9th Grade ELA - Diversity & Justice

In this video, photojournalist Ben DeSoto discusses "Understanding Poverty," an exhibit featuring images of people and communities affected by poverty and homelessness.

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.

In this poem, the speaker--who is Native American--responds to a series of unspoken discriminatory questions. The reader can deduce the missing questions based on the speaker's responses.

Maleeka gets made fun of at school about her clothes, her grades, even the color of her skin. In this chapter, she talks about getting teased on a school trip and how even her friend Char was ashamed to be seen with her because of her clothes.

Maleeka gets made fun of at school about her clothes, her grades, even the color of her skin. In this chapter, one of her teachers, with white blotches on her face, shows how she's been able to accept the skin she's in.

It may seem like an empty stomach is the worst thing about being poor, but for Junior it’s not being able to save his best friend.

This graphic from Mother Jones magazine depicts income inequality in the United States.

Until Daniel Beaty was 3 years old, his father would "knock knock" on his door every morning. This performance explores the shaping of personal identity in an incarcerated parent's absence.

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.

Solomon Northup was kidnapped and sold into slavery for 12 years before he was freed. This excerpt from his memoir of those years, Twelve Years A Slave, details a New Orleans slave auction.

In this essay, the author identifies vague terminology used by the United States government during World War II to describe their actions toward Japanese Americans and outlines terms that would more appropriately describe the government's actions.

This graphic from Mother Jones depicts income inequality in the United States.

“And I asked him everything that I ever wanted to ask. I asked him to tell me the real story.”

“I wasn't like other kids.”

"Rough on Rats" is a late 19th-century advertisement for a pesticide. The image depicts a stereotypical Chinese man eating a rat.

This cartoon eye chart tests for perfect vision, which sees beyond stereotypes and bias and encourages a lens of compassion.

On April 14, 1947, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld the lower court decision in Mendez v. Westminster, which required the school to integrate and set the stage for Brown v. Board of Education.

“In response to legislation that would have criminalized immigrants, thousands of high school students from across the country walked out of their classrooms and into history.”

In this poem, the speaker traces the senseless killings taking place abroad and at home, with a particular focus on the African-American community. The speaker also calls communities to action to "grow our hope and heal our hearts" in order to live together in peace.

Protesting the death of Alton Sterling and the Baton Rough Police Department’s request for Black Lives Matter demonstrators to clear roadways, Iesha Evans stands in the middle of a street as two Louisiana state troopers, dressed in riot gear, approach to arrest her.

This 1974 print depicts Bloody Sunday, when a group of nonviolent protestors marching for voting rights in 1965 faced police violence at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala.

The Grand Council Fire of American Indians wrote this letter in response to the Chicago mayor's 1927 campaign against the use of British textbooks in public schools. The letter condemns the misrepresentation of Native American history in schools.

The announcement on November 20, 1969 from 89 American Indians – mostly students from colleges and universities – that they were taking over Alcatraz Island, set in motion what would become the longest occupation of a federal facility by Native Americans to date. This report aired a year later on NBC News, in December 1970, six months before the occupation ended.

With the Emancipation Proclamation, President Lincoln freed all enslaved people in “rebellious” states, forbid the military from repressing their freedom and sanctioned their military service for Union forces. This decree made emancipation a clear objective of the American Civil War.