The Guinea Pigs and I have a tradition....

Every Martin Luther King's day, I read them the full text of "I have a dream."

We use this extraordinary book.  Coretta Scott King wrote its forward; fifteen different illustrators (including Leo & Diane Dillon, James Ransome, Jerry Pinkney, and Carole Byard) each selected and illustrated a specific line (a tableaux, to use the language of our last class session).  Each of the illustrators include a short paragraph explaining what compelled them to select the moment they did.  There is a short biography of King's life at the end.

Collectively, the illustrations stand as an abbreviated history of the civil rights struggle: Jerry Pinkney matched the prelude to the speech in which King spoke of Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation to a painting of a black Union regiment.  The next painting, by Pat Cummings, shows the back of a black man walking down a modern urban street.  It takes the kids a moment to realize that his shadow has broken shackles on; the selected text is "(still) an exile in his own land." Other illustrations show the Woolworth counter sit-ins ("meeting physical force with soul force", police beatings ("unspeakable horrors"), the March on Washington ("whirlwinds of revolt"), and the scene of the speech itself ("the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation").   Each page sparks questions and discussions.  Every year, one of the kids points out something new in either King's language or in one of the illustrations.  Truly, it is a book that every single classroom in America should have.

This year, for the first time, we added King's own voice.   (Just the voice.  Not the video images.  But that's another story for another day.)

The inspiration for this came last night, when I was posting the Roosevelt link.  I happened to be at my parents' house, and my mother (who had been successfully blocking out the cacophony of my family) perked right up and tuned right in the instant she heard Roosevelt's voice.  It made me think of the Radio Age, and wonder if maybe people listened more carefully, when they had fewer images to look at.