Quote Accurately from a text

"I hate the idea of having all those people out there watching me...I just don't like it when I'm around so many people. I wish I just could hide somewhere," whispered Violet.
What can you infer about Violet?

• She is energetic
• She is shy
• She is mean
• She hates people

Do you enjoy kites?  If you order right away, we will give you directions for making kites out of all kinds of materials-sticks, straws, socks, and more.  All of this for only $10.95.  Hurry!  Time is limited. 
What is this ad trying to get the reader to do?

• buy information about sticks and straws.
• Buy information about sock puppets.
• Buy information about kite making.
• Buy a read-to-fly kite.

To make something clear in speech or writing.

• explain

• quote

• infer

Something that gives proof or a reason to believe.

• quote

• evidence

• explicit

Something said or written in a clear and direct way

• explicit

• infer

• explain

What point of view is the memoir told from?

• first person
• second person
• third person
• fourth person

Tags

CCSS.RL.6.6

How many siblings does Jackie have?

• 1

• 2

• 3

• 4

Who is the author of "Brown Girl Dreaming"?

• Jackie Brown

• Jacqueline Woodson

• Jessica Brown

• Jennifer Woodstone

20 pts

Using the RACE Strategy answer the following question:

(Response should be 5-7 sentences).

Who was the first black person to publish a book in America?

By Kat Eschner Smithsonian.com January 18, 2018

Phyllis, or Phillis, Wheatley was the first black person to publish a book in America. She was also and one of the first women to publish a book in America.

Her work was read and admired by the likes of George Washington. But her talent posed a problem for national leaders at the time. Why? At the time she published her book, Wheatley was enslaved.

“Slaveowners and abolitionists both read her work, “the former to convince their slaves to convert, the latter as proof of slaves’ intellectual abilities.” That's according to the National Women’s History Museum.

The life of Phyllis Wheatley is somewhat buried in mystery. She was forcibly brought to Boston as a slave. She came on a ship named the Phillis. That's according to according to Henry Louis Gates Jr. He is a historian.

“It’s a fair guess that she would have been a native Wolof speaker from the Senegambian coast,” he wrote.

She was described in the cargo list as “a slender frail, female child.” The young girl was estimated to be about seven. Susanna Wheatley bought her for very little money. She named her after the ship she was brought to America on.

Susanna Wheatley and her husband John Wheatley had two children. They were twins named Nathaniel and Mary.

Mary began teaching the child slave to read,” Gates write. The reasons were never shared. But she apparently had her mother’s wholehearted support. Sixteen months after she’d arrived, she spoke and read English fluently. And she had started learning Latin. She published her first poem when she was 13 or 14. And she continued writing.

“Wheatley’s poems reflected several influences on her life. Among them were the well-known poets she studied. These included Alexander Pope and Thomas Gray.” That's according to the museum.

“Pride in her African heritage was also evident. Her writing style embraced the elegy. It was likely from her African roots. From there, it was the role of girls to sing and perform funeral dirges. Religion was also a key influence. It led Protestants in America and England to enjoy her work.”

By the time she was about eighteen years old, Wheatley and her owner Susanna Wheatley looked for subscribers. It was for a collection of twenty-eight of her poems.

“The colonists were apparently unwilling to support literature by an African. So she and the Wheatleys turned in frustration to London for a publisher.” That's according to the Poetry Foundation. She traveled to London with Nathaniel Wheatley. They met dignitaries. And they had had the book printed.

“Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral” was the first book on record published by an African-American. It was read–and debated–on both sides of the Atlantic. The book included a portrait of Wheatley in the front to underscore her race. It also had signatures from a number of colonial leaders verifying that she had written the poems in the book.

“With the publication of her book, Phillis Wheatley almost immediately, became the most famous African on the face of the earth. She was the Oprah Winfrey of her time,” writes Gates.

The Wheatleys freed Phyllis three months before Susanna Wheatley died. This was in 1774. After the book was published, “many British editorials castigated the Wheatleys for keeping Wheatley in slavery while presenting her to London as the African genius.” This is according to the Poetry Foundation.

But “the family had provided an ambiguous haven for the poet. Wheatley was kept in a servant’s place–a respectable arm’s length from the Wheatleys’ genteel circles–but she had experienced neither slavery’s treacherous demands nor the harsh economic exclusions pervasive in a free-black existence.”

This relationship was one of power. After all, the Wheatleys owning and teaching a talented poet brought them a kind of prestige, but it did also give Phyllis Wheatley the power to speak out. In her letters with Washington, as in her letters with others, she spoke out against slavery.

Wheatley was a talented poet who met with the poetic tastes of her time. But she was also a black woman at a time when black people had very little power in America. “She died in 1784 in abject poverty, preceded in death by her three children, surrounded by filth, and abandoned, apparently, by her husband, John Peters,” Gates writes. Like Benjamin Banneker, she used her voice to fight against slavery. She also fought for equality, but sadly, that voice only went so far. Banneker was another well-known early African-American intellectual.

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