Literary activity

Welcome back to school! I hope you all had a great Holiday!

We're kicking off the new year with lots of activities. This is an historic January. We will get a new President this year. Barack Obama will be inaugurated on January 20. The day before the swearing in of America's first black President is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. This nation has come a long way from the days of pushing individuals to the back of a bus because of the color of their skin.

Try this activity with your students--choose a photograph taken during the times of the Civil Rights movement and have your students write a poem or a story about that photograph. The following is a poem I wrote in high school.

Southern Streetcar (After a photograph by Robert Frank)
I
In the first seat
of the streetcar
sits a white woman.
Her cheeks sag
to join her slight double chin.
The blind on the window
covers her forehead.
She holds a book,
a closed Bible,
on her lap.

II
Two children
sit in
the second seat,
dressed in their Sunday best.
The older one looks like a young soldier,
staunch and solid,
with slightly flared nostrils.
By almost arching his back,
he avoids touching
his little brother,
whose fingers
are sticky from his candy.

III
And in the third seat
sits the black man,
with his blazing eyes
turned skyward.
His shirt
hangs loosely
over his shallow chest,
like water
polishing a flat stone.

Amy Maida Young, 1989