Speech

Hello, my name is Jake Teachey, and I am very pleased to speak to you on this fine Tuesday morning. Through out this semester in our History class I have learned about a variety of topics. One topic in particular I was pleasantly surprised to learn about was how the people of the 19th century spent their downtime, this is the first time in American History where “leisure time” was acceptable in society, it is also interesting that the divide between the choice of leisure time from the different social classes. The working class would often go to amusement parks such as Coney Island, and the wealthy would go to central park.

One thing I was unpleasantly surprised with was the unit on the west & Native Americans. I did not find this unit interesting at all. Nothing about it really caught my attention, I think part of this “hatred” or “dislike” I have for this unit is due to the way modern day movies portray the “Old Western” to be. The unit was not interesting to me because I want to believe what the movies say rather than how it really was; Hollywood makes The Old West much more enticing than it truthfully was.

If you were to ask me what I would be able to remember and discuss ten years from now it would be the movie 12 years a slave. I say this because I am a very visual learner and I tend to remember things for a much longer period of time if I hear and see them. I also found this movie much more intriguing and memorable than Glory due to the quality of production. What I mean by this is since 12 Years a Slave was made in more modern times so the producers had access to better special effects, and film quality than the producers of Glory.

            In the past Americans struggled with people going on strike and protests, from the Pullman strike to the Homestead Strikes. In more modern times this relates to the protest in Ferguson. The protest back in the 1900’s also sometimes resulted to violence, just like the Ferguson protest where storefronts were broken, and police had to use tear gas to calm the crowds down much like in the Pullman strike where 2,000 US troops were called into the Chicago area to break the strike up.

            If I had to give a name for the time period between 1865 and 1920 I would call it the “The Age of Unions”. I would deem this name appropriate because of the great amount of unions formed over the working conditions and labor laws. Two of the main unions that were formed were the Knights of Labor, and the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Both of these unions were fighting for different things but did have one thing in common and that was better working conditions. Both of these unions helped aid in the dubious amount of strikes that occurred in this time period, and for this reason I would gladly announce this time period as the “The Age of Unions”.