Yasnil Suriel

Dear Henry Louis Gates Jr.,
When I saw the Many River to Cross documentary it blew my mind. One of my favorite parts was that part about Oscar Micheaux and how he was the first black independent film maker. I can’t even express how I was feeling at that time. It was like a dream come true, but not too long after 1,250 or more structures in a town named Greenwood (where the African- Americans just wanted to be left alone) got burned and destroyed.That shows how good things happened but then something bad happens next. It was like a pattern: bad, good, bad etc. It was like an epidemic. One person got sick. Then the next.
Oh, the world we live in. We try to make it better, but sometimes it just gets worse.
Some parts in the movie just shocked me, others gave me hope like when I heard that Madam C. J. Walker was the first black millionaire. That was a really big accomplishment back then, even for a white woman and especially for a black woman!
I just hated the unfair parts about how African-Americans and Whites couldn’t play checkers together. Also, African-American schools were broken and they had no desks, but the white schools were made out of bricks and they had basketball courts. Do you see the difference? These blacks didn’t deserve this. They never did anything to the whites. If they didn’t want to be with them, they could have just let them go back to where they were from, or leave them alone in Greenwood, but instead they held them back and made them their slaves.
The slave owners disgusted me. They treated blacks like they weren’t human. They did studies to see if blacks were even human. How cruel is that/
As I mentioned Blacks couldn’t even play checkers together because of the stupid Jim Crow laws. The Whites were probably happy they had “Won.” But they then got a taste of their own medicine. Ruby Bridges went into an all white school. Blacks were happy. They said “We don’t see a child. We see change.” That was an amazing and powerful part of the documentary. Ruby Bridges helped change history. While Ruby was walking into school and learning in school, whites would say “2468 we don’t want to integrate.”
The Whites back then and the Whites now are very different. Things have changed over the course of months, years, decades, and centuries. We have changed many things but we are still not done. All those arrogant people in the world: not only whites, but others. They still believe we should be separate, but we can’t let that happen. We have to be strong.
One quote that really motivated me was “Could 500 years of years of racism be erased by one man?” It is such a powerful quote. I think it could never be erased. I believe everybody should know what the African-Americans went through, just because of their skin color. They went through cruel and brutal treatment.
It was an amazing feeling to know that African-American’s were writing their own newspapers and expressing how they felt about what was happening. When I heard that so many white communities in the South weren’t non-violent, I was thinking “That isn’t fair.” How could they? Most of the African-American’s were non-violent. Why would they fight them if they never hurt them?
A part that really surprised me was the part that said 90% of African-Americans joined 26 year old Martin Luther King in marches and meetings, I felt very proud of the African-Americans for standing up for themselves.
While Rosa Parks and other African-Americans were boycotting buses, they said “My feet are tired but my soul is rested.” That is a very powerful quote. It can tell you that they would go through anything, just to not be segregated: in the buses of anywhere, but this was the first step.
Another thing that really amazed me was that 50 thousand black students had sit-ins and they were non-violent, but they were attacked. Why would some whites do this? The students didn’t even try to fight back. Just why?
All of these things happened throughout history. I am very happy you made this documentary, so that others could learn a lot just like I did. There was so many dad and good parts. But, as you can tell, the good parts were my favorite and most likely most of the people who saw this documentary feel the same. The only question I have is “Just why?” That question and many of my others questions will be left unanswered.
From,
Yasnil Suriel