Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Jim Crow Laws


Jim Crow Laws were statutes or laws created to enforce or segregation. In the South, segregation, or separation of the races, was different because laws enforced and perpetrated the discrimination. In 1883 the Supreme Court set the stage for legalized segregation by overturning the Civil Rights Act of 1875. The law  had prohibited racial discrimination keeping people out of public places on the basis of race, and it also prohibited racial discrimination in selecting jurors. ''Jim Crow'' laws segregated buses and trains, schools, restaurants, swimming pools, parks, and other public facilities. Also drinking fountains, railroad cars, lavatories, and waiting rooms were segregated all across the South due to the Jim Crow System. The Jim Crow System legally entitled the African Americans were ''separate-but-equal'', which means they had ''separate-but-equal'' schooling, housing, and social services. However, the Jim Crow System made sure that only a small percentage of public funds embarked for schools, streets, police, and other expenses found its way to African American neighborhoods.

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

William Randolph Hearst

Brandon Short-Plaut
1863-1951 Born in San Francisco, California. William influenced and extended publishing, politics, Hollywood, and the art world and everyday American life. His dad was a miner.  Hearst and his mom toured Europe at the age of 10. Back in America he was inrolled at St. Paul's Preparatory School in Concord, New Hampshire at 16. Later he went to Harvard where he showed the first signs of becoming a thriving future publisher. 1903 Hearst married Millicent Willson in New York City. They had five boys, two which were twins. On the honeymoon in the European continent inspired Mr. Hearst to make his first magazine, Motor. Later in the 1920s to the 1940s he produced about 100 films already. Hearst was a collector and had a nice big collection of classical paintings, tapestries, religious textiles, oriental rugs, antiquities, sculptures, silver, furniture, and antique ceilings. He died at the age of 88 in 1951. All of his sons followed in his footsteps and went into the media business.

Jacob Riis

Jacob August Riis (May 3, 1849 – May 26, 1914) was a Danish American social reformer, journalist and social documentary photographer. He is known for using his photographic and journalistic talents to help the impoverished in New York city; those impoverished New Yorkers were the subject of most of his prolific writings and photography. He is considered one of the fathers of photography due to his very early adoption of the flashbulb. It put a whole new aspect on photography and really added an element of drama to his work. He had written many books. One of which was How the Other Half Lives, which showed how life was like in the slums and ultimately shocked the US. Theodore Roosevelt responded to his book with: “I have read your book, and I have come to help.” It was the book that made him famous.

        His photography was very impressive for its time period. Riis was frustrated at first with capturing the images he wanted to. He tried sketching but was incompetent at this. Then he looked into photography, but the lenses of the 1880's were slow and did not create the depth of field that Riis was looking for. In early 1887, however, Riis was startled to read that a new way to take photos by flashlight had been discovered. Now the darkest places could be photographed and the true colors of the world could be shown. His photo "Bandit's Roost" (Bottom right) in How the Other Half Lives was one of his most famous photos. It was taken 59½ Mulberry St. and was considered one of the most dangerous, crime ridden places in new york.

Sources: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/503662/Jacob-A-Riis 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Riis

By Max Buchner 
Period 2

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

transcontinental railroad


America shot cannons off each coast east and west, to tell the railroad was completed.  The first train was coming out of California headed to the east coast. Travelers and trade cargo were always on the train after it was built. Resources were spread out through US and each year raised 50 million dollars. This caused hardships on Indians and buffaloes causing them to leave. Buffaloes were killed and their hides were shipped all over. The coasts were connected and the world of Americans got smaller. Books written in San Fransisco found shelves in New York just weeks after they are published. Manifest Dynasty brought the two coasts together and spread iron and metals around.

Resources: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/tcrr-impact/

Brandon Short-Plaut

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Chinese RR Strike

The Chinese RR Strike

   There was no violence inside these Chinese rail road camps. No one hardly said anything to one another. They eventually demanded to be paid 40$ instead of 35$ a month. They requested a reduction in hours. Normal work days lasted from dawn to dusk. They did not want to work more than 10 hours daily. Charles Crocker promised that he would stop work before considering one of their demands. They still didn't budge. They raised their expectations to 45$ a month. Crocker did not know if his men were having a legitimate grievance. Crocker decided to cut off supplies from their camps. He left them to sit in their camps for a week. Charles Crocker was afraid that his work was going to be permanently damaged. Fearing his Chinese men wouldn't work he looked into the Freedman's Bureau to get African American workers. Crocker returned to the camp and stated that the pay and hours wouldn't take on a change. He gave them the option of working again and only being fined or if they continued on their strike they would loose all of June's pay. Hunger motivated some of the men to continue working, others were angry and still refused. Then Crocker to white men power to instill the fear into the rebelling men to continue work. And they did. Work went continued on the railroads. 

by Olyveah Brule

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/tcrr-strike/

Owners of Transcontinental RR

By Dahnte Cegers
Leland Stanford was an owner of the Transcontinental Rail Road. He was a deliberate thinker and was characterized by a plodding nature that repeatedly insulted his railroad partners. Stanford characteristic silence and reticent pace was trying his other patience. He was very cruel and that made all his workers not want to work for him anymore. On January 8, 1863, Governor Staford
broke ground to inaugurate the Central Pacific's construction.

Leland had trouble motivating himself, leaving the exhausting tasks to his compatriots. When he made decisions on their behalf, the results often sent the Associates scrambling. In 1866, he signed million-dollar draft without their consultation , making the company captive to the bank of California.

The owners were cruel, mean and hard to work with. Leland Staford was the worst off all and in the end he ensured that he would be the most famous rail road owner of all time. He has a legacy that would outlast his associates.

Source:
 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/biography/tcrr-stanford/


Monday, October 14, 2013

Life in the Camp

Life in the camp was very bad. Some people even called it hell on wheels. It usually consisted of grueling work that took all day. The camps were always on the move. Mining would boom in one place, a town would be built, railroad would be established and then the mining would completely die off and there would be no reason to stay in the town. Miners and traders would be scattered around the countryside working and doing what they do just to survive. Regular train service on constructed track also brought carloads of migrants and workers looking to settle down, make a buck, or simply experience the beauty of a town out in the wild. North Platte and towns that followed were the new boomtowns, they grew without any law. Which, of course, encouraged a spirit of anarchy, not to mention a good number of criminals.

          One of the most striking things about the colonies was their portability. As winter commenced, and the railroad workers built toward new towns, agents could simply pack up their wares, dismantle their shacks, and follow along on the brand new track. It did not require days of packing up and moving.
          Workers lived in canvas camps alongside the grade. In the mountains, wooden bunkhouses protected them from the drifting snow. Most of the houses were compromised by the elements. Each group had a cook who purchased dried food from the Chinese districts of Sacramento and San Francisco to prepare on site. While Irish crews stuck to an unvarying menu of boiled food, like beef and potatoes, the Chinese ate vegetables and seafood, and kept live pigs and chickens for weekend meals. The newcomers were very strange and seemed alien in other ways. They were very clean, they bathed themselves, washed their clothes and stayed away from whiskey. Instead of water they drank lukewarm tea, boiled in the mornings and dispensed to them throughout the day.

Source: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/tcrr-hell/
Linked to Taryn's Blog: tarynpoole.blogspot.com

By Max Buchner