Group items tagged

This article beautifully highlights the life of Rosa Parks and provides background information on both her life and the image in question. This article provides a story and a narrative of the life of Rosa Parks and how she triumphed and advanced the civil rights movement and her legacy remains everlasting today and for the future. The site provides background information on the image that we observed in this unit as it includes it within the context of the story and provides the information in that the image was a staged portrait for Look magazine of Rosa Parks in front of a bus in December of 1956. The finding represents the notion of both femininity and the impact of the civil rights movement.

This site reports the the correlation between the income gap and mortality rates. A chart is available revealing the life expectancy change in the last 20 years of the 20th century, including the difference between the life span of men and women. Cause for the financial separation in the U.S. isn't identified, but some ideas are that "Lower-income people are more likely to not have health insurance..." and "Smoking has declined more rapidly among people with greater education and income". In the appearance of the man in the photo, I definitely make the connection with him and not having poor health care and habits.

Here is a site dedicated to the life of civil rights icon Rosa Parks. In viewing many of the photos of her later in life, one can get a sense of how powerful a symbol of protest she became. Seeing her posing with some of the world's most important people speaks volumes to how truly powerful and inspirational her stand against racial injustice was.

This article in the African American History section of About.com gives a brief biographical summary of Parks' life and civil rights accomplishments. Interestingly, it mentions that Parks' was aware of the divide between black and white people as a child, "I'd see the bus pass every day. But to me, that was a way of life; we had no choice but to accept what was the custom. The bus was among the first ways I realized there was a black world and white world." It is apparent that Parks' would no longer accept what was custom the day she refused to give up her seat on that Montgomery bus. The African American History section on About.com has an extensive collection of historical information, timelines, video clips, facts of African American activists, writers, artists, politicians, and quite a bit of information on Parks and the Civil Rights movement.

This site provides an overview of the life of Rosa Parks and the impact that she had on the civil rights movement and the impact that she continues to have in today. This site is extremely useful in exploring the image on hand as it provides the context and background of Rosa's life and experiences and how this culminated in the image and impact that Rosa Parks has for many of us today. In addition, it provides information on the image in that the photo in question is a historic photo that was staged for the purposes of history and meaning. This site provides swaths of extremely useful information and is extremely relevant for our discussion at hand.

This site discusses the life of two hundred and fifty thousand teenage "hoboes" who left home because they felt they were a burden to their families. It describes how some teenagers looked for adventure while others searched for jobs. All were searching for a better life. Education was not an option for these children during the depression so they had to "ride the rails" to find employment.

This is an interesting (without being very lengthy) site which describes life during the Great Depression."Practically everyone had to deal with major losses and drastic changes. Children had to cope with the loss of a stable life and an education. Farmers had to learn to live with the loss of their farms that had supported their families. The middle class had to deal with the loss of money and the potential disappearance of their social class."

This site lists ten things that you (we) likely may not know about Rosa Parks: 1) she had been thrown off the bus by the same bus driver; 2) she was a life-long believer in self-defense; 3) her husband was her political partner; 4) many of her ancestors were Indian; 5) her arrest had a grave effect on her family's health and economic well-being; 6) needing to leave Montgomery eight months after the boycott ended, she spent the majority of her life in the North; 7) after two decades of political work, she received her first paid political position in 1965; 8)she was far more radical than had been understood; 9) she was an internationalist; and 10) she was a life-long hero and activist to Nelson Mandela.

This source and site is very pertinent as it provides information on the life of Rosa Parks before and after the Montgomery Bus incident and subsequent boycott and the impact her legacy remains with us today. In particular, this source provides both video of a segment done on the subject as well as the text transcript. The reason that this site and source is important and relevant to the analysis of the image at hand is due to the fact that it provides us with the context of Rosa's struggle and how her struggle helped change the nature of America. This is a very relevant source that helps us place ourselves in the shoes of Rosa Parks and the struggle that she fought and overcome.

