1. Anchor Text: The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander, chapter 2, “The Lockdown,” Non-Fiction text

Lexile: 1450

Summary: Since this book is at such a high lexile level, I am including only Chapter Two, “The Lockdown.” This chapter from Michelle Alexander’s book traces the causes for the high rate of incarceration for people of color, especially African-Americans, in the United States. It highlights the history of how the Jim Crow laws in the South have found a new place in the prison system, where many inmates of color have lengthy incarceration sentences for nonviolent offenses, such as drug possession. Alexander also writes about the effects of a felony record in the U.S. and connects it to the loss of many rights, such as voting and access to resources. The impact on entire families, from denial of housing and other resources, to effects on the nuclear family, are good background information for my students to build their knowledge about our theme. Since the book is at such a high lexile, it will require a teacher read-aloud with several guiding questions for small group and whole group discussion throughout the chapter.

2. Bridge Text: Two political cartoons

Summary: This will consist of two political cartoons. One is entitled, “Build that wall.”

https://i.redd.it/7nwiuntdsqzz.jpg

The Native Americans are building a wall because the Puritans and the Pilgrims refuse to learn their language and culture. The reader can connect the cartoonist’s message to current events and President Trump’s insistence on building a wall with Mexico. Students will be able to ponder what would have happened if the indigenous people had turned away the early European immigrants, insisting that they change their culture, language, and way of live.

The second political cartoon is entitled, “The Americanese Wall - as Congressman [John Lawson] Burnett would build it.”

https://iowaculture.gov/sites/default/files/primary-sources/images/history-education-pss-global-americanese-source.jpg

It is a reference to the Literacy tests some people advocated for to keep recently immigrants, now citizens, from voting. Both cartoons depict irony in showing how helping and accepting immigrants (in the first cartoon) has been part of the American tradition, and how rejecting immigrants really is the epitome of being anti-American.

3. Mentor Text release to small groups: Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell

Lexile: 1300

Summary: Next, we will read a first-person narrative set in the Appalachian Mountains about a young woman named Ree Dolly. Set in modern times, her father is a Meth cook, and her mother is too mentally ill to take care of Ree and her two younger brothers. The book has themes of gender discrimination, abject poverty, the drug culture, and sub-cultures within those groups. Ree feels stuck and wishes she could just leave and join the military, escaping the hunger, abuse, and neglect. However, she feels duty-bound to take care of her mother and siblings. When a sheriff visits the home and informs Ree that her father put up the family house and land as a bail bond, Ree realizes she must find her father, get him to turn himself in, or she, her mother, and siblings will be homeless. In the book for people growing up in abject poverty and the drug culture, their only two choices are to stay loyal to their dysfunctional families by not snitching, or to ask for help from police and other government agencies, resulting in the splitting up of the family. In the novel, the rights of children get violated either way. By reading this novel in small, mixed reading ability groups, students will get assistance both in reading the high-lexile novel and discussing the challenging topics.

4. Bridge Text: American Progress, John Gast, 1872, artwork

https://picturinghistory.gc.cuny.edu/john-gast-american-progress-1872/

Summary: The bridge text is artwork representing the concept of Manifest Destiny, a U.S. doctrine justifying westward expansion throughout the 19th century. In the art, the students can analyze the artist’s message, the implicit bias against the Native American people, and the westward expansion model of dominating the land via progress and technology. Missing are the points of view of the indigenous people as they were forced to migrate ever further west. Also, there is no understanding of the ecological impact such progress resulted in, such as the Dust Bowl and widespread starvation on the plains when the crops failed due to locusts, lack of crop rotation, drought, and prairie fires. This piece of art is a good bridge text because it is accessible to students at any reading level, and it is clear that the indigenous are being forced to migrate. There are so many critical elements in the piece that I would suggest using the quadrant method to close read and analyze the piece section by section.

5. Mentor Text release to strategic pairs: NPR Podcast “Rez Life” by David Treuer; excerpt from novel

Lexile: 1000

Summary: This text is a good follow-up to “American Progress,” since it shows a missing perspective, the indigenous point of view. However, instead of speaking about native culture as a deficit, Treuer focuses on the beauty of his culture. He emphasizes the assets that indigenous people hold valuable as part of a communal culture. Instead of the stark version of a reservation that so many are familiar with, “Rez Life” resonates with hope and joy. It is a kind of disruptive text because many students will not be familiar with this point of view.

