Caged+Bird+notes

Caged Bird
 * At the beginning of the book the narrator has no self-confidence.
 * She imagines waking up and being white – then everything would be okay.
 * What she sees around her is a society that values people who aren’t like her.
 * Her family supports her
 * The community is made up of people who support each other
 * Sometimes, because they have to!
 * 1890s – Plessy v. Ferguson
 * Case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court
 * Determined that school districts could have segregated schools, provided the facilities were equal
 * Separate but equal


 * In reality schools did not get equal facilities
 * Sometimes black schools got athletic equipment – assuming that was the only way they could excel
 * If you’re not given any good equipment (science, library, etc.) you can’t excel
 * When white schools got new textbooks and equipment, the old stuff was given to the black schools.


 * Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
 * Declared that schools must be integrated
 * It didn’t happen until the 1960s
 * Civil Rights Act


 * At Marguerite’s 8th grade graduation
 * Everyone gets depressed by Board of Education speaker
 * Talking about all the good stuff the white school will get
 * Assuming they don’t care about academics
 * They are not seen realistically
 * Henry Reed, a serious student
 * Starts to sing “Lift Every Voice and Sing”
 * Known as the Black National Anthem
 * Reminds the community that they have a future, they have each other
 * Fills them with hope –
 * Appropriate for a graduation!

When Marguerite and Bailey go back to San Francisco
 * US gets involved in WWII
 * Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor
 * There are empty stores in SF
 * Japanese Americans (U.S. Citizens)
 * Sent to Internment Camps
 * Based on irrational racial prejudice
 * Empty storefronts made opportunities for new black businesses
 * Due to booming war economy
 * Blacks and whites were moving all over the U.S. for new jobs
 * San Francisco had been a place where lots of communities coexisted
 * Now, it had people moving in with prejudices based on home, where they came from