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It takes a lot of courage to stand up for something that is morally right, especially in a time when standing for what's right was not popular, due to the results that would follow after. Rosa Parks in the year of 1955, as many know it, kept sitting to stand up for what's right, and furthermore human rights. Although she was jailed and fined, her bravery helped society in many ways, like the end of the segregated transportation law posed by Jim Crow. Mrs. Parks did not care about the odds against her nor the criticism; in an era of ample bias against people of color. This sites content is useful in exploring week two's image of race in America, because it places focus on how change "can" happen with just one person, in the toughest of social times. A focus on courage not just for self help but for all (as Mrs. Parks was a member of the NAACP; an organization up in arms with the Jim Crow laws) who were the victims and the conscious or unconscious offenders, a social movement that was another zenith to the ascent of man. Heidi Beckles

Because of Rosa Park's fearless defiance towards the bus driver that placed her in jail, an act that was a social norm at this time, the NAACP was able to take on her case with success of getting it to the Supreme Court, to end these segregation laws, which forced people of color to yield to people of white skin whenever a seat is needed. The individuals which were part of the NAACP and The Women's Political Council were powerful in drafting three demands for the bus company: that seating is available on a strictly first-come, first-served basis; that drivers conduct themselves with greater civility to black passengers; and that black drivers are hired for predominately black routes. On refusal of the bus company to comply with the stated demands as I've pointed out above, the Montgomery Improvement Association was formed and elected as president was Martin Luther King. With subsequent campaigns by King, the boycott lasted a whole year. King defended injunction of the M-I-A. Rosa Park's case was ruled in favor by the Supreme Court, and on the 21 of December 1956 bus segregation had ended. Martin Luther King joined Ralph Abernathy and other boycott leaders for a ride on the first desegregated bus. This site is useful to this image because it points out the rigorous and at times dangerous processes in fighting for equality. It is also useful because it briefly explained in this era the leaders involved like Mr. King and Mr. Abernathy. I have always thought that Mrs. Parks fought the battle of jail time and making a difference in her time mostly by herself.

This essay by Amanda C. Burdan gives us a larger scope of Evans and his journey through photography while keeping the central point his iconic 'Alabama Cotton Tenant Farmer's Wife' photo.

The Encyclopedia of Alabama offers "a reference resource to the history, culture, geography and natural environment" of Alabama. This particular page discusses the history of sharecropping as it evolved from being a way of earning a living for freed slaves to being taken over by "poor whites". It also talks about how sharecroppiing was affected by the Great Depression. This is pertinent to our analysis of the photograph of Allie Mae Burroughs, a sharecroppers wife from the 1930's.

When I first looked at this photo, the first thing that came to mind was the image of a hillbilly. As I searched the web for information about the photo I remembered visiting the tenement museum in the Lower Eastside, one of the things I remembered was Hard Times and the New Deal of the early mid 1930's. The New Deal came up when I typed in hillbilly in Hale County Alabama, which lead me to this site about Roosevelt and the New Deal. Since the onset of the Great Depression-initiated by the crash of the stock market in the fall of 1929-over $75 billion in equity capital had been lost on Wall Street, the gross national product had plunged from a high of $104 billion to a mere $74 billion, and U.S. exports had fallen by 62 percent. Over thirteen million people, nearly 25 percent of the workforce, were now unemployed. In some cities, the jobless rate was even higher. Caught in a web of despair, thousands of shabbily dressed men and women walked the streets in search of work, or a bit of food, doled out from one of the hundreds of soup kitchens set up by private charities to keep the wage-less from starvation. FDR's response to this unprecedented crisis was to initiate the "New Deal" - a series of economic measures designed to alleviate the worst effects of the depression, reinvigorate the economy, and restore the confidence of the American people in their banks and other key institutions. While the New Deal did much to lessen the worst affects of the Great Depression, its measures were not sweeping enough to restore the nation to full employment. Critics of FDR's policies, on both the right and the left, use this fact as a reason to condemn it. Conservatives argue, for example, that it went too far, and brought too much government intervention in the economy, while those on the left argue that it did not go far enough, and that in order to be truly effective, the Roosevelt Administration should have engaged in a far more comprehensive program of dire

This CNN.money site combines information from CNN plus Fortune and Money magazines. This article by David Whitford of Fortune magazine goes into some detail about the story behind the photograph we are studying this week. The woman in the photo (taken when she was only 27 years old) is identified as Allie Mae Burroughs. Her son, Charles Burroughs recalls what life was like for him and his family during the Depression years.

This is an article of the return to Hale County, Alabama to speak with the descendants of Walker Evans' famous depression era portraits.  In this interview with Charles Burroughs, the son of Allie Mae Burroughs, he describes vividly the backdrop to the famous portrait.  The tough life of the depression era is evident in the portrait of 27 year old Allie Mae who looks like hard work has aged her and her eyes well beyond 27 years.

The son of Allie Burroughs swore he would never do what he's doing right now (an interview)," says Charles Burroughs. Tall and broad with a bald pate and those familiar gray eyes. Blue shirt, khaki pants, aviator glasses. Thick, flat fingers, grit under the nails. He has come reluctantly to meet me after work at a Waffle House in Tuscaloosa. Still angry after all these years at how a writer and a photographer on assignment for this magazine moved into his house when he was just a boy, 4 years old (he remembers the day), and stayed for weeks, and while the family was working in the fields, snooped around in dresser drawers and under beds, and took notes, and took pictures, and shared what they had taken with all the world. James Agee and Walker Evans gave us a lasting image of the Depression; Charles Burroughs and his family got squat. This site lets you in to the confusion and heart ache of the children of Allie-Mae Burroughs, the psychological aftermath the children has endured in their working situations. It also expresses how Charles Burroughs parents worked and just never had a chance, in a mostly African American area, making some 5.50 and dropping to 5.15 and hour if late to work once, or ever have to leave before the line shuts down for the day, to support a family. It also touches on the editors from Fortune who sent Agee and Evans south wanted them to write about poor whites. That they found their subjects in Hale County was more than a little perverse. Most of the county's people, and an even higher percentage of the poor people, were and are African American. This site also gives incite into the black society in this era i.e. - one Yolanda Robinson, who worked in quality control for a seafood company, is a sharecropper's granddaughter and is black. She won prizes for elocution in high school, joined the Navy, married young, and was widowed in her 20s. On her second stint at the catfish plant, had hoped she'd never have to