Making Poetry and Art from History:
Martin Luther King Day Programming

Arlyn Miller,
founder/director

Appropriate Age Groups. This activity is appropriate for students of all ages, so long as they can read. Moreover, it works well with a mixed age group.

Inspiration. The task at hand was to come up with a 45-minute poetry workshop for about 30 students from 6th – 8th grades. The workshop was part of a full day of civil rights and diversity programming in celebration of Martin Luther King Day. In keeping with the tenor of the day, I was advised to design an interactive, engaging program. As a basis for the workshop, I decided on the 1954 Supreme Court Decision, Brown vs. Board of Education, which struck down the long standing doctrine of “separate but equal” as a violation of the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause and required racial integration in public schools. I thought this would be an area the students would find relevant and interesting. I wanted them to explore the impact of and reaction to Brown at the time of the landmark decision in 1954.

Materials. Historic text reproduced onto card stock, pencils, washable black tempera paint, sponge brushes, blue painters’ tape, paper plates, hair blow dryers, disposable table/desk covering.

The Exercise. With the help of the community librarian, I was able to find excerpts of editorials from newspapers across the country printed during the days immediately following the Brown decision – from segregated states, non-segregated states, college papers and so called “Negro papers.” The excerpts were up to several paragraphs in length. About a week before the workshop, I began a bulletin board in the hallway and posted a copy of the Brown decision, some related photographs, and copies of the editorial excerpts.

In preparing for the day of the workshop, I made multiple enlarged copies of the excerpts onto card stock. I set the room up ahead of time (a science room with long tables which was well suited for our activity), by covering the tables with plastic, setting out pencils, strips of blue painters’ tape, sponge brushes and paper plates. I also brought in some hair blow dryers. I waited to pour WASHABLE black tempera paint onto the plates until we were ready to begin.

Once the kids came in, I asked what they knew about the Brown vs. Board of Education decision. We spent about 5 – 10 minutes talking about the decision and its historical context. I then explained the project to them. I would be handing out one copy of an editorial excerpt to each student. Students were to read the excerpt and think about which words, phrases, or portions of words they wanted to keep in order to create a poem. They could not reorder words, or add any words, although they could create shorter, new words from longer words already in the text (i.e., “or” from “for, “eat” from “great”.) I told kids to write their names and grade and to write a new title if they chose. I directed students to circle in pencil the words they wanted to keep and to cover them with blue painters’ tape, being careful not to include words or letters they didn’t want to keep. Remind students to cover their names and titles with tape. Next, students painted the text, including those portions covered with painters’ tape, with WASHABLE black tempera paint. A thin layer of paint will dry more quickly. Students shared the blow dryers to speed up the drying time. When the pages were dry, students peeled off the blue painters’ tape. Prior to the kids beginning the project, I directed their attention to the front board where I had posted my own sample in three stages: words circled in pencil, words taped, and tape removed from black background.

Results. What remained in stark relief against the black page were those words the student saved which now combined to make a poem. Some students read their work aloud. We ended up with several different poems created from a single editorial excerpt. The poems were hung on the bulletin board in place of the original excerpt copies previously posted. After taking down the bulletin board, the poems may be copied and bound along with a copy of the Brown decision, the unaltered excerpts and other items such as photographs and the text of the 14th Amendment. This bound volume can be circulated among the classrooms and kept as a memento, while returning the original poems to the student poets.

Follow-up Thoughts. The hands-on, artistic nature of this activity is a big reason for its success. Also, even those students who aren’t comfortable writing poetry tend to enjoy this activity because the words are already supplied to them --- they simply have to choose among the words. Students who finish up early can assist others still working. The blow dryers repeatedly ended up blowing fuses so that not all of the poems could be dried during class time. One option is to follow up during a subsequent session. In our case, students from the second workshop helped unpeel the tape from poems completed during the first workshop session. I finished up the others. This activity requires at least 40 minutes, preferably an hour to allow for drying time. I had several teachers assisting me. Depending on the number of students, I’d suggest adult assistance to the leader of the poetry workshop. This idea can be adapted for use with any historical text or, for that matter, with text from other areas of the curriculum, keeping in mind relevant copyright laws.