Africans In NYC

Using Africans in New York, who’s stories we discovered by historians, we filled in the blanks using creative writing. Here is mine.

Good “Fortune”

I remember the stories mama told me. Her village in Lower Guinea raided, husband killed. She told me how she was dragged toward the slave port, on to the slave ship. “I was chained up and beaten…” She had told me. “next to people I didn’t know, and I laid there, until they took me out of the chains. It was the first time I had seen the sun in what felt like years.” She told me how she ran from where she was to New York where she met a nice man, and had me, so I had freedom, but no matter what, it still felt like I was treated differently, and I was. People looked at me in odd ways and kept a far distance from me, no one seemed to like me. But that changed two years ago.
I was in love. She was a slave, I wasn’t, but I needed her. I bought her as a slave, with my son, Robin. It seemed surprising that and man like me would buy a slave, especially after the British passed laws that made free blacks like me less equal to the whites. So I made a big decision, and bought her freedom with the money I had from being a cooper, then I married her. It was a great life. I made the money, she took care of Robin. I was thought of as a rebel, John Fortune, and my name was disliked in the streets. We then had a daughter named Elizabeth, and people were now starting to treat us differently. We even hired a teacher for Elizabeth so she could learn to read and write, something, our family could not do. It was great. Now that we had an educated member in our family, people treated us normally. Now we were the Fortunes, just a family in New York.

Racism Essay Template

Name: Ben C. Humanities
7th Grade Comparative Essay

Outline for Crucible/McCarthy Comparative Essay

Theme: Racism

Paragraph #1: Introductory Paragraph (GIT)

Grabber Statement (G): ISIS took responsibility for 9/11, and since they affiliate with Islam, people develop a prejudice against all Muslims. When those people gain power, it can lead to deportation, terrible treatment, and unfair jailing. What are you supposed to think?

Introduction of Theme (I): Racism is a problem that appears throughout history. It can lead to unfair treatment, hysteria, fear, chaos, and death. Friends become terrorists and neighbors become witches. From the Salem Witch Trials, to the McCarthy Era and current day, it seems to never stop ruining lives and making terrible history.

Thesis Statement (T): Racism can cripple the peace and order of a society. Racism happens when people need someone to blame, so they oppress a group of people who may not have as much power.

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Paragraph #2: Crucible Thematic Connection

Topic Sentence (T): Racism in the Crucible is primarily displayed through the treatment of Tituba and how quickly she’s accused of witchcraft.

Explanatory Sentence (E): The play the Crucible showcases the racism that took place during the Salem Witch Trials of the 1690’s. Tituba is the first person accused because she’s a black woman who possess’ little power and no social status. Parris and Abigail use their power and racism in the following section.

Evidence (E):
“Parris: I saw Tituba waving her arms over the fire when I came to you. Why was she doing that? And I heard a screeching and gibberish coming from her mouth. She were swaying like a dumb beast over that fire!
Abigail: She always sings her Barbados songs, and we dance.” (Pg.64)

Analysis (A): This quote shows Parris and Abigail dehumanizing Tituba because she’s black and disempowered. Their treatment of Tituba is extremely racist and terrible. Abigail scapegoats Tituba to take the blame off of herself, because she doesn’t want to lose the slight bit of respect she has and be held responsible for “witchcraft”. Parris even says Tituba swayed over the fire like a beast, which is dehumanization.

Concluding/ Transition (C): The Crucible was a horrible time, even though it was more sexism, it still shows the theme of racism. But racism became more of a problem when there is at least some twisted proof, which is what happened in the McCarthy Era.

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Paragraph #3: McCarthy/Red Scare Thematic Connection

Topic Sentence (T): Racism was a huge problem that caused complete hysteria and chaos in the McCarthy Era as well.

Explanatory Sentence (E): The McCarthy Era was fueled on racism. Russians were persecuted for being from Russia even if they didn’t affiliate with communism. Because of the racism that took place during the McCarthy Era, America became a madhouse in which no one felt safe. People hid under desks for bomb drills and treated Russians terribly. People in power were the most racist, as you can see in this quote.

Evidence (E): “His first major raid rounded up hundreds of suspected radicals. Nearly 250 of them were deported back to their homeland. Many of the deportees had not done anything wrong. Their only crime was belonging to an organization that was viewed as radical.” (Pg.20)

Analysis (A): Russians in the USA were sent back to their homeland, even though they had done nothing wrong, only because they were Russian. This persecution was on their ethnic and racial background. They might have disagreed with communism, yet they were sent back to Russia. This is racism at its greatest. Major racism appears through history. It is natural to be fearful of difference, but it shouldn’t lead to unfair treatment and death.

