Tag Archives: readings/research

Rebecca [Blaine] Harding Davis

“Rebecca [Blaine] Harding Davis: (1808-1889) American author. Davis was one of the earliest American realists, known for her attempts to deal in fiction with the life of industrial workers, the problems of black Americans, and political corruption. Her first success was as a muckraker with Life in the Iron Mills, published in the Atlantic Monthly in April, 1961. This was followed by Margaret Howth (1862), a novel set in an Indiana milltown. Waiting for the Verdict (1868) was a story about racial bias; John Andross (1874) was a tale of political corruption. She also raised a large family and, from 1869 to the mid-1870s, was an associate editor of the New York Tribune.”

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

The Weekly Text, 14 March 2025, Women’s History Month Week II: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Benazir Bhutto

For the second Friday of Women’s History Month 2025, the Weekly Text from Mark’s Text Terminal is this reading on Benazir Bhutto along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. You may recall, if you are of a certain age, that she served twice as Prime Minister of Pakistan, from 1988 to 1990 and from 1993 to 1996.

She was, alas, assassinated in 2007.

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.

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

“Helena Petrovna Blavatsky: (called Mme Blavatsky, 1831-1891) Russian-born spiritualist, medium, magician, and occultist. Blavatsky founded the Theosophical Society. She wrote Isis Unveiled (1877) and The Secret Doctrine (1888), influential books of occult lore. She toured India, Europe, and the U.S., developing and preaching her doctrines. The poet William Butler Yeats was profoundly influenced by her work.”

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

Lydia Maria Child

“Lydia Maria Child originally Lydia Maria Francis: (1802-1880) U.S. abolitionist. Born in Medford, Massachusetts, she wrote historical novels and a popular manual, The Frugal Housewife (1829), and founded the first children’s periodical, Juvenile Miscellany. After meeting William Lloyd Garrison in 1831, she became active in abolitionist work. Her Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans (1833) was widely read and induced many to join the abolitionist cause. She edited the National Anti-Slavery Standard (1841-43) and made her home a stage on the Underground Railroad.”

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Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

Cultural Literacy: Lagos

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Lagos, which is, of course, the largest city in Nigeria and that nation’s capital until 1991, when the government moved the capital to Abuja, in the center of the country.

This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of one very long compound sentence, separated by a semicolon, and a two-part comprehension questions on one line.

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.

Sarah Breedlove Walker

“Sarah Breedlove Walker originally Sarah Breedlove: (1867-1919) U.S. businesswoman and philanthropist, the first black female millionaire in the U.S. Born near Delta, Louisiana, she was a widowed washerwoman with a daughter to support in 1905 when she developed a method for straightening curly hair. She founded the Madame C.J. Walker Manufacturing Co. to sell her treatment, and her door-to-door saleswomen became familiar figures in the black communities in the U.S. and the Caribbean. In 1910 she moved her company to Indianapolis. She augmented her earnings with shrewd real-estate investments, and she donated two-thirds of her fortune to charitable and educational institutions. Her daughter, A’lelia Walker Kennedy, hosted salons where artists and cultural figures mingled during the Harlem Renaissance.”

Excerpted/Adapted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

Joe Louis

“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.

Booker T(aliaferro) Washington

“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.

The Weekly Text, 14 February 2025, Black History Month Week II: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on the Harlem Renaissance

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.

Sarah Vaughn

“Sarah (Lois) Vaughan: (1924-1990) U.S. singer, one of the most virtuosic and expressive in jazz. Born in Newark, New Jersey, Vaughan won an amateur contest at Harlem’s Apollo Theater in 1942 and joined Earl Hines’s big band as vocalist and second pianist the following year. Joining Billy Eckstine in 1944, she gained exposure to the new music of bebop, and later recorded with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. Alternating between popular song and jazz, she worked as a soloist for the rest of her career. A vast range and wide vibrato in the service of her harmonic sensitivity enabled Vaughan to employ a seemingly instrumental approach when singing, often improvising as a jazz soloist.”

Excerpted/Adapted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.