South Street Exemplification

Decent Essays
Exemplification: South Street, New York

Walker Evan’s photo in South Street, New York shows what life was like for white men during the Great Depression in the 1930’s. They are sitting in front of a shabby, decrepit building with nothing to accomplish but read the newspaper, sleep, or scowl. This probably means they are out of jobs, and because they do not work, they are presumably homeless. That is not the only inkling that they are without homes, it is also their dirty clothes that seem like they have been worn for days, maybe even weeks. Furthermore, their sorrowful, weary faces appear as if they have not been washed for a while. Their faces display a mix of exasperation and exhaustion, not just just desolation. Another fact that this picture

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    All the elder people in the household, Walther, Ruth, and Lena, work serving white people. The opportunities of African-American’s to get a high paying job in the 50’s and 60’s was very slim (Hansberry, 1966). Some people are lucky enough to even get a job in Chicago, because the amount of black’s with unemployment was 7.6% and 2.3% for whites in the 1960’s. Today, it has been calculated that 19.5% of blacks are unemployed and 8.1% for whites. African-Americans unemployment rate is almost double the rate of the white percentages many years apart (Bogira, 2013).…

    • 1106 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Worst Hard Time is a chronological book that follows the history of the homesteaders particularly in the dust bowl region of the United States. Centered mainly in the 1920’s and 1930’s, Timothy Egan shares various accounts of people who lived in the area during theses times. He shares with us their stories of hardship in dust storms, crop failures, deaths and political strife. Egan begins by giving historical information which lead up to this period such as the Homestead Act back in 1862. He then goes on to to tell the peoples’ stories who lived in the plains before, during and after the plains.…

    • 1139 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Elizabeth West Pease was born in the year of 1927, two years before the Great Depression and twelve years before World War II. She lived with her parents, her two sisters, Martha, Jean, and brother George on Pleasant Street in the blue-collar town of Woburn, Massachusetts. The Depression of 1929 was set into motion due to the great economic crash of Wall Street, that was triggered when investors traded around sixteen million shares on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day and billions of dollars were lost. Even though the country fell into a great debt and hard times, the West family wasn’t entirely effected. Biff’s father was the neighborhood doctor, so her family was well supported.…

    • 781 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Ex-Colored Man Thesis

    • 153 Words
    • 1 Pages

    While traveling on a train to attend a University in Atlanta, he met a bright young fellow who was a student (Johnson, 1989, p. 16). Meanwhile, while walking into a street, The Ex-Colored Man spied a large group of colored people (Johnson, 1989, p. 16). The Ex-Colored Man assumed that the colored people from Atlanta lived on a particular street (Johnson, 1989, p. 17). Despite The Ex-Colored Man wanting to have an insight about Blacks in America, he chooses to talk disparagingly about blacks. He states, the unkempt appearance, the shambling, slouching gait and loud talk and laughter of these people aroused in me a feeling of almost repulsion (Johnson, 1989, p. 17).…

    • 153 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom”, is an emotional memoir about the 1965 voting rights movement in Selma, Alabama. The book was written by Elspeth Leacock and Susan Buckley as told by Lynda Blackmon. Miss Blackmon, a black girl who grew up poor during the civil rights era in Selma chronicles her; nine arrests, love for Dr. King, and determination to help blacks win the right to vote. She details how the children in Selma helped to pass the 15th amendment to the United States Constitution, by peacefully marching in the streets. Miss Blackmon account is written as if she was still that defiant 15 year old girl marching in the streets of Selma.…

    • 685 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Great Depression, an economic collapse of worldly proportions. Citizens all around the world were struggling to just make by. America also fell, even though it 's great economic boom during WW1. The Depression left millions of Americans without jobs. Many middle-class individuals found themselves in poverty.…

    • 1206 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    For the past several weeks we have been reading memoirs on multiple sources, ranging from the hills of the Appalachian Mountains, to the streets of Chicago. Both of these places come off not only as different in geography but in lifestyle as well. They also share similarities in some instances. In Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance, and Our America by LeAlan Jones, and Lloyd Newman, both stories share similarities in the fact that the people in these stories are restricted by the environment in which they are raised in, but also stricken by poverty which is responsible for the frustrations and hardships in life they face, and the path which was paved for their life. Our America focuses on two boys living on the southside of Chicago,…