Concluding/ Transition (C): Now this theme of sending people back to their homeland is happening again, and the McCarthy Era is repeating itself in current day.

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Paragraph #4: Modern Day Witch Hunt Thematic Connection

Topic Sentence (T): Racism is at its most in modern day because of people like Donald Trump.

Explanatory Sentence (E): People are still racist to this day, because there parents raised them that way, and their parents before them and so on. It’s a never ending cycle until someone breaks it and isn’t racist. The racism that is happening right now is terrible. People like Donald Trump are going to far and affecting millions of people’s lives. One example of this can be seen in this quote from a news article.

Evidence (E): “President Trump’s most recent executive order effectively bans citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. for at least 90 days — but some Muslim countries were spared from the order’s blacklist, even though they have deep-seated ties to terrorism.” (NY News)

Analysis (A): Trump banned Muslims, even though he claims it’s not a ban. He categorizes Muslims as terrorists. Since ISIS affiliates with Islam, they fooled people like Trump into hating Muslims. Now racist people like Trump are making Muslims think America is a terrible place which shows how racism comes back and bites you.

Concluding/ Transition (C): Racism is a big problem throughout history that needs to be stopped. We look back at history and say how it’s different now, but it’s not. It just seems like that which is why it happens. If racism is not interfered, it will ruin peoples lives, which is terrible.
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Paragraph #5: Concluding Paragraph (ROC)

Reflection on Thesis (R): You wonder why people with power can be so racist and not feel bad, or even stop. History is going to repeat itself if no one does anything, yet the people who don’t seem to realize are the ones causing the problem.

Overview of Main Points (O): Race is something people should be proud of, and not something you hide to fit in. Race should not be hated on, but loved. If everyone wasn’t never racist, imagine how different history would have been. Racism fuels hysteria and chaos, yet people don’t stop being racist, as if the tragic moments in history never happened.

Concluding Idea (C): Racism shows how powerful words are, and how they can change people’s lives. From people like Tituba, to the Rosenbergs, and Muslims deported back to their home country, a world without racism would have changed their lives for the better, so why isn’t that possible?

My Woodworking Essay Rubric

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My Essay:

