Wright: The Ethics of JIm Crow extra credit

The point of this autobiography is clearly to show that the Jim Crow laws clearly hindered African Americans in the south after the Civil War. I think a sentence from his writing that could serve as a thesis is “There were many times when I had to exercise a great deal of ingenuity to keep out of trouble.”
2. The entire article summarized some events that a young black man had to go through in his early life that had lasting impressions on him for the rest of his life. He starts by telling how he got injured by a broken glass bottle during a fight with white boys and how instead of feeling sorry for him his mom beat him instead so he would learn his lesson. Then he told the story about his first factory job and how he was threatened for trying to learn to do better from the white workers. After that he told the story of how he tried to hitch a ride with some white men and was smacked in the face by a beer bottle and left in the middle of the road. The next story was about how a policeman bashed him against the curb on purpose while he was on his bicycle. Then he told of a few bad experiences that he experienced or witnessed while being a hall-boy at a hotel. Another experience he told about was seeing a black woman beaten and then hearing that it was lucky nothing worse was done to her. The last episode he wrote about was how over a long time he learned some tricks that helped him avoid physical harm or verbal abuse. While on an elevator, he couldn’t take his hat off so a white man did for him. But he knew from experience it was good not to say thank you so he pretended to be struggling with the bags that he was carrying.
3. I thought that Wright did a wonderful job in his autobiography of explaining how you had to live as a black person in the Deep South. Only excerpts were taken from his book. Unfortunately, none of them contained any dates as to when these things occurred. I am curious as to whether they were close to the Civil Rights Movement or if they were closer to the end of the Civil War. It was truly terrible; the things that black people had to go through in this time period. The thing that amazes me is how the policeman acted violently against blacks just as other white people did. I think Wright did a good job showing the wide assortment of things that black people had to go through. It was just a few things that the blacks had to be careful about. They had to be smart about every single decision that they made. If they weren’t, they would have to pay terrible consequences.
4. Earlier we read about how bad life was for blacks on the southern plantations before the Civil War. From these excerpts from Wright’s autobiography, I can see that even with freedom their lives really didn’t become much better. It is sad to read about all the years where blacks were treated so poorly. Many had to live their whole lives under these terrible circumstances.