A Lesson Before Dying
By Ernest J Gaines
• The story of two
African American men
struggling to attain
manhood in a
prejudiced society,
the tale is set in
Bayonne, La. in the
late 1940s.
• .
A Lesson Before Dying
By Ernest J Gaines
• The story concerns
Jefferson, a mentally
slow, barely literate young
man, who, though an
innocent bystander to a
shootout between a white
store owner and two
black robbers, is
convicted of murder, and
the sophisticated,
educated man who
comes to his aid.
A Lesson Before Dying
By Ernest J Gaines
• When Jefferson's own
attorney claims that
executing him would be
tantamount to killing a
hog, his incensed
godmother, Miss Emma,
turns to teacher Grant
Wiggins, pleading with
him to gain access to the
jailed youth and help him
to face his death by
electrocution with dignity.
FACTS about this decade.
• Population 132,122,000
• Unemployed in 1940 8,120,000
• National Debt $43
Billion
• Average Salary $1,299.
Teacher's salary $1,441
• Minimum Wage $.43 per
hour
FACTS about this decade.
• 55% of U.S. homes
have indoor
plumbing
• Antarctica is
discovered to be a
continent
• Life expectancy 68.2
female, 60.8 male
• Auto deaths 34,500
FACTS about this decade.
• US drops atomic
bombs on Japan top
end WWII.
• World War II
changed the order
of world power,
the United States
and the USSR
became super
powers
• Cold War begins
Presidents
• Harry Truman - (May 8th1894 –
December 26, 1972) was the
thirty-third President of the
United States (1945–1953).
• He used executive orders to
begin desegregation of the U.S.
armed forces and to launch a
system of loyalty checks to
remove thousands of
communist sympathizers from
government office.
Presidents
•
•
Dwight David Eisenhower
(October 14 1880 – March 28,
1969), nicknamed "Ike", was a five
star general in the United States
Army, who served as the thirtyfourth President of the United
States (1953–1961).
As President, he oversaw the
cease-fire of the Korean War, kept
up the pressure on the Soviet
Union during the Cold War, made
nuclear weapons a higher defense
priority, launched the Space Race,
enlarged the Social Security
program, and began the Interstate
Highway System.
Life in the United States in the
1940s
• The 1940's were
dominated by World
War II.
• War production pulled
us out of the Great
Depression.
The in the United States in the
1940s
• Women were needed
to replace men who
had gone off to war.
• Women had to give
up their jobs to the
returning men, but
they had tasted
independence.
The in the United States in the
1940s
• After the war, the men
returned, having seen the
rest of the world.
• No longer was the family
farm an ideal;
• no longer would blacks
accept lesser status.
• The GI Bill allowed more
men than ever before to
get a college education.
Segregation in the US
• The issue of race still
tore apart the nation
• The South was still
living under
segregation called
Jim Crow Laws,
named after an 1830s
minstrel show
character.
Segregation in the US
• One after another,
Southern states passed
laws segregating blacks
and restricting African
American rights in almost
every conceivable way.
• For example, Tennessee
initiated segregated
seating on railroad cars in
1881. Florida (1887),
Mississippi (1888), and
Texas (1889) followed.
Segregation in the US
• In Alabama, laws
prohibited blacks and
whites from playing
checkers together;
• in Louisiana, statutes
ordered that there be
separate entrances for
blacks and whites at
circuses.
• All Southern states
prohibited interracial
marriages.
Sharecropping
• Sharecropping is a
system of agriculture
or agricultural
production in which a
landowner allows a
tenant to use the land
in return for a share of
the crop produced on
the land (e.g., 50
percent of the crop).
Education
• Education was racially
segregated.
• Poor African American
communities could not
raise the funds for
teacher salaries.
• The average expenditure
on white students was
$80 and on black
students was $15
Living Conditions in the South
• 77% of blacks still
lived in the South
• In 1949 the average
salary for blacks was
$1761.06 and the
average salary for
whites was $2984.96
Music & Radio
• Radio was the life line for
many Americans providing the
news, music and
entertainment, much like TV
today.
• Music was from the Big Bands,
Glen Miller, Duke Ellington and
Benny Goodman.
• Later in the decade Be Bop
and Rhythm and Blues
became popular. These were
primarily black performers like
Charlie Parker, Billy Holiday
and Ella Fitzgerald.
Death Penalty
• From the 1920s to the
1940s there was a
resurgence in the
death penalty.
• Many Americans
believed that it was a
necessary social
deterrent to rising
crime rates
Your Assignment
• Today United States is still one of the only countries that
still has the death penalty.
• Do you think the death penalty is fair? Do you think it is
a deterrent? Do you think it is applied fairly?
• Your job is to answer these questions
• You need to find evidence to support each of your
answers. (Bring Document and search path to class)
• You will meet with your team on Monday and review your
team member’s positions and evidence.
• We will engage in class debate regarding these issues