Why Do We Learn About Mlk Reading
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Teaching and Learning About Martin Luther King Jr. With The New York Times
How do you celebrate and teach the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., both on the holiday that celebrates his birth, and all twelvemonth long?
Updated: Jan., 2022 , with articles and multimedia linking Dr. Male monarch's work to the contempo Black Lives Matter protests that many believe may exist the largest movement in United states history.
Please note: In honor of Martin Luther King Mean solar day, The Learning Network will not be publishing on Jan. 17, 2022.
Martin Luther King Jr. Day, an annual federal holiday since 1986, celebrates the national civil rights leader who was instrumental in challenging the racial caste system that delineated how millions of Americans lived their lives.
All fifty states celebrate the public holiday on the third Monday in January, but not all states, cities and towns dedicate it solely to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Some packet it equally a broader celebration of both Dr. King and Confederate leaders, according to this 2017 piece, "Celebration of Martin Luther Male monarch Jr. Even so Faces Pushback."
Educational activity Tolerance's "Dos and Don'ts of Jubilant MLK Day" (and "Going the Actress Mile for MLK Day") remind us that although the holiday is simply 1 day — and Black History Month is only ane month — Dr. King's message of equality and justice for all are best embedded in the curriculum all twelvemonth circular.
The New York Times reported on Dr. King'due south entrada and on the civil rights movement in full general, and continues to report on related issues of segregation and inequality today. And on Apr 4, 2018, the 50th anniversary of Dr. King's assassination, The Times published a rich collection, from manufactures and Op-Eds to photos and video, to celebrate his life and legacy.
Below, we've chosen both recent pieces as well as pieces from the Times athenaeum published during Dr. King's lifetime. We besides propose several teaching ideas for connecting his bulletin with our world today.
How do you teach about Dr. King? Let us know in the comments.
Six Ideas for Teaching About the Life and Legacy of Dr. Male monarch
one. How Do His Words Resonate Today?
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What would Dr. Rex make of America today?
In a 2021 piece, "The Words of Martin Luther King Jr. Reverberate in a Tumultuous Fourth dimension," Audra D. S. Burch, John Eligon and Michael Wines write:
He lived and died in a time of tumult and a racial awakening, and so perhaps information technology is no surprise that the 35th national celebration of the life and legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther Rex Jr. on Mon has item resonance amid one of the most traumatic seasons in retentiveness: A raging pandemic. Protest and ceremonious unrest after the killing of Black people by the law. A momentous election. And an insurrection.
Even the title of his terminal volume — "Where Exercise We Go From Here: Chaos or Customs?" — seems ripped from today'due south headline.
"I recall it'southward still an unanswered question," said Clayborne Carson, a history professor at Stanford Academy, referring to the championship of Dr. King's book.
These reporters asked Dr. Carson and others from across the country to choose words from Dr. King and reflect on how they resonate today. Invite your students to read what they had to say, then, maybe, answer the question, "Where do we go from here?" themselves.
For deeper investigation, they might have a look at the special Apr 4, 2018 Times interactive headlined "Martin Luther King Jr.: 50 Years Subsequently, His Battles Live On." Here is how the piece begins:
Martin Luther King Jr. remains frozen in fourth dimension for many Americans. Seared into our consciousness is the man who battled Southern segregation.
We see him continuing before hundreds of thousands of followers in the nation's capital in 1963, proclaiming his dream for racial harmony. Nosotros come across him marching, arms locked with fellow protesters, through the battleground of Alabama in 1965.
But on the 50th ceremony of his death, it is worth noting how his message and his priorities had evolved by the fourth dimension he was shot on that balustrade at the Lorraine Cabin in Memphis in 1968. Dr. Rex was confronting many challenges that remain with us today.
He was battling racism in the Northward then, not just in the South. He was pushing the government to accost poverty, income inequality, structural racism and segregation in cities like Boston and Chicago. He was also calling for an cease to a war that was draining the national treasury of funds needed to finance a progressive domestic agenda.
This may not be the Dr. King that many remember. Nevertheless, his words resonate powerfully — and, perhaps, uncomfortably — today in a state that remains deeply divided on issues of race and class.
They might also watch this Opinion video, in which Dr. Male monarch'due south son, Martin Luther King III, explores his male parent's messages near poverty and workers' rights, which he says are more than relevant now than always:
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My Begetter, Martin Luther Male monarch Jr., Had Some other Dream
If he saw the bug of poverty and income inequality that exist today, he would be greatly disappointed.
