Dear Racism I Am Not My Grandparents Sincerely These Hands Shirt! My fifth grade students and I took the past few days to study the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the early events of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In so doing, we discussed segregation, bus boycotts, lunch counter sit-ins and a myriad of other topics related to that turbulent time in history. Having only been a child of four at the time King presented his legendary I Have a Dream speech, my personal memories were somewhat limited. But being a child who lived through that time of change, and having done my own research along the way, I think I was able to answer most questions and clarify the majority of misunderstandings held by the kids.

Grade school education with regard to social studies is sorely lacking in our modern schools. However, that topic is for another conversation at another time. Dear Racism I Am Not My Grandparents Sincerely These Hands Shirt! What is important to note here is that the knowledge of basic facts regarding our country’s history is either missing or badly mangled in the minds of the kids sitting in our classrooms today. They come to the class with a disjointed timeline filled with sound bits from the internet, fictionalized movies and television documentaries.