Yesterday I was flipping through TV channels and I saw that the History Channel was playing a program called "Stories From the Road to Freedom" which was a documentary about the civil rights movement. Although I only watched about ten minutes, I found it interesting because it related directly to what we have been learning about in class. The program reiterated what we have been discussing-- that 80% of southern African Americans migrated to the North, many to escape the violence caused by racism in the Deep South. The narrator mentioned that people who migrated out of the south did not really have a choice of where they moved to. Most people just got on a train, and if that train was headed to Chicago or Detroit, then Chicago or Detroit it was.
Additionally, all was not well just because people moved up north. African Americans unfortunately still faced racism even out of the south. One man quoted, "a black man is a black man no matter where he is." I think that there tends to be stereotypes that we grow accustomed to, like learning that the south is the racist part of the country and the north is not. While most of the violent acts against African Americans occurred in the south, the north was not completely innocent (even today). For example, Chicago is still one of the most segregated city in the country. I have more facts about Chicago's diversity in an older blog post (linked here). I am bringing up these contemporary facts because when we learn about the Civil rights movement in school, it seems like the story ends when the unit does. Many people believe that even though the C60s are over, our country is no longer segregated.
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