6. Stretch Text: “Cesar Chavez: His fight for farm workers” an article from CommonLit, a biography about Cesar Chavez

Lexile: 1190

https://www.commonlit.org/en/texts/cesar-chavez-his-fight-for-the-farm-workers?search_id=17033760

Summary: This is a biographical article about the life and work of Cesar Chavez and his activism on the behalf of migrant workers, especially Latino migrant worker families. Since the lexile is higher, some students might need support reading it while others can read it independently. The article details the plight of many farmers who lost their land during the Great Depression and had to resort to migrant farm work, including Chavez’s own family. The migrant farm labor consisted of long hours, low wages, unsafe working conditions, and child labor. Determining that their would be strength in numbers, Chavez collectivized the people to form cooperatives, an early form of the worker’s union. Since many of the migrant workers had limited English or education, they would often not have the resources to fight for better wages, conditions, and treatment. Cesar Chavez organized the people through peaceful protest, including going on hunger strikes himself to bring attention to the plight of the migrant farm workers in the United States.

7. Mentor Text release to individuals: A collection of black and white photos and direct quotes from Japanese internees at U.S. internment camps for Japanese citizens during World War II, entitled, “Dorothea Lange’s Censored Photographs of FDR’s Japanese Concentration Camps”

Summary: The photos were seized by the federal government and stored in the National Archives, and they were not available and published until 2006. The website is organized with photos and quotes interspersed throughout the page. Beginning with the round-up of the Japanese-American citizens, it traces their journey to the camps via bus and train, reminiscent of photos of Jewish refugees who were taken to concentration camps during the Holocaust. The irony is that the events were happening simultaneously; however, the internment of Japanese-American citizens has gone largely undocumented. The website includes quotes from those in power who made the decision to inter the Japanese-Americans, so there is a whole story through primary source documents of quotes and photos from the time period. The collection is very graphic, stark, and haunting, and it will challenge students thinking about how some citizens have been treated in the United States.

8. Stretch Text: Hidden figures: Young reader’s edition by Margot Lee Shetterly, Non-Fiction book

Lexile: 1120

Summary: The story narrates the true events of the African-American women called human computers during the early years of NASA (then called NACA) and their contributions to the development of NASA. Although the women had the same qualifications and advanced mathematical degrees that the white women and men of NASA had, they were kept in a separate wing of NASA, with their own lunch area, bathrooms, and work areas. The women could not be promoted despite the fact that one in particular, Katherine Johnson, was a child math prodigy and knew more math than anyone at NASA. The novel renders the Jim Crow laws and the Supreme Court’s case, Plessy v. Ferguson or “separate but equal,” in the real-life stories of these women, and how they had to fight for equality under the law.

9. Disruptive: For my disruptive text, I plan to use an animated video from The Atlantic magazine called “Bruce Western on mass incarceration.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/404890/prison-inherited-trait/?utm_source=eb

Summary: This is a short, animated 2 ½ minute video that gives a very clear, yet stark look at how the majority of the incarcerated population is people of color. In visuals and graphics, the video compares the percentage of people of color in the general population. It also shows how the percentage of people of color is disproportionately represented in prisons in the United States. The focus is on the last decade and how significantly the prison population has exploded in the U.S. It is a very short video, but it is filled with powerful images and graphics of the increase in the incarceration of predominantly African-American men in the past 10 years in the United States. What makes this a disruptive text is that instead of just a focus on men of color being incarcerated at high rates in comparison to other industrialized nations, it also focuses on the disruption of the family and how the family members are impacted. Students will consider how mass incarceration forces families to become displaced, affecting the next several generations. The video ends with alternatives to both imprisonment and the death penalty.

10. Anchor Text: The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, chapter 2, “The Lockdown.”

Summary: Return to the Anchor text and read it again. Focus on the essential question, Throughout history, has the United States treated all citizens equally under the law? Since the students have been exposed to many different examples from diverse groups throughout history, they can begin to answer this question in a much more substantive way. There are so many more multimodal texts I would have included in this text set because there is so much content on this topic. For further research, students could begin to select their own multimodal texts to read on this same theme, pursuing those stories that are personally of interest to them. They can create a summative product and share their new learnings with the whole class, furthering everyone's knowledge on the topic of equality in the United States.