Jazz and Racism

The jazz scene that emerged in Harlem in the 1920s was perhaps one of the most innovative and original sounds ever created.  It combined sounds of soul music, gospel, bluegrass, and big band to create a distinct sound.

http://www.8notes.com/images/artists/duke_ellington.jpg

This was perhaps a way to release stress from  the increasing racist behavior shown by the white majority.  The effects of Jim Crowe laws are felt in the south and north, up till the 60's.  This is show by the poem Strange Fruit, ironically used as a song later in the century.

Barons of Robbington

Wall Street with less Street and more Walls

            The tycoons of oil, rail, steel, and coal made more money in a set amount of time than any other when you include inflation to the current date.  In today's dollars, Rockefeller alone made roughly twice as much as any other person in the world.  These rulers of capital were not known for their well treatment of workers, in fact, they were downright horrible.  The conditions, conditions that allowed for maximum profit, did not allow for safety or even the survival of the workers in some cases.  While the notion of the chance to work, and the opportunity for income is a welcome idea to the worker, the facts are that these wages were subsistence wages, meaning that the income you made was enough to survive that day, in the building they gave to live in.  These workhouses sometimes charged the workers more than they made, effectively making them indentured servants unable to pay back the money, no matter how much they worked.  Even if this wasn't the case in areas, the wages did not meet the idea of "the American dream".  No entry level worker could build a home to live in, or even perhaps feed his family, on his 60-100 a week schedule.  It was an atrocity to such things, and these were the ways to make a fortune, and still are.

Reconstruction= Fail!

My name is Nikk, and I'm in this because i really enjoy history, and I love to expand my knowledge of events that shaped our world.  I'm a history/ sociology/ political science major at KSU, and this is hopefully my last year before I graduate.  My fingers are crossed on that last one.

This guy sucked

I feel that the reconstruction was a massive failure on both the north's part, and a victory for southern idealism that blacks were still second class citizens.  The failure on the norths part was due to inept leadership by Grant, who was of course the same general who won the civil war for the north, and an overall thought that the south should be punished for rebelling and thus made worse off than originally.  The north broke the southern economy, and in doing so sowed resentment in the relationship between the former confederacy.  My take on this is that if JWB did not kill Lincoln there would have been a different outcome.  Lincoln could have easily been reelected, and his cooler head and steady hand at the controls may have proved a better way, one that would have rebuilt the south, and that perhaps put pressure on Jim Crow, the state laws that inhibited blacks from doing most things.  So we can blame John Wilkes Booth for this.