divendres, 28 de novembre del 2008

Questions for preparing Barack Obama’s text


1. When did women get the right to vote in the United States? (par. 2)

In 1920, women received the right to vote in the United States with the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

2. What was the “New Deal”? (par. 5)

The New Deal (1933) was the name that United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave to a series of economic programs he initiated between 1933 and 1936 with the goal of giving work (relief) to the unemployed, reform of business and financial practices, and recovery of the economy during The Great Depression.

3. Paragraph 6 refers to “the bombs” falling on “our harbor”. Which bombs and which harbor is B. Obama referring to? (par. 6)

The harbor is our world and the bombs the politics who can do a worse world.

4. What was the “Montgomery bus boycott”? (par. 7)

The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a political and social protest campaign started in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, intended to oppose the city's policy of racial segregation on its public transit system.

5. To know who the “preacher from Atlanta” was, check


Martin Luther King

6. When did the Berlin wall fall down?

1989

7. What happened in the Edmund Pettus Bridge, outside Selma, in 1965?

On Sunday March 7, 1965, about six hundred people began a fifty-four mile march from Selma, Alabama to the state capitol in Montgomery. When ABC television interrupted a Nazi war crimes documentary, Judgement in Nuremberg, to show footage of violence in Selma a powerful metaphor was presented to the nation. Within forty-eight hours, demonstrations in support of the marchers were held in eighty cities and thousands of religious and lay leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King, flew to Selma. On March 9, Dr. King led a group again to the Pettus Bridge where they knelt, prayed, and, to the consternation of some, returned to Brown Chapel. That night a Northern minister, who was in Selma to march, was killed by white vigilantes. The Edmund Pettus Bridge, named for Edmund Winston Pettus, a Confederate brigadier general, and eventual U.S. Senator, is a bridge in Selma, Alabama. It is infamous as the site of the conflict of Bloody Sunday (March 7, 1965), where armed officers attacked peaceful civil rights demonstrators.

8. To understand the reference to the Birmingham hoses, check:

A few firemen hurt with water to pressure a few boys of black race with the excuse that they wanted to extinguish the fire.

Vocabulary to look up:

Ballot - a slip or sheet of paper, cardboard, or the like, on which a voter marks his or her vote.
Cast a ballot – The place we can vote, give the ballot to vote.
Slavery - the condition of a slave; bondage.
Creed - any system, doctrine, or formula of religious belief, as of a denomination.
Despair - someone or something that causes hopelessness
Conquer - to gain, win, or obtain by effort, personal appeal
Witness - to see, hear, or know by personal presence and perception
Preacher - a person whose occupation or function it is to preach the gospel
Sum up - a particular aggregate or total, esp. with reference to money