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The Watsons Go To Birmingham: Play Analysis

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The article Susan B. Anthony Dares to Vote! and the play The Watsons Go to Birmingham share the common theme of being different. For example, in The Watsons Go to Birmingham, they are not allowed to sit up front in a movie theater. In Susan B. Anthony Dares to Vote she is voting illegally because of her gender. These themes are shown differently in each text because in Susan B. Anthony Dares to Vote! Susan takes an extreme risk of breaking the law to show that women should have the same rights as men. In The Watson Go to Birmingham, Byron and Kenny go into a restaurant, unknowing that they will get yelled at and told to go to the back or get arrested.

The theme of the article Susan B. Anthony Dares to Vote is being different. In the article, Susan goes to votes which at the time was illegal for women to do. Meanwhile, It was legal for men to vote in every election. “If the same act had been done by her brother, it would have been honorable. But having been done by a woman, it is said to be a crime.” After her first case, she was to be sentenced by a …show more content…

In the play, an African American family travel to Birmingham, which is a segregated city. When they arrive, they go to Grandma Sands house and then head out to lunch and Byron and Kenny try to order hot dogs. They end up getting kicked out and threatened to because they went into the white only part of the restaurant. “Boy, you better get up off that seat. Don’t make me call the police and have you arrested.” , on the other hand, being different because they got kicked out of the restaurant just because of their skin color. Then the next day they go into a movie theater and they sit down on the balcony. Kenny asks if they can sit closer. “Mr. Robert, can we sit closer?” “No Kenny. Only white folks can sit down there. Nevertheless, this is significant because it is stated that only people different than them can sit down

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The third, and final, device Florence Kelley uses to build her argument is a shift in topic. Her speech is delivered to the National American Woman Suffrage Association, a group primarily concerned with the equality of voting laws. She vows to use her right to petition “in every possible way until the right to ballot is granted.” By referring to a common goal shared by the author and her audience, a sense of trust is established between the two parties.

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The rights that all citizens have were ensured by the constitution and therefore they cannot be denied by a law pass by the state. Anthony assured that a law that takes away women’s rights to vote because of their gender is a “violation to the supreme law of the land” (19). If their rights were to be revoke half of the country would become superior to the other causing the rights of liberty and equality to disappear. Denying the rights of a woman based on her gender makes the country less of a democracy and more of an aristocracy (Anthony 19). The country was built upon equality for all but if women were not included than equality would never be

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She does not find it fair that only men are given the right opportunity to vote. Shaw’s tone is persuasive when she gives the definition of a republic to prove

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The poem “Making Sarah Cry” and the play “The Watsons go to Birmingham” have the similar theme of being different. In “Making Sarah Cry” Sarah is different from the other kids on the playground. In “The Watsons go to Birmingham” the Watson family has a different skin color so they are separated from whites to do everyday tasks. The texts, both share a similar theme, but have different qualities. For example, in “Making Sarah Cry” only two people are excluded from playing with kids because of their differences.

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When she does use pathos, she accompanies it with uses of logic and fundamentally relatable situations. One of the most emotionally appealing statements she made in her entire speech was her reference to the voting techniques she saw as a child, and how terrible they were. She uses this concept to show how the unfairness of males being able to vote and women not caused pain and a general sense of not truly being free. To balance out her use of emotional appeal in reference to the human struggle, she argues that "when we take so much pains to adapt the ballot to the male intelligence of the United States, we should be very humble when we talk about female ignorance" (Shaw). She not only makes an emotional appeal to women by using a blanket statement to say women are not ignorant, but also negates the possibility of an anti-suffragist saying she is being emotionally unreasonable.

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She asks a number of questions throughout the speech, specifically Kelley asks “If the mothers and teachers in Georgia could vote, would the Georgia Legislature have refused at every session for the last three years to stop the work in the mills of children under twelve years of age?”(lines 55-58) Kelley asks this question to assert the argument of women’s suffrage. Kelly argues that if women had the right to vote there would be better guidelines for child labor laws. Kelley also asks “ Would the New Jersey Legislature have passed that shameful repeal bill enabling girls of fourteen years to work all night, if the mothers in New Jersey were enfranchised?”(lines 59-62) Kelley takes this opportunity to emphasize the importance of women fighting for their rights to vote.

