Exploring Diversity

In this poem, the speaker explores how our culture would be lacking—in people, in music, in movements, in contributions—without contributions of African Americans.

This excerpt explains that families are defined by love, caring and sharing, not the number or gender of its members.

This excerpt focuses on the lives of African American students during Freedom Summer. After reading Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech in class in 1963, students in main character C.J.'s school are asked to share their dreams at an assembly.

“By the time I was in the second grade, everyone was calling me Raymond.”

This text explores the relationship between Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, two self-made men whose lives intersected near the end of America's Civil War.

In this excerpt from his book, Walking with the Wind, John Lewis describes his involvement in the sit-ins in Nashville, Tenn., in the spring of 1960.

To cover is to downplay aspects of our identity that make us different from mainstream society. Kenji Yoshino argues that, although we live in an age where the law prohibits many forms of discrimination, people still face pressure to hide who they are.