Preview

How The Watsons Go To Birmingham Essay

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
574 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
How The Watsons Go To Birmingham Essay
Living with my family is like living with the weird Watsons from The Watsons Go To Birmingham by Christopher Paul Curtis. The weird Watsons is full of a barrel of laughs, tears, and seriousness. The Watsons go down to Alabama, Birmingham because of the choices Byron ( one of the Watsons) has made. Even though this is a recommended book, it does not go into much detail about Civil Rights. The Watsons Go To Birmingham by Christopher Paul Curtis is an interesting book about Kenny and his family and how they go on a rollercoaster of ups and downs. Overall, this book could be confusing in some chunks of the book, but still was attention grabbing. One of my favorite parts in the book is close to the end when Byron is comforting Kenny because Kenny felt like he did not help out Joetta when the church got bombed. It shows how their …show more content…
In the book, it explains that there was a church bombing at a church, the church Joetta went to in Birmingham. Luckily, Joetta got out of the church in time before the bomb went off. Sadly, the tragic bombing killed 4 colored young girls. Research tells me that the bombing was at the 16th Street Baptist in Birmingham. Research also tells me the bombing was Sunday, September 15th 1963. I researched who bombed the church, the people were Thomas Edwin Blaton Jr., Bobby Frank Cherry, Robert Edward Chambliss, and Herman Frank Cash. I got my research from the source www. History.com. On the other hand, there was not much about racism in The Watsons Go To Birmingham. I tried to research on was there any racism in Flint, Michigan? (where the weird Watsons lived) This topic was very difficult researching because of how specific this question was. But while I was doing my research, there was a website that I found that said there was troubles with racism in today’s society. Where I found that out was at the website

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Martin Luther King wrote a letter while in Birmingham Jail, this was received on April 16, 1963. Months earlier King was involved in a nonviolent direct-action against segregation, King was called upon by the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. This nonviolent action was mostly demonstrated through sit-ins and marches along the streets where Negroes showed their aggravation and irritation towards all of the segregation that was present in the United States at this time. During this action over a thousand Negroes were arrested including Martin Luther King, being one of the many motivational speakers that were arrested. The Commissioner of Public Safety of Birmingham, Alabama Eugene "Bull" Connor was the main reason for the arrest. Eugene Connor was a segregationist who was completely all right with putting the protestors in jail. He even was forced to send other protestors to other jails throughout Alabama. Three rhetorical modes were used through King's letter which all help express him during his time at Birmingham Jail.…

    • 838 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Sixteen Street Church bombing was a tragic day many lives were ruined that day, four girls were killed and 14 injured in a bomb blast at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Riots break out, and two African-American boys, Virgil Ware, 13, and Johnny Robinson, 16, are also killed. In all, at least 20 people are injured from the initial bombing and the ensuing riots. (CNN). The four little girls that died in the Sixteen Street Bombing but no one really recognize Johnny Robinson and Virgir ware, as hero also that help in setting the back bone for the colored peoples' freedom. Johnny Robinson and Virgir also need to be known as the hero that they are…

    • 407 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Kenny Watson: Summary

    • 203 Words
    • 1 Page

    Kenny Watson is a ten-year-old African American boy who lives in the northern town of Flint, Michigan with his family. His older brother, Byron, is a magnet for trouble; his little sister, Joetta, is the family peacekeeper; his mother and father are doing their best to raise respectful children during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. It’s 1963, and Momma and Dad decide to pack up the Brown Bomber and head to Birmingham, Alabama in hopes that a visit with Grandma will set the rebellious Byron straight. While in Birmingham, the children learn about racial intolerance when a church is bombed on a Sunday morning. The reader may not understand the dangers that accompanied the civil rights movement, but the reader can relate to Kenny’s emotional…

    • 203 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The book “The Watsons go to Birmingham” is about an African family that lives in Flint, Michigan but then travel to Birmingham because the mom misses her family. When they arrive at Birmingham they face many challenges because of their skin color.Throughout the book, the character Kenny changes in various amounts of ways.…

    • 134 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The Scottsboro Case is known to many. It is a significant case involving racism, lynching, segregation, and the Jim Crow laws. The case started on March 25, 1931, when two white women accused nine black men of rape while on a train headed to Jackson County, Alabama. The trial lasted years and ended with an unconstitutional verdict of guilty against the defendants. “Scottsboro captured South’s racism and the disturbance of the Great Depression.” (Scottsboro Trials). The Scottsboro Trials and Tom Robinson’s trial in the novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee have many similarities. With the similarities there are differences too. The stories that the people involved tell is one. In the case…

    • 1168 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee makes many connections to real events of the time period that she was writing about. The trial of Tom Robinson is directly related to the real life trail of the nine Scottsboro boys. Both these trails focus around the same circumstances, the rape of a white woman, by black men, with the white women’s word held above that of the black…

    • 258 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    “I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of our skin, but the content of their character.” -Martin Luther King Jr. The historical novel, The Watsons Go To Birmingham, 1963, by Christopher Paul Curtis is about a typical family who has typical problems and they go on a trip to Birmingham. Because of the events in Birmingham, the Watsons changed.…

