Black History Month
Bookmarks
Originator
Gary Carey, teacher, editor, and writer, Lincoln, Nebraska.
Age/Grade Level or Audience
Elementary school students.
Description
Create a variety of hand-lettered bookmarks featuring quotations by Martin Luther King, Jr., Maya Angelou, Jesse Jackson, Barbara Jordan, Sammy Davis, Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer, Faye Wattleton, Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and other black notables.
Procedure
Have students use yardsticks to mark large sheets of tagboard or construction paper in 1" x 5" rectangles and inscribe short, memorable quotations on each. Suggested lines include these by Martin Luther King, Jr.:
- Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
- I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.
- Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time.
- He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.
- Our destiny is tied up with the destiny of America.
- Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.
After decorating with drawings, stickers, or pictures cut from magazines, have students coat the tagboard with sheets of clear stick-on plastic or laminate by machine. Cut the final page with scissors or paper cutter. Use bookmarks as banquet favors, rewards for reading or class attendance, and gifts to handicapped children and retirement home dwellers.
Sources
Bell, Janet Cheatham, Famous Black Quotations and Some Not So Famous, Sabayt Publications, 1986.
King, Anita, ed., Quotations in Black, Greenwood Press, 1981.
Alternative Applications
Paperclip bookmark on a classroom clothesline made of twine. Or attach tassels to markers through a hole punched in one end and distribute as tray markers in hospitals, cafeterias, or restaurants.