Tag Archives: united states history

Everyday Edit: Thurgood Marshall

Here is an Everyday Edit worksheet on Thurgood Marshall. If you want more of these, check with the eleemosynary spirits at Education World, who give away a year’s supply of them at their site.

My usual caution and entreaty on typos doesn’t apply here: there are a number of spelling, grammar and punctuation errors on each of these worksheets; the task is to fix them.

Cultural Literacy: The Compromise of 1850

Here’s a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Compromise of 1850, which of course was a debate about how much further the commodification of persons of African descent in the burgeoning United States in the middle of the nineteenth century. This worksheet is a full page–longer than most of these exercises I’ve drafted, so it is perhaps useful for independent practice work.

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.

Dr. King on Government Action and Inaction

“Government action is not the whole answer to the present crisis, but it is an important partial answer. Morals cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. The law cannot make an employer love me, but it can keep him from refusing to hire me because of the color of my skin.”

Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story ch. 11 (1958)

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

Everyday Edit: Juneteenth

OK, let’s wrap up this Tuesday with an Everyday Edit worksheet on the Juneteenth holiday in observance of Black History Month 2020. Incidentally, if you like these kinds of exercises, the good people at Education World will gladly hand over a year’s supply of them for free.

And if you find typos in this document, fix them! It’s an Everyday Edit worksheet, after all.

Battle of Antietam

OK, social studies teachers, here is a short reading on the American Civil War Battle of Antietam along with a vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet to go with it.

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.

Did Ralph Ellison Speak for You?

“Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?”

Invisible Man epilogue (1952)

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

Cultural Literacy: Brown v. Board of Education

Continuing with Black History Month 2020, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Brown v. Board of Education, the United States Supreme Court Decision that desegregated public schools in this country.

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.

Everyday Edit: Tuskegee Airmen

Here is an Everyday Edit worksheet on the Tuskegee Airmen. As I say every time I post one of these documents, if you and your students like them, the good people at Education World generously give away a yearlong supply of them.

And if you find typos on this document, well, that’s the purpose of them; edit and repair as needed!

Malcolm X on Self-Defense

“There is nothing in our book, the Koran, that teachers us to suffer peacefully. Our religion teaches us to be intelligent. Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery. That’s a good religion.

Message to the Grass Roots” (Speech), Detroit, Michigan, 10 November 1963″

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

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (and Paul Laurence Dunbar)

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: A volume of memoirs (1970) by the African-American writer, singer, and actress Maya Angelou (1928-2014). Angelou borrowed her title—a metaphor for the African-American experience—from the US writer Paul Lawrence Dunbar (1872-1906):

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,

When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore—

When he beats his bars and he would be free;

It is not a carol of joy or glee,

But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,

But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—

I know why the caged bird sings!

Paul Lawrence Dunbar: ‘Sympathy,’ in The Complete Poems (1895)

Dunbar may have been inspired by an earlier line:

When caged birds sing, when indeed they cry.

John Webster: The White Devil (1612), V.iv

Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.