Fwd: SPECIAL NEWSLETTER FROM TWM

Suggest that your students, grades 7 - 12, see the movie Harriet - now in theaters. We are preparing a Learning Guide to the film which will be completed by Thursday, November 7. The first two sections of the Guide discuss the importance of this story to the history of America for the period 1849 - 1865. Description:   Harriet Tubman was without doubt one of America's greatest heroes. Her courage, ingenuity, and tenacity enabled her to escape from slavery in 1849. She then became a conductor for the Underground Railroad. With a price on her head and facing certain torture and death if she were caught, Harriet Tubman went back into the South 13 times freeing the rest of her family and many other slaves. It is estimated that she shepherded some 70 slaves to freedom. This film is well-grounded historical fiction, giving a sense of the times and providing a reasonably accurate portrayal of the almost super-human exploits of its heroine. Benefits of the Movie: Not only does Harriet tell the story a black female role model, it also demonstrates the humanitarian vision of hundreds of thousands of Americans, black and white, who worked to end slavery. It is accurate to call slavery the original sin of the United States. However, it is also true that before and during the Civil War Americans by the hundreds of thousands put their lives and livelihoods at risk to eradicate this great evil. They did this with no thought of reward but in the hope of redeeming the promise of the Declaration of Independence and the soul of the country itself. (Can anyone imagine the U.S. playing its role in WW I, WW II, and the Cold War if slavery had still existed?) While it is a tragedy that the hopes of African-Americans for equality were frustrated by the hundred years of Jim Crow and the continuing discrimination suffered by some black Americans must be rooted out and extirpated, the idealism and sacrifice of those who worked to end slavery is an important chapter in American history. Harriet Tubman was one of the foremost of those brave women and men whose moral vision and humanitarian spirit inspired them to fight for the end of slavery. TeachwithMovies.org, November, 2019.

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