Read the excerpt from "Freedom Walkers” by Russell Freedman.Robinson joined the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, attended by many Alabama State professors. That’s when she became a member of the Women’s Political Council, which had been founded three years earlier when the local League of Women Voters refused to accept blacks. "We were ‘woman power,’ organized to cope with any injustice, no matter what,” she recalled. "I had suffered the most humiliating experience of my life when that bus driver had ordered me off the fifth-row seat from the front and threatened to strike me when I did not move fast enough. Thus, I was ready to take over the WPC when the time came.”
Read the excerpts from "Freedom Walkers” by Russell Freedman.Excerpt 1Rosa Parks had not expected to resist on that December evening. And she did not want to put her family at risk. But she was no longer willing to accept the indignities of bus segregation, a system that dehumanized all black people. "I decided that I would have to know once and for all what rights I had as a human being and a citizen, even in Montgomery, Alabama.”Excerpt 2"Aren’t you going to get up?” one of the police officers asked."No,” Claudette [Colvin] replied. "I don’t have to get up. I paid my fare, so I don’t have to get up.” At school, Claudette had been studying the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and she had taken those lessons to heart. "It’s my constitutional right to sit here just as much as that [white] lady,” she told the police. "It’s my constitutional right!”
Read the excerpt from "Freedom Walkers” by Russell Freedman.In 1950, she [Robinson] was elected president of the WPC. Under her leadership, segregated seating on public buses became the group’s most pressing issue. Joined by other black community leaders, Robinson and the women of the WPC met several times with Montgomery city commissioners and, later, with bus company officials. Their demands were modest. They simply asked for "better seating arrangements.” The word integration was never mentioned. "To admit that black Americans were seeking to integrate would have been too much,” Robinson said later.
Read the excerpt from "Freedom Walkers” by Russell Freedman.Claudette [Colvin]’s arrest galvanized the black community. E. D. Nixon, an influential black leader, came to the teenager’s defense. Nixon was employed as a railroad sleeping car porter, but his passion was working to advance human rights. A rugged man with a forceful manner and a commanding voice, he had founded the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Nixon was recognized by blacks and whites alike as a powerful presence in the black community, a vital force to be reckoned with. It was said that he knew every white policeman, judge, and government clerk in town, and he was always ready to help anyone in trouble.
Read the excerpt from “Pakistan’s Malala.”But this was not how Malala decided she would live. With the encouragement of her father, she began believing that she was stronger than the things that scared her."The Taliban have repeatedly targeted schools in Swat," she wrote in an extraordinary blog when she was empowered to share her voice with the world by the BBC.She was writing around the time the Taliban issued a formal edict in January 2009 banning all girls from schools. On the blog, she praised her father, who was operating one of the few schools that would go on to defy that order.Which sentence best expresses Malala’s viewpoint?
Read the excerpt from "Freedom Walkers” by Russell Freedman.Under Montgomery’s segregation laws, Claudette was in fact entitled to her seat behind the whites-only section. If no seats were available for blacks to move back to as additional white passengers boarded the bus, then they were not required to give up their seats. That was the official policy. But in actual practice, whenever a white person needed a seat, the driver would order blacks to get up and move to the back of the bus, even when they had to stand in the aisle.
Read the excerpt from "Freedom Walkers” by Russell Freedman.E. D. Nixon and other black leaders wanted to take the entire bus segregation issue into federal court. They hoped to demonstrate that segregated buses were illegal under the U.S. Constitution. But first they needed the strongest possible case—the arrest of a black rider who was above reproach, a person of unassailable character and reputation who could withstand the closest scrutiny.
What are key details in an informational text?
Which sentence correctly uses commas to separate phrases?
Read this excerpt from We’ve Got a Job.Remember: Our Slogan is: "MORE IN '64"Alabama Christian Movement For Human Rights, Inc,— Rev. F. L. Shuttlesworth, President Southern Christian Leadership Conference— Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., PresidentThe pronoun in the excerpt is in which point of view?
Read this excerpt about Angel Island, an immigration station in the 1900s.Entry into the United States was most difficult for the Chinese. In part, Angel Island was built to enforce laws that restricted Chinese immigration. Such laws as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 were written out of prejudice and fear that Chinese workers were taking jobs away from European Americans. Around 30 percent of Chinese immigrants at Angel Island were forced to return to China.The rest, those who could prove they had a husband or father who was a US citizen, were allowed to enter the mainland United States.
Read this excerpt about Angel Island, an immigration station in the 1900s."They grilled us incessantly day after day,” said Don Kingman, a Chinese man who was, in fact, born in Oakland, California. At the age of five, his family moved to Hong Kong. But when he returned at age eighteen, he was sent through Angel Island. "They asked insignificant questions which were significant for them. How many steps do you have in front of your house? What did your mother have for breakfast? What is the name of your grandmother?”
Read this excerpt about Angel Island, an immigration station in the 1900s.The isolation and despair that everyone felt at Angel Island were expressed in the poetry that detainees carved into the walls of the buildings. The majority of these were written by the Chinese. Here is an example:Nights are long and the pillow cold; who can pity my loneliness? After experiencing such loneliness and sorrow,Why not just return home and learn to plow the fields?
