...did her best to instill values and morals among their home. When Maya Angelou was eight years old she was living with her mother in Saint Louis. Tragically Maya was raped which then lead Maya to become mute for close to five years. Maya Angelou was sent back to Stampa because no one could handle the state that Maya was in. While living back in Stamps Maya life was going to change for the better. Mrs. Flowers was a woman that rescued Maya from who she thought she was. Maya confidence was regained and she was once more thriving. Maya at this time lived behind the back of the Johnson Grocery store with her brother and Uncle Willie. At this time Johnson Grocery Store would sell to both whites and blacks. In the home Mrs Annie had taught the Christian principals, respect, love and courage. Mrs Annie had a hand in Maya Angelou believing in God, an honest days work and family. Mrs. Annie was a the changing factor in Maya’s life. Mrs. Annie opened Maya’s eyes to a world of good, the world where she could fly. As time would have it Maya and her brother went back to live their mother. Maya becomes overwhelmed...
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...were sent back to Stamps after it was discovered that her mother’s boyfriend had sexually molested Maya. He was arrested and kept in a cell for 1 day, however after his release he was later found dead. While living with the Grandmother, Maya became an elected mute; she felt her words had such power that they caused the death of others (her mother’s boyfriend) and as result choose not to speak at all. While living with her Grandmother, she responded with the following words: “Sister, Momma don’t care what these people say, that you must be an idiot, a moron, ’cause you can’t talk. Momma don’t care. Momma know that when you and the good Lord get ready, you gon’ be a teacher.” As a teenager, Dr. Angelou’s love for the arts won her a scholarship to study dance and drama at San Francisco’s Labor School. At 14, she dropped out to become San Francisco’s first African-American female cable car conductor. She later finished high school, giving birth to her son, Guy, a few weeks after graduation. As a young single mother, she supported her son by working as a waitress and cook, however her passion for music, dance, performance, and poetry would soon take center stage. In 1954 and 1955, Dr. Angelou toured Europe with a production of the opera Porgy and Bess. She studied modern dance with Martha Graham, danced with Alvin Ailey on television variety shows and, in 1957, recorded her first...
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...Dr. Maya Angelou is one of the most renowned and influential voices of our time. Hailed as a global renaissance woman, Dr. Angelou is a celebrated poet, memoirist, novelist, educator, dramatist, producer, actress, historian, filmmaker, and civil rights activist. Born on April 4th, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri, Dr. Angelou was raised in St. Louis and Stamps, Arkansas. In Stamps, Dr. Angelou experienced the brutality of racial discrimination, but she also absorbed the unshakable faith and values of traditional African-American family, community, and culture. As a teenager, Dr. Angelou’s love for the arts won her a scholarship to study dance and drama at San Francisco’s Labor School. At 14, she dropped out to become San Francisco’s first African-American female cable car conductor. She later finished high school, giving birth to her son, a few weeks after graduation. As a young single mother, she supported her son by working as a waitress and cook, however her passion for music, dance, performance, and poetry would soon take center stage. In 1954 and 1955, Dr. Angelou toured Europe with a production of the opera Porgy and Bess. She studied modern dance with Martha Graham, danced with Alvin Ailey on television variety shows and, in 1957, recorded her first album, Calypso Lady. In 1958, she moved to New York, where she joined the Harlem Writers Guild, acted in the historic Off-Broadway production of Jean Genet's The Blacks and wrote and performed Cabaret for Freedom. In 1960, Dr....