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"I have a dream." "Martin Luther Rex Jr. is celebrated every bit a champion for civil rights. But today, I want you to think about a different part of my dad'south legacy. Something that you lot may not know, merely information technology'southward more relevant today than always — his fight against poverty and income inequality." "Merely if a human being doesn't have a job or an income, he has neither life nor liberty, and the possibility for the pursuit of happiness." "When my father was shot in 1968 in Memphis, he was crusading for higher wages for black sanitation workers. Their work weather condition were abysmal — low pay, no sick exit, and many were on welfare. In a speech communication to the workers, Dad said the issue is injustice. The issue is the — " "Refusal of Memphis to be fair and honest in its dealings with its public servants." "Today my dad is revered. But in 1968, he was deeply unpopular. Two-thirds of Americans disapproved of him." "Oh, I've been hit then many times I'yard immune to it." "The F.B.I. said he was a Communist. But he kept protesting anyway. I traveled with him equally a kid throughout Georgia in grooming for the Poor People'southward Entrada. The idea was to rally people to Washington to printing the federal regime to provide jobs and income for the poor. This was his other dream only he did not alive to see it come to fruition. I think if my begetter saw the issues of poverty and income inequality that be today, he would exist greatly disappointed. Dorsum then, 25 1000000 people were living in poverty. Only today, it's close to twoscore million, and some say it'due south much higher, while billionaires pay a lower tax charge per unit than the working class. Americans who teach our kids, deliver our food, bulldoze our buses are struggling." "It is a crime for people to live in this rich nation and receive starvation wages." "If we really desire to celebrate Martin Luther Male monarch Jr. Day and the principles that my begetter stood for, our whole government needs to step up, from creating a cabinet position focused on fighting poverty to passing a universal basic income." "There'southward nothing new about poverty. What is new is that we now have the techniques and the resources to become rid of poverty. And the real question is whether we take the will."
How do your students run into Dr. King's words resonating in their ain lives and communities — and in our nation and effectually the world? Invite them to click through this rich collection, which links to both new and archival pieces, as they address the question, What would Dr. Rex brand of America today?
Equally they work, students might highlight quotes and ideas that pair specially well with other things they are reading, learning about, listening to or viewing. For case, how do they speak to more contemporary works, from visual art on city streets and in galleries, to music like Beyoncé's "Formation" and Childish Gambino's "This Is America," or to novels similar "Dear Martin" by Nic Stone or Angie Thomas'south "The Hate U Give"? Why?
As a culminating activity, a form might create a gallery of images and quotes that bridge Dr. Male monarch's battles with those we are fighting today.
2. Blackness Lives Matter: A 'Battle for the Soul of America'
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'At that place'south a Knee Upon the Neck of Commonwealth': Protesters Rally in D.C.
Thousands gathered in Washington at the Lincoln Memorial on the 57th anniversary of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech to telephone call for racial justice and encourage voting and census participation.
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"George Floyd. George Floyd. George Floyd. George Floyd. "Over the weeks ahead culminating on Ballot Twenty-four hour period, we demand to vote equally if our lives and our livelihoods, our liberties depend on it considering they practice. There is a knee upon the neck of democracy, and our nation can only live so long without the oxygen of freedom." "Demonstration without legislation will non lead to change. Nosotros didn't come out and stand in this oestrus because we didn't accept nothing to exercise. Nosotros come to let you know if we will come up out by these numbers in the heat and stand in the heat, that we will stand in the polls all mean solar day long." "What nosotros need is change. And we're at a point where we can go that change. Just we accept to stand up together. Nosotros have to vote." Crowd: "Breonna Taylor. Say her proper name: Breonna Taylor. Say her name: Breonna Taylor." "I wish George were here to encounter this right now. Everybody out here right now, our leaders, they need to follow the states while we are marching to enact laws to protect united states." "Jacob Blake!" Crowd: "Jacob Blake!" "Jacob Blake!" Crowd: "Jacob Blake!" "There are two systems of justice in the United States. There'southward a white system. And there's a Black system. The Black organisation ain't doing so well. But we're going to stand up. I ask everyone to stand up. No justice!" Crowd: "No peace!"
The protests that broke out in the summer of 2020 in response to the death of George Floyd and many others became what scholars believe may be the largest movement in United states of america history. In June, Joe Biden, then on the campaign trail, noted, "Fifty-fifty Dr. Male monarch's bump-off did non have the worldwide touch that George Floyd'southward death did … People are really realizing this is a boxing for the soul of America."
Do your students concord? Did any of them attend whatever of the marches that reached every corner of America, and many places around the world? Do they know whatever of the thousands of Americans who streamed to the Lincoln Memorial in September, 2020 to rekindle the spirit of the 1963 March on Washington?
