Cora Tucker

Cora Tucker grew up working as a sharecropper and with very little education. She had gotten married at the young age of seventeen and had worked in a factory to make money. I think that Cora Tucker considered herself successful because she achieved the house that she always wanted to have and became a successful civil rights activist. However, in terms of the idea of the American Dream today and the materialistic view that we take on it, Cora Tucker didn’t achieve the success of the American Dream.

Today, the American Dream is often perceived as the middle-class family with a beautiful home, with the two kids, and a dog. Cora Tucker was in the minority, which we as we discussed in class had major disadvantages when trying to achieve success and she was also born into poverty.

Cora Tucker’s form of success was to reach out to those who didn’t have the same opportunities that she had, and even when she was sick she reached her hand out. This lady compared to the Ralph Waldo Emerson’s idea in the article of Self-Reliance. She had set her own goals, and explored new opportunities, and didn’t let anyone else influence her decisions. Cora Tucker even stated, “If you stop doing things because somebody says something bad about you or does something to you, then you’ll never get anything done.”(Rereading America) Cora had been successful because she reached her self-happiness by reaching out to others even though she hadn’t attained the material wealth associated with the American Dream.