South Mountain Community College
Journal # 13 - I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Tone
Excitement and happiness can quickly turn into depression and sadness. How does this happen?
Maya is graduating from 8th grade. Not only has she never missed a day of school, never arrived to school tardy, is the salutatorian of her class, her hair is perfect too!
Momma, as Maya refers to her grandmother, has ensured she is dressed just right for the occasion in her smocked pretty yellow dress. Her brother Bailey has given her a leather bound collection of poems by Edgar Allen Poe. Momma and Uncle Willie have bestowed her with a brand new Mickey Mouse watch and her dear friend Louise endeared Maya with four embroidered handkerchiefs. The store patrons in Momma's store provided words of encouragement, "Keep on moving to higher ground," with a nickel or dime graduation gift. The day was perfect, Maya was so very pleased!
The evening has come, the time for the graduation ceremony where a guest speaker, Mr. Donleavy places their fate, the fate of the next things to come for the graduates being of a negro race. The plans for this graduating class was much different than the plans of the white students of Central High. The white boys could become Galileos, Edisons and Guaguins, even the white girls where not included in this advancement. But, lordy if you were black you better be athletic, striving to be like Jesse Owens and Joe Louis. If you were too small be be athletic your days would be spent picking cotton and studying corresponding books at night for the next 20 years. Now the girls would be maids and washer women, any job with higher aspirations was quite presumptuous.
The man's words fell like bricks on top of the class of 1940 in Stamps, Arkansas. Their heads were hung low and their gorgeous embroidered handkerchiefs were being used to wipe the tears of their future.
Maya is graduating from 8th grade. Not only has she never missed a day of school, never arrived to school tardy, is the salutatorian of her class, her hair is perfect too!
Momma, as Maya refers to her grandmother, has ensured she is dressed just right for the occasion in her smocked pretty yellow dress. Her brother Bailey has given her a leather bound collection of poems by Edgar Allen Poe. Momma and Uncle Willie have bestowed her with a brand new Mickey Mouse watch and her dear friend Louise endeared Maya with four embroidered handkerchiefs. The store patrons in Momma's store provided words of encouragement, "Keep on moving to higher ground," with a nickel or dime graduation gift. The day was perfect, Maya was so very pleased!
The evening has come, the time for the graduation ceremony where a guest speaker, Mr. Donleavy places their fate, the fate of the next things to come for the graduates being of a negro race. The plans for this graduating class was much different than the plans of the white students of Central High. The white boys could become Galileos, Edisons and Guaguins, even the white girls where not included in this advancement. But, lordy if you were black you better be athletic, striving to be like Jesse Owens and Joe Louis. If you were too small be be athletic your days would be spent picking cotton and studying corresponding books at night for the next 20 years. Now the girls would be maids and washer women, any job with higher aspirations was quite presumptuous.
The man's words fell like bricks on top of the class of 1940 in Stamps, Arkansas. Their heads were hung low and their gorgeous embroidered handkerchiefs were being used to wipe the tears of their future.
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