Trip to Immanuel Mission

For the next two months I will be living at the Immanuel Mission school in Teec Nos Pos, AZ. A family from my church, the Suns, work there full time and we visited them a few years back. So I decided to go and help out for a little while. I am staying with a very nice family, they have 6 boys under the age of 10 so there is never a dull moment. There is no phone reception here but I am able to have access to a computer once or twice a day. I also get a chance to go into town about once a week to get groceries and other such necessities. The weather hasn't been too amazing, my first day here I was welcomed by 5 inches of snow and once that melted they cancelled school because the dirt roads were too muddy. However the scenery is really quite spectacular! We are surrounded my large mesas and outside of those, depending on the weather you can see some mountain peaks out in the distance. once the weather improves and the ground is less muddy I am very much looking forward to taking long hikes and seeing more of the surrounding area. I'll be posting updates roughly every other week.

The Reconstruction Era

            The Reconstruction was the time period directly following the civil war. It was a time where the meaning of being a citizen of the United States of America was redefined. The slaves had only recently been freed and the north and south had freshly been merged together. There was a lot of conflict between peoples, north and south, black and white, and between different political parties. But despite the conflicts there was incredible growth in the United States. The Reconstruction of America lasted from 1865-1890 it was during those years that the likes of Tomas Edison, Mark Twain, P.T Barnum, Boss Tweed, Ida B. Wells, and many more famous Americans made their name know.

            Immediately following the war, blacks knew a freedom that they had never experienced before. But that freedom quickly turned to oppression that was quite possibly worse than what they had endured during the war. Amendments such as the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments were made to protect the rights of black Americans by giving them the opportunity to vote and legally do anything a white man could do. But even though the amendments had been passed, many people found loopholes to the rule that made it so that they could oppress black people without it technically being because they were black. For example if a store owner had a rule that only people who could read and write were allowed in his store, there was a good chance that would apply to a vast majority of the black Americans as many of them had not ever received formal education. But even still others would attack black people illegally. During the reconstructing there was a sickening amount of black men, women, children that fell victim to the horror of lynching. Some people saw lynching as an act of vigilantism, but in reality they were more or less hate crimes. Killing someone purely because you didn’t like who they were or what they looked like, and in extremely inhuman ways is far from vigilantism.

            But the reconstruction era was not just a time of hardships for black Americans, it was hard from all Americans. There was a lot of confusion on how the government would be run and how laws would be passed and other such things. But despite the confusion and conflict, the reconstruction era was a time that would shape the United States of America into the country it is today.

Jim Crow

There isn't actually a real Jim Crow it was a made up term to represent the policy of segregation. A Jim Crow law was a law that specifically applied to people of color. For example, whether a black man could sit in the front row of a bus would be considered a Jim Crow law. Jim Crow was thought up because so many people had a belief in white supremacy. Not all whites were behind the Jim Crow movement. A newspaper from Charleston, South Carolina said, "The common sense and proper arrangement, in our opinion, is to provide first-class cars for first-class passengers, white and colored....To speak plainly, we need, as everybody knows, separate cars or apartments for rowdy or drunken white passengers far more than Jim Crow cars for colored passengers." There was a lot of conflict on whether Jim Crow laws were constitutional or unconstitutional, I am inclined to think that they were unconstitutional.

Theodore Roosevelt

One of the next people in history that I had to learn about was our 26th President, Theodore Roosevelt. As a boy Roosevelt was commonly referred to as Teedie, he suffered from a fairly severe case of asthma and had to live a very active and strenuous life to combat his natural weakness. He found great interest in animals and different parts of nature. From an early age he would capture animals and collect dead bugs to have a "museum" in his house, much to the dismay of his mother. Roosevelt was a very intelligent boy and would eventually attend Harvard for college. When he was 22 Theodore married Alice Hathaway Lee, together they had a daughter named Alice Lee Roosevelt. But two days after giving birth his wife Alice passed away from kidney failure. I learned in my research that Theodore Roosevelt was originally a Vice President until President William McKinley was assassinated. Roosevelt would be reelected to serve a second term, he was in office from 1901-1909. Before becoming President, Theodore made a name for himself by his actions in the military he was ranked as a colonel. He wanted to be called Colonel Roosevelt or The Colonel, but normally people just called him Teddy. The name that most people know him by today.

For this blog post I am supposed to talk about a few examples of emotions and attitudes expressed in current times toward different ethnic or religious groups. And to see whether people and their acceptance of different cultures and freedom of religion changed from the 1870s to the present day.

I definitely think that in regard to the recent election this topic is very relevant. Compared to the 1870s there is an immense difference in the way people are treated because of their cultures and religion. However I would say that religion has lost a lot of respect since then. People don't really discriminate based on religion but they tend not to take it very seriously either. In that aspect I think we have gone backwards since the 1870s. As far as cultures are concerned I also think we have come a long way, while the laws haven't really changed the people have. In the 1870s there was a lot of very open racism in our country. And though that problem hasn't been solved even today we have come a long way since then. There is a lot less anger and inherent dislike towards people who are different now and more of a prejudice and disrespectful culture now. Of course not everyone is like that, those are just the extremes of each time period.

13th, 14th and 15th Amendment

In my research of the Civil War I had to learn a bit about these three amendments. So I will write a small tidbit about each one.


13th Amendment
        "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." This was the amendment that officially set slaves free in all of the United States. Not only in the specified free states, and it was vital in ending the war.

14th Amendment
        The 14th amendment was passed so that all people would have equal rights, meaning that you couldn't refuse to do things for people because of their skin color or where they were from.

15th Amendment 
        "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." This was another step toward not just freedom for the African Americans but equality as well. There were quite a few loop holes that people found to avoid this amendment.

Blockades Good vs. Bad

In my past weeks reading about the Civil War I read about the Union blockade and the battle between the newly made ironclad ships Virginia and Monitor. The Virginia, previously known as the Merrimack, was attacking the Union blockade and doing a very good job of it, they had destoryed about half of the ships in the blockade. A blockade seems like a good idea to protect your land from naval attacks, but it also closes off trade coming in from the water. It encourages conflict that may possibly have been avoided otherwise. The unions blockade did it's job so it could be said that it was a good use of a blockade. Whether a blockade is neccesary or not is very dependent on the situation.