A Rebel's Yell!

Frankie Lennon’s book, The Mee Street Chronicles, ends Part 1: Mee Street is Memory with a chapter entitled Breaking the Rules. In this Chapter the narrator tells a story of displaying rebelling by wearing inappropriate clothes in high school. The rebellious act does not come without consequence, and is punished following the act. Throughout the chatper the audience is shown the opposing values being displayed as the main conflict.

On one side of the conflict is the Narrator that symbolizes change of the normal tradition and on the other side you have Ms. Clay that symbolizes the normal tradition. The change the Narrator displays in her clothing is an oversized sweater, a short skirt, long black socks, a rap around scarf, and dark sunglasses. This clothing style was mimiced from the Beatniks, who she idiolized. On the other side Mrs. Clay dressed appropriate and represented normalty, the folowing of rules, and the respectable way to present your self in the 1950’s.

Era and geographic location definitly played a part in the socially acceptable normalcy that is expressed in this chapter. The south I believe was always more conservative than places like New York or Los Angeles, where this style of attire may have been more accepted.  Also in the 1950’s clothing was also more conservative than in the 1960’s, when hippies began to change what was considered normal attire.

The school’s values and society as a whole also represent a conflict against change. Schools have rules which are set in place to make sure all students look presentable and society as a whole have specific social standards that they expect everyone to abide by. These rules are set in place because it is what society finds acceptable. Change is never accepted but sometimes if enough people change, it will in turn change what is accepted.

The Beatniks in the story represent change, they were idols to many young teenagers who wanted to dress and act as there idols did.  Youth is another force that drives changes to be made. Young teenagers are constantly fighting for popularity, and in Breaking the Rules, dressing bad was seen as popular. This demonstrates why growing up is always about values in conflict. A person can make many turns in life, some may not be as accepted as others, and values will end up clashing in the end. Who am I though to tell another person that my values are superior to theres?

Adversaries & The Code

Adversaries

Motif 10 # Family, Home, Community, Traditions

1.     The Square – represents a community tradition where the children play.

2.     Austin Home Projects – represent Home

3.     Auntie – represents family

4.      Grandma memory – represents family

Setting: Austin Home Projects, Aunties house

Antagonist: Frankie’s Auntie

Protagonist: Little Frankie Lennon

Main Conflict: Between People (Frankie vs Auntie) She has conflicting feeling about who her Auntie is. If she is mean or good.

Narrator’s Values: Values her Mothers and Fathers feeling. Also values her playtime.

Antagonists Values: Values a strong person. Values family.

The Code

Motif 10 # Family, Home, Community, Traditions

1.     The Code – Traditions & Community

2.     Her Aunts - Family

Setting: Austin Home Projects

Antagonist: Aunt Helen

Protagonist: Little Frankie Lennon

Main Conflict: Between people (Frankie vs Aunt Helen)

Between a person and a force (Frankie vs The Code)

Narrator’s Values: Family & The Code. She does not want to go against the code and embarrass her mother.

Antagonists Values: Cooking. Self-interest.

The Help

The Help by Tate Taylor was a great movie that took its audience into the real lives of the black maids who worked for white middle class families in 1960’s Mississippi. The Help was an eye opening film and portrayed how black maids in the south were not even considered equal enough to use the same bathrooms as the whites in the community. A black maid could bring up white children from birth and cook food for everyone in the house but still could not eat in the same kitchen, with the same utensils, or use the same bathrooms.

I also found it interesting that The Help, the book that Skeeter is writing in the movie was actually illegal at the time due to the Jim Crow laws. The scene with the women running home, when forced off the bus, captures the fear that these women endured from whites. The film is full of scenes that will put you on edge. It is filled with serious issues and followed by great laughs. It will teach the viewer a bit of history that is not taught in schools. The Help was truly a great film and I recommend that everyone watch the film at least once.

The Shopkeeper

In the 1997 film Rosewood written by John Singleton we follow the horrifying story of the small city Rosewood and its residence, a predominantly black community, which was extremely rare for its time. The movie portrays the historical events in which whites lynched dozens of blacks and burned down the city of Rosewood, Florida in 1923 due to a white woman who had claimed to be beaten by a black man. The story takes place during the Jim Crow Era, which was a set of rigid anti-black laws set in place to keep the segregation and oppression of blacks.

