Focus Task Civil Rights

1. The way you could take the optimistic view of what was happening is through the evidence that when blacks took a stand it gave them hope and courage that things would get better. For instance, when the Montgomery bus movement took place, although it took a year for it to happen, the law became that they could not segregate buses and that everyone could ride them. Another example is when blacks did the lunch counter sit in which although they could not be served food, it prevented whites from being served food at the counters too. The last example is the Little Rock 9. When the government stepped into help the 9 children make their way to school with the federal troops, it gave hope and sent a message of seriousness about this situation to everyone.
2. Pessimism is easily found throughout this whole presentation also. In the first place, violence was very common in the civil rights movements. Not only was it physical abuse that played a role, but also verbal abuse. For instance, during the Little Rock 9, people would surround the 9 blacks that were just trying to make their way to school. They would scream and harass them to no end. But the verbal abuse was not nearly as significant as the physical abuse. To begin, projectiles would be thrown at blacks for being somewhere the whites didn't want them to be. For instance, at the lunch counter sit in, in Source 25 you see blacks having stuff thrown on them,and whites surrounding them tantalizing them. Even more seriously, there was injury caused by physical abuse. An example is the fire hoses. In Source 28 it is seen that fire fighters are spraying blacks with high powered hoses. Not only is this a racist action because they were black, but it was also seriously dangerous to their health. The power of the water from the hose could break a person's ribs and tear off their skin if they are sprayed for too long. According to the reading, these fire hoses have the power to topple down a wall of bricks.
3. In my opinion, there are more reasons to be pessimistic about the whole situation. For every action taken during the Civil Rights Movement, you can find something bad about it that hurt someone, usually blacks. Although there are a lot of events that encouraged blacks and gave them hope, you can not find hope in all of them, some events were just too horrible. Also, the fact that there was a Civil Rights Movement in the first place is horrible because there should be no need for a movement when America is based on equality and freedom for everyone. All in all, in my opinion, there are move events are reasons to be pessimistic about the Civil Rights Movement.