Carpenters, The Builders Of America: Woodworking In the Colonial Era
Without barrels, Colonial America’s profit would have sunk and its economy would have fallen. Barrels were a great way to trade and store belongings. With the genius design of the barrel, an average man could push one thousand pounds or more. America’s trade profit rested on the shoulders of the most important type of carpenter, the Cooper. Cooper actually means container maker. They made barrels, butter and milk churns, mugs, and buckets. They were at the top of the middling class, which is another way of saying middle class. Coopers tended to make supplies for ships, like barrels and buckets, but they were the only ones working on the ships. But cooper’s didn’t do it by themselves. They were other carpenters to help. The whole process, from the tree, to timber, to lumber, was the responsibility of the carpenter, the most important tradesperson in Colonial America.
There was a huge variety of wood related trades in Colonial America. Woodworking played a big role in building America. Carpenters were the primary woodworkers, who often split up their jobs. In the book, The Woodworkers by Bobbie Kalman, she says: “As towns grew, skilled woodsmen started specializing, or becoming experts at certain jobs.” (pg.6) Some carpenters had more useful jobs in society, while others had less helpful jobs. Trades like the Cooper paid much better than the Joiner, but they were all in the middling class. It was a very common job and was great for a family who wanted their child to be an apprentice. Carpentry is so important because it was a big source of income, jobs, trading, and expanding the colony into the America we know today. Carpenters had a huge variety of trades, such as the Cooper.
Coopers were container makers. Their products were great for trade and voyage overseas. They made things such as barrels, buckets, butter and milk churns, mugs, and so much more. The used curved planks called spades, and metal bands they made themselves, instead of the blacksmiths. They also used the joining process to attach the planks before applying the metal bands. They were by far the most important carpenter in Colonial America. They were very dedicated and worked 12 to 15 hours a day. The design of the barrel was also very important. Barrels were rounded so that men could transport hundreds of more pounds. Also, only a third of the barrel had contact with the ground, so the barrel could be turned in different directions, instead of picking up the barrel and turning it in different directions. Sea travel was the main use for barrels, but shipwrights were the biggest part of sea travel.
Shipwrights built ships. Ships were a very important part of trade, war, and transportation. The English ships were a common design, but different countries did tend to add their own little things that differentiated them from other ships. The slave ships were just small ships, with barely enough space to fit the slaves. Warships were much bigger than transport ships. Their outside layer is insanely strong, due to the process of seasoning wood, which is a method to make the wood firm and durable. While shipwrights build the ships, there are other things in the ships besides barrels and weaponry on the ships. Things like furniture were the work of Joiners and Cabinetmakers.
Joiners and Cabinetmakers are basically the same things, and there isn’t much of a difference between the two. Cabinetmakers are affiliated with furniture, while Joiners have no boundaries. Joiners joined everything and worked with lots of different people. They worked with shipwrights, housewrights, coopers, and wheelwrights. Cabinetmakers also joined wood, except they didn’t help other carpenters join wood. Cabinetmakers made furniture of all types and of all different qualities. Cabinetmakers also made coffins, which also were different qualities. The longer seasoned the wood was, the nicer the quality. The type of wood was important too. Birch was terrible, and oak was very common. There were trees that could only be found in specific areas. Joiners had tons of jobs, but the pay wasn’t the greatest, while cabinetmakers salary was different depending on the project. Furniture was most commonly found in a house, a house made by housewrights.
Housewrights built houses of all sizes. They were a very mobile job. They had no specific workspace and traveled a lot to get to the different locations that houses needed to be built. Building houses was a very well paying job. They built churches with the help of Joiners. The also did a process called raising the roof, which wasn’t a party. The laid planks called rafters on the top of the structure and nailed or joined the into the rest of the building. They then cut out the shingles or were given stone shingles. Those were then attached to the rafters, and the roof was done. All the wood had to be seasoned, where the wood is left to dry in a log house. The wood must be seasoned for seven years minimum so that the wood doesn’t shrink and leave holes in the walls, ceiling, floors, and stairs. Sometimes the holes caused the house to collapse.
The seasoning was and still is a very important process. Now there are ways to speed up the seasoning process, but we still have to season wood. The seasoning was overlooked by woodsmen. The log houses wood was seasoned in were in a sunny area and had to be protected from rain, snow, and other natural occurrences. You would either find about five gigantic log houses or tons of small ones. But before the timber didn’t just appear in the log house, someone had to cut it down. That is the job of a woodsman.
Woodsmen were the lumberjacks of the Colonial Era. They cut down wood for the carpenters. Before they cut the tree, they had to check the wind, because one small breeze and the tree falls on the poor woodsman. Once the tree is chopped, and before it’s sent to be seasoned, the bark is taken off with a special type of saw. The saw is flexible, so its shape can be adjusted to the timber. Then it’s cleaned of bugs and sent to a log house to be seasoned. Then possibly years later, it will be used for a carpentry project. If it will be used for a carriage, it won’t be seen for seven years. But that wood will be used for European woodworking, but Native and African woodworking is a different matter.
Natives built boats. They made canoes out of logs, shells, fire, and animal fat. They burned a hole in a log and covered the parts of the log they didn’t want to burn in animal fat. Once the fire went out, they dug out the remains with shells. They used thin timber as paddles. They main materials, were stone, wood, and shells. The houses had frames made of twigs and branches, and they also carved wood. What they carved with is still unknown to man today. But the Natives weren’t the only woodworkers in town. The Africans did some woodworking too.
Most of the woodworking Africans did be while they were enslaved. They did the hard and dangerous work that carpenters didn’t want to do. They cut down the risky trees, went to the broken parts of ships, risking their lives, and sometimes even built the slave ships that would bring their fellow Africans to America, “The Land of the Free”. Africans were mostly worked on ships because ships needed the most help. Africans wouldn’t leave their town or city for work unless very necessary, and most carpenters didn’t either.
Carpenters were either urban or suburban carpenters. The different places had their pros and cons. Suburban carpenters could get wood much faster than urban carpenters. The downside was that business wasn’t so good. Traveling wasn’t easy. Only 1% of the population had carriages, let alone horses. Getting to suburban carpenters was much harder for people. Their tools were most likely a worse quality than urban carpenters, due to the fact that they couldn’t go to a nearby store and get new tools. Urban carpenters had a much better business, but got supplies much slower than suburban carpenters, but had very new tools. But suburban, or urban, all carpenters has apprentices.
Apprentices were a very important and helpful part of a carpenter’s job. Parents petitioned their children as an apprentice. Sometimes carpenters took apprentices for free, but other times it cost parents. When the first settlers arrived at Jamestown.having a master was like having a third parent. Masters had complete control over apprentices, and apprentices treated their masters with respect, just as they treated their parents. Masters could discipline their apprentices, just as the child’s parents would. An apprentice could only be an apprentice for a specific amount of time. That time served as an apprentice was decided by the master. The longest amount of time an individual could serve as an apprentice was seven years. It was rare to be an apprentice for seven years. The usual amount of time was four or five years, but if the apprentice disagreed with their length of apprenticeship, they could shorten that term by running away like the great Ben Franklin had. But not all apprentices parents petitioned them. Orphans often were found by carpenters and taken in as apprentices. Few Americans served seven years; five or four were more usual, and sometimes the boy shortened that term by running away as Ben Franklin did. Because of this, there were constant advertisements in the newspapers for a missing apprentice. But masters had much more to take care of than their apprentice.
The carpenters without apprentices had problems. He had lots of rival carpenters who most likely had an apprentice. He had a short of help, which wasn’t good for business. If he had a workforce, they all lived with the master as one big, but not always happy, family. It was the master’s responsibility to take care of his men’s problems and to make sure that they showed up to the church on Sunday.
Woodworking was a very important part of Colonial America and still is. From raising the roof to joining a barrel, carpenters were a necessity to trade, travel, and building the America we live in today. The tools and processes from then are still used today, which was how advanced carpenters were and why they are so important today. While some tools have been modified like power tools, other tools only have minor changes due to modern day technology. Carpenters are now more of an artisan than a tradesman. They now make crafted goods instead of necessary objects. What would America be like without carpenters? Would there be an America? Would we exist? That’s a question with no answer. Who would have thought that a man with metal tools and wood would affect the outcome of the America we know today?

