Tag Archives: united states history

Leroy Robert “Satchel” Paige on a Balanced Social Life

Posted on February 12, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Go very lightly on the vices, such as carrying on in society. The social ramble ain’t restful.”

“How to Keep Young,” Colliers, 13 June 1953

Leroy Robert “Satchel” Paige

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

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The Weekly Text, February 12, 2020, Black History Month 2021 Week II: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Hank Aaron

Posted on February 12, 2021 | Leave a comment

This week’s Text, in this blog’s ongoing observation of Black History Month 2021,  is a reading on Hank Aaron and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

This is one of the very first of these document sets I prepared, and it includes a short numeracy exercise on Mr. Aaron’s statistics. As you surely know, we lost Mr. Aaron on January 22 of this year, just a couple of weeks shy of his eighty-seventy birthday. I don’t know about you, but I can’t remember a time in my life when Hank Aaron wasn’t someone I thought about on a regular basis.

If you or your students are interested in Mr. Aaron, stay tuned; I plan to exhaust my storehouse of material on him before Black History Month 2021 is over.

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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Art Ensemble of Chicago

Posted on February 11, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Art Ensemble of Chicago: U.S. jazz ensemble, innovators in free jazz. The group evolved from the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), an experimental collective. Saxophonists Roscoe Mitchell and Joseph Jarman, trumpeter Lester Bowie, bassist Malachi Favors, and drummer Don Moye formed the group in 1969, combining freely changing tempos, dynamics, and textures with an often comic theatricality of presentation. Their diversity of inspiration is expressed by their motto, ‘Great Black Music—Ancient to Modern.’”

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

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Althea Gibson

Posted on February 10, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Althea Gibson: (1927-2003) U.S. tennis player. Born in Silver, South Carolina, she moved to New York City when she was three, later returning south to attend Florida A&M University. She was the first black tennis player to win the French (1956) and Wimbledon and U.S. singles championships (1957-58). She also won the U.S. mixed doubles, Australian women’s doubles (both 1957), and U.S. professional women’s title (1960), for a total of 11 Grand Slam events. Ranked number 1 in the U.S. for 1957 and 1958, she was voted Female Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press both years, the first black athlete to receive that honor.”

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

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Cultural Literacy: Arthur Ashe

Posted on February 10, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Arthur Ashe, the great tennis player and humanitarian.

Have you, by any chance, read Mark Mathabane’s memoir of life in apartheid-era South Africa, Kaffir Boy? Mr. Mathabane also played tennis–quite well–and came to the attention of tennis legend Stan Smith at the 1977 South African Championship in Johannesburg. Mr. Smith worked with Mark Mathabane to secure a tennis scholarship, and in 1978 Mr. Mathabane matriculated at Limestone College in South Carolina, aided by a tennis scholarship.

However, in November of 1973, Arthur Ashe traveled to South Africa to play and in so doing broke the color line in sports in the apartheid state. I remember at the time–I was pre-high school–thinking Mr. Ashe was an American hero. Today, there is little doubt of that. In any case Mark Mathabane devotes chapter 38 of Kaffir Boy to the deep impression Arthur Ashe made upon him. You’ll find a nice, uncluttered summary of that chapter at Lit Notes.

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.

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Cultural Literacy: Dred Scott Decision

Posted on February 9, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here’s a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Dred Scott Decision, an ignominious moment among several in the history of the United States Supreme Court. This is a full-page worksheet with seven questions; it can be used, therefore, as an independent practice worksheet. But it can also be easily adapted to the needs of your classroom and its students.

What this worksheet does not cite or invoke, and which students really ought to know, is Chief Justice Roger Taney’s infamous statement in the decision, to wit, that Dred Scott, like other Americans of African descent, possessed “…no rights which the white man was bound to respect….” This is a key moment of racist rhetoric in this nation’s history, and one students should be bound to understand. Put another way, anyone who says that racism isn’t a fundamental element of United States history really ought to have his or her nose rubbed in Justice Taney’s statement.

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.

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H. Rap Brown on Violence

Posted on February 5, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Violence is as American as cherry pie.”

H. Rap Brown

Press conference at Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committed headquarters, Washington, D.C., 27 July 1967

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

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The Weekly Text, February 5, 2020, Black History Month 2021 Week I: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Huey P. Newton

Posted on February 5, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here, for the first Weekly Text in observance of Black History Month 2021, is a reading on Huey P. Newton along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

In the mid-1970s, among my crowd in high school, Huey P. Newton was a bona fide hero. He co-founded, with Bobby Seale (another of our heroes), the Black Panther Party, (a heroic organization), which among many other things, fed breakfast to impoverished children and challenged the kind of police brutality that brings us events like the patently racist and sadistic murder of George Floyd in 2020.

It’s quite possible that your students may know Huey’s name. A panoply of rappers, including Tupac Shakur, Dead Prez, The Flobots, Public Enemy, Ab-Soul, Buddy and A$AP Ferg, and the great Kendrick Lamar have alluded to Huey in their rhymes. Pop artists like St. Vincent, Ramshackle Glory, Bhi Bhiman, and the Boo Radleys have also mentioned Huey in their songs. The character of Huey Freeman in Aaron McGruder’s brilliant comic strip and television show The Boondocks, a favorite of many students I’ve served over the years, is named for Huey P. Newton.

My own personal favorite pop-culture reference to Huey occurs in the 1979 film Richard Pryor: Live in Concert, which Eddie Murphy regards as the greatest stand-up comedy performance ever captured on film. At the 1:06:54 mark (thanks to Wikipedia for that) of Mr. Pryor’s performance, he calls out to raise the house lights and introduces the audience to Huey P. Newton–who, alas, does not appear on camera.

Finally, I found Spike Lee’s production of Roger Guenveur Smith’s celebrated solo performance in A Huey P. Newton Story to be utterly riveting. Mr. Smith uncannily captures Huey’s deep intellect and abiding compassion, but also his essential shyness and even diffidence. I highly recommend this film.

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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Sterling Allen Brown

Posted on February 4, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Sterling Allen Brown: (1901-1989) American poet, folklorist, editor, and critic. Brown was one of the first writers to identify folklore as a vital component of the black aesthetic and an important form of artistic expression. His first collection of poems, Southern Road (1932), was a critical success, fusing elements of ballads, spirituals, work songs, and the blues into narrative poems generally written in a Southern dialect. Two of Brown’s works written in 1937, Negro Poetry and Drama and The Negro in American Fiction, are major books of criticism on African-American studies. In 1941, Brown, along with colleagues Arthur P. Davis and Ulysses S. Lee, edited the The Negro Caravan, which was considered by many “the anthology of African-American literature.” With the publication of The Collected Poems of Sterling A. Brown (1980), Brown won the 1982 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and received widespread and deserved recognition.”

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

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Cultural Literacy: Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)

Posted on February 4, 2021 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). CORE was founded in 1942, and pioneered the use of nonviolent direct action in the struggle for civil rights and simple justice for Americans of African descent. It is impossible to underestimate the importance of CORE, which is why your students should learn about it. This is a half-page do-now exercise that serves as a general introduction to the organization. Needless to say there is a great deal out there about CORE and its founders.

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.

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