Patagonia Standing Up for What Term Paper

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" It did not matter that the Carters were uneducated. What mattered was that they were determined to get an education for the next generation of Carters. Curry uses this as the title for her book because the Carters, despite the despair of their circumstances, could still have dreams that were, like the metal, "bright" and "shining" (xxviii). The author was a member of the American Friends Service Committee, an organization that later helped the Carters through their struggles, although for most of the early part of their fight, the Carters battled the law, and society alone.

As a result of their actions, the family was threatened with violence, and their children were harassed in school. They lost their jobs and their homes on the cotton plantation where blacks had worked for generations. The father, Matthew Carter, was denied a job anywhere else, and their home was riddled with gunfire. Even the children were treated like pariahs, as the teachers mocked the young Carters for their appearance, their hygiene, and even rotated seating partners, so that white children would not have to sit next to black children. The book is honest about the emotional trauma and abuse experienced by the children. The Carter children were subject to bullying and intimidation that would result, today, in lawsuits, even if the words wielded by the teacher were not racially charged -- which they were. The children had to assume an emotional responsibility far beyond their years, and they knew that no one in authority at the school, not the principal, teachers, or administrators, wanted them there or would protect them. They only had their faith and their family.

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Even the youngest Carter children enrolled in school, age six, had a sense of what the family was sacrificing, for the children to attend school.

I don't think my sisters and brothers ever though about pulling out," said one of the children, looking back on the experience. "During that time it seems like I was filled up with hate. I hated the white man. I hated my teachers" (112). The fact that her children were not even able to enjoy the better schools she was sending them to was heartbreaking for Mrs. Carter. However, she forbade her children from expressing hatred against white people, and the children, no matter how discouraged, refused to pull out of school, because they would not quit and yield, knowing that their parents had given up everything for them.

Today, "Mississippi is more peaceful" (146). No longer do white people shrink away from touching the hands of African-Americans. But this came as a result not just of changes in the law, but because of people like the Carters who forced society to change, through their actions and their convictions that they too were entitled to live the American dream and give a better life to their children.

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