Transcript Document

Rights-Writing Journal
What rights do you have as an American
citizen? What gives us these rights? How
would you react if someone tried to take your
rights away? What could you do?
I Have a Dream
Martin Luther King Jr.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that
all men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are
Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.-
Civil Rights Powerpoint
Montgomery Bus Boycott
Civil Disobedience
14th Amendment
Rosa Parks
Plessy v. Ferguson: separate but equal
How “equal” do these schools look?
What is your impression of each of
the schools? Which would you rather
go to, and why?
Segregated Schools
Brown vs. Board of Ed: Separate is
inherently unequal
Integration of Little Rock High School, 1957
My Arkansas -Maya Angelou
There is a deep
brooding
in Arkansas.
Old crimes like moss
pend
from popular trees.
The sullen earth
is much too
red for comfort.
Sunrise seems to hesitate
and in the second
lose its
incandescent aim, and
dusk no more shadows
than the noon.
The past is brighter yet.
Old hates and
ante-bellum lace, are rent
but not discarded.
Today is yet to come
in Arkansas.
It writhes. It writhes in awful
waves of brooding.
from
“The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little
Rock” –Gwendolyn Brooks
In Little Rock the people bear
Babes, and comb and part their hair
And watch the want ads, put repair
To roof and latch. While wheat toast
burns
A woman waters multiferns.
Time upholds or overturns
The many, tight, and small concerns.
In Little Rock the people sing
Sunday hymns like anything,
Through Sunday pomp and polishing.
And after testament and tunes,
Some soften Sunday afternoons
With lemon tea and Lorna Doones.
I forecast, And I believe
Come Christmas Little Rock will cleave
To Christmas tree and trifle…
In Little Rock they know
Not answering the telephone is a way of rejecting
life,
That it is our business to be bothered,
is our business
To cherish bores or boredom, be polite
To lies and love and many-faceted fuzziness.
I scratch my head, massage the hate-I-had.
I blink across my prim and pencilled pad.
The saga I was sent for is not down.
Because there is a puzzle in this town.
The biggest News I do not dare
Telegraph to the Editor’s chair:
“They are like people everywhere.”
The angry Editor would reply
In hundred harryings of Why.
And true, they are hurling spittle, rock,
Garbage and fruit in Little Rock.
And I saw coiling storm a-writhe
On bright madonnas. And a scythe
Of men harassing brownish girls.
(The bows and barrettes in the curls
And braids declined away from joy.)
I saw a bleeding brownish boy. . . .
The lariat lynch-wish I deplored.
The loveliest lynchee was our Lord.
Martin Luther King Jr. “I Have a Dream”
“…And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still
have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true
meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men
are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former
slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at
the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state
sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of
oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation
where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the
content of their character….”