Influence for one, Equality for all. by Cody

Influence for one, Equality for all. by Cody - May 2017 Scholarship Essay

This semester is my Junior year of highschool, I am currently enrolled in a US History course. Recently, our teacher presented a project known as a “Performance Assessment” which involved preparation of a book report on a book that is significant to what we had learned so far in the semester. Recently in the class, we had learned about Jim Crow laws, the Civil War, and the Civil Rights movement. I have always been interested in the Civil Rights movement and I have a lot of respect for Dr.Martin Luther King. I have great appreciation and acknowledgement for his non violent protest ideology to spark change in society and I believe his core values and beliefs are still important today. We had covered Civil Rights quite frequently in our curriculum up to that point, so I decided to do my report on a book relating to the subject. I stumbled across a book called “Mudbound” by Hillary Jordan, which seemed to fit what I was looking for.
It turns out I was right. The story is set in the late 1940s and early 1950s (post World War II). One of the main characters, Ronsel, is a black soldier that operated a US tank in World War II. After he returns from the war to his hometown in Mississippi, he finds that not much has changed. He returns home to find his mom and dad living on the same farm they had been on for 10 years after they got stuck there through a sharecropping scandal. Ronsel goes to town to see how the place has changed and he is surprised to see it hasn’t changed at all. He walks into the local bar through the front door and catches a lot of dirty looks from customers. One man confronts him, saying “Your kind goes in and out through the back door, that way we don’t have to see you walk by”. Ronsel informs the man that he was a soldier who fought for the US in World War II and that he thinks he deserves and has earned the right to walk in the front door. More people have now joined in the altercation and side against Ronsel, ultimately getting him thrown out of the bar. Ronsel continues to face racial adversity throughout the book. After Ronsel caught a ride home with a white friend, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) captured him and beat him to a pulp for riding around with a white man and for having a child with a white woman back in France where he fought for his country. The book clearly outlines the hardships people of color had to endure during that time, and displays those hardships through Ronsel.
Although society is not at all like this today, it is important to know what happened in the past to understand what is happening now or what might happen in the future. In fact, some historical events can impact how people see the world today. For example, we still do see some racial discrimination in schools and regarding law enforcement. Discrimination as a whole is something no one should have to endure, whether it is based on race, age, sexual orientation, or political views. My peers and I have worked to stop this through a program called “Pick Up Someone CHS”. It is a school wide program that encourages good behavior among students while helping students who feel isolated to become more involved and included in daily school activities and functions. Some of the activities include games, study groups, or even just sitting with someone you don’t know at lunch. Although it was not started because of “Mudbound”, it is a reminder that discrimination is a problem in today’s society, and the book really showed me how it started and how it is still alive today. I believe everyone should read “Mudbound” in order to find out what discrimination is really like, why it still exists in some forms, and how we can continue to work to eradicate it from society for the good of humanity.