“My father was a slave and my people died to build this country, and I’m going to stay right here and have a part of it, just like you. And no fascist-minded people like you will drive me from it. Is that clear?”
Paul Robeson, Testimony before House Un-American Activities Committee.
Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Posted in Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged black history, social-emotional learning, united states history
Moving right along this morning, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Sierra Leone. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of four sentences and three comprehension questions. As I prepared these for use, either in the classroom or on this blog, I intended to use them as measures of reading comprehension and mental organization. So there are a lot of questions along the lines of “What nation is to the north of Sierra Leone?” There are several such questions in this document which I hope will help teachers diagnose students’ reading struggles and formulate solutions.
In the case of most of these Cultural Literacy worksheets dealing with nation-states in Africa, the most important thing is to read one sentence at a time, then figure out which question it answers.
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.
“Teddy Wilson (originally Theodore Shaw) (1912-1986) U.S. pianist and bandleader, the principal pianist of the swing era. Born in Austin, Texas, he began recording as the leader of small groups in 1935. These recordings, which featured Billie Holiday, are classics of small-group swing. Wilson joined Benny Goodman’s trio in 1936. After 1940 he worked primarily as a leader of small groups or as a solo pianist, showcasing his tasteful and refined amalgam of the styles of Fats Waller, Earl Hines, and Art Tatum.”
Excerpted from: Macey, David. The Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory. New York: Penguin, 2001.
Posted in Independent Practice, Quotes, Reference
Tagged black history, music, readings/research, united states history
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Scott Joplin. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of two relatively simple sentences and two comprehension questions. Just the basics on this innovative and groundbreaking African American pianist and composer.
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.
“If you teach the Negro that he has accomplished as much good as any other race he will aspire to equality and justice without regard to race. Such an effort would upset the program of the oppressor in Africa and America. Play up before the Negro, then, his crimes and shortcomings. Let him learn and admire the Hebrew, the Greek, the Latin and the Teuton. Lead the Negro to detest the man of African blood—to hate himself. The oppressor may then conquer, exploit, oppress and even annihilate the Negro by segregation without fear or trembling. With the truth hidden there will be little expression of thought to the contrary.
The American Negro has taken over an abundance of information which others have made accessible to the oppressed, but he has not yet learned to think and plan for himself as others do for themselves. Well might this race be referred to as the most docile and tractable people on earth. This merely means that when the oppressors once start the large majority of the race in the direction of serving the purposes of their traducers, the task becomes so easy in the years following that they have little trouble with the masses thus controlled. It is a most satisfactory system, and it has become so popular that European nations of foresight are sending some of their brightest minds to the United States to observe the Negro in ‘inaction’ in order to learn how to deal likewise with Negroes in their colonies. What the Negro in America has become satisfied with will be accepted as the measure or what should be allotted him elsewhere. Certain Europeans consider the ‘solution to the race problem in the United States’ one of our great achievements.”
Excerpted/Adapted from: Woodson, Carter G. The Mis-education of the Negro. Eastford, CT: Martino Fine Books, 2018.
OK–Black History Month 2026 has arrived. As I say every year, at Mark’s Text Terminal every month is Black History Month because Black History is American History. At the same time, far be it from me to second guess a person of Carter G. Woodson’s stature; Black History Month is his brainchild. This month I have a couple of new things to roll out, developed in the year since the last time the calendar spun around to February.
So let’s start out with these 27 pages of annotations I prepared to accompany all 17 chapters of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s first novel Purple Hibiscus. As you may know, Ms. Adichie is a member of a group of writers known as the “Children of Achebe” (about which I heard a great deal on a public radio program several years ago, and can now find no credible source for citation on the Internet). Artificial Intelligence (which I think dubious at best) yields a list of names that include Ms. Adichie, as well as Helon Habila, Chigozie Obioma, and Sefi Atta.
Achebe, of course, refers the the late, great, Chinua Achebe, whose novel Things Fall Apart is universally regarded as a masterpiece of post-colonial literature. Purple Hibiscus is also an exemplary post-colonial novel. And it’s difficult to get past the first sentence of this fine book without noticing Ms. Adichie’s homage to Chinua Achebe: “Things started to fall apart at home when my brother, Jaja, did not go to communion and Papa flung his heavy missal across the room and broke the figurines on the etagere.”
Finally, in preparing this post, I intended to refer to material I’d prepared and published for Ms. Adichie’s short book (pamphlet, really, and literally the transcript of a TED talk), We Should All Be Feminists. To my surprise, I somehow never staged this material for inclusion in this blog. I have two versions of the unit, one complete and one incomplete. The complete unit was prepared for a small class of emergent readers and writers, so there is a lot of material. Needless to say, now that I have uncovered this lapse, I have this material in the warehouse and ready for publication.
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.
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