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The 1920s and 1980s were two of the most influential decades in American history. Both had issues with rebellious youths, generational value differences, and racism. Also, tragedies occurred in both decades as well, events that both cast a dark pall over the lives of the people and decreased trust in the government and government agencies that they could keep the people safe. It is these times of tragedy that are remembered more than any other kinds of events, simply because often, people cannot fathom how such an event was allowed to take place. The tragedies for the 1920s and 1980s are the Rosewood, Florida Massacre and the Challenger Explosion, respectively. In both cases, certain men and women became national heroes, either because of their tragic death during the tragedy, or their efforts to prevent another such event from taking place. These heroes will be analyzed using the four criteria of the Great Man Theory to discern if their efforts proved to be the driving force to ease people's suffering during these times of tragedy, or if society itself was more successful in working its problems out.

During the first week of January in 1923, the town of Rosewood, Florida changed forever. The predominantly black town underwent a series of race riots after "' Fannie Taylor, a young white woman living in [a neighboring town], claimed that a black man, [Jesse Hunter] sexually assaulted her' (Myers 1)" (Mason). Hunter was believed to be hiding in his cousin Sylvester Carrier's house so an angry mob of "'20 to 30 white men approached the Carrier home and shot the family dog, [and] when Sylvester's mother Sarah came to the porch to confront the mob they shot and killed her' (Goodloe)" (Mason). Carrier fought back and killed 4 of his mother's attackers, however his actions brought another 200 white men to his house the next night. They torched his house and burned down much of the town of Rosewood. Only eight black men died, however numerous others were injured and the town was destroyed. In response to this tragedy, many groups and people worked to end the pattern of race riots in the South. One of the most influential people of the time was Ida B. Wells-Barnett. She was a black woman that worked as an editor of an influential newspaper in the South. She "' devoted her life to chronicling incidents of lynching, organizing anti-lynching societies, and lecturing in the northern U.S. cities and it Britain' (Giddings 1)" (Mason). She was mainly focused on ending the practice of lynching, but she was influential in the fight against race riots. Since race riots still occurred in the U.S. during the 1990s, her success during the 1920s was relatively short-lived, so the extent of her influence was relatively short-term. However, she is still remembered today as a prominent civil rights activist, so her legacy has long-term endurance. The impact on the daily lives of people is immense, when the pattern of race riots ended in the south during the 1920s, many black people were able to live normal lives without fear of a mob of white men coming and killing them or burning their house and town down. This also builds into the significance of Ida's accomplishments, because I believe that when a person is working to expand or ensure the rights of others, when they succeed, their accomplishment is greatly significant. In light of the evidence of the Great Man Theory, I would say that the events of the Rosewood Massacre and Ida B. Wells-Barnett's work fall under the Event-making Hero section of the Great Man Continuum. While her work was extremely important during her time, its long-term significance to daily life today is fairly minimal. That said, the short-term accomplishments of Ida B. Wells-Barnett were extremely important to black people living during that time period, giving them a chance to live in relative safety from mobs and race riots and to build the foundation for the eventually successful Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s.

Works Cited:

Mason, Brooks "Rosewood, Florida Massacre". AmStuds Wiki Miller, Emily "Challenger Tragedy". AmStuds Wiki

RUBRIC

A quality comparison essay will

•Use the __four__ criteria of Great Man Continuum to analyze the significance of three 1920’s topics and three 1980s topics.

•Analyze of each of the 6 topics with evidence taken from the 1920s and 1980s wikis--no evidence cited in the first paragraph

•Develop a thoughtful and thorough conclusions on all 6 topics---modified to 3--sweeping claims made,

•Rank the three topics for each decade and explain why one topic is more influential than the other two,

•Answer the essay question with a clear, well reasoned argument,

•Explain why the __second__ choice fell short compared to the __first__ choice but is more just than the __third__ choice,

•Organize ideas in extended power paragraphs,

•Identify the source and establish its credibility with an appositive phrase,

•Cite evidence with internal citations and in a Works Cited. Works Cited has errors.