Primer on "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee"
- May 5th, 2010 |
- By Robert |
- Category: Civics Campaign, Primers
SIGNIFICANCE Known as “The Wounded Knee Massacre,” in 1890 over 300 men, women, and children of the Sioux nation were killed by the U.S. Calvary while trying to surrender. It marks one of the final and most gruesome chapters of the long conflict between the American Indian and both the U.S. government and white settlers. [...]
No CommentsPrimer on Elie Wiesel's "The Perils of Indifference"
- May 5th, 2010 |
- By Robert |
- Category: Civics Campaign, Primers
SIGNIFICANCE Wiesel is a Holocaust survivor. In 1944, Jews in his town were rounded up and sent to concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Buchenwald, and elsewhere. Both his parents and a sister did not survive the camps, but two other sisters did. So, Wiesel speaks on the topic from personal experience, and, given his life story [...]
No CommentsPrimer on George Washington's Farewell Address
- May 5th, 2010 |
- By Robert |
- Category: Civics Campaign, Primers
SIGNIFICANCE George Washington (1732-1799) was a planter, politician, soldier, and the foremost man of his times. It was Washington who led a ragtag band of poorly trained farmers and ill-equipped blacksmiths against the world’s greatest power during the Revolutionary War… and won! Washington presided over the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and was unanimously selected by [...]
No CommentsPrimer on Alexis De Tocqueville's "Democracy in America"
- May 5th, 2010 |
- By Robert |
- Category: Civics Campaign, Primers
“Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.” – Alexis de Tocqueville SIGNIFICANCE de Tocqueville (1805-1859) was a French political thinker, public servant, and historian who was sent to America to study the penitentiary system, but ended up traveling across the country observing the people [...]
No CommentsPrimer on Sojourner Truth's "Aint I a Woman"
- May 5th, 2010 |
- By Robert |
- Category: Civics Campaign, Primers
SIGNIFICANCE This is the title of a speech delivered Sojourner Truth in 1851 at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention. Few whites had ever heard a black – much less a black woman who had been enslaved – give a speech at a formal public event. Although uneducated, Truth had remarkable oratorical gifts and a natural [...]
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