Exploration 7: AIn't Scared of Your Jail

     The biggest thing that I learned from this documentary is that fundamental change is always difficult. Instituting a societal change not only takes extensive push but patience and time, and you have to be stubborn but leave breathing room to allow the change to push onto the rest of the society. The reason we call it change is because it is changing the dynamic of what people are accustomed to and those who are the voiceless are making their own voice to get people to have an epiphany and empower an imperative movement, and knowing people will fight you on it only continues that empowerment but to not give up.
      Watching this documentary showed us how to recognize a problem and approach it with the right attitude and to follow through with your beliefs regardless of what others think. The statistic that goes along with that and really surprised me was how many people were arrested during the Freedom Rides, over 300 people were arrested in response to that and it showed the fight back against the civil rights movement and taught us that the resistance was real.
     The quote that really got me was when the man was attesting to the movements and the bus rides, saying, "people were yelling kill the n*****... All I was doing was riding the bus" and this was so sad because it is hard for us as human beings to fathom that we see people hate others solely due to the color of the skin but it is a real problem. Martin Luther King also proclaimed "Alabama is going to have to face the fact we are determined to be free", which really spoke to the way he fought for civil rights that it was with stubbornness and recognizing the right thing but never in a demeanor to provoke violence.
     The protest that stood out to me was the sit-ins because it was a more direct way of protest than the others, meaning that people were sitting in places that refused to serve them and sat anyways, obviously provoking verbal and physical response not just by management of the businesses but customers in the place and this was extremely symbolic because it was bold and brash and showed great integrity.