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...Morgan Peoples English IV CP Blankenship 3/21/14 Maya Angelou Known as one of the most influential voices of our time, Dr. Maya Angelou is a global renaissance woman, a celebrated poet, novelist, educator and holds many other titles. She has proven the point that sex and race cannot hinder dreams and goals. In this paper, Dr. Maya Angelou’s failures as well as successes will be recognized and discussed. Born on April 4th, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri, Dr. Angelou was raised in St. Louis and Stamps, Arkansas. Maya Angelou's former name was Marguerite Ann Johnson. Maya got the nickname from her older brother Bailey, who had a speech issue and could not pronounce Marguerite (Longly, 2013). He started calling her Maya because he read a book on Mayan indians, and the name stuck. In Stamps, Dr. Angelou experienced the brutality of racial discrimination, but she also absorbed the unshakable faith and values of traditional African-American family, community, and culture (Angelou, 2012). Growing up in Stamps, AK, Angelou learned what it was like to be a black girl in a world whose boundaries were set by whites (Longly, 2013). As a child, she always dreamed of waking to find her "nappy black hair" metamorphosed to a long blond bob because she felt life was better for a white girl than for a black girl (Franks, n.d.). Despite the odds, her grandmother instilled pride in Angelou with religion as an important element in their home. Maya Angelou contributed to black history...
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...starts his letter he says, “MY DEAR FELLOW CLERGYMEN” (72). He starts his letter right away, appealing to character. With this being said, he sounds like he wants to do a nonviolent protest against them, but he wants his voice to be heard, but not violently. He used clever words to start off the letter. He doesn’t separate blacks from whites, showing that they both are the same, no discrimination, and no segregation. He wanted everyone to be treated equally. He was against the fact that everyone was racist in Birmingham. Another quote to support his character is when he said “I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty-five affiliated organizations across the South, and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights.” In this quote he is describing the role he plays in the religious community. With this being said, it shows that he is equal with the eight clergymen and can share of sort of relationship with them. His desire is to stop injustice, showing credibility with the white clergymen, just wanting people to get along. He also appeals to reason when he says, “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.”(74). No white...
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...Critical Analysis Essay “Letter from Birmingham Jail” In arguing, writers use different techniques to effectively convey their message to their intended audience. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" was a response to "A Call for Unity" by eight white clergymen in which King’s presence in Birmingham and his methods of public demonstration were questioned. King’s letter was not only a response to his presence in Birmingham, but he also used the opportunity to address the unjust proposals by the clergymen that Negroes wait for the legal system to abolish segregation and unjust laws. King uses rhetorical modes of persuasion such as ethos, pathos and logos to meticulously address and discredit the claims made by the eight white clergymen. Throughout his letter, King also makes many comparisons to effectively illustrate how the Negro pursuit of freedom was timely. To answer the question of his presence in Birmingham, King uses both ethos and pathos to explain why he is qualified to be present leading the demonstrations. To argue the perception of him being “an outsider coming in”, King first states that because he has organizational ties in Birmingham, he has an obligation to be available whenever he is needed. This statement discredits the notion that he is an outsider. To lay the foundation of his argument, King states, “But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here.” This statement is used to make King’s presence seem less personal...
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...Devin Ponder Eng291-001 13 September 2013 Rhetorical Analysis Rhetorical Analysis of “Letter from Birmingham Jail” “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” by Martin Luther King, Jr., is a letter in which King is writing to his “fellow clergymen” in a response to their recent criticism of the actions he was leading in Birmingham at the time. The letter was written in April of 1963, a time when segregation was essentially at a peak in the south. Birmingham, in particular, is described by King as “probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States” (King 7). King goes on to inform the clergymen of the reality of the situation where he is and how waiting isn’t an option anymore. In the letter, King uses a variety of rhetorical strategies to accomplish the task of appealing to the readers from a logical standpoint. King first establishes his credibility to answer the clergymen by naming his personal title and comparing himself to such a higher historical authority as the apostle Paul. King uses repetition of his personal experiences in Birmingham to describe the situation from an emotional standpoint. By stating his credibility and giving his personal experiences, King gives the readers no choice but to listen to what his reasoning is behind his actions taken in Birmingham. He does so by describing how he has dealt with the situation in Birmingham appropriately using the four basic steps of any nonviolent campaign, and defining what those are. By coordinating the rhetorical...
