THis is indeed a sad time in our history. I was reading the forum that was with the movie and I was amazed at how most people felt compassion and a sense of depression. Others were in denial after looking at the pictures. There was a couple of responses that were surprising though that contained no feelings of remore or compassion to the victims. Kinda' scary to know that there are still people out there that have those kinds of beliefs!! Most of us know that hatred and anger eventually come out in some form of violence.

As educators how should we repond to students in our classes or schools that show these beginnings of hatred?
Also, many children have heard stories but no one can get the true sense unless you have seen pictures to see how far people will go to carry out their feelings of hate and fear.

I found out recently how racist my students are, and it shocked me. I teach 4th grade in a country, mostly-white school. We were discussing government one day, and some of the boys were laughing, because one of them said he didn't want Kerry to be president because he's black. I told them that he isn't, but I continued that line of discussion by asking them why they didn't want a black president. I couldn't believe how passionate some of them were about the subject! Most of them do not want a black president. Only a couple stood up for black people. They got so upset they were yelling at each other!! The whole thing made me wonder if I should have a "brown eyed, blue eyed" day. Their comments made me sad, because I know their words came right out of their parents' mouths.

After listening to Dr. Turner read about lynching, I felt anguish and angry that no one stood up and said this was not right. I felt pain but it certainly was not the pain the victims felt. Everyone should know about the past and feel the suffering and pain that existed. Just hearing about one lynching last night was enough to make me sick.

I have to admit that I was not touched by the lynching pictures that everyone else seemed to be. I hate to say that but it is honest. I am not saying that I felt nothing but I had a low emotional reaction. I wonder if it is due to the generation I grew up in and the amount of violent media that my generation has been exposed to. I wonder sometimes if this desynthesizes us.

After Dr. Turner read the account of the Hoe's (Spelling) lynching I was touched and shocked. The verbal account in such detain created more emotional reaction from me. I physically hurt by the amount of injustice that I thought was present. I was actually mad that it was said that he raped the white wife and that had nothing to do with the story and no truth. Even the wife said so. This outraged me. I guess I have a real thing for honesty. Thank you Dr. Turner for taking the lynching topic to the next level by bringing the book into the classroom or otherwise I would have never connected with it. Did anyone else have similar reactions or even opposite reactions.

I honestly think that many of our students are like Jill and they cannont make connections to these events because of their prior experience. I believe that they have also seen so much violence on tv that they do not really bat an eye at harm to others. Is this not scary that we live in a sociey that does not react to pictures of society?

I was almost like Jill; I have seen so many pictures from the media that show cruel and heinous acts that I am now almost conditioned to not respond to these scenes. I think when I see scenes such as this I go on mental lock down where I have no feelings one way or the other. I reacted more to the movie forum where the other viewers shared their views.
This tells me that we need to quit exposing our children and our society to so much violence in the media. I am making a committement to my children to not over expose them to media violence so they will not become impassive to such scenes.