01/13/2011 New Orleans, LA

First time I saw New Orleans in the morning. It is a really beautiful city. Let’s skip the bus tour part and I eagerly want to tell something about what I have got in the African American Museum in which I learned so much!

1: One Drop Rule:

“The one-drop rule is a historical colloquial term in the United States for the social classification as black of individuals with any African ancestry.” If there is a member in your family who is an African American person or to say “a black person”, then every people at the branch of the tree is considered “black”.

Some people you cannot distinguish them from white of black just by seeing the color of their skin, however, by the “one drop rule”, “white” is sometimes “black”. At the particular date, you can’t find jobs, places to live and even have dangerous to be killed for a Negro unless you can change the color. It seems easier for those “white” black men living in their community, but actually, it’s even harder! If someone knows that you have a black blood, even if you look like white, you can be treated the same way as pure “black” people. If you want to completely change the social role or status, you should be going to separate from your family physically and sometimes, mentally. Can you image what is the feeling if you have to forget your mom?

2: There is an exhibit showing a contract of a black slave and her owner. In the contract, the girl wanted to buy herself freedom, but she cannot even write that way. A black person must have a master or owner and a free Negro was not being accepted. So she bought herself, or to say, she is the owner of herself! Slavery is very common in south of America at that time. The situations about them were also very harsh. The average life time for the black slave is 7 years!

3: There are 2 papers being presented in a room. They are application for KKK (Ku Klux Klan) and NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). It makes perfect sense after listing the explanation from the tour guide. From the text of these two applications, we can see the completely different purposes for recruiting people of these two groups. The concept of KKK is to gathering people to accomplish what they wanted the world become to, they gathering people to push the boundary which is between their vain dream and the reality world; while the NAACP is to gathering people and to merge their idea and then establish a world where these different ideas could be living together harmoniously. It’s clear that whose policy is better and better off for those people either suffering or enjoying.

I did learn a lot!

Then we were heading to capture alligators and had a very nice and cold swamp tour!