Write That I . . . for the Civil Rights Movement
Lesson by Linda Christensen, as applied by Deborah Menkart
Portrait of Betita Martínez. Bob Fitch Photography Archive, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries
In July 2018, the Duke University Franklin Humanities Institute, in collaboration with the SNCC Legacy Project and Teaching for Change, hosted a 2018 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Teacher Institute: “The Civil Rights Movement: Grassroots Perspectives from 1940- 1980.”
During the Institute, Teaching for Change had participants write about key people in the history of the Southern freedom struggle using a lesson by Linda Christensen called “Unleashing Sorrow and Joy: Writing Poetry from History and Literature” in Teaching for Joy and Justice: Re-Imagining the Language Arts Classroom (Rethinking Schools, 2009). As Christensen explains, this poetry-writing activity encourages participants to write from the point of view of people in history.
Many years ago, I found a wonderful poem about a woman on a balcony. The poem started, “Write that I . . . .” In the jumble of my file cabinets and my moves, I lost the original poem, but I didn’t lose my love for this opening, so I wrote a poem from the point of view of Molly Craig, the main character in the movie Rabbit-Proof Fence to use as a model with students.
Grade Level: Middle School+
Time Required: One to several class periods
Procedure
Part 1: The Mixer (Optional)
This activity allows all of the students to begin to learn about the activists who will become the subjects of their own and one another’s poems. Select short bios of Civil Rights Movement veterans from any of the role-play activities found throughout Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching and this website. You can find bios in “Resistance 101,” “Women Make History,” “Stepping into Selma,” and “Meet Medgar Evers.”
Distribute the bios you’ve chosen, then follow the procedures and distribute the interview sheets from “Resistance 101.”
Part 2: Poetry
Choose one of the poems that follow, written by participants in our NEH Institute about Civil Rights Movement veterans. Follow Linda Christiansen’s protocol:
I ask students to highlight the poem with two colors of highlighters: “Highlight the repeating lines in one color. For example, ‘Write that I’ is a repeating line. What other lines repeat? Highlight the details about [the character’s] life in the other color” . . . I point out that the poem uses a series of phrases that help weave the content together: Write that I; tell them that I; when you write my story, say that I . . . . If they don’t notice, I show them that I use specific information: names of people and places, dialogue from the movie, characters’ actions.
Once students understand that frame of repeating lines — write that I, say that I, when you tell my story — I encourage them to add phrases that would hook their poem forward. “What other phrases could you use to anchor your stanza?”
. . . I encourage them to think about minor characters, bystanders, and objects in the landscape. For example, when we studied about the Soweto Uprising, students listed Hector Pieterson, who was killed by the police during the uprising; Hector’s sister; the photographer; and a teacher whose students walked out. But they also listed the school building, the flag, the bullet that killed Hector.
Students will then be ready to begin writing their own “Write that I” poems about the Civil Rights Movement veteran they chose or were assigned.
Students can learn more about the work of their activist from SNCC Digital (www.snccdigital.org), the CRMvet.org website, and other resources.
Students should go through at least one revision of their poem after feedback from the teacher.
Part 3: Read Aloud
Once students have completed their poems, have each student read their poem aloud to the class, if time allows. If time is short, students can choose their favorite three lines to read aloud in a read-around.
Part 4: Additional Activities (Optional)
Create a book of the poems to include in the school library or elsewhere.
Submit student poems for publication in the school newspaper, etc.
Sample Poems
Sprouting Revolution: Betita Martínez
By Billy Rutherford
Write that revolutionary roots run through me,
roots that sprouted up from a new seed
planted with my father’s words that I still heed.
He told stories of the campesinos rising,
Zapata marching in from across the horizon
coming to Mexico City,
laying rest to the old sun
our people dancing to the beat of a bold gun,
my heart racing in my father’s lap like Zapatistas on the run.
Write that I didn’t rely on the lies I heard in school,
for my father educated me so I wouldn’t grow up a fool.
I knew Uncle Sam bombed Veracruz and spilled my people’s blood,
and that stars and stripes meant conquest was roaring in like a flood.
Write that even as I grew up learning revolution,
I believed my own skin was adding to pollution.