Yous might ask them: What wisdom can Dr. King and the civil rights motility of the 1960s offering the activists of the Black Lives Matter motility? Why? In this article, those who fought with Dr. King offer seven lessons and warnings about both how to march and how to build a movement. Which do yous recall are nearly useful for Black Lives Matter activists today? If yous have studied the work of Dr. Male monarch, are in that location any you would add together to the listing? Why?
3. Protests Yesterday and Today
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Exercise y'all have to exist disobedient if you lot want justice? How would your students answer?
How much do your students know nigh the civil rights motion? Test their knowledge with this 13-question quiz The Times published in 2019 in accolade of Dr. Rex'south 90th birthday. Then consider: What did working to advance racial and social justice look similar in the 1950s and 60s? What does it look like now?
In a 2015 Magazine article, "Education Martin Luther King Jr. in the Age of Freddie Gray," Syreeta McFadden writes near discussing "Letter From Birmingham Jail" with her students at a community college in Manhattan:
… We returned to King'south letter, in which he draws a distinction betwixt just and unjust laws. They didn't know about this King, I constitute, the ane who fought the law. In their view, the ceremonious rights movement was embodied in Male monarch the Christlike leader, who stands for peace, love and alliance.
I told the students that King went to jail a lot for peace, honey and alliance.
We talked about Baltimore, where the constabulary had just killed Freddie Gray and street protests were swelling to an uprising. My students were skeptical of headlines and commentary that called for irenic protest. One of the students noted that the police were trigger-happy, also, and they were placing people in mortal danger just to protect some buildings from being damaged.
"A building is not more than valuable than a person," she said. Nigh of the others nodded in agreement. More than began to speak. The rote discussion was becoming impassioned, cacophonous:
"But at that place's a difference between rioting and peaceful protest. …"
"Are we maxim property is more valuable than a human beingness?"
"That'southward like saying to protest is unlawful. …"
"What does 'peaceful' even mean?"
Read well-nigh the residuum of the discussion that day, and think well-nigh the implications for your own classroom. How does teaching about Dr. Male monarch and the civil rights movement look different today, later movements like #takeaknee and #MeToo, and protests from the Women's March to the events in Charlottesville, Va., in August, 2017 and the Black Lives Matter movement?
What about subsequently the pro-Trump anarchism at the U.Due south. Capitol on January. six, 2021? On The Learning Network, we asked students what they thought about that anarchism, and many of them spoke passionately on what they saw as a double standard in how the police treated these insurgents and the manner they have treated Black Lives Matter protesters. Do your students agree?
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To think more about Dr. King and the history of protest, students might read ane or both of the following.
In a 2017 Op-Ed, "Which Martin Luther Male monarch Are We Celebrating Today?," Jason Sokol writes:
In this flavour of political polarization, it is tempting to hope that we can unite in celebration of Dr. King. Merely celebrators ought to know whom they are honoring. Dr. Rex died for striking garbage workers and beseeched his government to protect the vulnerable. He had a bulletin for those who would target immigrants or wall off America from the world. In a 1967 speech, he declared: "Our loyalties must get ecumenical rather than national." Instead of policing their borders, nations should "develop an overriding loyalty to flesh as a whole."
The alternative was unacceptable. "History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of detest." To accolade Dr. King is to follow a different path.
And in a 2020 Op-Ed, "Without the Right to Protest, America Is Doomed to Fail," the activist Patrisse Cullors looks at the Black Lives Matter motility as role of a long history:
Protestation is the foundational variable of the American experiment. Every pivot bespeak in the history of our state is rooted in it. From the Boston Tea Party of 1773 to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther Male monarch Jr.'s immortal "I Accept a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, a nation "of the people, by the people" is only as robust and defensible equally its protections of the right to protest.
Protests led by Black Americans, though often unrecognized, take been particularly crucial to every great political move in this country. From Crispus Attucks (the first martyr of the Revolutionary State of war) to Ida B. Wells and the Black suffragists fighting for women's right to vote, Black and brown people take e'er protested for comprehensive systemic change and liberty for all Americans, even when they've been denied freedom themselves.
She too asks:
As the Black Lives Thing movement continues to grow, I ask that anyone proud to be role of (or hoping to join) our always-evolving country continue to educate themselves on both the roots of and the reasoning behind calls for "nonviolence." Are such calls seeking solutions, or are they enervating silence from protesters?
Accept your students read these pieces in preparation for a word on the role of protest in America in the past and today. What lines resonate? Where do they stand up on questions almost "disobedience" and violence as protest? What questions practice these pieces raise most activism in 2021? What advice or help exercise they offer?
4. A Twenty-four hours of Service
The Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service, signed into police by President Beak Clinton in 1994, challenges Americans to make the holiday into a day of active volunteer service to honor Dr. King.
