Thank You

It was so awesome hearing about everyone's field trips/oral histories. The stories were fascinating to hear, and I have a lot more places to check out in the Bay Area now! This class has been a great learning experience and getting to know everyone has been equally as great. Looking forward to seeing some of you in the fall!

A Picture Speaks A Thousand Words

My last post about the Berlin Wall was an important and poignant point in history. It was also filmed and widely reported in the media. I think that the fall of the Berlin Wall paved the way for recent media outlets reporting on anything and everything in world news. The massacre at Tiananmen Square was also another moment that was seen played out on TV.

At 2:00am on June 4th 1989, People's Liberation Army tanks and 300,000 soldiers moved into TiananmenSquare in Beijing to crush a large pro-democracy demonstration that had been going on for seven weeks. The tanks rolled over people that got in their way and soldiers opened fire on groups of protesters.

Hundreds of students and supporters were killed. Nobody but the Chinese authorities knows how many people really died, partly because the bodies were carried off the night of the massacre and buried in secret graves.

The massacre at Tiananmen Square didn't take place in Tiananmen Square but rather in the streets around it. Most of violence occurred on the Avenue of Eternal Peace on the southern side of the square. Reports that the square was washed in blood were unfounded and it appears no one actually died within Tiananmen Square itself. Crackdowns also occurred in more than 200 cities all over China.

The Chinese government death figure is 300. Other estimates range from 2,700 and up. Most of the dead were not university students but ordinary people. Among them were many bystanders, including a 17-year-old high school student, a 27-year-old chemistry teacher, and a 30-year-old computer company employee who had been married for only a month.

Never before had the People's Liberation Army turned its weapons on the Chinese people with the intention of murdering so many of them. Demonstrations at Tiananmen Square in 1976 and 1987 had been broken up with batons and tear gas not guns and tanks.

Berlin Wall

Chapter 22 talked about Communism in Russia and China. I admit that I am a bit ignorant when it comes to understanding Communism especially when it came to other countries. Chapter 22 was especially insightful for me and I found myself remembering a neighbor who had traveled to Europe when I was about 8 years old. He came back with gifts for my sisters and I and he brought us each a piece of the Berlin Wall. I was way too young at the time to understand the significance. I am not sure if I still have the piece of the wall; a part of me hopes that it is tucked away in some box in my attic somewhere.

The fall of the Berlin Wall had begun with the building of the Wall in 1961. However it took about three decades until the Wall was torn down. Several times people in the Communist countries rose up against the Communist system but failed.

In 1989 the first free labor union was founded in the communist Poland. The end of the communist system had begun.The Soviet Union could control their satellites yet but with the new leader Gorbatshov their politics changed in 1984. The reforms in the Soviet Union also had its effects on the other communist countries, especially in Poland and Hungary.

On August 23, 1989 Hungary opened the iron curtain to Austria. Months before East German tourists used their chance to escape to Austria and Hungary. In September 1989, more than 13,000 East German escaped via Hungary in 3 days. It was the first mass exodus of East Germans after the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961.

Mass demonstrations against the government and the system in East Germany begun at the end of September and took until November 1989. The new government prepared a new law to lift the travel restrictions for East German citizen. At 06:53 pm on November 9, 1989 a member of the new East German government was asked at a press conference when the new East German travel law comes into force. He answered: "Well, as far as I can see, ... straightaway, immediately."

Thousands of East Berliners went to the border crossings. At 10:30 pm the border opened. Other border crossing points soon opened to the West and by December of 1989, the majority of the Berlin Wall had been destroyed.

Chapter 21

Chapter 21 proved to be an excellent reiteration of what I have learned in every single history course I've ever taken. I studied the Great Depression in depth after reading The Grapes of Wrath. I discovered how awful trench warfare is in All's Quiet on the Western Front. And I learned that war really is hell, after watching Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers, and The Pacific.

That being said, I still found chapter 21 very interesting and informative. It is always good to look at history from different perspectives to really gain a better understanding of the whole.