My suburban school had a freshly cut green lawns and pale faces
telling me that brown kids, like Black kids, were nothing but disgraces.
Going into town, I learned to navigate the back of the bus,
being told to accept second-class status without a fuss.
Write that I am Betita Martínez, whose name reveals I am a Chicana,
and I claim this name to stand with the people, my people, la Raza.
Remember that I once hid this name and called myself Elizabeth Sutherland,
scared that I would not put food on the table if the white man knew my motherland.
Write that as a grown woman, being a publisher in New York did not gain my father’s praise,
for he wanted more for me than some change, a picket fence, and kids to raise,
so he pulled me outside the Big Apple, beyond the belly of the beast
to Cuba, where the revolution was sweeter than Snapple, rising like bread with double yeast.
Write that socialist Cuba created a socialist me,
and I came back to the beast’s gut with new eyes to see
that the life I must live I can’t find in soap operas on TV,
so instead I joined the struggle, coming to SNCC’s office excitedly.
Write that the four young souls ripped from their church in Birmingham
sent me South in ‘64, quitting my job with a mission in hand,
to chase freedom that summer,
traveling distances like a marathon runner.
Write that my mother’s white skin and European roots didn’t shield me from white supremacy,
and that shared oppression led to my belief in Brown and Black solidarity,
a bond that lasted past SNCC’s move to be all-black,
which left me with confusion and a bag to pack.
Write that I went to the part of Mexico they call new but I know is old
land that colonization ripped from home to fit an American mold.
I next went to the bay and ran for governor
seeking to become the people’s comforter.
Write that I was not red or blue, dissatisfied with the two-party system,
knowing that both options dull our mind and keep us in prison.
I’ve seen identity politics do much of the same,
keeping the downtrodden apart without seeing who’s truly to blame.
Write that I see white supremacy crushing black, brown, poor without stopping to hesitate.
Write that I wrote, “let us tear down all such prisons together. Go liberate!”
Write that I, That We: Reverend Frederick D. Reese
By Jessica Kibblewhite
Selma, you know the one.
More of us in jail than on the voting rolls: 18th of February, 1965;
On the Edmund Pettus Bridge:
Reconstruction, we’re not done with you;
Civil Rights Act, 1964; you weren’t keeping promises (again)...
And so we marched. Again.
Tall. Strong. Many.
Make sure you write what we were moving towards: More than freedom, but humanity heinously overdue;
Jimmie Lee Jackson, reaching for your mother, fell;
Murdered by a man who would only serve six months:
Police, you know what they did then, as now.
Write that we, on that steel-arched bridge, saw the grand dragon standing with his men in blue; Confederate flags giddy that day through the tear gas and screams; children, too:
They never spare a one.
Whips and wire: you tried to cut us down;
But write that the world saw you, and we rose against (again);
you couldn’t keep us down with your
Guns and your fear;
And still we rise. We rose.
And me, as many, like phoenix;
Upwards from this day and onwards;
Write that I kept marching after that.
Your fear was not mine; I knew how to fly with fire;
I knew that voting is the sword we’d use to slay that dragon,
and the other reptiles that crawl around him, green and afraid;
Write that I left the Edmund Pettus and continued on to
The Dallas County Voter’s League, 1965, and
became the president.
Write that I had strength aplenty, resistant to your flames;
I was a proud teacher and forged unions, and so
Reverend King came to Selma (again) and we organized;
Ever committed to the strength of scholars in classrooms
And beyond its crumbling, segregated walls.
As a reverend — revered — and Principal of a school,
I later became a Councilman and changed the minds of those
Moneyed men at Walmart to promote men and women to
Managers;
And later, because history has a funny way of burning coals,
Write that I now have three miles of Route 80 in Klan country, USA,
that bears my name:
Reverend Frederick D. Reese,
And please, don’t forget to write that I looked
Damn good in a hat, and always wore a suit
and tie.
Ella Baker ‘We Who Believe in Freedom Cannot Rest Until it Comes’
By Catherine Thompson
I was born into the freedom struggle
My grandmother, “Bet” Ross introduced me
she refused to marry the man chosen by her enslaver
Her resistance was punished brutally
But she danced until dawn at every celebration —
her spirit unbroken and resilient.
