Hollywood Cowboy vs. Realistic Cowboy

The differences between our modern-day understanding of a cowboy and the reality of the cowboy as of the 1870's is vast and romanticised incredible. As seen in all of the movies from the 1900's to the 1950's are all romanticized pictures that were created by the Hollywood producers so that they could rake in the money from unknowing audiences of those time periods. But the truth behind these romanticized figures of history is the fact that they were "the lowest on the food chain". The 1870's version of the cowboy was some hired hand who was barely educated, if at all, and would flee at the sight of the Indians leaving the herd he was corraling unprotected. Now compared to the modern-day cowboy, there's a huge difference. Our modern-day cowboy gets into explosive shootouts, battling Indians that are surrounding the hero, and ALWAYS getting revenge, giving jusitice, and getting the girl. The realities of the cowboy compared to what is distorted and obscured by the power of the Hollywood is that they were basically the bottom of the boot compared to most others in that current society. And sometimes there wasn't just a bad guy, a good guy, and just a random group of towns people, in fact it was usually just towns people trying to survive. Where as Hollywood constantly made the bad guy fight the good guy and have a special lover involved that in the end rides off into the sunset on a horse after the bad guy is finally defeated. While your realistic cowboy would flee off into the sunset at the first sight of trouble, or just stayed out of trouble all together. What really contributed to the idealization of the American Cowboys were the tall tales told by people who had seen or had imaginated what the

Chapter 15 Reflection

What I knew already about this event in the history of the United States was that it took nearly three presidents for the Reconstruction period to finally end. I also knew that around this time the KKK, or the Ku Klux Klan as formerly know, was founded around this time period to "terrorize" the Blacks. But I did learn something unusual that lead to the end of the Reconstruction Era. It was the fact that Democratic Southerners had made a compromise with the Northern Republicans that they would pull out the federal troops from the South for them to not care who ends up being the president. It is important that people across the U.S. should learn about this important date in history is how it later leads to the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960's and that even though the African Americans were freed from the oppression of slavery, they still had to deal with segregation, lynchings, and the inability to vote.