Archives Visit

Today my classmates and I, had the opportunity to visit the archive here at LaGuardia College. Tara and the archive’s staff at the school welcomed us; she was very kind to us and was able to explain to us what an archive is for which she said is a place where they collect and maintain primary sources.  We talked about Mayor Wagner, and she presented us a very important speech made by Mayor Wagner in 1964 in the aftermath of the Harlem riot.

             First of all, we were taught that before you try to examine a text, always try to see if the context of the text is reliable. We both went through to the speech and found the main point of the speech. In the speech we learned that Mayor Wagner had to cut his trip from Europe, for a world conference because of the chaos or violence that happened in Harlem on July 1964. When he got back, his acting mayor Paul Screvane briefed him about the violence. But since he knew that he couldn’t just judge the violence by words, he decided to take a tour in Harlem and inspect the violence by himself. However, when he started to tour Harlem he couldn’t find as much evidence as he thought he would get. But that did not stop him from arguing, “law and order was Negros best friend”, which I believe that comment should been told to the police department who was attacking black people in Harlem not to the people who were trying to express themselves.

             On the other hand he said the police are under legal mandate and obligation to protect, with all the force that is necessary and justify. The police where not justify here; they were killing innocent people and beating them up because of they race. Mayor Wagner’s comment meant that he gave the police more power to brutalize the people of Harlem, which was not the best idea for the community in Harlem.

             

In the chapter on the" Working chain of the Gaing ",Mosley mention that, black poeple have experianced the chains from day one in the new world , and for that  black American history should be American history . Black people where shunted aside , denied access , and allowed to suffer with no real democratic recourse . Mosley quote that after World War II ended , black poor people suffered more because there were few avenues for us to rise above the level of manual labor .

In this article “Workin’ on The Chain Gang”, by Walter Mosley. He mentions that "we have defeated the democracy process, and now we are living in an economy system that perverts our labor" (Mosley 3). Therefore is not good for us to have a Living in an economics system as we live right now is not helping the people but instead helping the rich corporations and rich people based on a sub-culture of poverty and crime, a system that any other creature would see as barbaric. Some people even argue that if you work hard, “you will get to live a better life.” They might think that will live in a better life, but in reality you not you are just being used as slave.

He claims that “after a hundred years since the practice of slavery has been outlawed in the west” (Mosley 4). However, we are still witnessing slavery round us, but in a very different manner. The new generation of slavery is that big corporations or rich companies are using us to get them richer while not given us the values that we deserve as human being. We work too hard and so many hours with a low wage payment while big companies or corporations such the banks, A.I.G and B.P are getting richer. But its time free to ourselves from this kind of economics system we live, and follow the real democracy we always dreamed of.  

Therefore Mosley said, “we hope the change of the century and millennium, will allow us to forgive and forget the brutal past” (Mosley 4). We have been thru and witness too much in the past century such as slavery, which white people claim that it ended in 1865. But as black people were still suffering, they believed that it didn’t end at that particular time. We hope we will forget about the economic system that has been ruing our lives for long time