Read this excerpt about Angel Island, an immigration station in the 1900s.Located in San Francisco Bay in northern California, Angel Island opened in 1910 to process a wave of European immigrants expected to come through the Panama Canal. But when World War I began, the wave never came.However, immigration from across the Pacific Ocean rose thanks to crises around the world. These included the civil war in Mexico, the Russian Revolution, the massacre of Armenians, the Japanese invasion of China, and worldwide effects of the Great Depression. More than half the immigrants came from China or Japan. In spite of the odds, America still offered the hope for a better future.Angel Island was called the “Ellis Island of the West.” But from the start, it was more like a detention center than an immigration center. The roughly one million immigrants entering the United States through Angel Island were processed but not welcomed.
Read this excerpt from "The Spirit of Alcatraz."Protest leaders say the occupation led to new federal laws that recognized American Indian tribes and gave them more control over their daily lives. Additionally, the government decided to drop its plan to sell Alcatraz to developers. Today, the island is a National Historic Landmark that sees more than a million visitors each year.But activists say their most important accomplishment was changing the way American Indians looked at themselves. As activist John Trudell puts it, "Alcatraz put me back into my community and helped me remember who I am. It was a rekindling of the spirit.”
Read this excerpt from The Spirit of Alcatraz.Demonstrators first started coming to Alcatraz after the US government closed the prison in 1963 and declared the property "surplus federal land.” Officials wanted to sell the island to a private developer, but some American Indian leaders had other ideas. They pointed out that a treaty between the United States and the Sioux said all abandoned federal land should be returned to Native people.The first group of American Indian protestors arrived in March 1964 and occupied Alcatraz for four hours. The small group of Sioux demonstrators offered to pay the US government $9.40 for the island, or 47 cents per acre – the same amount the government was paying to use tribal lands.Activists decided to state a larger action five years later, after the federal government offered to turn Alcatraz into a national park. On the morning of November 20, 1969, seventy-nine American Indians, many of them college students, set off for the island and began their occupation.
Read this excerpt from "The Spirit of Alcatraz.”But activists say their most important accomplishment was changing the way American Indians looked at themselves. As activist John Trudell puts it, "Alcatraz put me back into my community and helped me remember who I am. It was a rekindling of the spirit.”Each year, American Indians from different tribes pay tribute to that spirit by returning to the island on Columbus Day and Thanksgiving to remember the occupation with a Sunrise Ceremony for Indigenous Peoples.
Read this excerpt from "The Spirit of Alcatraz."The name Alcatraz makes people all over the world think of the infamous prison that used to be there. But the small island in the San Francisco Bay has a different meaning for many American Indians, who see it as a symbol of freedom.
Read this excerpt from "Painting Freedom on the Walls.”When a wave of Mexican settlers began to come to San Diego in the 1890s, many of them made their home in an area known as Logan Heights. Soon that area was called Barrio Logan. (In Spanish, a barrio is a neighborhood.) At first, Barrio Logan was a neighborhood of homes and shops that stretched from well inland all the way to San Diego Bay, and the people had access to the beach. Then, during World War II, the beach was closed. In the 1950s, the city changed the zoning of the area so that industry could move into the neighborhood. Soon, the barrio was spotted with noisy, dirty junkyards. In the 1960s, Interstate 5 and ramps for the San Diego-Coronado Bridge cut Barrio Logan in half. About 5,000 homes were destroyed in the process.By this time, the residents were very angry about the terrible damage to their barrio. They protested loudly. Finally, the City Council of San Diego promised them a park to help make up for the damage. The council set aside land for that purpose. And then, in 1970, bulldozers arrived to turn the land into a parking lot. A student, Mario Solis, saw them, asked what was going on, and started spreading the word. Within a few hours, there were 250 people in the park, blocking the bulldozers.The people of Barrio Logan won their battle and got their park. They planted cactus and other native plants, but there was something missing. An artist named Salvador Torres came up with the idea of putting murals on the concrete pillars that supported the freeway. Chicano Park was born.The murals of Chicano Park are filled with the colors, the history, and the heroes of Mexican America. They are painted by professional artists and by community groups. There is even one mural painted entirely by children. They are visible reminders of the Mexican cultural heritage of the city.
Read this excerpt from "Painting Freedom on the Walls."There are many ways to honor a heritage, express a yearning for freedom, and celebrate a culture. Art is one of the most positive of those ways, and public art is one of the most effective. A remarkable illustration of this truth is the “freedom mural.” This kind of public art that has been created by the Latino community of California for more than half a century.Since a mural is a large painting on a wall, you need a wall to make a mural. It’s easy to find a wall in most California cities. There are blank walls on the sides of buildings and bridges and overpasses. And there are a lot of bright, sunny days that are perfect for painting pictures of everything from mountains to flowers to cultural heroes. There is also something very important in California that was made invisible for a long time.
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