Rebecca Chase

Convocation Essay
The epilogue from Freedom Summer by Bruce Watson is riddled with
extensive optimism. It contains excepts from President Obamas famous 2008
inaugural address and compares the speech to the ups and downs of the civil rights
movement around the time of the Freedom Summer. Following the lives of
Freedom Summer volunteers in the era of our countrys first ever President to be
anything other than a white man, Watson follows the theme of optimism and ends
the book on a positive note about possible civil rights progress in the future.
What Watson didnt know when writing this book back in 2011 is how civil
rights just in the past few years would become more of a prevalent issue than it has
been since the 1960s. Recently, the corruption and prejudice in Americas very
own public safety system and been realized, yet it seems every day yet another
young, unarmed, and unassuming African American is killed by a police officer.
Wages in the United States have never shown as much of a solid gap between races
as now, with black men making less money to the dollar than the average white
woman. Klu Klux Klan meetings are for some reason still taking place all over the
country, and instilling terror in people of color all around America. With more
African American men and women finally being involved in politics after voting

discrimination ended, you would assume that laws would be easily instated to
prevents things like this. However, with the political majority still held in the hand
of white men, this is unfortunately not the case. Citizens of the United States have
really been taking a stand recently with the riots in Ferguson and Boston, and most
cities around the country. So even with all of the horrible things happening in our
country, we are still able to unite and take a stand against the racial discrimination
and civil rights violations that are causing turmoil everywhere. Hundreds of
thousands of people are protesting police brutality, and have been for about a year
now, and if that doesnt show dedication the I dont know what does. Because of
this, I believe that Watsons epilogue was rightfully optimistic. Sure, we still have
plenty of issues that need to be dealt with, but the people are joining together to
solve those issues and working hard for it. Were making baby steps, and
sometimes there will be steps backwards, but there is still progress being made. It
was the same way with the civil rights movement and the freedom summer, and
look how much times have changed since then. In my opinion, there will always
been civil rights issues to be handled for as long as civilization exists. As society
gets more complex, we realize that things that applied 100 years ago will be
completely different today. However, it is not the backwards steps that define us as
a people, its how we handle them and how we learn and advance from them. And

because our country has shown a great and relentless ability to change, grow, and
learn, I believe that Watson was definitely right to be optimistic is his conclusion.