Take students research ideas in the spirit of service here, and then pattern a day of service for themselves and their classmates, or for their family members, and present these ideas to their class. They can also find resource in our lesson programme Making a Difference: Ideas for Giving, Service Learning and Social Activity.
five. 'I Accept a Dream'
Invite your students to scout Dr. King'southward "I Accept a Dream" speech. Why is it nonetheless then powerful over fifty years later on?
That's the question we enquire in our Text to Text lesson programme that pairs Dr. King's words with an article by the Times volume critic Michiko Kakutani, "The Lasting Power of Dr. Male monarch's Dream Speech." In information technology, we pose questions about the figurative language and other poetic and oratorical devices, such as repetition and theme, he uses, as well as questions about what information technology still has to say to united states today. There are also several ideas for assessing how much progress on Dr. Rex's dream our nation has made since he spoke.
Consider, for example, Adeel Hassan's 2019 interview with Dr. Male monarch'due south son well-nigh how far, or close, we are to achieving his father'due south dream. Martin Luther King III said:
This vision that he engaged in and talked almost, elements of it have become true. Only the hope is that nosotros'd exist much further every bit a nation. I retrieve nosotros're going through a metamorphosis. And what I mean by that is all of the sick, or all of the negative, has to come out for the positive to emerge because there'southward no manner that we can go dorsum to the past.
Students tin can be invited to read the residue of the piece then post answers to our Student Opinion question, What Does Dr. King'southward Legacy Mean to You lot?
half dozen. Songs in Celebration
Have students listen to some of the songs written in honour of Dr. King, and then write their own song. For example, encounter Stevie Wonder's "Happy Birthday Song," originally written for Dr. King afterward there was opposition to creating the federal vacation, above.
Students might besides listen to this 1 by James Taylor, which is not part of the Billboard list, in a higher place. Hither is the outset stanza:
Permit u.s. plow our thoughts today to Martin Luther Rex
and recognize that in that location are ties between united states, all men and women living on the Earth.
Ties of hope and love, sister and alliance, that nosotros are spring together
in our desire to see the earth become a place in which our children can grow costless and stiff.
Nosotros are spring together by the task that stands earlier us and the road that lies ahead.
Nosotros are bound and we are leap.
For additional ideas for education history and social studies with music see our lesson plans Teaching With Protest Music and The Ten-Dollar Founding Father Without a Father: Teaching and Learning With 'Hamilton.'
Lesson Plans and More From The Learning Network
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How Dr. King Inverse a Sanitation Worker's Life
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther Male monarch Jr. came to Memphis in 1968 to march with sanitation workers who were protesting low wages and poor working conditions. Cleophus Smith marched with him. He's still on the job.
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If Dr. Rex came back and seen the way things are, he wouldn't be pleased with it. No, he wouldn't exist pleased at all. All right. I call us sanitation engineers because we're supposed to run the job, not permit the job run u.s.a.. I was 24 years one-time when I started. Merely dorsum then, it was a different brawl game. Dorsum and so, the working condition, it was unbearable. After three weeks, when I got my first cheque, I broke down and cried. We were working full time. And at the same time, the wages were so low, we was qualified to get nutrient stamps. We were determined that we was going to get a matrimony organized, that we would run into justice. We were striking about the wages, off-white handling and dignity. When we heard that Dr. King was coming to Memphis to help us in that sanitation strike, we were very surprised. Nosotros knew then that there was somebody that cared about our struggle. We was at Bricklayer Temple this particular night. Dr. King said, the Lord allowed me to go to the mountaintop and to expect over into the promised state. And he said, I might not get there with you, merely we will brand it to the promised state. Everybody was simply jubilated, but excited, not knowing the side by side solar day would be a solar day of silence. Considering of Dr. Male monarch's death, that was one of the reasons that Mayor Loeb went on and signed that marriage into a decree. We got what we wanted, only at the same time, we lost the great leader. "He never idea in terms of his personal welfare, but always in terms of the cause which he defended his life to." I really had a lot of animosity. I came from the streets. I was a street thug. And Dr. King was the one that taught me, through his humility and his leadership. I said, that's the mode I'd like to be. "— united will never be defeated. The workers united will never be defeated. The workers united volition never be defeated. The workers united will never be defeated." There are notwithstanding some unsolved problems demand to exist solved. "What do we want?" "15." "When do nosotros want it?" "Now!" "What practice we desire?" "15." "When exercise want it?" "Now!" It is what it is until somebody tin roll his sleeves up and get out there and fight.
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/15/learning/lesson-plans/teaching-martin-luther-king-jr.html
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