Tag Archives: united states history

Cultural Literacy: Clara Barton

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Clara Barton. This is a half-page worksheet–in other words there are two copies on a single piece of paper. There are three questions.

Ms. Barton, who lived a very long life, is well known as the founder of the American Red Cross. She was a self-educated nurse during the Civil War, long before nursing became an academic discipline and the practice assumed professional standards. She was a friend to Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass, upon making whose acquaintance she became, respectively an activist for women’s suffrage and for civil rights. Her accomplishments are many, which is why her name is memorialized around the United States in the names of streets, schools, and medical institutions, and why in 1973 the National Women’s Hall of Fame inducted her into its ranks.

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.

Belva Lockwood on Women and the Law

[Arguing for the admittance of women to practice law before the U.S. Supreme Court;] “The glory of each generation is to make its own precedents.”

Belva Lockwood, Speech to National Convention of Woman Suffrage Association, Washington, D.C., 16-17 Jan. 1877

Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

Cultural Literacy: Geraldine Ferraro

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman, in 1984, nominated to run on a presidential ticket.

Specifically, Ms. Ferraro, at the time a United States Congresswoman, was nominated as the vice-presidential candidate on the ticket the included Walter Mondale, himself a former vice president in the administration of President Jimmy Carter. She served first in 1993 as a delegate to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, after which President Bill Clinton elevated her to the position of United States Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Council. Along the way, she served in the various kinds of think-tank and media sinecures (including a time on CNN’s execrable “Crossfire,” as well as on Fox News) generally available to retired politicians.

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.

Jane Addams

“Jane Addams: (1860-1935) American leader in social work and in the pacifist and woman suffrage movements. Addams is famous for her pioneering work as cofounder of Hull House, Chicago, one of the first and most influential settlement houses in America. In 1931 she shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Nicholas Murray Butler. Besides a number of books and articles on social problems, Addams wrote two autobiographical works: Twenty Years at Hull House (1910) and The Second Twenty Years at Hull House (1931).”

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

The Weekly Text, 12 March 2021, Women’s History Month 2021 Week II: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Margaret Fuller

This week’s Text, in this blog’s ongoing observation of Women’s History Month 2021, is this reading on Margaret Fuller and it’s attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

Who is Margaret Fuller? I am embarrassed to say that I had never heard of her before I read the Intellectual Devotional article linked to above. She is, if nothing else, a crystal clear example of why themed history months are valuable in lifting the erasure from historical figures who are not, frankly, white males. In her short life–she died at age 40 in a shipwreck off the coast of Long Island–she accomplished enough as a writer and public figure to earn a key position in the history of American letters. To wit, she joined the Transcendental Club in Boston, where she became friends with Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson solicited contributions from her for the influential American literary journal The Dial, to whose editorship she ascended in late 1839.

Ms. Fuller’s work at The Dial, as well as her proto-feminist book Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1844), brought her to the attention of Horace Greeley, the storied publisher of The New York Tribune. Recognizing her talent, Greeley hired at first to write book reviews, making her the first full-time book reviewer. In 1846, the Tribune deployed her to Europe, where she became the paper’s first female foreign correspondent.

All in all, Margaret Fuller’s is an extraordinary life, and one worthy of both casual and scholarly attention. I hope this small contribution from Mark’s Text Terminal brings her to the attention of high school students.

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.

Cultural Literacy: Lizzie Borden

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Lizzie Borden. If you are my age (or perhaps younger–do kids still recite this?), you might remember her from this piece of doggerel, recited on finer playgrounds during recess from the horrors of the elementary school classroom:

“Lizzie Borden took an axe
She gave her mother forty whacks.
When she saw what she had done
She gave her father forty-one.
Lizzie Borden got away
For her crime she did not pay.”

I wrote this worksheet for this year’s Women’s History Month 2021 which is under way now. So I’ve never used it in the classroom. But it’s a safe bet that it will be a high-interest item–especially if paired with a deeper examination of the facts of Lizzie Borden’s case, and the fact that one may, if one chooses, lodge at the Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast/Museum while traveling through Fall River, Massachusetts.

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.

Book of Answers: The First Literary Club in America

Who established the first literary club in America? Author Anne Hutchinson organized literary groups for women in the seventeenth century.

Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.

Cultural Literacy: Fannie Farmer

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Fannie Farmer. I knew so little about her that I confess I cannot honestly say (to my chagrin) that I understood that she was even a real person.

Rest assured she was: in fact, she possessed the kind of indomitable spirit that makes for interesting and inspiring reading. At age 16, she suffered a paralytic stroke, which prevented her from finishing high school in Medford, Massachusetts. At age 30, with a limp she would endure throughout her life, Ms. Farmer enrolled in the Boston Cooking School. When she submitted her famous cookbook, The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, to Little Brown for publication, the publisher couldn’t imagine a market for the book and so limited the first edition to 3,000 copies; moreover, the book was published at Ms. Farmer’s expense. Unsurprisingly, there appear to be no true first editions of this book for sale in online used book sites–but quite a few reprints, to the annoyance of this bibliophile, identified as firsts.

I asked two friends of mine about Fannie Farmer, both of whom are talented and adventurous cooks. They responded immediately. The first noted that Ms. Farmer’s cookbook is “The first cookbook I ever bought and I still use it from time to time. Basic and reliable.” This friend also sent along a photograph of the copyright page of her copy, which shows, as of 1968, that the book had been through 18 printings (HA! Take that, Little Brown!). My other friend declared himself agnostic where Ms. Farmer is concerned: “My thoughts on Fannie Farmer? I don’t have any. She’s more an historical allusion but I’m late coming to the cooking game.” At least he knows she’s a real person, which, again, was more than I could say for myself before I prepared this post.

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.

Katherine Graham

“Katherine Graham: Originally Katherine Meyer (1917-2001) U.S. owner and publisher of news publications. Born in New York City, the daughter of Eugene Meyer (1875-1959), owner and publisher of The Washington Post (1933-1946), she studied at Vassar College and the University of Chicago. In 1940 she married Philip Graham who later became the Post’s publisher. The Grahams acquired the paper in 1948. On her husband’s suicide in 1963, she stepped in as head of the Washington Post Co. (which had purchased Newsweek in 1961). Under her leadership the Post became one of the nation’s most powerful newspapers, particularly with its coverage of the Watergate Scandal. Her best-selling autobiography is Personal History (1997, Pulitzer Prize).”

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

Cultural Literacy: Amelia Earhart

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Amelia Earhart. She requires no commentary from me.

That said, the enduring mystery of her disappearance is just the kind of thing, in my experience, that motivates alienated students to work to get to the bottom of it. Stories, like this one from just over a year ago, continue to appear in the popular press. In fact, the question “Where, how, and why did Amelia Earhart disappear?” is the kind that starts synthetic research papers.

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.