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In Anna Howard Shaw 's speech to the suffragists and anti-suffragists of America, she is easily identifiable as a skilled orator and it makes sense that Susan B. Anthony sought her out. She easily handles the bias against anything she says as a woman by dissecting opposing arguments and pointing out their flaws. Her use of clean cut logic and ability to sway a crowd enabled her to create the persona of a man in the eyes of anti-suffragists. Through her speech at New York and its recanting at other locations in the U.S., her efforts and the efforts of others were not in vain when women gained the right to vote in 1920, five years after her speech. The main factors that contribute to this goal were her well thought out uses of ethos through emphasizing the most important or thought provoking point, and her establishing her credibility by proving her gender does not define her intelligence.

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In Tyboria Stones’ defense, she says that she did not do it because “she does not see the point in going out to rape an old woman when she already has a woman” for herself (Deavere 161). Also, Tyboria’s case may have suffered from an added amount of prejudice, due to the fact that “she is stocky and muscular, with her hair trimmed very close to the sides, short and curly on the top” (Deavere 161). From this information, one may infer that the women here did not have the opportunities to bring their cases toward the legal system

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In the play Appropriate that was put on at Colorado State University, is a play about the Lafayette's, an dysfunctional family that gets mixed up in racial situation. The purpose of putting on this play was to show how with all the racial tension going on around the world, everyone has their only views on what happens. This also showed how being put in to situation, like the Lafayette’s were put in, make it a lot harder to deal with. During the play they show how different people look and react are racism. The director was showing how different nationalities and religions, try to deal with situation even if it all blows up.

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They often appealed to the idea that to be better mothers and wives theyneeded the vote, in order to protect their families. In this text, there is also an appeal to ethos,citing the Constitution in outlining their rights, as they are people. " Votes for Women! TheWoman's Reason" reflect the importance of writing in spreading messages and effective writingsthat appealed to logic and emotion aimed to convince America of the suffrage movement.

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His mother had warned him regarding how the South had a different way of living than Detroit and Chicago. Lots of Northern cities were segregated not by law but by the way the people decided to live. Cities in the South didn’t have strict, discriminatory racial customs. His mother told him to be careful and then drove him to the train station. She then kissed him goodbye without

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How they couldn’t vote and how they didn’t have the rights that white men had. But throughout the whole speech, she is trying to convince people to start a big ordeal on how white men are not the only ones able to vote. In conclusion, the author is speaking to her fellow women and the to the wrong white men of the United States. Her purpose of making this speech is that woman have just as much right to vote as white men do.

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Have you ever rode in a car for more than 24 hours? The plot in the book of “Watson’s Go To Birmingham”, is about a family going on a trip to Birmingham in 1963 and experience an event that makes them see how wrong color in the south are treated. The plot in the movie is more about how colored had been fighting for their rights and all the event leading up to everyone becoming equal. In “Watson’s Go To Birmingham”, lots of events changed the plot like the movie is focused mainly on Civil Rights while the book isn 't, but Joey leaves the church before it blows up in both, so there are some similarities. There are many differences between the book and the movie, like in the book they all stayed down at Grandma Sands, but in the movie the dad didn’t stay with them.

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He didn’t forget his lunch, he didn’t have any. He had none today nor would he have any tomorrow or the next day. He had probably never seen three quarters together at the same time in his life. ”19 For the African-American people, things seem to be even worse as they are rejected in Maycomb like cancer. The heart of their community, the church, where Calpurnia takes the kids into, is in poor condition with no electricity or

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The two speeches by Elie and Susan have different topics and subject. In her speech,” on woman’s right to vote”, Susan B. Anthony talks about how people remained silent for centuries while the oligarchies of learning where elites governed non-elites, rich governed the poor and where these elites decided the fate of the nation (Anthony, n.d.) . People were forced to be idle because they were just women or black while the white landowners ran the country. On the other hand,

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