You don’t see many people in the picture only about six, looking at the picture I have to wonder whether there just weren’t many people in the snapshot or there weren’t many people in the park that day at all. When wondering that I couldn’t help but to think maybe there weren’t many people in the park because they didn’t want to be where they weren’t wanted on a daily basis. Of the people that the photo does show I see a little girl that reminds me a lot of a picture I once saw of my mother when she was a little girl in the 50’s or 60’s. This little girl made me think of what hardships and cruelty my own mother had to go through as a child in Georgia. I look at the photograph and I see more than just the little girl I see my aunt, my grandmother, grandfather, my uncle and it
Makes me look at them in many different ways than I had before. Such as hero and survivor and I think about there struggle and no matter how bad we think we have it today it could have been a lot worse. As you look at the picture and the people in it you see how they look a lot like others in photos of the 50’s.Except in the other photos there aren’t little girls walking around in a segregated zoo, there little girls running for there lives, there aren’t men walking with there families there men getting blasted by full force water hoses.
The people shown in the photograph to me seem to be contempt that they even are allowed in the park today. For some reason to me they don’t seem to be angry protesting type but more of the type who are happy getting what they can. Even though they had to
Get on the back of the bus to get there that day, that when they got there they couldn’t drink out of the regular water fountain. It seems in the photo that the main concession stand is closed even though zoo is open. And yet with all this they still came to the zoo as if everything is alright.
Despite of the sign in front of the zoo I still see a regular zoo with Trees, signs of visiting hours, waiting lines, a concession stand, food signs, birds and people. Not black people, but people who are having a good day out at the zoo. And for enjoying themselves and having the courage to do so in such a hard time I admire them because many of us would hide and complain but they decided to enjoy life where they could enjoy it.
Works Cited
Withers, Ernest No White People Allowed in Zoo Today Little Brown Reader 2003
