Hello and welcome to my final action project for my Rhetoric class. This last unit was "Unite" where we talked about how people can come together to challenge or fight a certain force. With that, we looked into the 13 colonies and how they were started. We also looked into Bacon's rebellion and how he was able to unite people together to fight against colonists. Throughout the class we've been looking at housing and the people on both sides of the situation. One side is uniting to fight to make housing more fair, while the other is developing housing in some cases. We had the opportunity to talk to some developers from Sterling Bay who develop housing throughout certain parts of Chicago. For this last Action Project, the goal is to create a form of art that could give a sense about a political issue and inspire people to fight for that issue.
For this I decided to do two pieces, one of them being a poem. For this I wanted to look into the history of Black Wall Street. As a whole, Black Wall Street it has a lot of history so I wanted to focus on specific parts of it and then look at the other parts of it. Here's my poem below:
"Dream to Nightmare", By RBL, 2022
Explanation:
This poem could possibly be found on a website or in a book based around the history of Greenwood. For a start, Greenwood was a community that was located in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was an entirely black run neighborhood that was one of the most wealthy neighborhoods even to today. Their net-worth as a town converted to today is equal to about 2.2 million dollars. One of the reasons for this was because the families who were moving in were all starting their own businesses. That's what the 190 represents in the amount of businesses that were in the neighborhood. At the time, a Model-t was a popular car which a lot of black people had at the time. One thing that was popular in Greenwood was the Dreamland theater. Right next to the building there was a candy store named William's Confectionery. The Williams were one of the most prominent families in the community who own the candy store and the movie theater. A popular thing to do at the time was get a treat and watch a movie.
Then there's a turn into the race riot with the screams and shouts from black people who were running in fear. One of the reasons this happened was because the white people in the community were racist and didn't want to see black people succeed. Another reason this happened was because a black shoe shiner named Dick Rowland was accused of assaulting a white woman named Sarah Page who was an elevator operator. When the white community heard about this allegation they were in outrage and tore Greenwood to the ground. Not only did they shoot through buildings and people, but even used planes to bomb the neighborhood as well. The tragedy left hundreds dead on the street and left their families traumatized. The government decided to hide this history so not a lot of people know about the history of the neighborhood and why it matters.
This piece is dedicated to Greenwood as a whole. The target being a person who might be looking for something to represent this history. Along with that, someone who might've read the poem and might want to unite with others to raise awareness to the issue and the community that was lost to racism. The names on the black are all places that businesses that were lost in the race riot. All of them were a huge part of Greenwood and a part of what made the community so valuable. The image of the houses on the front are supposed to represent the houses that people might have lived in. Though there are only five businesses on the back of the shirt, there are still some many others that didn't make it through the riot. Part of understanding complex histories is understanding that people were harmed and that there is work that must be done to understand those histories and honor those that were harmed. In my eyes this connects to pathos because it is attempting to draw upon the sadness that people might have when thinking about the history of Greenwood. Using pathos was a intentional choice in this project because I felt that people would be more willing to make choices to prevent the repeating of history if they had an emotional connection to the history.
Dillahunt, A. A. (2021, June 3). Black Wall Street, collective memory, and reparations. AAIHS. Retrieved November 10, 2022, from https://www.aaihs.org/black-wall-street-collective-memory-and-reparations/
John and Loula Williams. The Victory of Greenwood. (n.d.). Retrieved November 10, 2022, from https://thevictoryofgreenwood.com/2020/03/15/the-victory-of-greenwood-john-and-loula-williams/
The williams dreamland theatre in Tulsa, Oklahoma - nitrateville.com. (n.d.). Retrieved November 10, 2022, from https://nitrateville.com/viewtopic.php?t=31745
No comments:
Post a Comment