    • 450 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Thomas Jefferson and Martin Luther King, Jr. were brilliant men. The Declaration of Independence, written primarily by Jefferson, and the Letter From Birmingham Jail, written by King, are perfect examples of their intellect. Looking at these documents and observing the tactics they use while attempting to move their audience toward their ultimate goal, one can see the finesse that both Jefferson and King possessed. The Declaration of Independence had aspirations of obtaining a new form of government, away from the King of England, while the Letter From Birmingham Jail was intended to help move America toward a desegregated future. Jefferson was charged with moving the Colonists to armed revolution, as well as not alienating the King of England…

    • 997 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    (AG). SUMMARY STATEMENT The Watsons Family which has a mother named Wilona, a father named Daniel, an eldest son named Byron, a middle named Kenny, and the youngest child Joetta live in Flint, Michigan and go to Birmingham, Alabama. The oldest son, Byron, is a juvenile delinquent¨ and needs the guidance of their strict grandmother, Grandma Sands, to straighten out Byron. Also, when the family heads to the south they realize that there is racial discrimination towards African Americans which leads to a bombing of a church. (CLAIM) Christopher Paul Curtis’ historical fiction novel The Watsons Go To Birmingham -- 1963 (TAG-- Title, author, genre) is an allegorical novel because the events in the novel, though they are fiction, relate to real life events that happened during the 1060s in the States.…

    • 514 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Martin Luther King Jr., born on January 15, 1929, fought for the injustices of his brothers and sisters throughout his life. While being an active activist, Martin Luther King was imprisoned to Birmingham jail due to his participation in a nonviolent demonstration against segregation and discrimination in Alabama. During his sentence, he wrote a letter, “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” to counter the criticisms of his actions from the clergymen by claiming that “An unjust law is no law at all”(par. 12), “Injustice everywhere is a threat to justice…

    • 1359 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The persecution of the New York and Baltimore ghettos had the same effect on the both Wes Moores as the Nazi ghettos did on the Jews. Throughout the world, religious persecution has been present. During World War II, the Jews were persecuted under Hitler’s rule. The rights that other citizens were allowed to exercise were denied for Jews. Jews were removed from their homes and forced into concentration camps. The Jews were looked at as inferior in Nazi Germany for years because of their religion. Throughout the book, the reader can infer that the ghettos played a huge role in the future of the individual. In both situations there were restrictions that denied people of having prosperous outcomes in life. Although the persecution present in The Other Wes Moore was not as cruel as the persecution in Nazi Germany, both Jews and blacks were treated unreasonably because of their race or…

    • 844 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    On September 15, 1963, a bomb exploded in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama ("Birmingham Church Bombing" 1). The Ku Klux Klan had threatened to detonate a bomb in response to the federal court decision mandating the integration of Alabama's school system (3). No part of Birmingham was safe to African Americans as the Ku Klux Klan had set off two other bombs in the past 10 days targeting civil rights meetings (3).Throughout the 20th century, civil rights activists such as Richard Wright have discussed the omnipresence of racism. In Wright's novel Native Son, Bigger Thomas, a young African American in Chicago, is subjected to unyielding racism through verbal abuse and unfair treatment. To Bigger the inhumane…

    • 1014 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Third, in The Street by Ann Petry, Lutie’s son, Bub, is offered a servant-type labor of work as he cleans White’s shoes in the streets of Harlem for a low-pay. Finally, in The Ethnics of Living Jim Crow by Richard Wright, the Black narrator ends up losing his job when he forgets to properly address the white man as “sir.” Each main character are Black and go through psychological trauma based on the obstacles set up by the Whites. In cases like the Younger family and Lutie and the son, upward mobility is difficult because they are Black wanting to achieve the American Dream. On the other hand, in cases like Emmett Till and the Black narrator, talking is a crime which leads to devastating consequences. The Younger family, Emmett Till, Lutie, and the Black narrator all go through psychological effects of being Black. However, survival is the greatest resistance for Blacks in order to overcome the Whites’ obstacles…

    • 305 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Essay On Sherlock Holmes

    • 439 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Some people seem to thrive on figuring out the unknown, and I’m one of them. That, perhaps, is why I fell so immediately in love with Arthur Conan Doyle’s universe of Sherlock Holmes. Opening my first Holmes book, A Study in Scarlet, and becoming enthralled with the characters, the language, and the mystery, was a turning point in my life.…

    • 439 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    My Soul Is Rested

    • 1631 Words
    • 7 Pages

    The book My Soul Is Rested by Howell Raines is a good book that shows exactly from first encounter interviews what went on during the civil rights movement. It has many important interviews that come from the people’s actual point of view of the history of events. Everything that went on during the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955, some of the actual people that participated in the sit-ins, what went on during the Freedom rides and, the campaigns on the school and university integrations Some of the people associated with movement and give an eye witness summary of what went down are student, News reporters, Black and white activist, Lawyers and government officials, and Politicians. The way the book is laid out is that everything that happened or said is from the people that witnessed and lived it. The book is not focused on one point of view or in a way that the author wants you to take or view what happened under his perspective but in a way that when you read the interviews and recollections, you feel what is going on from the unknown point of view. It puts you in the shoes of the interviewee and makes you see exactly what they are going through.…

    • 1631 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays