“Marriage is really tough because you have to deal with feelings and lawyers.”
Richard Pryor, quoted in Robert Byrne, The Third and Possibly the Best 637 Things Anybody Ever Said (1986)
Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged black history, humor, literary oddities, united states history
Sadly, we recently lost him; here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Henry Aaron. If you’re interested in an Everyday Edit worksheet on this exemplary American and great athlete, you can find one here. Moreover, I have a number of materials on Mr. Aaron prepared for publication here, so stay tuned if you or your students are interested in him–and don’t forget to use the search bar on the homepage of this blog.
If you are interested in learning about Hank Aaron’s Civil Rights activism, check out his friendship with the legendary Wisconsin Civil Rights attorney Vel Phillips.
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.
“Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Brazilian, and Afro-American Religions: Religions among persons of African ancestry in the Caribbean, Brazil, and the United States. These include Haitian vodun, the Jamaican Rastafarian movement, Santeria, and Candomble and other Macumba sects in Brazil. Similarly syncretistic religions appeared in the United States during the era of slavery. The Nation of Islam combines black nationalism with an unorthodox version of Islam. Black Protestant churches (especially Baptist and Pentecostal) have imported some forms of lively worship from Africa.”
Excerpted/Adapted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Cameroon, the west-central African nation. This is a full-page worksheet with nine questions, so it might be appropriate for independent practice. Alas, it only touches on this nation’s colonial past. If I set out to make more of this document, I would emphasize Cameroon’s colonial past as part of a larger examination of the motives and depredations of colonialism in Africa and, indeed, worldwide. It’s time once and for all to come clean about this stain on history.
One or two simple questions should suffice to open a critical inquiry on colonialism in Cameroon: “How did France and Britain gain control over the west-central nation of Cameroon,” or “Why did France and Britain colonize Cameroon.” The second question, I imagine, will help to clarify what there was to exploit or expropriate in this area of the African continent.
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.
“Apollo Theater: Center of African-American popular culture on 125th Street in New York’s Harlem district. Built in 1914, it hosted musical performers such as Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson, Billie Holiday, Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, Duke Ellington, and others in the 1930s and 1940s; such stars as Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughn, and James Brown were discovered on Wednesday amateur nights. In the 1960s the Apollo featured soul artists such as the Supremes, Stevie Wonder, and Marvin Gaye. Converted into a movie theater in 1975, it reopened as a performance venue in 1983.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
Today is February first, which means that Black History Month 2021 begins today. I normally bloviate on this topic, but I’ll leave it alone this year other than to say that in this country, and on this blog, every month is Black History Month. That’s not to say Mark’s Text Terminal won’t observe the month–it will. In fact, I developed a raft of new Cultural Literacy worksheets with topics and themes in Black History, as well as transcribed a number of lengthy quotes to post as well.
Let’s start off the month with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on Count Basie. Do you know his music? If not, then check out this killer 1965 performance of a Basie Band chestnut, “Jumping at the Woodside.”
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.
“de facto segregation: Racial separation that occurs in a school or other public institution ‘in fact’ or ‘in practice,’ as a result of such factors as housing patterns or school enrollment and not because of legal requirements. See also de jure segregation
de jure segregation: Racial separation that occurs in a school or other public institution as a result of laws that require separate facilities for people of different races. De jure segregation was declared unconstitutional by the U.S Supreme Court in 1954, in the Brown v. Board of Education decision.”
Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.
“Libertarian, n. One who is compelled by the evidence to believe in free-will, and whose will is therefore free to reject that doctrine.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities, united states history
Here is a reading on President Rutherford B. Hayes along with its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.
Hayes was basically a cipher (in the sense of “one that has no weight, worth, or influence : NONENTITY“), but his election in 1876, a result of the famous Compromise of 1877, was consequential indeed. The negotiations that elevated Hayes to the presidency directly brought about the end of Post-Civil War Reconstruction Era in the former Confederate States, but also engendered the Jim Crow laws that oppressed Americans of African descent, in most respects, to this day. When you think about the horrors that black people suffered and continue to suffer, think about the installation of Hayes in the presidency as a result of this chicanery.
This is a relatively short reading. But I think it could be the basis of a unit that I would like to think contained adapted text and teacher-made materials from C. Vann Woodward’s seminal treatise on this period of United States history, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). If we want students to make sense of the present, then we must help them understand the real past–without obfuscation or euphemism.
Incidentally, I’ve attached the black history tag to this post, not because Hayes’ biography is black history–it manifestly is not. But the man’s effect on the lives and history of Americans of African descent really speaks for itself: generations of extrajudicial murder (including of children), apartheid laws, an unearned and misplaced sense of ethnic superiority attached to white skin–do I need to go on? Unfortunately, Rutherford B. Hayes is part of Black History in this country.
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.
“The air currents of the world never ventilated his mind.”
Walter Page Hines on Woodrow Wilson
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities, united states history
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