In an interview, Mel Brooks once said, "I was never crazy about Hitler...If you stand on a soapbox and trade rhetoric with a dictator you never win...That's what they do so well: they seduce people. But if you ridicule them, bring them down with laughter, they can't win. You show how crazy they are."

Below are some clips while in ridiculously bad taste, fit perfectly with what Brooks was trying to convey.

Happy 5th of July!

On the day after celebrating America's birthday, stuffed with bbq and beer and smelling like sparklers, it's time to get back to business.

A couple of weeks back, I was speaking with my best friend on the phone. She is a grad student at Humbolt State working on her MA in Sociology. We vented to each other our frustrations with the amount of work we had, how much we hated our jobs and everything else bff's discuss. I was telling her I was currently reading chapter 22 in my history book, and the topic of communism reminded me of our favorite teacher in high school and his fabulous sayings such as "that's not an elephant, its a mouse with a thyroid problem". This teacher taught history electives our senior year, and one of the classes was American history from 1945 to the present. I was telling her how I had no topic for a research paper, yet found the topic of communism interesting. I wanted a good angle for the paper however. She told me about a book she had read for one of her classes, and it included the story of the Wheatland hop riots of 1913. After I got off the phone, I decided to research it a bit more, and I really found myself drawn to the topic. I decided that for my research paper, I would discuss the 1913 Wheatland hop riots.

What happened in 1913 was not only important in California and American history, but served as a lesson for countries and labor unions all over the world. It showed the direct impact the "fear of communism" had on American society and other cultures.

Here is a link for a brief history of the riot. I cannot wait to share it with you though in class.

http://libcom.org/history/1913-wheatland-hop-riot

Since our last class discussed briefly the Massachusetts colony, I thought I'd post some pictures I took from my Boston trip last month. I loved Boston and the people there. Everywhere you walk there is some part of American history smacking you in the face. I walked along the Freedom Trail (until it took me to the marketplace and I got distracted by shopping), and I tripped several times on the cobblestone streets (flip flops and stone streets don't mix).

I tend to geek out on early American colonial history, and I only had a short time there so I didn't even come close to seeing all the historical buildings, statues and tours Boston had to offer (friends, Boston beer and the Red Sox had a hand in this). I loved Boston and can't wait to visit again.

Faneuil Hall has been a marketplace and meeting hall since 1742. Samuel Adams, James Otis and others gave speeches here encouraging independence from Britain. It was a well known stop on the Freedom Trail and is sometimes referred to as "the Cradle of Liberty."

This stature of Samuel Adams is outside Faneuil Hall. He was a statesman, political philosopher, and one of the founding fathers of the United States. As a politician in colonial Massachusetts, Adams was a leader of the movement that became the American Revolution, and was one of the architects of the principles of American republicanism that shaped the political culture of the United States.

The Robert Gould Shaw Memorial, designed by Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Stanford White, was built in his memory on Beacon and Park streets in Boston in 1897. Robert Gould Shaw was the colonel in command of the all-black 54th Regiment, which entered the American Civil War in 1863. He was killed in a failed attempt to capture Fort Wagner, near Charleston, South Carolina.

The Massachusetts State House, also called Massachusetts Statehouse or the “New” State House, is the state capitol and seat of government of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It is located in Boston in the Beacon Hill neighborhood. It was built on land once owned by John Hancock in 1798.

Of course my favorite part of my Boston trip was going to Fenway Park! The park is the oldest Major League Baseball stadium still in use and the oldest venue for a professional sports team in the United States. My tour guide informed my group that the team has put in a petition to Congress to make Fenway Park a historical landmark. In 2011, Fenway will turn 100 years old.

Ch 11

Wow. Chapter 11 contained a lot of information, but extremely interesting information. I will be the first to admit that I am totally confused by how Islam came to be. It has such a rich cultural tradition and history that it was helpful to read about how it came to be.

I admit I have a short attention span, and I do much better with videos (don't we all?) I took a religion class last semester, and watched this PBS documentary that I found insightful, interesting and informative. (You can't go wrong with the 3 I's!)
*I only posted the first 3 parts-the rest can be found on Youtube.