Exploration 7: Joe Weingates

Something that this documentary taught me was about the boycotts of chain stores that discriminated against blacks. I had never heard about this and from the Documentary, the way it was shown seemed like it'd be pretty scary to try to shop at any of these boycotted places. I see in comparison that in today's society our boycotts tend to be a lot more peaceful but just as effective. It kind of shocking that no national guard or anything was sent in for riot control since these got pretty violent.

The Reporter asked "I take it, then, that you are advocating Negroes in New York to stay out of these national chain stores?"

Adam Clayton Powell then responded: "Oh no, that's not true. I'm advocating that American citizens interested in democracy to stay out of chain stores." I like how Powell generalizes this issue to basically everyone and not to just black people making it a race issue but for everyone to just stand up for what they know is right.

Surprisingly with the dynamite bombing and all the people getting hurt from the boycotts nobody actually died. I like the tactic that they used of scaring the people by smacking stuff out of shopper's hands and by also telling people to "get out of town". Although smacking things out of people's hands is a bit harsh, it's not over the top and since the people don't know each other you don't know how the person will react if you get angry at them for their action, so to me I thought it was a great scare tactic. By saying "Get out of town" also, word gets around, nobody wants to go downtown to get harassed or worse, these two tactic combined was smart and very effective at striking fear into the shoppers.