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Pulaksi's Black History
Hall of Fame
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Frederick
Douglass, Michael Jordan, Condolezza Rice, Marian Anderson,
Oprah Winfrey, Tiger Woods are just some of the figures that
line the walls of the Black History Hall of Fame--not too
far from Dee Martin's and Claire Belmonte's fifth grade classrooms
on the second floor of the Pulaski Street School. The students
in these two classrooms chose, researched, wrote about, and
then made a representation of a famous black American as part
of their unit on biographies during Black History Month, and
then mounted their figures in their own little Hall of Fame.
One fifth grader (pictured left) chose to make a figure of
Frederick Douglass in his early years when he was a slave
on the Lloyd Plantation. She adjusted Frederick's tie as she
detailed some of his early life.
The students' research, in a flip book format, will be mounted
on the wall next to their figure, so that other students in
the school can stop and learn about each of the people represented
in the Hall of Fame.
One student (pictured left) spent hours working on her book
detailing the life of Marian Anderson, a famous black singer
who started her long career in the 1920's. She gave an overview
of the difficulties that Ms. Anderson faced at a time when
segregation and prejudice made it difficult for a serious
black singer to find an audience. This young woman wrote,
"When she first went to take singing lessons, she was
told they were only for whites. . . She went to Europe to
start her career where blacks were more accepted. . . When
she was 22 she sang in Manhattan's Town Hall, but hardly anybody
showed up because she was black. She stopped singing for 3
months."
Another student detailed the biography of Condolezza Rice.
She writes, "Condolezza Rice faced many challenges in
her life. One of those was the fight to end segregation."
Ms. Anderson and Ms. Rice, two famous African American women
who are linked by history and by their presence in the Pulaski
Hall of Fame.
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