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...information and ideas from his task force and his advisers and blockaded Cuba and to threaten Khrushchev, Khrushchev then withdrew the missiles. (Salem, 2009) He was interested in “peace as a process,” and in 1963, the United States and the Soviet Union ended the nuclear threat. Kennedy listened to advisers who insisted that the United States should send troops to Vietnam to show the South Vietnamese army how to fight, even though skeptical, Kennedy agreed. He did not live to follow the plan through. In Dallas on November 22, 1963, he was assassinated. (Salem, 2009) The Second item found in the 1960 time capsule was a letter from the Birmingham County Jail. http://learnfly.wordpress.com/2007/01/15/56/ SCLC allied with the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, to protest the conditions in Birmingham. (Spark Note, 2005) Between...
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...clergymen’s claim that the demonstrations were risky and early. He states that the Negro community had no substitute except to prepare for direct action. He supports this claim by saying that the Negro leaders wanted to negotiate with the city fathers, but they consistently refused to engage in good-faith negotiation. He also gives more support to his argument by writing about another confrontation in September when the Negro leaders finally got their chance to talk with the leaders of Birmingham. He states that in the course of negotiations certain promises were made by the merchants-for example to remove the stores’ humiliating racial sings. On the source of these promises, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the selected of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to a halt on all demonstrations. As the weeks and the months went on, they realized that they were the victims of false promises, because the signs went back up. Due to the reality that their hopes were yet again blasted they were forced to resort to direct action. This is just one illustration of many others in which Martin Luther King makes excellent appeals to logos. Martin Luther King channels a high sense of ethos in his letter. He establishes this from the very start of the argument. In the first paragraph he sets the attitude for the letter. He states that he wants to counter the clergymen’s statements in patient and reasonable terms. Also, he establishes his credibility in the second paragraph...
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...Stephanie L. Davis Professor Randall Gordon English Composition II 10428 22 February 2014 Equal Rights: Action or No Action In the article “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” the author Martin Luther King Jr., is responding to a minister’s opposing comments to King and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference organization’s actions in Birmingham, Alabama. The author reflects his point by portraying the fear of the residents of Birmingham and thus evoking the same emotion in the reader to justify the actions that were taken. King also adds further detailed information explaining the time and situation along with various activities occurring in the same area which explains the feeling and temperament of Birmingham. Although King was attempting to explain the call to action, the article rambles and addresses so many topics that the reader becomes lost and by the end has forgotten the actual goal of the correspondence. The article was written with a very passionate and disgusted tone for how colored people were being treated in the southern states. His choice of words that include “intolerance”, “injustice”, and “racial” stress both his deep pain and personal anger for the way that he and other colored people are being segregated and reacted to by whites, law enforcement, merchants, and various people in the community. Each term causes the reader to pause and contemplate the feeling of prejudice, how it would feel to be judged by the color of your skin, and have laws created...
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...was beaten to death a few days after being released from jail, which caused her to become mute for almost 5 years. I think that with everything Maya Angelou has been through, so far in her life, if she was not a strong enough person, she probably would have drowned herself in sorrow and punished herself for all that has happened in her life. Instead, she moved back to Stamps, where her grandmother lived, and began to meet with Ms. Bertha Flowers, who was a family friend and teacher. Ms. Flowers helped Maya with literature, art, and managed to help Maya find her voice again. When Maya hit thirteen years of age, she decided to reunite with her mother in San Francisco. She attended high school and worked very hard. She also received a scholarship to study dance and drama at the California Labor School. Maya had to drop out of high school to become San Francisco’s first female, African-American streetcar conductor. Finally, she returned to school, even though she was pregnant, and still managed to graduate high school. At seventeen, Maya was a single mother, who worked numerous jobs, such as, being a cook, waitressing, and even prostituting, just to be able to support herself and her son. Once again, I feel that in order to be able to make it through high school while being pregnant, is a very challenging task to complete. Apparently, Maya Angelou was...
