Yearly Archives: 2020

Independent Practice: African Slave Trade

Wrapping up for today, here is an independent practice worksheet on the African slave trade. I find myself struggling to post this catalogue of indignities that Americans of African descent have endured. I’m down to the last few of them, and I begin to see why I have hesitated to post them over the years.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

Charles Waddell Chestnutt

“Charles Waddell Chestnutt: “(1858-1932) American novelist. Chestnutt, sometimes referred to as the first black American novelist, was a teacher, newspaperman, and lawyer. His first story, ‘The Goophered Grapevine,’ appeared in The Atlantic in 1887. His first book, The Conjure Woman (1899), centered on Uncle Julius McAdoo, a character with similarities to Joel Chandler Harris’s Uncle Remus. His later books dealt with race prejudice, the best known being The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line (1899). In 1928, Chestnutt received the Spingarn gold medal for his pioneer work in depicting the struggles of African Americans.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

Everyday Edit: Thurgood Marshall

Here is an Everyday Edit worksheet on Thurgood Marshall. If you want more of these, check with the eleemosynary spirits at Education World, who give away a year’s supply of them at their site.

My usual caution and entreaty on typos doesn’t apply here: there are a number of spelling, grammar and punctuation errors on each of these worksheets; the task is to fix them.

Write It Right: Authoress

“Authoress. A needless word—as needless as ‘poetess.’”

Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.

Circumspect (adj)

After another day of edifying young minds (I hope), here is a context clues worksheet on the adjective circumspect. I guess it’s not a particularly commonly used word, but maybe it should be.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Things Fall Apart: The first novel (1958) by the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe (born Albert Chinualumogo, 1930). Its theme is the mutual incomprehension between Ibo tribal communities and white officials in the 1890s. The title comes from the poem ‘The Second Coming’ (1921) by W.B. Yeats (1865-1939):

‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned.’”

Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.

Cultural Literacy: The Compromise of 1850

Here’s a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Compromise of 1850, which of course was a debate about how much further the commodification of persons of African descent in the burgeoning United States in the middle of the nineteenth century. This worksheet is a full page–longer than most of these exercises I’ve drafted, so it is perhaps useful for independent practice work.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

Dr. King on Government Action and Inaction

“Government action is not the whole answer to the present crisis, but it is an important partial answer. Morals cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. The law cannot make an employer love me, but it can keep him from refusing to hire me because of the color of my skin.”

Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story ch. 11 (1958)

Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

Everyday Edit: Juneteenth

OK, let’s wrap up this Tuesday with an Everyday Edit worksheet on the Juneteenth holiday in observance of Black History Month 2020. Incidentally, if you like these kinds of exercises, the good people at Education World will gladly hand over a year’s supply of them for free.

And if you find typos in this document, fix them! It’s an Everyday Edit worksheet, after all.

Hellenistic Art

“Hellenistic Art: Term describing the later and less classical phase of Greek art, ca. 300 to 100 B.C. Also applied to Greco-Roman art and architecture.”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.