Illustrator: Historic Photographs
Grade Level: Third through Eighth
Summary:
Toni Morrison has imagined the
emotions and thoughts of people from historic photographs in her book, Remember: The Journey to School Integration.
Morrison’s text infuses additional life into these striking photographs and
skillfully illustrates for children what segregation and discrimination looked
like before and during the United States civil rights movement and school
integration. Morrison illuminates for students Jim Crow laws and civil rights
milestones in her compact introduction to this collection through historic
facts, personal recollections, and literary metaphors.
Element 3: Exploring Issues of Social Injustice
Educators
will find Remember: The Journey to School
Integration a wonderful resource for introducing their students to school
and social segregation in the United States before the historic Brown v. Board of Education ruling of
1954. Morrison explains to her readers that years ago there were many places in
the United States where children of different races could not attend school
together. The photos and imagined internal dialogue in this book allow students
to see the impact of discrimination and segregation on the lives of black
children in their: schools, during private play, and in public spaces. By
pairing historic photos with imagined internal dialogue Morrison adeptly
provides readers glimpses of the hurt, frustration, fear, danger, and injustice
of this time period as well as the strength, resilience, bravery, and hope.
These
photos and text explore segregation as it existed in schools, classrooms,
theaters, buses, at water fountains, and more and invites readers to
emotionally participate in the experiences pictured. This vantage point
provides fertile material for educators to explore with their students how
discrimination and segregation impacted children’s lives then, and what effects
it continues to have on communities and people today.
At
the end of, Remember: The Journey to
School Integration is a
timeline outlining key events in civil rights and school desegregation history
as well as photo notes identifying the dates, places, and details associated
with each photograph. Both of these resources will further assist teachers and
students who wish to continue their exploration of social injustice to
better understand people's experiences during segregation.
Activities:
Educators interested in exploring issues of social injustice will find this beautiful book provides many meaningful opportunities to explore racism and oppression in ways their students will find enlightening and engaging (see 'Classroom Resources' above for the publisher's curriculum recommendations). Listed below are two activities I've designed for use in the classroom:
Activity 1: Ask young students (grades 3-5) to thumb through the book
and choose a photograph that captures their imagination. Try to encourage
students to select a range of different photographs. Ask students to imagine
what it felt like to be one of the people in the photograph they've selected
and have them write a narrative or draw a picture with their own caption from
that individual's perspective. Have students, in small groups, share what they
have created and why they chose the photo that they did.
Next discuss timelines and how they
can be used to help us understand history. Using the photo guide at the back of
the book, have students line up in order of when the photos they've selected
were taken. Students' projects can be displayed in timeline order with
photocopies of the photographs that inspired them, along with important dates
in civil rights history.
Student groups using their selected photo and research should create a short dramatic act that either begins or ends with the students posed in the same positions as the people in the photo. The primary goal of this project is to have students bring their selected photo to life through dialogue they have scripted and shaped through their research.
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