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...Cristal Gonzalez Mrs. Patterson English III - 5B 14 May 2013 Why Try to Erase History? To Kill a Mockingbird, for various reasons is marked top and a must read before you die, because of its outstanding lessons through the eyes of a little girl. This book teaches history and life lessons better than any textbook or teacher. Society strongly believes there is no reason for banning this book, because it teaches about racism, shows courage, and gives a mental vision of how society has changed since then. It’s very difficult when people have decided your verdict by just seeing the color of your skin. People shouldn’t be judged by how they look; in the end we’re all human, nothing more nothing less. There are different types of courage shown throughout the book. It ranges from how courageous a kid could be and an adult too. Society has come a long way, and it has changed for the best. When you realize in the book how society was, you think to yourself how could people be so cruel? Although years after, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. himself said, “…I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character…” (King). To Kill a Mockingbird, teaches racism better than any textbook, “I thought it taught things about racism and tolerance better than a history textbook,” (Oakley Ebscohost). Even though racism is a sensitive subject to some, people of today’s world need to know what kind...
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...RELI 8 December 2015 1. Briefly tell the lives of Buddha and Muhammad. How did their life experiences affect their teaching? (10 points) Siddhartha – whose name means “the one whose objective is attained” – was born into a noble family around the year 560 AC. in the city of Kapilavastu in Nepal. Legend says that at the moment that his mother was making love with his father, she had a vision: six elephants, each one with a lotus flower on his back, were coming in her direction. The next instant, Siddhartha was conceived. During her pregnancy, Queen Maya, his mother, decided to call the wise men in the kingdom to interpret the vision she had had, and they were unanimous in affirming that the child about to be brought into the world would be a great king or a great priest. Siddhartha’s childhood and adolescence were very like ours; his parents wanted by all means to protect their son from knowing about the misery of the world. So he led his life confined between the walls of the gigantic palace where his parents lived and where everything seemed perfect and harmonious. He married, had a son and knew only the pleasures and delights of life. Eventually, Siddhartha wanted to keep being in the city, whilst being in the city the deprivation of the sight of suffering in his life finally became a reality to him. Shortly thereafter, he became enlightened. 2. Tell some ways that Hinduism and Buddhism are similar. Why is this so? (10 points) Every being wants happiness...
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...The Power of Freedom “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed” (Martin Luther King Jr.). Just like Martin Luther King Jr. said people who faced oppression couldn’t wait around expecting to be given freedom. Instead, in order to earn it, they would need to fight and demand for it. The same ideas are portrayed through the writing of a fellow activist, Maya Angelou. In “I know why the caged bird sings” by Maya Angelou, the idea of freedom is explained through the use of metaphors and imagery. To begin, the metaphors used compare two perspectives of life. The poem itself is one large extended metaphor with other metaphors dispersed throughout. The main metaphor explains the lives of two barricaded races; “The caged bird” representing those who lacked freedom and “The free bird” representing those with freedom (Angelou). A caged bird could be a metaphor for any group of people facing oppression while the cage represents physical barriers. The freedom appointed to the free bird is opposite to that given to the caged bird. To show how the caged birds dealt with this segregation Angelou writes, “The caged bird sings/with fearful trill of the things unknown/but longed for still/and is tune is heard/on the distant hill for the caged bird/ sings of freedom” (Angelou). The caged birds “fearful trill” represents the bird’s worry that it will never have a chance to experience that same freedom. Though he’s fearful and his ambition is unmet...
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...King tried his best to make changes in the way people thought back then. On August 28, 1963 he gave his famous life changing, “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington DC. That speech influenced people to want to stick together as human being, and not just as blacks and whites. He tried to give everyone hope that one day there wouldn’t be anymore segregation. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested for his Civil Rights movement, and wrote a letter from jail answering the comments that was said that he was an “outsider coming in”. After Dr. King wrote the letter they didn’t even want to read it. The letter became famous and called the “Letter from Birmingham Jail”. Martin Luther King Jr. became the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference that was in support better human rights. He joined Ebenezer Baptist Church and was made the pastor. He created an organization to “March on Washington” that greatly influenced people to want to stop the violence that was going on in the south. Dr. King was assassinated on April of 1960 and that made a big impact on the nation and the world. So many people were saddened by Dr. King’s death, all races. What him most influential is that he wanted equal rights for ALL Americans, not just black or white people. He helped Rosa Parks and many others stand up for themselves by being a great example of peaceful demonstrations. I believe that if he hadn’t been shot he could have made a million more Americans come closer...
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