journal 10 by Patrick Lynch

My active reading in Holding on is going pretty well. I have been highlighting more things than when we were reading the other books. My strengths right now are writing down summaries of paragraphs and highlighting passages that I think are important. My weaknesses are writing down connections and trying to find out the different themes of each profile.

The two profiles that I find compelling are Geneva Tisdale and Harold Cotton. Tisdales profile was interesting because I remember learning about the sit-in movement in class. The sit-in movement was a tactic to spread civil rights peacefully. It was started by the four colleges students the walked into Woolworth that was talked about in Genevas profile. The purpose of the movement was to have equal rights for African Americans on lunch counters. African-Americans would sit down and wait to be served. This lead to white people threatening and throwing the food at them. They would respond by just taking the punishment since a back lash would look bad. Sit-ins later lead to all kinds of different peaceful movements to help civil rights for African-Americans. http://www.ushistory.org/us/54d.asp.

In Harold Cottons profile I found his job interesting. A hat blocker is not a common job anymore and when he describe how he fixed the hats it was interesting because I didn't know how they did that. One thing that I found really interesting was when the shop owner came in and saw that the shop was Integrated and was okay with it. "He said "are you having any problems with that?" and I said, "None so whatever". and he said " If you're satisfied, I'm satisfied"". This is interesting because back when segregation was common it was weird to see the land owner agree with a black person on how to run a shop.

The two profiles are very similar in content and style of writing. Both are writing as an interview and have first hand accounts of their lives. They both also deal with civil rights and discrimination back in the early 1900s. The biggest differences is that in Cottons profile he didn't talk much about racism and the land owner actual agreed with him. In Tisdales profile the events where more violent and harsh.