I'm told I'm a statistic. I'm told that my young black sisters are disease-ridden... but we are greater than what society tells us we are.
Jurnee Smollett-BellRead
Oftentimes, a history book in school will talk about the Underground Railroad as if it's one sentence. But thousands of people decided to run, and they single-handedly changed the trajectory of our nation. By running to the North, they put a face to slavery, which recruited a lot of abolitionists.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the significant impact of individuals in the fight against slavery through their courageous actions.
Jurnee Smollett-Bell emphasizes that the Underground Railroad was not merely a historical footnote but a monumental movement fueled by the bravery of countless individuals who escaped slavery. Their actions brought attention to the harsh realities of slavery, mobilizing support for abolitionists and altering the course of American history.
In practice
During a lecture on American history, this quote can serve to inspire students about the importance of individual actions in social movements.
I'm told I'm a statistic. I'm told that my young black sisters are disease-ridden... but we are greater than what society tells us we are.
The great bulk of the legal voters of the South were men who owned no slaves; their homes were generally in the hills and poor country; their facilities for educating their children, even up to the point of reading and writing, were very limited; their interest in the contest was very meagre--what there was, if they had been capable of seeing it, was with the North; they too needed emancipation.
Slavery is nothing to joke about. The history of this nation's involvement with slavery is nothing to pass off in a joke.
Never to forget the Holocaust was not only against Jews. It was mostly against Jews but it was also against homosexuals, gypsies and, let's not forget, people with disability.
Open your refrigerator door, and you summon forth more light than the total amount enjoyed by most households in the 18th century. The world at night, for much of history, was a very dark place indeed.
If we trace the history of any nation backwards into the past, we come at last to a period of myths and traditions which eventually fade away into impenetrable darkness.
We have a long, ugly history of white supremacy in this country, ranging from Jim Crow laws to keep African Americans down to the 1924 Immigration Act to keep non-Europeans out.
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