Tag Archives: readings/research

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.

The Weekly Text, 7 February 2025, Black History Month Week I: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on the Scottsboro Boys

Despite Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s diktat to cancel it for members of the United States Armed Forces, February remains Black History Month, and today begins its observance on Mark’s Text Terminal with this reading on the Scottsboro Boys along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

As a middle school student, I would often take extended bathroom breaks so that I could visit the library to look at Time Magazine’s year-by-year Time Capsule books, which fascinated me. It was in one of these volumes that I first became aware of the case of the Scottsboro Boys. Even in the bland prose of Time Magazine, and even to my then relatively unschooled mind, this was obviously one of the most grotesque miscarriages of justice ever perpetrated in a country that is at this point known for such things–especially where and when Black people are concerned.

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.

Honus Wagner

[Over the past few years, I have developed an interest in baseball. I remain a neophyte in my understanding of the game–this summer I bought a copy of The Dickson Baseball Dictionary by Paul Dixon so I could better build my knowledge of what the players, particularly pitchers, are actually doing. This post, however, arrives because of my long interest in the T206 Honus Wagner Baseball Card, which I think I can safely analogize as: What the Bay Psalm Book is to bibliophiles, the T206 Honus Wagner card is to collectors of sports memorabilia.]

“Honus Wagner (originally John Peter): (1841-1918) U.S. baseball player. Born in Mansfield (now Carnegie), Pennsylvania, he played principally for the Pittsburgh Pirates (1900-1917), and coached the team from 1933 to 1951. The right-handed hitter led to the National League in batting in eight seasons (1900, 1903=4, 1906-9, 1911) and in stolen bases five seasons. His total of 252 three-base hits remains a National League record. Nicknamed ‘the Flying Dutchman’ for his speed. Wagner is considered one of the greatest shortstops and all-around players in baseball history.”

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