Inequality In Something The Lord Made And Iron Jawed Angels

Two Sides to Inequality The two films Something the Lord Made and Iron Jawed Angels both portray the struggles that African Americans and women faced prior to when their rights were granted to them. In the movie, Something the Lord Made, follows the protagonist Vivien Thomas in the 1900’s, and his experience to becoming a key figure in the cure of the “Blue Baby Syndrome” despite having to endure oppression faced from mistreatment and berating. Alongside, the movie, Iron Jawed Angels, tracks the perspective of the 1910’s Women’s Rights Movement, illustrating the obstacles of mistreatment and berating that comes as a cost to having rights. Mistreatment, in addition to inequality, can be found in both the Civil Rights Movement and the Women’s Rights Movement— both facing similar adversaries along with handling them in a similar fashion. Both sides had to face similar …show more content…
One example of the similar struggles that the suffragist encountered in Iron Jawed Angels, was how they were mistreated by the law during one of their protests regarding democracy and its application towards women. While the suffragists were among the picket line protesting, officers began piling one after another, manhandling the women into the back of the police vehicles. The police officers were in no position to carry out those actions towards the women because of the fact that they did not commit any crime whatsoever, so instead their claim was that they were “obstructing traffic.” Furthermore, the false claim was justified by the male judge of the court that left the women with only two choices: pay the fine of ten dollars each per person or a sentence to the Occoquan Workhouse. Within the Occoquan Workhouse, the women initiated a hunger strike against their unjust sentence, but were answered with unlawful cruel punishments such as being tied down and force-fed raw eggs. In addition, the women were denied access to an attorney and visitors