The Black Panther Party was a revolutionary black nationalist and socialist organization active from the years of 1966 to 1982. At first, the Black Panther Party’s core practice was to monitor the behavior of police officers and to challenge police brutality after several incidents of brutal, unnecessary police attacks. It was once said that the party was “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country”. Other than monitoring police activity, the BPP’s instituted a variety of community social programs, including the Free Breakfast for Children Programs and community health clinics. 

Today, April 22, we celebrate Earth Day, an international celebration of Mother Nature and everything around us in the natural world. The first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970, when it was declared a national holiday. 45 years later, however, we still face numerous environmental issues, such as climate change, CFC emissions, more extreme natural disasters, and the melting of the polar ice caps. Even though we try to raise awareness once a year to protect the earth, we still fail to make any actual impacts. 45 years later, we, especially the United States, are still destroying our environment.

President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. Oswald was killed before confessing he had killed President Kennedy. As of today his assassination is still considered a mystery. Kennedy was wounded in the back, throat and fatally shot in the head. Kennedy was rushed to the hospital but there was nothing the doctors could do and was pronounced dead. On Sunday morning as Oswald was being transferred to the county jail, Kennedy’s casket was moved from the white house to the capital. Many people in the United States mourned the death of Kennedy. Many people liked Kennedy and felt their lives were similar to his. Below is a picture of when the assassination occurred.

http://www.michaelparenti.org/excerpt_the_jfk_assassination_defending_the_gangster_state.html

Today in lecture and small section we talked a lot about the feminist movement and women fighting for equal rights. Recently, my friend Michaela showed me the theme song for a show called Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, a show about a woman who was captured by a cult for 15 years and was found and is now trying to immerse herself back into regular life. She is “unbreakable” because she takes her plight in stride and tries to live her life normally and positively. This related because in the theme song, one of the lines is “Females are strong as hell.” This is something that empowers females and would be a viewpoint that could be beneficial for the feminist movement today, and could’ve been back during the 1960s-1970s of the second wave of feminism.

Today in our small section, we talked heavily about the Women’s Movement and the effect it has left on society today. I was able to connect a lot of the points we talked about in class because I took a Women’s Studies class last semester. The class and the discussion today has helped expose me to a lot of the injustices of the past and some that still persist. I think it is important to talk about such issues so that we can continue to progress and move forward.

Today, we focused in both large and small lecture on women’s movements. In small section specifically, there was much focus on the gender based wage gap in America today. (On average in California specifically, a woman only earn 84 cents for every dollar a man earns doing the same job.) When I was on my friend’s Tumblr account the other day, I noticed a post that struck me, because although we all know about the wage gap, I had no idea the difference in product pricing in stores. This phenomenon is often referred to as “The Pink Tax”.

http://micdotcom.tumblr.com/post/117002786678/watch-the-pink-tax-is-secretly-costing-women

The Pink Tax

In the final chapter of Hist the text begins to discuss the early 2000’s and where are government is now. As we know we have had the struggles with the war on terror, the first black president, 9/11, the boom of social media, and of course the sad expansion or reality television. The era that has become the 2000’s has shown us how much the generation has changed since the Reconstruction in 1865 and molded us into the country we are today. It would be interesting to seeing what the next publication of Hist has in 20 years and see where history has been taken as we are all constantly hacking into history on a daily basis.

https://paulkiser.wordpress.com/2015/03/19/this-is-why-2015-vs-the-2000s/

From listening to lecture and of course watching the movie in which Tom Hanks became famous for The Black Power movement is something we have all heard of. In this clip from Forest Gump where Jenny takes him to black panther meet up he is treated poorly by the members he is patted down and they think he is there to cause problems. When his best friend is African-American who was named Bubba and who he ends up creating a legacy at the end of the movie by opening up a shrimp company in honor of his friend. This shows not to judge a book by its cover and because Forest may have been a southern white man he was not racist and viewed people as equals.

In lecture I heard some gasps at the idea, but the concept was familiar to me. As an older student than most, I really enjoyed the TV sitcom That 70’s Show and I remember this scene vividly. You can watch the whole episode as I find it hilarious, or you can cut to 17:13 min into the clip and watch the scene unfold. This was my immediate thoughts when our professor brought up this topic. Please enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSQ3cLKY8-A