My formative years at Shaw nurtured me intellectually
Deepening my understanding of the world around me
Cultivating my resistance to unjust authority.
I advocated for the right of classmates to wear silk stockings
not because I wore them
but because it should be their right to wear what they wanted.
It was the twenties after all.
Write that I found a new home in New York
at the Harlem branch library and the YWCA.
That I thrived on those streets
immersed in a black political life and community organizing
hungry to learn everything I didn’t know.
Write that I began networking there —
Cultivating a black book of activists to call on from anywhere.
I organized with the NAACP and SCLC for years,
I was indispensable in each.
But let them know that I was an outsider within.
I defied top-down leadership
challenged undemocratic structures and
transgressed gender norms —
like when I distributed copies of the Crisis in pool-rooms.
I refused to pander to male egos.
I believed in the movement, not in organizations.
I built trust and relationships
through discussion, debate, and struggle.
Know that I was interested in creating leadership, not leaders.
In truth, my ego was never at stake.
“Strong people don’t need strong leaders,” y’all.
I think that’s why they call me the godmother of SNCC.
Write that I’m Miss Ella Baker and I said this:
“We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.”
For Clyde Kennard
By Youssef Carter
“Ode to the Death Angel”
It’s true my eyes are dim
My hands are growing cold
Well take me on then
That I might at least become my soul
Clyde Kennard wrote those lines three days before his death in the summer of 1963; while unjustly imprisoned due to his attempt to integrate Mississippi Southern University, he contracted colon cancer and was still made to labor on the cotton plantation of Parchman Penitentiary. This military veteran was denied medical attention. Due to his failing health, he was later released but not exonerated. Weighing less than 100 pounds, he wrote those words as his body was rapidly deteriorating.
If by chance you should drive
along highway 32
and cross the Parchman
And you should pass a large tree
Standing wide
Tall and proud
At its base
There is an etching
Of a name
Passed down to these tired bones
From wrinkled hands
Calloused from many harvests
Sentenced to the hard labor
Of trying to make a way
When there was none
If by chance you should find that tree
Know that at its base
Is where I buried a silent prayer
Into a soil burned by the bloody sweat
Pulled from the backs of a blues people
Sentenced to the hard labor
Of trying to build a nation
Behind enemy lines
If by chance you should plunge your hands
Into that Mississippi soil
Know that at its base
Is where I asked for the strength
To die a good death
If by chance you should remember me
Write that I was strong
Tell my mother
That I did not die alone
My Lord was with me
If by chance you should remember me
Write that I was brave
Write that I tried to free my people
Write that I tried to free you too
Write that I am still here
I am standing with you
Encouraging you to hold the line
Dear sons and daughters
You still have a long way to go
You still have a lot of ground to cover
Not only can you do it
You must
Dorie Ladner
By Raymond Brookter
Write that I…
From Palmer’s Crossing came
To protest burning crosses
To protest daily losses
Of dignity
To protest right to our names
To protest against an enemy
That would demean and disrespect
To protest an enemy that with cowardly mobs
Would take your neck.
Write that I...
Lived in a state where no one seemed to need us
Except to hold one race supreme.
They called us bottom feeders.
Daily abuse of soul, body, and mind
Made us wonder if the time
Would ever come when we could be free?
In these fields would we shed blood for Liberty?
Write that I…
Read about heroes and heroines of justice
In days when the world sure needed ’em
As a teenage girl, I dreamed about freedom.
Yet told in Mississippi that such visions were vanity
For Blacks in those times it was considered insanity
Yet holding feelings within
Seemed to be more of a sin
Being told you could be anything in this nation
But could not win.
Write that I…
Wouldn’t let a clerk manhandle me
Wouldn’t let a racist jerk demean me
Beneath my clothes
Or strangle me.
So, I went roughneck
Put the attacker in check
Turned his so-called smooth move
Into a trainwreck.
Write that I…
Gave the movement my support
Against my mother’s protest
To express or redress
Injustice
Done to My people
But I remember her retort
That I should have killed the white man
That handled me as a sport
So with that implicit endorsement
I gave it my all
Write that I…
Fought for freedom
Until the nation saw Segregation fall.