20 hours due 1000 words

Writing Project 1: Struggles of the Civil Rights

The podcast I chose was StoryCorps. The title of the episode I listened was “The Leesburg Stockade Girls”. The host of the podcast is Jasmyn Morris. Jasmyn Morris interviewed Shirley Green- Reese, Emmarene Kaigler-Streeter, Diane Bowens and Carol Barner- Seay because they were arrested for protesting in Americus, Georgia in 1963.

These young girls were kept in an old stockade, a poor prison. Here is a square building with a broken toilet in the room except for the concrete floor and a barred window. Even small animals are reluctant to live in this environment. They miss the world outside, and they expect someone to save them. A month into their confinement, Danny Lyon, a twenty-one year old photographer for the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), learned of the girls’ whereabouts and sneaked onto the stockade grounds to take pictures of the girls through barred windows. After SNCC published the photos in its newspaper The Student Voice, African American newspapers across the country printed the story, and the girls’ ordeal soon gained national attention. On September 15, 1963, law enforcement released the Leesburg Stockade Girls and returned them to their families.

A girl's mother bathed the child and she realized that she had not taken a bath in two months. But what is regrettable is that they have left the normal world because they have been locked for too long. They dare not let others know that they have been in prison because they think that the stockade is their shame.

In my opinion, the experience of these girls being held in prison is a regret of theirs lives, I can understand the loneliness of them. I feel heaviness for them. But they are a neglected point in the history of civil rights. They are ignored but very important people in the civil rights history.

In fact, after listening to this podcast, my inner feelings are very depressed. Because I understand the loneliness they are locked up and the thoughts of their families. That feeling of helplessness is really scary.

Not only the fear and fear of entering the prison, but the suffering in prison is even more crippling. Along with the pain of being restricted to freedom day by day, the girls in the prison gradually turned from hope to despair, from helpless crying to silence. This process is the most unbearable. But some girls show their strength in this difficult environment. They encourage each other and try to make everyone hope. One of the girls, Verna, was pregnant when she was taken in. Two months after she was released, she gave birth to a baby boy.

After two months of hard work in the prison, they were rescued and returned home. They had not touched the outside world for a long time, and they became a bit sluggish and timid. They fear that other people know that they have been kept in prison because they have dignity and they think it is a shame to be held in prison.

“You didn’t know this but today, when I got in this elevator, I was about to have a heart attack. I just don’t want to be closed in and I don’t want to be in the dark. I’m sixty-six years old and I sleep with two lights on in my bedroom.” (The Leesburg Stockade Girls, DB) As can be seen from the DB said, because she has been locked up in a claustrophobic room for a long time, she has had a sequela, and a narrow and secluded space like an elevator reminds her of her experience of being held in jail and let her Unbearable.

I once read a book in the middle school period called “Robinson Crusoe”. The story tells the story of the protagonist Robinson living alone on an isolated island. The feeling of having to persist after desperation makes me feel that it is not easy to live alone. No one can talk to him, everything only can depend on himself.

In fact, just being locked up in jail, reminds me of the lonely Robinson, but this article, let me think of the human rights movement, when it comes to human rights. I think of the famous Nobel Peace Prize winner, Martin Luther King, who advocates the non-violent civil disobedience to fight for the basic rights of African Americans and become a symbol of American progressiveism.

If there is an important change in the history of the civil rights movement, then the declaration of the black slaves issued by Lincoln will make black people free, give freedom, citizenship and voting rights to black people. This is a milestone in the history of black American politics.

When I look back at the stories of these young girls, I am thinking about how might young people today play an equally significant role in promoting racial equality in the United States? But anyway, the Leesburg Stockade Girls are an incredible example of these courageous, young freedom fighters.  

References

https://storycorps.org . ( 1.8.2019)The Leesburg Stockade Girls.  Transcript.