College of Charleston Bruce Watson, author of Freedom Summer, writes about the struggles of the civil rights movement in Mississippi during the 1960’s. The volunteers as well as the African Americans in this book are trying to break the white supremacist society by: holding a voter registration drive, hosting sit-ins, and helping to set up Freedom Schools. Organizations such as the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and the SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) were created to help African American’s receive equality in: education, politics, and society. Freedom Summer reflects what I am learning in Women’s and Gender Studies because it addresses the topic of rape and privilege. When the Klansman created the Birth of a Nation film they made it in favor of white women. The clans motto to create this film was to, “organize for the protection of women, property, civilization itself” (Watson 2001 p.42). I found this to be very sickening because rape culture is something …show more content…
While reading Freedom Summer I learned about a period in history that I did not learn about previously in other history classes. In my history classes my teachers mainly talked about Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks but they never really talked about the Little Rock Nine students who were always bulled and picked on when they went to an all white school. After reading about this it made me realize that students of African American descent still face discrimination when they are in school. African American students seem to get labeled as “bad kids” and they get suspended at different levels in comparison to white students. This is a form of discrimination because if a punishment is given then it should be equal, and a person who is of color should not face harder punishment in comparison to a person who is not of color if both of those people committed the same