OK, as long as we’re on the topic this morning, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Joe Louis. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two sentences and three comprehension questions. This is a more basic introduction to the Brown Bomber than the post just below.
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.
“Joe Louis (originally Joseph Louis Barrow): (1914-1981) U.S. heavyweight boxing champion. He was born into a sharecropper’s family in Lexington, Alabama. He began boxing after his family moved to Detroit. He won the U.S. Amateur Athletic Union titles in 1934 and turned professional that year. On the road to his first title bout he defeated six previous or subsequent champions, including Max Baer, Jack Sharkey, James J. Braddock, Max Schmeling, and Jersey Joe Walcott. Nicknamed ‘the Brown Bomber,’ he gained the title by defeating Braddock in 1937, and held it until 1949. He lost to Schmeling in 1936 but defeated him in one round in 1938. He successfully defended his title 25 times (21 by knockout) before retiring in 1949. He made unsuccessful comeback attempts against Ezzard Charles in 1950 and Rocky Marciano in 1951.”
Excerpted/Adapted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
For the third week of Black History Month 2025 here is a reading on 2pac and Biggie along with its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.
At this point, this blog is heavily stocked with materials excerpted and adapted from David S. Kidder and Noah Oppenheim’s series of books under the title of The Intellectual Devotional. There are five in all of these books: the first one, simply called The Intellectual Devotional, then one volume each (under the title The Intellectual Devotional) on American History, Biographies, Health, and Modern Culture. All of this is a long way of explaining that some readings repeat, with only slight variations, in more than one volume of this series; there is, ergo, another version of this material on this blog that I published back in 2018.
It goes without saying that in some places, this will particularly high-interest material. Thus, I have tagged it as such.
If you find typos in these documents, 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.
“It is unthinkable [that American Negroes] would go to war on behalf of those who have oppressed us for generations against a country [the Soviet Union] which in one generation has raised our people to the full dignity of mankind.”
Speech at World Peace Conference, Paris, 20 Apr. 1949
Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Posted in Quotes
Tagged black history, professional development, united states history
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on George Washington Carver. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of three sentences and three comprehension questions. I had learned, I suppose in elementary school, to associate George Washington Carver with developing a plethora of uses for the peanut; as it happens, he did the same thing with the sweet potato.
All of this was done, interestingly, because Carver recognized the deleterious toll cotton production takes on the soil. This makes him, as his Wikipedia page observes, an early leader in environmentalism.
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.
“Booker T(aliaferro) Washington: 1856-1915) U.S. educator and black-rights leader. Born into slavery in Franklin County, Virginia, he moved with his family to West Virginia after emancipation. He worked from age 9, then attended (1872-75) and joined the staff of the Hampton (Virginia) Normal and Agricultural Institute. In 1881 he was selected to head the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, a new teacher-training school for blacks, and he successfully transformed it into a thriving institution (later Tuskegee University). He became perhaps the most prominent black leader of his time. His controversial conviction that blacks could best gain equality in the U.S. by improving their economic situation through education rather than by demanding equal rights was termed the Atlanta Compromise. His books include Up from Slavery (1901).”
Excerpted/Adapted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
Alright, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Namibia. This is a two-page (!) worksheet whose reading, somehow, in four sentences, manages to give a relatively thorough introduction to this African nation, including its colonial and post-colonial struggles. As you can imagine, these four sentences are relatively long and complex. If I were to give it to most of the students I have served over time, I would edit the reading to ease its understanding.
There are ten (again, !) comprehension questions that could easily be reduced by half. Indeed, many of the questions are there to test comprehension of fine details, in this case the African nations that border Namibia. In terms of content, it’s far from vital–unless you want to see how students track details in a relatively complex reading.
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.
“The Black child in Britain, facing a white examiner, remembers the white landlord who has pushed mum and dad around; he remembers the face of Powell on the television screen demanding the repatriation of Black people and their ‘piccaninny’ children; he has seen on the news and heard his parents talk about white skinheads and the white police who have beaten up black people in the streets at night. More than likely he has encountered a racist teacher in the past; he has certainly been called ‘Black bastard’ or ‘Wog’ by many of the white children on more occasions than he cares to remember. If he lives in Haringey, he would almost certainly have heard Alderman Doulton of the Haringey Education Committee stating that Black children had achieved significantly lower IQ scores than white children, the inference being that ‘something must be done about these Black children’. He might have put two and two together and realized that this is why he sees so many Black children, including some of his friends, going to ESN [Educationally Sub-Normal] schools. The thought will not have escaped him that the test he about to sit before the white examiner, who is an official of white society, will undoubtedly be used against him, as it has been used against so many of his friends.
Under these circumstances, and in this entire racial context, the Black child feels (and quite rightly) that he is fighting a losing battle. He becomes so consumed with fear, inner rage and hatred, that he is unable to think clearly when attempting the test. Under these circumstances, the very bright child does averagely, and the average child does poorly.”
Excerpted from: Coard, Bernard. How the West Indian Child Is Made Educationally Sub-Normal in the British School System: 50th Anniversary Expanded Fifth Edition. Kingston, Jamaica: McDermott Publishing, 2021.
For the second month of Black History Month 2025, here is a reading on the Harlem Renaissance with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. This is a useful, one-page survey of key events and personalities of the Harlem Renaissance. In the end, however, it is only an introduction to one of the most fertile and consequential periods in American cultural history.
If you find typos in these documents, 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.
Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, New York City, Social Sciences, The Weekly Text, Worksheets
Tagged art/architecture/design, black history, building vocabulary/conceptual knowledge, diction/grammar/style/usage, fiction/literature, poetry, readings/research, united states history
“You gotta say this for the white race—its self-confidence knows no bounds. Who else would go to a small island in the South Pacific where there’s no poverty, no crime, no unemployment, no war and no worry—and call it a ‘primitive society.’”
Excerpted from: Sherrin, Ned, ed. The Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations. New York: Oxford University Press. 1996.
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