xinyangs+narrative+for+us+hist

//Lay Bare the Heart: An Autobiography of the Civil Rights Movement Summary.// || //Lay Bare the Heart: An Autobiography of the Civil Rights Movement Summary by James Farmer// is a valuable lesson in history that reads with the force of a best-selling novel. -- ALA Booklist Returns us to the excitement of the struggle: the songs, the jailings, the courage, the sacrifices. . . . -- Washington Post Book World. || James Farmer. || **James Leonard Farmer, Jr.** ( January 12, 1920 –  July 9 , 1999 ) was a civil rights activist, a leader of the American civil rights movement of the 1940s, '50s and '60s, and the initiator and organizer of the 1961 Freedom Ride which eventually led to the desegregration of inter-state busing in the United States. || James Farmer || In 1942, Farmer and a group of students co-founded the Committee of Racial Equality, later known as the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), an organization that sought to bring an end to racial segregation in America through active nonviolence. Farmer was the organization's first leader, serving as the national chairman from 1942 to 1944. He held the position as a honorary chairman in the Democratic Socialists of America. || Quotes from the book:**
 * Lay Bare the Heart: An Autobiography of the Civil Rights Movement || Xinyang Liu, E period ||
 * [[image:farmer[1].gif width="213" height="273"]]
 * [[image:http://www.blackpast.org/files/blackpast_images/farmer_james.jpg width="225" height="306"]]
 * [[image:http://www.crmvet.org/crmpics/band/farmerj.jpg width="251" height="286"]]
 * media type="youtube" key="HdjH9zAdiX0" height="323" width="387" || This video briefly tells about James Farmer's leading of the Civil Rights Movement. ||
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Freddie's mother, Bernice, a white friend of James's, takes pride in herself for her color blindness and she has been teaching her son not to be a racist as well. Above is the conversation between Bernice and her little son after his first day of school. Both James and Bernice agree that this is the way people should all be, that the difference in color should be nothing but just a difference in appearance. This conversation reflects the unconsciousness of racism of the children, which is very rare and precious back when the Black is suffereing from injustice. This conversation also implies how the author, as a leader of Civil Right Movement, wishes to see the equality between the black and the white, that one day every child can talk like this. || When James and his friends walk into a "white only" restaurant and sit on the counter, waiting to be served, the manager simply looks meanly into James's face and tells him to get out of here. Living in a society full of injustice between the black and the white the insult is indeed within James's expectation, but when he hears it he still feels painful. That is one of the moments people get tongue-tied not because they do not have the reason to argue but they feel pointless to argue. The racism has been deeply rooted in people's heart and James nearly feels hopeless to change. When no one cares about his anger James can only manage a "why can't you" above his anger. This reflects how common racism is and the great difficulty James faces in his work. || James Farmer is sent as a delegate to the National Conference of Methodlist Youth as Miami University in Ohio with other delegates from all over the United States, most of them white. In the court although all the other delegates are friendly James still hesitates when he wants to raise his hand and say something. As he is struggling with himself a youngman speaks to the chairman that he yields the floor to Jim Farmer. James is completely shocked. He, although spends the majority of his time fighting for the rights of the black, is still surprised when a white delegate stands up for him voluntarilyand askes the chairman to give him the floor. James reacts like a five-year-old who finally gets the candy after a long wait and gets tongue-tied because of overjoy. This also shows how much the black suffers from inequality, that a slight respect can make them feel extremely astonished. || James Farmer dedicated his whole life into the fight for racial equality. Back when the black was treated inhumanely it was easy for a leader of racial movement like he himself to be murdered. But James was not scared of death at all. This statement above well shows how he is prepared to devote everything including his life to fight for the racial equality. || James and his followers block the entrance of a building in New York to protest and sit-in. Blocking ingress and egress is considered illegal but they try to use this way to get more attention so more people will notice them. They plan to draw more attention by slightly violating the law so they can "bring the spotlight of public attention" to other aspects of injustice such as job discrimination, housing discrimination, and de facto segregation in New York. This strategy demonstrates James's insist on nonviolence, which is a strategy he emphasizes again and again throughout the book. His insist of nonviolence in Civil Right Movement is also a great contrast to the violence of the white. || This very last sentence of the book explains both why James Farmer was willing to dedicate all himself into fighting for the racial equality and why he writed the book. He suffered from enormous injustice when he lead the Civil Rights Movement, but he felt it was all worth it because he fought liberty for himself and his nation. Even though, as he mentioned in the final paragraph of the book, that most of the black was not aware of this history of the past, they did understand that "the unknown past had made the greater hope of the present possible". James Farmer concluded his entire career in the simple sentence, showing nothing but pride of fighting for the black a chance to create their own rules. || Work Cited Farmer, James. //Lay Bare the Heart: An Autobiography of the Civil Rights Movement.// New York. Arbor House Publishing. "1237727404-41jxanpq94l" 2009 Web. [|.] "James Farmer Nov 2009 Web"<[]>. " 583 x 806 - 52k - jpg" []
 * **" Freddie," the mother asked tentatively, "is the new child colored?" "I don't know," the boy replied. "I didn't notice. I'll look tomorrow."(76)**
 * **"But when they came, I had no defence, no response that would blow them out of the language...but all that came out, above a churning anger was, "why can't you?"(91)**
 * **"Those words hit me like a thunderbolt. I'd been asking frantically for the floor, and now that I had it I didn't know what I was going to say."(128)**
 * **"...if i had to die violently, I wanted to be on the front lines of the fight for racial equality, not in the dark alleys of a union jurisdictional scuffle."(180)**
 * **"It was not a bad law that we were protesting by breaking; it was a good law that we deliberately violated in order to bring the spotlight of public attention on other evils in New York."(180)**
 * **"Living was tenuous in the movement days, but the grasping at liberty, and the reaching toward happiness ennobled life for this nation."(351)**