Class Notes A Girl Stands at the Door

Here are my class notes from today on A Girl Stands at the Door (Intro to Ch. 1-3)

3/5 Class Notes on A Girl Stands at the Door
  1. Discussion Questions
    1. What role did women and girls play in the school desegregation movement, and why was it important?
    2. How important was their gender to their activism? Were women able to perform a different role than men?
    3. What do you make of the NAACP’s response to the activism of these girls and women?
    4. Why now? Disenfranchisement has been around for decades, so how do we explain this acceleration after the second World War?
  2. Notes from Kieran on activism after WWII
    1. Brown vs Board 5/17/54
    2. Plessy vs Board 1896
    3. Images of the Brown vs Board aftermath
      1. Is this a story about men and the achievements about the lawyers? Or is it about women? Or is it a little bit of both? This book is challenging us to rethink this.
    4. WWII
      1. Question for African Americans is what role should we play in this war? Since we don't have the same rights should we fight for democracy? Or will service in the war show patriotism and their increased right?
      2. “Should I sacrifice my life to live half-American?” The Pittsburgh Courier 1/31/1942 after Pearl Harbor
      3. Franklin D. Roosevelt desegregating the defense industry in an Executive Order 8802
        1. They can’t receive a government contract if they have discrimination in the workplace
        2. Major piece of government action that secures Black rights in 63 years
4. A.P. Randolph

    1. Head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
      1. Important political constituency in African-American life
    2. Old socialist who became head of this organization
      1. Perfect opportunity for African-Americans to gain some rights
      2. Told Roosevelt ‘You need to desegregate the military and the defense industry’
      3. We are going to have a march if you don’t
        1. It would have been a spectacle and optics
    3. Double-V campaign
      1. Victory abroad and victory at home
    4. 10,000 African-Americans a month migrating for California
      1. Opportunity to make more $$
      2. When war ends, there is a big financial boom for African-American communities
        1. 8% of defense industry is african-american
        2. In 1950, only 1600 African-American workers left in the ship industry
    5. Lynching of African-American veterans
      1. Scary high
      2. Columbia Race Riot of 1946
      3. 1948 bus incident
        1. Bus driver is acquitted after 30 mins
          1. The driver had admitted his guilt
        2. His lawyer said if he is found guilty than he should
      4. George Dorsey
        1. World war II veteran lynched
      5. Explanation of this violence
        1. Wearing a uniform
          1. Does it demand respect?
          2. It facilitates it
        2. Threatening the upper-hand
        3. Changes the ideas of African-Americans
          1. ‘Lazy’, ‘unamerican’
        4. The image of the white man winning the war, African-Americans wearing the uniform challenges that
        5. Showing that I served too, I am a member of this nation, where are my rights
        6. Form of protest
          1. Let's change the narrative, we were here
          2. Going against the status quo
          3. Kind of like A Girl Stands at the Door
            1. You have to put yourself out there
        7. Those people are risking their lives to lay claim to ideas of masculinity and citizenship
          1. Incredibly brave
    6. Failure of the war to deliver on its promise
      1. Accelerating the freedom struggle
        1. They have done what they were told to do, but now they are getting murdered for it
  1. What do we make of Devlin's argument?
    1. Brown vs Board of Education 1954
      1. “detrimental effect upon the colored children” and contributed to “a sense of inferiority,”
    2. How does A Girl Stands at the Door challenge the conventional narrative of the school desegregation campaign? Why is that challenge important to our understanding of Black activism in this moment?
      1. We have been focusing on men challenging the status quo mostly--except for Ida B. Wells. It is interesting to change our perspective of men fighting for equality to small young African-American girls doing what they could to secure equal rights for themselves and their classmates.
      2. Also challenging the NAACP’s place in this struggle
        1. Page 70
      3. Desegregating law schools vs other schools
        1. Targeting public law schools
          1. Obligation of government to step in (bc they are funded)
          2. There aren’t any Black public law schools
        2. Where you go to law school matters!!!
      4. NAACP’s strategy
        1. Looking at higher education instead of lower (elementary)
        2. Legal defense and education fund
  2. Why is it all girls?
    1. Page 27 ““A girl stands at the door and a generation wais outside.” By pointing to Bluford’s status as a girl, he was making a connection between her and the girl in the audience. In this moment, she was not part of the NAACP or a journalist or an activist. She was––as Mary, Mcleod Bethune and other Black women leaders had advocated––a thoughtful, poised, socially open girl whose job it was to reach out to sympathetic whites on behalf of the race”.
    2. Simultaneous ability to be approachable but also tough
      1. Embodying the qualities of the trope of strong Black women
    3. A specific type of Black woman-not all Black women
      1. Lighter skinned perhaps, maybe could pass as white
      2. Kinda like the talented tenth idea where those people can go out and make the changes needed for everyone
      3. Dressing for the part
        1. Registrar said Sipuel looked “sheek” pg. 42
    4. Using the same symbolic things for femininity and sexuality
      1. Have to appear non threatening to whites for this to happen
      2. Not just that Black girls aren’t threatening, they have to be constructed as this in a conscious effort
        1. Not someone that is going to intimidate the jury
      3. How does this work on the ground? Are they able to be successful in particular ways?
        1. Always having to prove that you are not the stereotype
        2. Constantly keeping the image that they started out with to prove people wrong
          1. Page 32-33
            1. She continues to fight for this through reporting
        3. Page 12
          1. “Bluford did not see these encounters as...what they share with their long time neighbors”
            1. Idea to deconstruct segregation
          2. Illustrating that they could go into these places and both sides would be pleasant
            1. Challenging separate but equal
            2. Arguments for segregation are faulty
  3. How did African-Americans come across in this book?
    1. What do we learn about the communities?
      1. Painting a different picture
        1. Always being protected
      2. Criticism from friends and neighbors was sometime the most hostile concerning desegregation
        1. Page 19!!
        2. Not everyone in the Black community was on board, did not think that it was going to truly solve anything
      3. Showing that it is politically and socially diverse
      4. The other side of this argument
        1. Subjecting child to an environment where they are hated
        2. Putting them in danger in a way
        3. Page 20
          1. “How torturous attending a white school in 1938 would be”
      5. Showing Black female excellence
        A. What the girls went through and putting a name to thestories that often go unheard.

        B.  Acknowledging the women that paved the way for

        everyone and decentralizing the NAACP's strategy 
        page 70 (middle paragraph great quote!)


         


         


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