May 12

Today we started by going over some notes on how to improve your essays. This included a bit on thesis statements. Then we watched some of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech. After this, we watched a short clip of a woman from Alabama talking about her childhood. Then we watched sections of D.W.Griffith's Birth of a Nation and tried to pick out both racial stereotypes and I tried to explain where a lot of the racial prejudice and hatred between black and white came from. Finally, we watched a little of Mississippi Burning about the death of Medgar Evers and how initially Byron Beckwith got away with the murder via a series of mistrials. Bring your novel tomorrow and bring your essay and be prepared to read the introduction including your thesis statement..