in a way that had far less respect than the treatment of white soldiers.    
In the movie 12 Years a Slave, a free African American man, with a wife and a family, is captured by two con artists and sold into slavery.  Unfortunately, this too happened way too often in the real world before the civil war.  This movie has been discussed by thousands of professional critics and historians about its historical accuracy.  This movie, which is based on the 12 Years a Slave book, is all first had accounts of what really happened to that man.  And who better to hear it from than the man himself?  There are plenty of scenes in the movie that are very historically accurate, from the kidnapping, all the slaves packed in the bottom of the boat, the slave auction, the whipping, the field work, and just the plain brutality and meanness of some masters.  Even the songs the slaves sing in the fields were actual songs that would have been sung in that time period.
Learning about history can be boring to some students if all they do is read textbooks day in and day out.  Watching a good and historically accurate movie is far more interesting and effective than reading a boring old textbook.  The emotional scenes in these two movies help you emphasize with the characters and really feel the way they felt all those years ago.  Granite there may not be too many of these great movies out in the world today because of the complexity of making a good historical movie without it being a complete bust.  The director of one of these movies has so much to consider during the process of making the film, but if it is done right, there is no better way of learning history than from a historically rich and accurate movie.

Sources, Film Research – Glory and 12 Years a Slave

12 Years a Slave Awards

Glory Awards

12 Years a Slave Reviews

Glory Reviews

12 Years a Slave Box Office

Glory Box Office  

Production Cost of 12 Years a Slave

Production Cost of Glory

Historical Accuracy of 12 Years a Slave

Historical Accuracy of Glory

Filmmakers Intentions: 12 Years a Slave

Filmmakers Intentions: Glory

Emotional and physical scars are seen

Emotional final scene of Glory