Media 1 week 5

"The Long Walk Home"

"The Long Walk Home" is about a black maid her white owner's wife and their friendship. Odessa the maid (Whoopie Goldberg) rode the bus to the Thompson's house every day to take care of the children and cook and clean the house. When the bus boycott led by Martin Luther King Jr. took place in their town of Montgomery, Alabama. Odessa refuses to ride the bus to and from the Thompson household because of the boycott, so she walks to work every morning and back home every night. Mrs. Miriam Thompson was informed by her husband that she was not to help Odessa get to or from work. After a while, Miriam decides to help Odessa anyway. Because of the help that these two women gave each other, they became friends in a time that did not allow them to be friends. When Miriam joins the boycott and starts driving black people around to their jobs with her husband's car, he was furious. This was the last straw for Miriam's husband. He then joins the Citizen's Council. This council is very much like the KKK. After he sees what the council did to his wife, he stands up for her. (The council cornered her, destroyed her car, and then started to hit her.)

This movie relates to what Wright wrote about. Wright had to learn his place in society and deal with it. He had to sneak around just to become a well learned person. This movie does have a lot of sneaking around, but Odessa's point is quite clear. She does not undermine the family that she works for even though she does not ride the bus. Zinn talked about the same thing in his chapter that we read. Zinn talked about how after the slaves were free, they still gave up things such as their right to vote in order to get a descent paying job from a rich white person. Unlike both of the chapters that we read last week, this story does have a happy ending. (Most movies do.) This movie also shows the same thing that Zinn's chapter did about some white people standing up for the less "privileged" races.

I loved this movie. It is a very touching story based around a true event that took place in the past of our country. I feel that Odessa was a very strong woman, and at the time she felt like she knew her place as a worker, but when it came to her being a citizen of the town and of the United States, she knew that she could protest by boycotting the busses. In the movie, it is so powerful to see the empty busses drive by. In the movie, Odessa's daughter tries to get on the bus to go somewhere, but some people stop her, and while some white boys were coming over to beat her up, her brother steps in front of her and takes the brunt of the beating. This is not a shock to me, but it still gets to me to see young children have that much hatred toward someone else of a different race. I recommend this movie to everyone.

(The picture was found at http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=the%20long%20walk%20home&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi)