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.Immigrants were detained for days, weeks, or months. They underwent unpleasant health exams and interviews designed to judge whether their claims were correct. Their answers had to match those of the US citizen they claimed as a relation, or they would be deported.“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?”Aged sixteen in 1935, Lester Tom Lee immigrated to America by himself. He was detained for about two months.“The main reason I was detained so long was that my father and I gave the inspectors different dates about when I departed China,” Lee said. “The Chinese lunar calendar is about a month off from the American calendar! Aya!”
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."As the months passed, the occupation began to lose some of its momentum, and several occupiers left the island to return to school or family life. Things became more difficult when the government cut off phone service to the island, followed by electrical power and fresh water.Finally, on June 11, 1971, a large force of government agents arrived on Alcatraz and removed the last fifteen people – six men, four women, and five children. After nineteen months, the occupation was over.
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.
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