            It is important to see that Rosewood was set during this era because it demonstrates the relationship of the Jim Crow laws and the characters in the film. The character I will be discussing from the film is John Wright. His character is stricken with many identity conflicts throughout the movie. He is torn between helping his neighbors, the black citizens of Rosewood, and helping the white lynch mob carry out there own justice. John wright also helps manifest a few African American motifs throughout the film.

            First, what is a motif? A literary motif is any recurring element that has symbolic significance in a story. Through its repetition, a motif can help produce other literary aspects such as theme or mood.  An African American Motif is a motif that helps the reader understand the literary aspects contributed by African American history. In the film, we see John Wright using the Systems of Oppression motif, primarily Economic Exploitation.

            The Economic Exploitation Motif displays the oppression of blacks by using economic methods. Blacks were kept from becoming wealthy or advancing themselves by means of racial ideologies.  These ideologies were rampant in the early to mid twentieth century and were reinforced by such things as the Jim Crow Laws. Whites resented any economic gains by blacks and lynching became common against blacks that tried to compete economically with whites.

In this film John Wright is a wealthy shop owner in a predominately black town. Wright, his wife and two children are the only white residents of Rosewood. In the film it is apparent that being the only white man in Rosewood, he holds the upmost power.

In the opening scene we discover him abusing his power by having sexual relations with Jewel, who is the black help at the store. This scene demonstrates economic exploitation to the fullest. It shows how a young black woman who is relying on the low wages she may be paid cannot afford to lose her job by refusing to sleep with her boss. It was likely she would be threatened with violence or death if she ever implied that a white man was pursuing her sexually. This is the first of three examples of systems of oppression that John Wright displays in the film.

Another example is seen when John Wright is shown telling a black customer that an item was $3 instead of the usual $1. The extra $2 was due only because the black customer was already in debt with the store. This demonstrates how whites took advantage of blacks that had no other means of purchasing household necessities. It reinforces the oppression of the black citizens because it was nearly impossible for blacks to better advance themselves when their debt was rising higher and higher.  

When the lynch mob begins to start killing the citizens of Rosewood, John Wright displays another example of economic exploitation. In this scene he is torn between hiding a black man in his house that is threatened with death or turning him away. John Wright refuses to let the black man hide in his house until he is offered money. As he takes the man in the house, Wright states that when the violence is done he wants to talk about that deed of land, referring to the land that he was being outbid on by a black man named Mr. Mann earlier that day. I believe this was the largest display of oppression by John Wright. Even when a black man was threatened with death, John Wright still thought about how he could become wealthier at their expense.

In conclusion, throughout the earlier twentieth century in the U.S. there were many examples of Oppression by way of economic exploitation, from share cropping to the everyday purchases blacks made. John Wright was a symbol in the film Rosewood to better illustrate the oppression that blacks endured.

Mee Street Memories

Frankie Lennon’s book, The Mee Street Chronicles, opens with a chapter entitled Memory: Mee Street and Beyond. In this Chapter the author tells a brief story which she remembers about growing up in Knoxville.  She conveys the importance of remembering these memories with the use of a quote from a Native American writer, Paula Gunn Allen, who once said “The root of oppression is the loss of memory”.

What is oppression? Oppression according to the dictionary is to burden with cruel or unjust impositions or restraints; subject to a burdensome or harsh exercise of authority or power. To me oppression is simply any use of authority, laws, or physical forces, which may prevent another person from being free or equal. Paula Allen Gunn’s quote exclaims that the cause of oppression is forgetting ones past.

How does forgetting ones past have anything to do with oppression? In my opinion, memory loss is a type of oppression. A person who cannot remember what injustices have been done to them in the past, cannot find a way to change from being oppressed in the future. A person cannot excel if they have not realized that they are being oppressed.

In this first chapter, Frankie Lennon said, “People need to remember things. Because memories tell a story. Memories mark who you are”.  Lennon uses this quote along with Gunn’s quote to get her point across in this chapter. The point that a person or an entire people can lose there identity very easily by forgetting where they came from or by forgetting the long road and hardships their ancestors have traveled in hopes that their next generation will be better off. The point that forgetting is oppression.