Book-Reviews - Bing News |
| Class learns history of segregation - Greensboro News & Record Posted: 25 Mar 2010 04:47 AM PDT GREENSBORO — Hang with second-graders as they wind through our city's newest tourist attraction — the International Civil Rights Center & Museum — and you learn a thing … or two. They'll tell you the museum reminds them of a mall — an escalator, a shop and so much walking their legs hurt. I get that. I got wore out, too. I trailed them Tuesday through the sit-in museum as I chaperoned my daughter's class from Peeler Open School for the Performing Arts. Ever since Elizabeth brought home new vocabulary words such as "Negro'' and "discrimination," I had to know what they were doing. I found out. They want to write a book, and they want the book to include their poems, pictures and stories about the civil rights movement and the 1960 sit-ins at F.W. Woolworth. All told through the eyes of 7- and 8-year-olds. They've studied it for nearly two months. They've heard excerpts from at least a dozen books, watched a portion of a documentary and plugged in words like "segregation" next to "Hannah Montana" in their second-grade vocabulary. And they've written. And written some more. In their classroom, underneath a paper chain of many colors, are sit-in posters, book reviews and handwritten reports with titles like "Story of Freedom'' across one wall. In their folders are their poems. Some are four lines long; others fill an entire page. They're funny and poignant, wide-eyed optimistic and incredibly personal. One even rhymes like Dr. Seuss. These are Diane Mannino 's Peeler kids. She teaches my daughter and 21 other second-graders — white, black, brown and biracial. And right now, every one of them sees themselves as a poet, a writer, someone who can. On Tuesday, they finally visited what they've been reading, writing and talking about for weeks. And I went. Call me crazy. I rode a school bus that felt every bump, surrounded by kids who could barely keep quiet. And as soon as they saw the familiar red sign at our downtown block known worldwide, they erupted. "Woolworth's! Woolworth's! Woolworth's!" they chanted. Outside the museum, they stuck their feet in the forever footprints of the Greensboro Four from Feb. 1, 1960 — Ezell Blair Jr., Frank McCain, Joseph McNeil, David Richmond — and blurted out, "You are my inspiration!" But once inside, they got quiet quick. They saw the bars of a jail, felt the confusion of a mazelike exhibit barely lit and stared at time-capsule photos of people in suits, in midscream, in bandages with blood trickling down their faces. They also walked up 28 steps from the basement, with Mannino's hushed instructions in their ears: "Close your eyes and think about who you are and how you'll be." They inched toward the place they've only seen in the pages of a book or in the pictures in their mind. The whites-only lunch counter. And there they stood. It was the place where the Greensboro Four, the four students from N.C. A&T, sat down and asked to be served a half-century ago. On Tuesday, in the crook of that L-shaped counter, Mannino's Peeler kids read a few of their poems. Then, across town, on the A&T campus, directly beneath the 15-foot statue of the Greensboro Four, they read some more. We still wrestle with hang-ups over the color of someone's skin. Yet, listen to these second-graders, these poets and writers, about the need for tolerance. Bahijah Fall talked about "this madness thing." Gabriel McCune talked about how "David hates segregation." Aaliyah Bynum talked about freedom songs after looking up at the tall statue at A&T and shouting, "Y'all listen!" Zoe Lane just talked about her parents. It wasn't fair back in 1960 Yes, they did. And years later, the lessons of 1960 are still relevant. All you have to do is listen to kids like Bahijah, Zoe and Gabriel. They know. Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com
Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Book-Reviews - Bing News To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
0 comments:
Post a Comment