This page provides a little of the back story of Allie Mae Burroughs, who became the subject of a depression era iconic portrait by Walker Evans.  The image was taken as a series of four, all very similar in pose, expression and tone.  This page explained briefly on their lives as depression era sharecroppers with no real opportunity to advance from this life of hard work and poverty.  Interestingly enough, Allie Mae is compared to the Mona Lisa, in their absence of expression and hiding of thought.

In a study released by Pew Research Center in May 2013, women are the primary breadwinner of 40 percent of households with children under the age of 18. Although 51 percent of those polled thought that children are better off with a mother staying home, 79 percent thought that women should not return to the "traditional" role. Eight percent thought that children were better off if the father stayed home. I agree with the ending comment that this is insulting to men…the work-life conflict is not just a woman's issue.

In a study released by Pew Research Center in May 2013, women are the primary breadwinner of 40 percent of households with children under the age of 18. Although 51 percent of those polled thought that children are better off with a mother staying home, 79 percent thought that women should not return to the "traditional" role. Eight percent thought that children were better off if the father stayed home. I agree with the ending comment that this is insulting to men…the work-life conflict is not just a woman's issue.

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

The "OnInnovation" website is a really wonderful extension of the Henry Ford Museum.  The Henry Ford Museum is located in Dearborn, MI, very close to Detroit, where Parks resided.  It is known for having restored and exhibited the actual bus in which Parks refused to give up her seat.  This website provides video commentary on the life and impact of Parks provided by museum curators.  The photo is displayed here under the heading "Rosa Parks: Civil Rights Hero." On this site, we see that Parks expresses her desire to possess the same qualities as Septima Clark, a woman who was also in attendance at a seminar Parks attended on civil rights.  This is the first time I have seen a website include this quote by Parks recognizing Septima's influence.

This website is a great Quick Facts snapshot of information regarding Rosa Parks with a 4.5 minute biography video. This website contains sections of a Synopsis, Civil Rights Pioneer, Early Life and Education, Ordered to the Back of the Bus, Montgomery Bus Boycott, Racial Discrimination, and Death and Legacy. There is also a photo gallery and videos, quotes and a "Best Known For" section which states that Rosa Parks was best known for her refusal to give up a seat on the bus to a white passenger, which spurred the Montgomery boycott and other efforts to end racial segregation.

This site is a publication in which uses an excerpt from the book Free At Last: The U.S. Civil Rights Movement. This excerpt focuses on Rosa Parks, who's also known as the Mother of Civil Rights. This site provides us with a brief biography of Rosa's life. It speaks of her role in Montgomery Bus Boycott and what shaped her as a child to become a quiet activist. Later in life, Parks was acknowledged and presented with an award by President Bill Clinton. When Parks died in 2005, her body was approved by Congress to rotunda of the US Capitol. Parks is the first women, second black person, and the 31st person granted this honor.

This page on the NBC news website offers a surprising twist to the story of the Civil Rights Movement. It brings up a great point, why is Rosa Parks one of the only women we know about as an icon of that era? Racial equality was being fought for by those in the Civil Rights movement but what about gender equality? This story gives us more to think about when we look at the image of Rosa Parks and the white man on the bus.

This is a portrait of Allie Mae Burroughs husband, Floyd Burroughs, taken at the same time by Walker Evans.  This photograph uses the same basic layout with focused placed on the eyes and thin lipped straight-line mouth, made famous in the portrait of his wife, Allie Mae Burroughs.  

This is a pretty cool source, it is a series of interviews of people who lived through the great depression. The first interview in particular is of a man who grew up living in a sharecropping community. I've said it before but to be able to read the account of those who lived through a particular event really brings to life what we read about. In these interviews you hear about how hard life was for so many.

The website gives a brief description of life in the 1930's. "For Americans, the 1930s will always summon up images of breadlines, apple sellers on street corners, shuttered factories, rural poverty, and so-called Hoovervilles (named for President Herbert Hoover), where homeless families sought refuge in shelters cobbled together from salvaged wood, cardboard, and tin.