Blog Assignment Two: Archives Visit

The LaGuardia and Wagner Archives provide an extensive collection of primary resources and material that documented key events of New York City’s history. At a student’s disposal, it seems quite helpful as the archives offer exclusive documents that can be essential in researching for an essay or paper. It being my first visit there, I’ve learned that primary resources range from speeches, newspaper articles, artifacts, documented footage, photographs, etc. We were also instructed about the proper guidelines on how to read the material we’ve chosen from the Wagner archives. These guidelines included on who were the people and major factors involved, dates and places, the five W’s—who, what, why, when, and where.
At the archives, I and my fellow students were handed a document titled “Remarks by Mayor Robert F. Wagner” which was then a televised speech on CBS regarding the 1964 Harlem Riots. While Mayor Wagner was away attending a world conference in Geneva, Switzerland, addressing unemployment and poverty issues, he constantly stayed in touch with City Hall, which relayed the troubling news. Returning to New York sooner than expected, Mayor Wagner prepared a tour and personally inspected areas of Harlem ravaged by the riots. After describing what was considered an aftermath of battle, he also noted districts of Harlem and its residents’ who did not partake in the riots. This was sufficient enough to convince Mayor Wagner that the majority of the Harlem residents did not engage in violent and disorderly behavior. He further exclaims that police officers should maintain law and order while stating illicit conduct and disobedience towards police authority will not be tolerate.
Not only do I find this new speech from Mayor Wagner’s take on the 1964 Harlem riots helpful in gaining an expanded knowledge of this historical event. I am quite pleased he didn’t take a stance like The Times articles. Wagner’s stance seemed neutral. He didn’t openly criticize the Harlem residents as foul, impoverished thinking people. At the same time he didn’t ignore the actuality of police brutality while fervently reminding them how their initial duty of maintaining law and order should be carried out.

Blogging The Lab Assignment

It’s quite clear that the false promises imposed by
figurehead white politicians and supposed community leaders are necessary and
an irremovable cog of the white supremacy machine. Malcolm X’s speeches on the
police state and its provocation to worldwide revolution go hand to hand. The
poor, powerless struggle of the people of Harlem are concurrent to the
struggles of Latin America, Asia, and various other regions of the world where
the common enemy is the “international western power structure.”

Malcolm X’s description of a police state explains the cause,
effect, and dual emotional resentment between the police and the residents
occupying the area. I believe the most underlining point of Malcolm’s
particular speech is his analytical perspective on the statistics of Harlem,
gathered through certain media outlets, and pervaded to the white public as a
persuasive technique. A technique intended to sway the white public opinion.
The same technique that impacts repressed communities thus creating the tension
aborning police brutality and the Harlem residents’ justification for
resistance.

In Walter Mosley's second chapter of Workin On The Chain, he continues on by describing how we as citizens are locked in a state of conditioning. A monotonous routine of "work schedules, production lines, codes of behavior, and the array for personal advancement"(Mosley, 19). Many of these things that restrictively border our potential as human beings. These subliminal restrictions are the force that places limits on our awarness, understanding, and our ability to question. These are our chains.

Black history and the African-American experience is consequential to American history because freedom has yet to come in full circle. Centuries of social blunder consisted of segregation, lynchings, murders driven by rascism, and laws established to, what Mosley proclaims were "reintroducing chains into the lives of the freed slave"(Mosley, 40). The undeniable history of institutionalized slavery was the building blocks.The capital implemented to construct America. The bloodstains are indelible on the star spangled banner.

Assignment One: Workin' On The Chain Gang(Revised)

Walter Mosley’s Workin’ On The Chain Gang is an elaborate analysis on the unchecked growth of capitalism’s hegemonic restraints and its effect on not just the African American communities, but on the general population. ”Capitalism has no race or nationality. Capitalism has no humanity” (Mosley 12). Mosley explains how nearly everyone one of us despite race, color, creed, gender, and so on, are manacled by a system that is driven by the personal drive for profit. It is organized trickery, a supposed free market that is manipulated like a puppet in order to achieve deceitful ends. This is the inherent nature of capitalism.

Mosley passionately argues,“By the 1960s many African-Americans were still fighting for the right to vote, while technological advancement had brought us into outer space. On one hand there is shamefully little advancement, while on the other there is more than one could have imagined” (Mosley 9). This quote concisely explains how blacks never received the promises of America. Therefore, he strongly feels that African-Americans and the countless others mistreated, powerless, and abandoned should resist to celebrate false holidays. “I don’t consider myself an American. If you and I were Americans, there’d be no problem” (Malcolm X The Ballot or the Bullet). Malcom X's vigorous words seems in concordance with Mosley's Workin On The Chain Gang. To not recieve the promises, rights, and equal opportunity of what an authenticated constitution should provide, is to nullify you as an American citizen.

However, despite of the separation blacks and whites refuse to eliminate, their undeniable similarities are still prevalent. This is a strong indication of what Mosley is headed towards to. A stepping stone towards relinquishing our misunderstandings. To unveil curtains decorated in images of illusions assembled by the holders of history, television, music, corporate-controlled entertainment, and many other media outlets which Workin On The Chain Gang considers to keep us focused in an unfocused world.