Freeman, Damon W
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Publication Using Petitions to Teach Slavery(2003-04-01) Freeman, Damon WFor many years, the historical experience of slavery has occupied a unique niche in the minds of Americans. For some, the presence of enslaved Africans, while unfortunate, did not necessarily mean that American democracy was flawed (after all, they argued, American slavery was not all that bad). Others were repulsed by the institution and labeled the United States Constitution an immoral document for protecting the horrors of slavery. Regardless of their view, many Americans turned to the words and experiences of slaves themselves to support their arguments.Publication A Closer Look at the Japanese American National Museum(2001-02-01) Freeman, Damon WLos Angeles has prided itself as a city living on the edge, always setting the trend for the rest of America. Indeed, it became a magnet for many Americans fleeing Midwestern farms, southern plantations, Indian reservations, and east coast cities searching for a new life. Perhaps more than any other metropolis, L.A. is a city of neighborhoods defined by foreign immigration. One such neighborhood, Little Tokyo, has become the center of an effort to preserve the story of Japanese Americans.Publication Reexamining Central High: American Memory and Social Reality(2000-02-01) Freeman, Damon W"The dead can be buried, but the past can't." Quoting an un-known writer, Elizabeth Eckford stood at the podium in Whittenberger Auditorium on the Bloomington campus of Indiana University and began to tell her story. On this brisk October night of 1999, several hundred people--black, white, Asian, and Latino students, faculty, administrators, local citizens, journalists and television cameramen--came to hear Eckford, now in her fifties, describe what it was like for her to approach Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, over forty years ago. As one of nine black students who bore the brunt of integrating the all-white school during the 1957-1958 academic year, she had come to the school alone on 4 September and was turned away by the Arkansas National Guard, who had been ordered by Governor Orval Faubus to prevent the black students from entering Central High. A crowd of hostile whites, mixed with news reporters and photographers from around the nation, followed her to a bus stop where she sat down on a bench and stoically waited for a bus to arrive while racial epithets were hurled at her. Still shaken by her experience forty-two years later, Eckford tried to stress to the listeners in the auditorium the importance of that moment and the dogged resilience of the Little Rock Nine in wanting to continue the experiment in school desegregation.