Ashley

History Day’s topic this year is Conflict and Compromise. We chose to do women and blacks as our subject because there was a lot of information to use in between the conflict of not having rights and the compromise of getting the rights. We had to find how the blacks and women’s issues were related.

To look for information, we started with a book for all of us to read together as a class. This book was titled //__There Comes a Time__// by Milton Meltzer. This book gave a lot of information to us about the civil rights movement and how the blacks came to get their freedoms. It gave us quite a few pictures and primary sources throughout the book that we could use. It told us a lot about Martin Luther King Jr. and what he did to stop slavery before he was assassinated. It also told us about the bus boycott and what happened to Rosa Parks and blacks who went against the law to fight for their freedom.

Next we split up to work individually and read our own books. I read 2 other books that helped get more details on some subjects such as people and what they did to help win their rights. We searched the computer for useful information and pictures as well.

After we gathered all this information, we started discussing what we found out and what we should do to narrow down our project. We found that the way to narrow it down was to write a couple of our own ideas on a sheet of paper and combine them to form a topic to use.

What I Learned

I’ve learned so much about blacks’ rights and women’s rights and how they got freedom from the law. I found out that the process of gaining their rights wasn’t a 2-year type of conflict; it has been going on since the 1930s. The first story I learned was about the Greensboro Four. All they had asked was to be served at a restaurant counter, but they were rejected and a police officer had to force them to leave. They were never served at the counter, but they gained the respect of blacks and whites because they had done "the impossible" and showed they would do whatever it would take to get their rights. They were later on noticed for their brave acts of doing this.

Another thing that caught my eye was the violence between whites and blacks. The bus boycott had really affected everybody. The blacks, of course, got their freedom to ride in whatever bus seat they wanted, but the outcome wasn’t pretty. The whites started bombing the buses that came with freedom fighters on it, killing both the whites and blacks that were riding in the buses. The Ku Klux Klan started to kill innocent people on their own front lawns just for associating with the blacks or being one. Martin Luther King Jr. had crosses burned in his lawn. Nothing was right for a long time. Martin Luther King Jr.'s death didn't affect the fight against blacks gaining their rights. They were going to make sure they got their freedom and rights no matter what.

Women's rights are similar but yet, very different in its own way. **LIST HERE HOW WOMEN'S RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND CIVIL RIGHTS ARE SIMILAR. THEN LIST HOW THEY ARE DIFFERENT.**They really fought and fought no matter what men thought of them. The conflict of this was that men thought they were so much better than women and they could do whatever they wanted, and the women would have to do everything financially and physically related. Women were treated as maids, forced to cook and stay home, not allowed to go anywhere, and were not allowed to practice jobs as a doctor or lawyer.

People such as Susan B. Anthony were extremely important during these times. I read chapters about Susan and found that she really helped with women's rights. **HOW? EXAMPLES!** (Continue...)