If you can use it for Black History Month 2019, or any other month for that matter, since the organization is an important part of United States history, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the NAACP.
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.
“We wear the masks that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,–
This debt we pay to human guile…
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!”
“We Wear the Mask” 1. I, 14 (1895)
Excerpted from: Shapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged black history, poetry, united states history
Here is an Everyday Edit on the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This short document is an effective way to build a bridge from the often fractious beginning of a class period (after a class change, in other words) to the day’s lesson.
Usually in this spot at the bottom of a post, I beg for copyediting assistance if readers catch typos in my work, as well as peer review of its efficacy. I needn’t do that here, because this worksheet comes from the generous operators of Education World, who give away a year’s worth of them, which you’ll find if you click that lengthy hyperlink.
“A play (1974) by the US writer Ntozake Shange (b. 1948) consisting of 20 ‘choreopoems’ about the experience of African-American women in modern Western society. One of the longest running shows in Broadway history, the play’s extraordinary title, with its unconventional spellings and rejection of accepted grammatical rules, was intended by the author to represent the independence of African-American culture from Western influence. The mutilation of words throughout the title and text are reportedly meant to remind the reader of the mutilation of African slaves through branding and other punishments.”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
Here is a reading on the late, great, Richard Pryor and its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. Richard (as I like to call him, because when I listen to his comedy routines, even now, I feel like I know him–or perhaps he knows me might be a better way to put it) was an important social commentator, whatever you may think of how he lived his life, of his use of profanity and a certain epithet beginning with “n”. The fact is, Richard was rarely wrong.
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.
“When states decide to use force to deal with broader threats to international peace and security, there is no substitute for the unique legitimacy provided by the United Nations.”
Opening speech to United Nations General Assembly, New York, N.Y., 12 September 2002
Excerpted from: Shapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged black history
“(1929-1981) Senegalese novelist and activist. Despite the brevity of her writing career, Mariama Ba’s published novels secured her an international reputation. Une Si longue letter (1979; tr So Long a Letter), her first novel, won the first Noma Award for Publishing in Africa at the 1980 Frankfurt Book Fair. Le Chant ecarlate (tr Scarlet Song, 1981), her second novel, was published posthumously and also gained international attention. Ba’s works examine such issues and polygamy, clitoridectomy, and woman’s ability to transcend the negative consequences of the irresponsible use of power in a traditional Muslim and patriarchal society. The novels affirm the ability of women to experience such potentially devastating situations, and yet move beyond victimization to action and wholesome self-expression.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
“America is woven of many strands; I would recognize them and let it so remain…. Our fate is to become one, and yet many—this is not prophecy, but description.”
Ralph Ellison
Invisible Man epilogue (1952)
Excerpted from: Shapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Hey! Black History Month 2019 begins today. I’m always excited for this month to roll around. In 16 years of teaching in inner-city schools, I have served students of predominantly (recent) African Descent. (I modify that locution with recent because as it turns out, we all–humans, I mean–started out in Africa. As the late, great Richard Pryor put it, “So Black people we the first people had thought. Right? We were the first to say, ‘Where the f**k am I? And how do you get to Detroit?’”)
Because I have, from childhood, been enamored of syncretic African cultural forms in this country–particularly jazz–the history of Black people in the United States has always been a deep interest of mine. As a matter of fact, I consider the seven years I lived in Harlem a post-graduate exercise. I really was thrilled to read about the locations of famous nightclubs, or the addresses of famous Harlem residents (Billie Holiday’s first apartment was on was on 138th Street, just off Lenox Avenue; A’Lelia Walker’s Dark Tower was on 136th Street in Sugar Hill–I could go on at length starting with 555 Edgecombe Avenue or The Dunbar Apartments–there are just so many of these august addresses in Harlem) and then stroll by to look at them.
Because David Blight, a historian at Yale, has recently published a new biography of him (you can read Ta-nehisi Coates’ review here), let’s start the month with this short reading on Frederick Douglass and its vocabulary building and comprehension worksheet.
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.
“…grossness for the sake of grossness…the world will not be proud of it in that distant tomorrow which irrevocably sets the true value on books of today.”
The Literary World
Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged literary oddities
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