“America is woven of many strands; I would recognize them and let it so remain…. Our fate is to become one, and yet many—this is not prophecy, but description.”
Ralph Ellison
Invisible Man epilogue (1952)
Excerpted from: Shapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Hey! Black History Month 2019 begins today. I’m always excited for this month to roll around. In 16 years of teaching in inner-city schools, I have served students of predominantly (recent) African Descent. (I modify that locution with recent because as it turns out, we all–humans, I mean–started out in Africa. As the late, great Richard Pryor put it, “So Black people we the first people had thought. Right? We were the first to say, ‘Where the f**k am I? And how do you get to Detroit?’”)
Because I have, from childhood, been enamored of syncretic African cultural forms in this country–particularly jazz–the history of Black people in the United States has always been a deep interest of mine. As a matter of fact, I consider the seven years I lived in Harlem a post-graduate exercise. I really was thrilled to read about the locations of famous nightclubs, or the addresses of famous Harlem residents (Billie Holiday’s first apartment was on was on 138th Street, just off Lenox Avenue; A’Lelia Walker’s Dark Tower was on 136th Street in Sugar Hill–I could go on at length starting with 555 Edgecombe Avenue or The Dunbar Apartments–there are just so many of these august addresses in Harlem) and then stroll by to look at them.
Because David Blight, a historian at Yale, has recently published a new biography of him (you can read Ta-nehisi Coates’ review here), let’s start the month with this short reading on Frederick Douglass and its vocabulary building and comprehension worksheet.
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.
“Shallow, violent, and scurrilous.”
William Edward Hartpole Lecky, A History of England in the 18th Century 1882
Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities, united states history
“On what novel is George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess (1935) based? It is based on Porgy (1925), by Du Bose Heyward. Heyward and his wife, Dorothy, won a Pulitzer prize for their dramatic version of the novel. Porgy is a crippled beggar who lives on Catfish Row in Charleston, South Carolina. Bess is his drug-addicted mistress.”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged drama/theater, fiction/literature, music, united states history
“I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Letter from Birmingham Jail,” 16 April 1963
Excerpted from: Shapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the United States; this holiday, to me at least, given the political and cultural atmosphere in this country, feels especially important this year. If you ever feel a need to do something to make the world a more just place, today is the day to take action. As soon as the temperature rises to its balmy high of six degrees here in Springfield, Massachusetts, I’ll make the two-block trek to the Salvation Army Donation Center to deliver a couple of bags of things I can with which I can afford to part.
To celebrate the day, here is a reading on Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and a vocabulary building and comprehension worksheet to attend it. As a litigator for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. Justice Marshall did the work to bring about Dr. King’s version of a just society for all, regardless of skin color, in the United States. While he argued a number of significant cases that led to ethnic justice, his crowning achievement by most standards must be his triumph in the Kansas desegregation case, Brown v. Board of Education.
If you find these materials useful, let me remind you that at this point in January, we are on the eve of Black History Month 2019. Mark’s Text Terminal will feature a full month of posts on Black History–as it does every year.
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.
Several students in the school in which I serve expressed interest in the literature of the Jazz Age and Gatsby in particular, so here is a short reading on The Great Gatsby along with the vocabulary building and comprehension worksheet that attends 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.
From my sophomore year of high school on, I was quite taken with The Beat Generation. In the event that you have any students with a similar interest (I still stumble across one every so often), this cultural literacy worksheet on the late, great Allen Ginsberg might be a place for them to start in the pursuit an inquiry into the Beats.
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.
Here’s another document I must have written on student request, because I cannot imagine why I would ever need this learning support for the dates states seceded from the Union during the American Civil War, as well as the dates they were readmitted after the War.
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.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
This week’s Text is a reading on reading on chocolate tycoon and philanthropist Milton Hershey along with its comprehension worksheet. As this reading can explain to you and your students, Hershey was an interesting guy.
Several years ago “60 Minutes” ran a feature, which I cannot find on the Internet, on the possible sale of the Hershey Company. It was controversial because the philanthropies Milton Hershey contrived, particularly the Milton Hershey School, directly benefit from the company’s profits, and would lose that support in the event the company was sold. As far as I can tell (short of spending hours of research on this, which I really cannot afford to do at the moment), this issue remains unresolved.
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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