Colonial Woodworking Note Card Example

Note cards
Colonial Woodsmen
Source:
Kalman, Bobbie. The Woodworkers . Crabtree, 2002. Colonial People.
Pages:
8
Quote:
“Woodsmen cut down trees and prepared the wood for other woodworkers to use. Woodsmen were also called axmen because they used a felling ax to cut down trees. Skilled woodsmen looked for healthy trees with straight trunks because they knew that these trees produced the best lumber to construct homes and other buildings.
Cutting down trees was dangerous work. A falling tree moved so fast that sometimes a person could not get out of it’s way. A tree could easily crush someone under it’s weight! Woodsmen had to be very careful when they felled, or cut down, trees. Before they made any cuts, they checked the direction of the wind. Even a slight breeze could change the direction in which a tree fell.”

Paraphrase:
Woodsmen were the first step in a woodworking project.
More advanced woodsmen look for trees with good trunks.
Chopping trees was a dangerous job.
Woodsmen could get crushed by a tree if they weren’t careful.
Tree’s could easily crush anyone.
Before they started chopping the tree, they would check which way the wind was blowing, because the wind can effect which way trees would fall.
Even a small breeze could change the way it fell.
My Ideas:
Being a woodsman sounds like a really bad job. It was probably a very low paying job. I can infer that no woodsmen every past the middling class. I wonder how common it was for woodsmen to get crushed by trees. Would a woodsman have an apprentice. Where would woodsmen live? It wouldn’t make sense to live in the city, because there isn’t much wood, but it’s hard to get wood to urban carpenters in the city if you like in the country. How long would it take to prepared one log? Natives and Africans would use a different type of ax. African axes would have almost a hook that they would use. They would get it about halfway into the tree, and then turn it like a can opener, until the tree fell. The Native ax was a long stick that was sharp on the end. On the side was a rock that was smooth. Then they would whack the bottom and dig the roots up, until the tree was out of the ground.
History:
Created: 10/26/2016 10:09 AM

Rotocopter Design

The rotocopter helped me learn about design. Having to design the rotocopter to make it go slower and faster was really fun and hard. We had to make our own design from scratch. We didn’t get a template for the rotocopter, so we used lined paper. We made the wings bigger so it would catch more air and fall slower. For our fast rotocopter we added tons of paper clips. It was really fun and in the end the two teams ended with a tie. (Which really sucks)