Each day of the month we will be educating ourselves on the lives of Influential Black Heroes. To begin the month we will focus on President Obama. In Toronto we had a lovely book we read:
Barack Obama was the 44th president of the United States and the first African American to be elected. He was born August 1, 1961 in Honolulu Hawaii. In 2009 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for strengthening international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.
Obama's father Barack Obama Sr was from Kenya and his mother S. Ann Dunham was from Kansas Texas, Washington, and Honolulu. They were wed one year later after meeting in 1960. They met in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii however there love dissolved in 1964 and they divorced. Ann remarried to Lolo Soetoro from Indonesia and they had a girl named Maya. The family moved to Jakarta where Obama went to school. He returned to Hawaii in 1971 and stayed with his grandparents. In 1979 Obama graduated from Punahou School, an elite college preparatory academy in Honolulu. He received his Bachelors Degree from Columbia University in 1983 in Political Science. He was a writer and edirot for Business International Corp in Manhattan and in 1985 he became Chicago's community organizer for the Far South Side. He went back to school and graduated from Harvard law school in 1991 and became the first African American to serve as president of the Harvard Law Review. In the summer of 1989 he was an associate at a Chicago law firm of Sidley Austin where he met Michelle Robinson who was a lawer at the firm and they married in 1992 and have two daughters. He also taught law at the University of Chicago. In 1996 he was elected to Illinois Senate and in 2004 he was elected to the U.S Senate from Illinois. In 2007 he decided to run for President of the USA and in 2008 the Democratic Party chose him and on November 4 he was voted in over John McCain. He was swprn in as president on January 29, 2009. In 2012 he was reelected. He won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2009.
This is a nice biography about them: https://youtu.be/1-IgxSn21jU
https://luckylittlelearners.com/martin-luther-king-jr-day-activities-videos/
Feb 2 is MLK or as we have leart Michael Luther King Jr.
Seasame Street does a nice video: https://youtu.be/NGd6J-jwzV8
King was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 15, 1929. At age 15 he entered Morehouse College in Atlanta. He graduated in 1948.
King studied for three years at a seminary (school for ministers) in Pennsylvania. There he learned about nonviolent protest. King received a doctorate from Boston University in 1955. While in Boston he met Coretta Scott. They married in 1953 and had four children.
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Introduction
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Martin Luther King, Jr., led the civil rights movement in the United States. He used nonviolent, or peaceful, protest to try to get equal rights for African Americans. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
Early Life
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King was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 15, 1929. At age 15 he entered Morehouse College in Atlanta. He graduated in 1948.
King studied for three years at a seminary (school for ministers) in Pennsylvania. There he learned about nonviolent protest. King received a doctorate from Boston University in 1955. While in Boston he met Coretta Scott. They married in 1953 and had four children.
Civil Rights Movement
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In 1954 King became pastor of a Baptist church in Montgomery, Alabama. In 1955 an African American woman named Rosa Parks refused to give her seat on a Montgomery bus to a white man. She was arrested for breaking a segregation law. Such laws were meant to keep Blacks and whites separate. To protest her arrest, King encouraged African Americans not to ride city buses. This was called the Montgomery bus boycott. The boycott was successful. In 1956 the U.S. Supreme Court banned racial segregation on public transportation.
In 1959 King visited India. There he met with the followers of Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi had used peaceful protests to demand Indian independence. The trip strengthened King’s belief in nonviolence.
King had organized a group called the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957. The SCLC led many nonviolent protests against segregation. In 1963 King joined a demonstration in Birmingham, Alabama. Police turned dogs and fire hoses on the protesters. King was put in prison. In the Birmingham jail, King wrote a letter explaining that he would continue to protest.
In August 1963 King and other civil rights leaders brought together about 250,000 people for a huge protest called the March on Washington. There King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
King’s actions helped get the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed. The act outlawed several types of discrimination. In 1965 King led a march in Selma, Alabama, in support of African American voting rights. Soon the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed.
In 1966 King turned to other problems. He fought racism in Northern cities and spoke out against the Vietnam War. He planned a Poor People’s March to Washington, D.C.
In 1968 King went to Memphis, Tennessee, to help city workers who were on strike. On April 4 a white man named James Earl Ray shot and killed him. King was only 39 years old.
King’s reputation grew after his death. In 1986 the United States set aside the third Monday in January as a holiday to honor him.
