Read the excerpt from My Story.She took me up a flight of stairs (the cells were on the second level), through a door covered with iron mesh, and along a dimly lighted corridor. She placed me in an empty dark cell and slammed the door closed. She walked a few steps away, but then she turned around and came back. She said, "There are two girls around the other side, and if you want to go over there with them instead of being in a cell by yourself, I will take you over there.” I told her that it didn’t matter, but she said, "Let’s go around there, and then you won’t have to be in a cell alone.” It was her way of being nice. It didn’t make me feel any better.
Read the excerpt from "American Indian Civil Rights.”Over the years, American Indian activists have valiantly fought for reform and for the government to honor certain treaty obligations. Sarah Winnemucca, a member of the Northern Paiutes tribe, campaigned for better living conditions for her tribe in the late 1800s. She lectured around the country in an effort to increase support for her cause. Physician and lecturer Charles Eastman, who was part of the Sioux tribe, also strove to improve the circumstances of American Indians in the early 1900s through public speaking and serving in organizations such as the Society of American Indians.
Read the excerpt from President Kennedy's Report to the American People.It ought to be possible, therefore, for American students of any color to attend any public institution they select without having to be backed up by troops. It ought to be possible for American consumers of any color to receive equal service in places of public accommodation, such as hotels and restaurants and theaters and retail stores, without being forced to resort to demonstrations in the street, and it ought to be possible for American citizens of any color to register and to vote in a free election without interference or fear of reprisal. It ought to be possible, in short, for every American to enjoy the privileges of being American without regard to his race or his color. In short, every American ought to have the right to be treated as he would wish to be treated, as one would wish his children to be treated.
Read the excerpt from "My First March.”A group in the back started fanning themselves and singing the song "Heatwave,” making everyone laugh and sing along.
Read the excerpt from "American Indian Civil Rights.”One of the most sweeping blows to the American Indian community occurred in 1830 when President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act. As a result, the government negotiated with tribes to move them to land west of the Mississippi River. The government then acquired their previously inhabited land. Some tribes reluctantly went along with the act.
Read the excerpt from "A Quilt of a Country."Once these disparate parts were held together by a common enemy, by the fault lines of world wars and the electrified fence of communism. With the end of the cold war there was the creeping concern that without a focus for hatred and distrust, a sense of national identity would evaporate, that the left side of the hyphen—African-American, Mexican-American, Irish-American—would overwhelm the right. And slow-growing domestic traumas like economic unrest and increasing crime seemed more likely to emphasize division than community. Today the citizens of the United States have come together once more because of armed conflict and enemy attack.
Which is found in My Story but not in "On the Bus with Rosa Parks"?
Which correctly describes the narration in My Story and "On the Bus with Rosa Parks"?
Read the excerpt from "A Quilt of a Country."America is an improbable idea. A mongrel nation built of ever-changing disparate parts, it is held together by a notion, the notion that all men are created equal, though everyone knows that most men consider themselves better than someone. "Of all the nations in the world, the United States was built in nobody's image," the historian Daniel Boorstin wrote. That's because it was built of bits and pieces that seem discordant, like the crazy quilts that have been one of its great folk-art forms, velvet and calico and checks and brocades. Out of many, one. That is the ideal.
Read the excerpt from President Ronald Reagan’s Address at Moscow State University.The explorers of the modern era are the entrepreneurs, men with vision, with the courage to take risks and faith enough to brave the unknown. These entrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States. They are the prime movers of the technological revolution. In fact, one of the largest personal computer firms in the United States was started by two college students, no older than you, in the garage behind their home. Some people, even in my own country, look at the riot of experiment that is the free market and see only waste. What of all the entrepreneurs that fail? Well, many do, particularly the successful ones; often several times. And if you ask them the secret of their success, they'll tell you it's all that they learned in their struggles along the way; yes, it's what they learned from failing. Like an athlete in competition or a scholar in pursuit of the truth, experience is the greatest teacher.
Read the short speech.Mrs. Valenzuela touched countless lives. She reached out to her students and taught them about history. Every lesson was offered with lively insight. She reached out to her peers and made them smile. The workroom echoed with laughter when Mrs. Valenzuela was around. She reached out to her family members and gave them unconditional love.
Read the excerpt from the poem "On the Bus with Rosa Parks."RosaHow she sat there,the time right inside a placeso wrong it was ready.That trim name withits dream of a benchto rest on. Her sensible coat.
One purpose of President Reagan’s Address at Moscow State University was to
Why does King repeat the phrase "we can never be satisfied”? Select 3 options.
Read the excerpt from "A Quilt of a Country."What is the point of this splintered whole? What is the point of a nation in which Arab cabbies chauffeur Jewish passengers through the streets of New York—and in which Jewish cabbies chauffeur Arab passengers, too, and yet speak in theory of hatred, one for the other? What is the point of a nation in which one part seems to be always on the verge of fisticuffs with another, blacks and whites, gays and straights, left and right, Pole and Chinese and Puerto Rican and Slovenian? Other countries with such divisions have in fact divided into new nations with new names, but not this one, impossibly interwoven even in its hostilities.Once these disparate parts were held together by a common enemy, by the fault lines of world wars and the electrified fence of communism. With the end of the cold war there was the creeping concern that without a focus for hatred and distrust, a sense of national identity would evaporate, that the left side of the hyphen—African-American, Mexican-American, Irish-American—would overwhelm the right. And slow-growing domestic traumas like economic unrest and increasing crime seemed more likely to emphasize division than community. Today the citizens of the United States have come together once more because of armed conflict and enemy attack. Terrorism has led to devastation—and unity.
The context of a piece of writing is the
Read the excerpt from My Story.It was unfair to segregate us. But neither the bus company nor the mayor nor the city commissioners would listen. I remember having discussions about how a boycott of the city buses would really hurt the bus company in its pocketbook. But I also remember asking a few people if they would be willing to stay off the buses to make things better for us, and them saying that they had too far to go to work. So it didn’t seem as if there would be much support for a boycott.
Read the excerpt from Obama's Second Inaugural Address.This generation of Americans has been tested by crises that steeled our resolve and proved our resilience. A decade of war is now ending. An economic recovery has begun. America’s possibilities are limitless, for we possess all the qualities that this world without boundaries demands: youth and drive; diversity and openness; an endless capacity for risk and a gift for reinvention. My fellow Americans, we are made for this moment, and we will seize it -- so long as we seize it together.
Read the excerpt from "Finding Unity in the Alabama Coal Mines.”Nevertheless, the UMWA was able to bridge the racial divide in that state, forming a powerful interracial labor union fifty years before the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s would make racial integration the rule of the land.
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