Programming Spotlight: Author & Activist Jamal Joseph

Dr. Joseph reads to students at Belmont from his memoir

Humanitarian, activist, veteran Black Panther, professor, director, playwright, filmmaker, author, poet,  screenwriter Jamal Joseph visited with students at Belmont yesterday.  It was impossible not to feel moved by his brilliant storytelling, hard-won insight, and deep compassion.  Two groups of placement students who have been studying the Black Panther Party for the last six weeks with their Social Studies, ELA, Art teachers and reading specialist, speech language pathologist and school librarian as part of an interdisciplinary collaborative unit participated in the program. 

 

We are extremely grateful to Dr. Joseph for making the time to visit and to Dietrice Bolden for all of her assistance, and to Robert Galinsky for connecting us and Literacy for Incarcerated Teens for generously supporting the visit.--Jessica Fenster-Sparber

Promises to Keep: How Jackie Robinson Changed America by Sharon Robinson

Who better to write a biography on the iconic Jackie Robinson than his own daughter? Sharon Robinson, the baseball player's only daughter, fills this engaging book with a mix of historical facts and family anecdotes. Robinson uses timelines to outline the history of slavery and integration in baseball, and she discusses her father’s athletic achievements in the context of civil rights and the political climate of the day. Primary source materials are highlighted throughout the text, including letters written by Jackie Robinson, death notes sent to the Robinson family, newspaper pages and plenty of pictures, both from the media and from family albums. All of these documents are shown in photographs – readers will get chills looking at the note written in all caps, “WE HAVE ALREADY GOT RID OF SEVERAL LIKE YOU ONE WAS FOUND IN RIVER JUST RECENTLY” (p. 34). This book could easily be used as a resource to teach primary and secondary source documents, or in units on civil rights, biographies and oral histories.

Robinson, Sharon. Promises to Keep: How Jackie Robinson Changed America. New York: Scholastic, 2004.