Social Stratification in the Deep South

A day in the historic city of New Orleans. Today was my first time ever in the city of New Orleans and even though it’s been about two years since hurricane Katrina, the city of New Orleans night life is the same as you see it on television. After walking the strip of bourbon street and seeing the band playing and all the people walking around with beads on their necks, it seems as if nothing ever happen to this place. But as we rode through the town of New Orleans and seen other places, it all came back to light that this place went through a lot after hurricane Katrina hit. Looking out from the outside and just watching the news, we would think that this devastating thing happen during the hurricane, but hearing from the people here they fill like it was more a government thing. The people in New Orleans feel like if the government would have build the levies better than this beautiful city of New Orleans would have never experience such a disaster. To me this place is still live and beautiful, just listening to the band in the streets made me think of home. I really enjoyed my first day in New Orleans.

The second day in Hancock was another very interesting day of our journey. We met a few people that experience the bad side of hurricane Katrina; they took us through the days before the hurricane and the days after the hurricane. They also told us about what they did to get money to try and get there community back to what it was. They also fill that New Orleans is getting more help than them and it wasn’t even hit by hurricane. Just being in the community I saw a lot if people that was really close and you can tell that they all were trying to help each other out. It was really sad to see that the hurricane wipe out every house that was on the beach front of that city. I even saw a “BANK” and the only thing that was left was the Vault, which was crazy. Hancock County is a nice place and is going to be beautiful when it gets back to normal, and the people are extremely nice also.

Day 4, Memorial Day, it felt very awkward spending my memorial day with teachers and students on a bus in Alabama then spending it with my mom, dad, sister, brother and family members. But overall the day was beautiful, we learn more about the Selma to Montgomery march. The most interesting thing I learned about the march was that it was both black and whites were marching together to Montgomery. After watching it, it made me think again about our history, and a question came to mind after watching the documentary and it was ” Were all whites the same?”. The march to Montgomery was diverse and that really showed me that even though history shows blacks getting brutally beat by whites, it was not all whites that were doing the crimes. Oh yea and we saw the home of Ben Wallace, that was interesting also.

Day three started out pretty interesting, as a group we went to have church service in the historical church on 16^th street where the four little girls were bombed and killed by the four white men. Church service for me was a little typical and normal. I enjoyed the loud preaching and the song singing by the singers. The only odd thoughts I had about church was, it was very little teenagers in church. My church back home is very similar, but we have more of a younger crowd of people trying to learn the bible than elder people. Another thing I thought about, was this place is really known for what happen to the kids on that street and in that area, but I barely saw young people there. I did see kids the first day and that was only because they were having something like a get together at the park.

Day two was very interesting, I could not believe that we as a group were standing directly on the same grounds of the kids that were sprayed down and beating and whip by blackjacks by officers. It was so touching because it had statues up that gave clues of what happen that day. It just felt like I was there watching the whole thing. Than directly across the streets on 16^th street was the church where the four little girls were killed in Sunday school, the church was bomb by four men who attach more than 100 sticks of dynamite to the church windows in the basement.

My first day on the trip was Good and Bad. The bad part of my trip was I could not make it to North Carolina to leave with the class and enjoy the class discussion and watch the movies and get to the know all the other students that were going on the trip. The good thing about it was I left at 1pm and got to Birmingham at 4pm, the bus left North Carolina at 8am and got here at 5pm. So the good thing about that was I didn’t have to make that long ride. What made my day go even better was we as a group ate at “Fried Green Tomatoes” and it was one of the best meals I ever had before. So overall I had an OK day for the first day, Peace.

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