Feb 3 is Rosa Parks featurette. She was born Rosa Louise McCauley on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. Growing up she lived in segregation which means separation of the races. In 1932 she married Raymond Parks. She became the leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) branch in Montgomery. On December 1, 1955, Parks was riding a then segregated Montgomery city bus. She was sitting in a section where whites had first pick of seats. A white man wanted her seat, but Parks refused to move. She was arrested, jailed, and fined.
The city’s African Americans then decided to boycott, or not ride city buses until the segregation law was changed. The boycott was led by Martin Luther King, Jr., who was then just beginning his career as a civil rights leader.
The Montgomery boycott went on until 1956, when the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the U.S. Constitution did not allow segregation of buses. This gave hope to people who wanted all kinds of racial segregation to end. Within the next 10 years much progress was made.
Parks was fired from her job and threatened by white people. She and her family moved to Detroit, Michigan, in 1957. She then worked in the office of U.S. Representative John Conyers, Jr. She was honored with two of the country’s highest civilian awards: the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1996) and the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor (1999). Rosa Parks died in Detroit on October 24, 2005.
From Homeschool Pop we watched this informative clip: https://youtu.be/7sqiZ7agt4Q
https://www.pinkstripeysocks.com/2016/03/kids-flip-flop-artwork-summer-craft.html
Feb 4 we focused on Mae Jemison. A great storybook can be enjoyed:
https://youtu.be/uuxkz6FFd1Q
https://www.pinkstripeysocks.com/2014/03/cardboard-space-shuttle-craft-template.html
Mae Jemison was the first African American woman to become an astronaut. She was a part of the crew of the space shuttle Endeavour, which orbited Earth for more than a week in 1992.
Jemison was born on October 17, 1956, in Decatur, Alabama. She was the youngest of three children. When she was 3, the family moved to Chicago, Illinois. Even as a young girl Jemison was deeply interested in science.
https://www.thewaldockway.com/product/mae-jemison-unit-study/
Feb 5: Ruby Bridges HomeSchool Pop: https://youtu.be/sytZGGs5sRs
A nice book about her: https://youtu.be/MRfy2xs8Xpg
Feb 6: The USAF selected Maj. Robert H. Lawrence, Jr., on June 30, 1967, as a member of the third group of aerospace research pilots for the MOL Program. Lawrence thus became the first African-American to be selected as an astronaut by any national space program. Of the significance of his selection Lawrence said with his typical modesty, “This is nothing dramatic. It’s just a normal progression. I’ve been very fortunate.”
Born in Chicago on October 2, 1935, Lawrence graduated from high school at 16, earned his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Bradley University at age 20 and became an Air Force officer and pilot. Lawrence was a highly accomplished pilot with 2,500 flying hours, 2,000 in jets, and earned a PhD in physical chemistry from The Ohio State University in 1965, the only selected MOL astronaut with a doctorate. He completed US Air Force Test Pilot School in June 1967 and was immediately assigned to the MOL Program. While serving as an instructor for another pilot practicing landing techniques later used in the Space Shuttle program, Lawrence perished in a crash of an F-104 Starfighter supersonic jet on December 8, 1967, at Edwards Air Force Base, CA. Although both men ejected from the crash Lawrence did not survive, the promising career of the pilot-scientist suddenly extinguished. He was survived by his wife Barbara and eight-year-old son Tracey. Fellow MOL classmate and later NASA astronaut Don Peterson recalled in an oral history, “Bob was a super guy. His death was a terrible tragedy.”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iqH3TYkVrQo
Feb 7: Bessie Coleman https://youtu.be/zDProFrAcgI
Feb 8: George Washington Carver is our hero for today. He was an amazing scientist, giver, and artist. We found an activity that blends art and science thanks to the creative innovators at: https://deceptivelyeducational.blogspot.com/2016/01/how-to-make-paper-flowers-bloom-art.html
To learn about GWC these three videos are excellent: https://youtu.be/ArAwUq8HVAk and
https://youtu.be/6mYW0pkvYWA and https://youtu.be/hq_H7Oa90aU
Barron has loved GWC since he first discovered him. We were lucky to find a neat poetry lesson for free at: https://poets.org/lesson-plan/teach-poem-notes-peanut-june-jordan. In this lesson we examined the following poem:
Notes on the Peanut by June Jordan ( 1936-2002)
For the Poet David Henderson
Hi there. My name is George
Washington
Carver.
If you bear with me
for a few minutes I
will share with you
a few
of the 30,117 uses to which
the lowly peanut has been put
by me
since yesterday afternoon.
If you will look at my feet you will notice
my sensible shoelaces made from unadulterated
peanut leaf composition that is biodegradable
in the extreme.
To your left you can observe the lovely Renoir
masterpiece reproduction that I have cleverly
pieced together from several million peanut
shell chips painted painstakingly so as to
accurately represent the colors of the original!
Overhead you will spot a squadron of Peanut B-52
Bombers flying due west.
I would extend my hands to greet you
at this time
except for the fact that I am holding a reserve
supply of high energy dry roasted peanuts
guaranteed to accelerate protein assimilation
precisely documented by my pocket peanut calculator;
May I ask when did you last contemplate the relationship
between the expanding peanut products industry
and the development of post-Marxian economic theory
which (Let me emphasize) need not exclude moral attrition
of prepuberty
polymorphic
prehensile skills within the population age sectors
of 8 to 15?
I hope you will excuse me if I appear to be staring at you
through these functional yet high fashion and prescriptive
peanut contact lenses providing for the most
minute observation of your physical response to all of this
ultimately nutritional information.
Peanut butter peanut soap peanut margarine peanut
brick houses and house and field peanut per se well
illustrate the diversified
potential of this lowly leguminous plant
to which you may correctly refer
also
as the goober the pindar the groundnut
and the ground pea/let me
interrupt to take your name down on my
pocket peanut writing pad complete with matching
peanut pencil that only 3 or 4
chewing motions of the jaws will sharpen
into pyrotechnical utility
and no sweat.
Please:
Speak right into the peanut!
Your name?
We discussed what invention Barron would create and he said binoculars and telescopes to view the world far away. I would invent a time travelling machine. Barron wants to invent this because it would be neat to see each other and outer space and the world. I would invent this so we could spend time with loved ones or people we miss from our past. We examined two pictures and immediately Barron was drawn to the colour blue in the sky since that is his favourite colour, I was drawn to the center picture because the green was vibrant. When we looked at the second picture we found our attention going to George and the seed. We think these murals (paintings done on a wall) are aimed at people who are farmers or people who might want to know more about peanuts in the industry. Comparing the images we noticed that the colour was different, we were only shown a portion of the scene, and the painting that was zoomed seemed to have more of our attention whereas the larger mural had a sense of movement and wonder in it. We feel that these pictures relate or are connected to the poem because they talk about George Washington Carver's inventions and importance of the peanut, he mentions how he tried to capture the exact hues in a famous Renoir painting by using peanuts. The hues in the two paintings were different perhaps one is more accurate to what it really looked like when being there touching or observing the wall versus looking at a picture. We understand how this can happen because we took a picture in the mid afternoon with the flash on and suddenly it appeared a sunny day in our photo. Why the murals, well they show the beauty of the peanut, the soil, the importance of the farmer, and the advice of George. The lesson then asked us to examine the phrase
“lowly peanut” and “potential of this lowly leguminous plant” which we used our dictionary to find out that lowly means uncommon, not important or grand. We felt the audience of this poem might be to change the mind of people who think peanuts are nothing special or important. The first phrase says a peanut isn't much, however the second phrase asks you to think of what the common peanut could become, to seek the greatness in it. We still think the poem is talking to people who are farmers or gardeners. The lesson mentions that the poem uses hyperbole (exaggeration) and we found this as an example: "I have cleverly pieced together from several million peanut shell chips" although it may have taken a lot of peanut shells to make the exact paint colour we think several million is an exaggeration. On this topic we started wondering if we could figure out if George Washington Carver really liked Renoir or if that was the poet June's preference or what she thought George may like. We are familiar with GWC as a painter as we found some similarities between him and Georgia O'Keefe in an earlier post on this blog. We learnt that, "Carver’s story is fascinating, and his life was so clearly influenced by both art and science, that it’s clear why the California African American Museum’s exhibit “World Without End: The George Washington Carver Project” will be included as part of “Pacific Standard Time: Art x Science x LA”. It doesn’t take place until 2024, but it’s something to look forward to if you’re in California." Source: https://cloudistro.com/george-washington-carver-was-an-artist-long-before-he-became-a-peanut-scientist/
The images we were referring to are found at: https://www.loc.gov/resource/highsm.07051/?r=-0.071,-0.094,1.111,0.473,0
https://www.loc.gov/item/2010638461/
Feb 9: James Hemings
Feb 10:
Feb 11:
Feb 12:
Feb 13: Edna Lewis. https://youtu.be/J43s-Qy0qOI
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