Accomplishment Over the Six Weeks

For the past six weeks, we went to Charles Blockson Collection every morning. We would bring out Ebony Magazines from every year starting from 1945. Our job there was to put them back in order by months. After we have done this task, we would look through the magazines to find things that caught our eye or something we would want to write about in our blog. This was going to give us our ideas for what we should do with our project. What we chose to do was to compare and contrast different things from the past to the present. What our project was about was to go through the magazines, and compare what happened in the past up until now.

We figured that each of us would come up with a topic and focus on it. Each of us came up with topics such as the civil right movement, beauty, fashion, and African Americans in Philadelphia. From that moment on, we would look for information in Ebony Magazines that focused on our topic. From there we would pick something specific from our topic, go to the computer lab, and write a blog post about it. Each of us would do a blog post every week. We also made maps that would show specific things on our topic and where it happened. We also made a podcast that had us speaking about what our project was about. And now that we have finished our six weeks of the program, we will be having an open house and show case the work that we have done.

Our purpose of this project was to show different types of products, people, or events that made a difference in our country, and how they have changed over time. We hope what we have created with the maps and blog posts will let everyone know how things changed from the past to the present.

For information about our map go to:
http://maps.google.com/maps?tab=ml

Freedom Rides

In 1961, blacks undertook a new tactic aimed at desegregating public transportation throughout the south which was called the Freedom Ride. The first Freedom Ride took place on May 4, 1961 when seven blacks and six whites left Washington, D.C., on two public buses bound for the Deep South. Within the first few days, the riders encountered minor hostility, but in the second week the riders were severly beaten. Outside Anniston, Alabama, one of their buses was burned, and in Birmingham several dozen whites attacked the riders only two blocks from the sheriff's office.

The group traveled from Birmingham to Montgomery without incident, but when they get to Montgomery they were severely attacked by a mob of more than 1000 whites. The extreme violence and the indifference of local police prompted a national outcry of support for the riders, putting pressure on President Kennedy to end the violence. The riders continued to Mississippi, where they have further brutality and jail terms but get more publicity and inspired dozens more Freedom Rides. By the end of the summer, the protests had spread to train stations and airports across the South. In November, the Interstate Commerce Commission issued rules prohibiting segregated transportation facilities.

For more information, go to:
http://www.ibiblio.org/sncc/rides.html

Our Map!

Over these last six weeks, our group has been working on creating a map using the four different categories we each focused on. The map shows where fashion and beauty pruducts were first introduced, where key events took place in the civil right's movemnt, and shows important African Americans in various locations of Philadelphia. Each point on our map has a picture and further and information on the subject.



View Blockson Collection in a larger map

How Advertisers Make Cigarettes Look Good But They Pollute Our EARTH!
In this 1989 issue of Ebony magazine it has a couple of advertisements that talks about cigarettes. Not only are they polluting our air they pollute our bodies also. Advertisers tried to make them smell good in the Chelsea cigarette advertisement. They tried to make them look good in the Capri advertisements. They also tried to make cigarettes feel good in the Newport advertisements. Advertisers tried to get their audience to buy smokes by getting them to think and feel like cigarettes are beautiful and refreshing with their good looks, pretty names like Capri or Chelsea, and their slim shapes., "Like cigarettes are human species trying to be sold". "LOL".

Make The Environment Better.

In one of the Ebony Magazines, Van Jones wrote:

"Some how we bought into the thought that it was a hippie thing. It was really our commitment to be good stewards of the Earth. Our great grandmother's values are coming into vogue. We should be leading the charge on fighting against pollution and poison. These are not White values. These are universal values."

Black folks should go green because healthy environments effect their life, their family, their pocketbook and their community. Neighborhoods are serving as dumping toxic waste. It shows that the average Black resident of a major city lives in a more polluted part of town than a White person. These are the neighborhoods where children play and develop such disorders such as autism, asthma, or cancer. This should be the time and place where everyone starts doing everything they can to control this pollution and make it go away somehow.

Many people have transformed their lives by making their world cleaner and a greener place. There are many ways that we can make the world safer, conserve energy, and save money. We just need to work together as one to make this change happen before it is too late.

For more information, go to:

http://books.google.com/books?id=P9MDAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_v2_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Look from page 96-106 for this topic

Black&Green

Black & Green is the title of one of the articles in Ebony Magazine. The article talks about how we can be environmental friendly and save money. By doing simple things such as drinking tap water instead of bottled water we can help save the environment. The articles also show people how much they can save a year if they cut back on certain things.

In the article people talk about what they have done to change the world. People like Van Jones has helped to pass the Green Jobs Act of 2007. The act is basically to help people with green collar jobs. These jobs are green collar because they are are blue collar jobs that respects the environment. The jobs can include labor in solar energy,organic food, and wind power. Other people also concentrated on solar energy.

Think about it. If you want to save money, go green. Think of ways that you can both save money and the environment. Doing simple things such as using less electricity, walking the few minutes to save gas, and using less chemicals.