Showing posts with label Civil Rights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Civil Rights. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 05, 2019

When You Go to a Museum



Last Saturday, Hubby and I went to the Dayton Art Institute to see the special exhibit "For America" before it closed on Sunday. It was an amazing collection. A requirement for membership into the National Academy is a portrait, and these (often of prominent artists) were paired with another piece by the artist who painted the portrait, or by the artist who was the subject of the portrait. There were lots of familiar artists (ie: white men), but I learned about some I will want to explore more deeply: Juane Quick-to-See Smith, an enrolled member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes; Charles White, who painted "images of dignity" of African Americans; and Isabel Bishop, an Ohio native who was a leading member of the Fourteenth Street School of artists.

But it was what we found in the museum before we got the special exhibit that had the most profound impact on me. It was an exhibit of hats. Amazing hats. Over the top hats. So many hats owned by one woman.

One woman...and what a woman! Why had I never heard of Dorothy Height?

"This hat was worn on regular days to the office."

"Success depends on your stick-to-itiveness and the passion
with which you pursue your goals.
Give yourself a start and keep going." --Dorothy Height


"If the time is not ripe, we have to ripen the time." --Dorothy Height

"Greatness is not measured by what a man or woman accomplishes,
but by the opposition he or she has to overcome to reach his goals."
--Dorothy Height

"We African American women seldom do just what we want to do,
but always do what we have to do. I am grateful to have been in a time and place
where I could be part of what was needed."
--Dorothy Height

The hat she wore when Obama kissed her.

"Giving unconditionally is not a hard concept to understand
but it is very difficult for most to apply.
You have to be willing to see giving unconditionally
as something that you can do
because you recognize that your beneficiaries are human beings."
--Dorothy Height

From the introduction placard:

"Called the "Godmother of the Civil Rights Movement" by President Barack Obama, Dr. Dorothy Irene Height (March 24, 1912 - April 20, 2010) was an educator, activist, and a leader in the struggles for equality.

...she was rarely seen without a hat.

The hats worn by Dr. Height became a symbol of her personality, determination and poise. Often called "crowns" in the African American community, the hats are artistic creations, fashion items that Height wore on ordinary days and during extraordinary events in American history."

Dorothy Height wrote a memoir, Open Wide the Freedom Gates.
She also wrote Living With Purpose
and The Core of America's Race Problem.

She is featured on The History Makers: The Nation's Largest African American Oral History Collection (a resource to explore more deeply...)

and on the National Visionary Leadership Project website (another resource to explore more deeply...).

Her eulogy by Barack Obama can be found on American Rhetoric: Online Speech Bank (yet another site that needs a deep dive).

I couldn't find any clips from the Broadway musical, "If This Hat Could Talk," but I did find an interview with Julia Garrison, who played the young Dorothy Height.

Here is an hourlong documentary that I will watch, "The Life and Surprising Times of Dr. Dorothy Height."




Maybe I should be embarrassed to go public with my ignorance of this amazing woman, but instead  I'm going to bank on the possibility that I'm not the only one and make this a teachable moment about my own personal ongoing education in all of the aspects of American History that were not a part of my school curriculums (read BIPOC and LGBTQIA aspects).

I'll also make a plug for going to museums. Go to a museum and be as aware of the lenses with which you read the exhibits as you are the lenses with which you are reading books and the world. Ask questions about the curators of the exhibit to learn what their lenses were. Try on new lenses. Look for gaps in your education. Enjoy the art and the history...and LEARN.



Monday, June 12, 2017

Reading Without Walls



Midnight Without a Moon
by Linda Williams Jackson
HMH Books for Young Readers, 2017
review copy provided by the publisher

This was a Gene Yang "Reading Without Walls" book for me. It's a Civil Rights story, but not "just another Civil Rights story." What makes it different is the point of view in the story and the authenticity of the author.

The story is set in rural Mississippi, where a black family and community process the push for voting rights, integrated schools, and Emmett Till's death. What seems obvious and easy from the outside (who wouldn't want the opportunity to vote?) was complicated in ways a white or a northerner couldn't imagine. There is pushback about change from the older members of the community, and intra-racial racism based on the lightness or darkness of skin.

The author was born and still lives in the Mississippi Delta. She gets the characters, setting and language right in a way no one else could.

I've tagged this book YA for language and violence. I think pairing it with The Hate U Give would provide an amazing experience for readers to understand the historical context for the modern story, and would prompt rich conversations between teens of all races. Like The Hate U Give, this is a debut novel.

I was thrilled to see that Midnight Without a Moon is book one in a series! Book two comes out in January of 2018.


A Sky Full of Stars
by Linda Williams Jackson
HMH Books for Young Readers, January, 2018

Monday, March 18, 2013

3 by J. Patrick Lewis


by J. Patrick Lewis
illustrated by Anna Raff
Candlewick Press, 2013
review copy provided by the publisher

Any day's the perfect day to take a holiday and read funny poems by J. Patrick Lewis! Whether it's Dragon Appreciation Day on January 16, World Rat Day on April 4, Limerick Day on May 12, or (my favorite) Chocolate-Covered Anything Day on December 16, there's an animal poem for every reader in this book.




Face Bug
by J. Patrick Lewis
photographs by Frederic B. Siskind
illustrations by Kelly Murphy
WordSong, 2013
review copy provided by the publisher

Eye-catching close-up photos of creepy bug faces will draw the reader into this book, and Lewis' descriptive poems will delight. Sketches of the action in the poems and back matter full of factual information keep readers poring over this buggy book.




When Thunder Comes: Poems for Civil Rights Leaders
by J. Patrick Lewis
illustrated by Jim Burke, R. Gregory Christie, Tonya Engel, John Parra, and Meilo So
Chronicle Books, 2013
review copy provided by the publisher

On a more serious note, When Thunder Comes "...celebrates the struggles and achievements of seventeen men and women who dedicated their lives to fighting injustice based on race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, and sexual orientation."

These poems are far from silly, and require a reader who will read and re-read, utilizing the biographical information in the back of the book to understand the impact of each of these diverse civil rights leaders.