    • 1337 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “We must accept finite disappointment but never lose infinite hope”, a quote said by Martin Luther King Jr. During the 1930’s many people traveled from the midwest to California in the hopes of finding a better life but they faced many obstacles, but in order to survive they can’t lose hope in what they were trying to achieve. In the novel “The Grapes Of Wrath” written by John Steinbeck the effects of fear causes people to believe that there is no way of successfulness in their work of farming. The ragged man’s experiences of California make the men fear that they will end up in situations such as his own. While sitting on the porch of the camp owner a group of men including Tom and Pa Joad, a man, described as ragged, explained that in California his life was difficult, it “ took two kids dead, took my wife dead to show me. But i cant tell ya little fellas layin’ in the tent with their bellies puffed out an’ jus’ skin on their bones” (260).…

    • 738 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “There will always be men struggling to change, and there will always be those who are controlled by the past.” Though Ernest J. Gaines often told stories of the past, he was certainly not a man controlled by it. Through the characters he created, Gaines attempted to change his own character for the better, and to achieve his goal of changing the reader’s character for the better. Emerging from the turmoil of racial, socioeconomic, and gender inequality of the mid 20th Century, Gaines became one of the greatest and most influential African American writers of a generation, and struggled to change the perspective of the world by shedding light on the poverty and issues present in his homeland. Gaines was inspired to write by his socioeconomic background, his discovery of his love for reading, and wisdom he gained from listening to old people.…

    • 682 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Struggles of All: Of Mice and Men Up until now, 2015, the years of 1930 to 1940 has been the worst years in American history for people all around the country. The struggles that some already faced from day to day, went from manageable to unbearable. The difficulties that everyone faced, from a day to day basis. The effects that the Great Depression had on everything and everyone. And everyone’s broken plans.…

    • 1409 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    James Baldwin's "Fifth Avenue, Uptown" (rpt. In Santi V. Buscemi and Charlotte Smith, 75 Readings Plus 10th ed. [New York: McGraw Hill, 2013] 50-52) provides readers with a graphic perspective of a city that existed in the 1940s; the time period prior to the Harlem we now know. The diction Baldwin uses to describe the various aspects of his childhood Harlem leads the reader to infer that in these times there is immense poverty and disunion in society. In other famous pieces of literature, the city of Harlem is portrayed as this area booming with African American Culture and its beloved Jazz Music, however Baldwin shows us the other side of the coin through his memories of the city in which he lived.…

    • 497 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The men are put out of mindforgotten as they became unemployed and poor (“Women and the Great Depression” 2). As the farms only needed the strongest men, the others became weak to the point of leaving their families. For example, Noah, the oldest Joad son, decides to live by the river instead when the Joads do not need him anymore (Steinbeck 186). This represents the men who feel pressured and incompetent to the women’s standards during the Dust Bowl times. Most of the problems of homelessness lies in expectations of the men (“Invisible Women of the Great Depression” 6).…

    • 1203 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Racism In Sonny's Blues

    • 1163 Words
    • 5 Pages

    In early Harlem African American families would live tightly packed in apartments. Primarily due to the Great Depression and racism. The households were not only packed with relatives, but strangers as well. In This Harlem Life, the authors describe the lives of five African American families that lived in Harlem at this time, in which, all of them lived tightly packed. Economic issues eventually broke up some of the families as well.…

    • 1163 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Bob Jones View on Racism 1. For Bob, Life in the US is a struggle for minorities - Bob’s view on racial discrimination in the US is one of his greatest struggles, but it is opposite to the belief of Alice, she can easily cope with the changes in the society where she grew up. The differences in their belief are because of their upbringing; Bob is from Ohio, while Alice is born in Los Angeles, California. Because of Bob’s struggle, he often thought that he is in trouble “living every day scared, walled-in, locked up, I didn’t feel like fighting anymore” (Himes, 4); he often compared himself to white men. He worked in the yard as a mechanic and every time there are white leaders, Bob felt so tight inside and the only place he felt safe was in bed asleep, he was scared to tell anyone, every day he need to hide his fear.…

    • 782 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Killer Of Sheep Analysis

    • 132 Words
    • 1 Pages

    In the movie Killer of Sheep, the director Charles Burnett juxtaposes everyday scenes to portray the lives of African Americans in the Los Angeles ghetto of Watts. The movie takes place in the mid-1970’s and focuses on a black man named Stan, who works at a slaughterhouse and struggles to provide for his family. Stan embodies the desensitization and hopelessness many African Americans felt as a result of the pervasive poverty in their communities. In particular, Burnett focuses on the issues of poor infrastructure and limited access to proper healthcare and nutrition prevalent in Watts. Being from Watts himself, Burnett uses the film as a commentary on how the struggle to maintain the rudiments of survival resulted in stunted efforts towards…

    • 132 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays