|
THIS IS WORTH READING
|
| Louisiana Public Broadcasting has two resources
that may be of interest to you and your students. First, the LEAP preparatory series for Grades 4 and 8 will be, for the first time, available online and free-of-charge so you and your child can use them anytime, anywhere. We will begin posting episodes on Thursday, February 8th. The episodes are posted as they become available so keep checking for the episodes you need. The videos can be viewed online or downloaded to your computer at www.lpb.org/education/leap.cfm
Second, on February 12th at 8 PM Louisiana Public Broadcasting (WLPB-Baton Rouge, TV 27, KLTM-Monroe TV13, KLTS - Shreveport - TV24, KLPB-Lafayette -TV24, KLTL-Lake Charles -TV18, KLPA -Alexandria -TV25) and WYES in New Orleans will broadcast “New Orleans,” an episode of American Experience, which presents a fascinating portrait of one of America’s most distinctive cities. The program will be repeated on February 13th at midnight and 3 AM.
The compelling film tells the story of this remarkable city through revealing first-hand interviews with New Orleans natives and scholars, as well as through rich archival photographic material and footage. Education materials are also available at www.lpb.org/learningport. This program provides an interesting perspective on the history and culture of New Orleans and could generate some lively discussions among your students.
The program highlights the rich cultural complexity of New Orleans which spawned Mardi Gras and jazz as well as the explosive struggles with both integration and segregation. It suggests that New Orleans is a proving ground for national ideas about race, class and equality; a mirror that reflects both the best and the worst in America.
While the program highlights some of the colorful and fun aspects of the history of New Orleans, it also shows that in the aftermath of the Civil War, New Orleans was at once the most integrated city in the country and the site of some of the most vicious white supremacist violence. Later, the city fostered the struggle against segregation that eventually culminated in the infamous 1896 Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson, which declared “separate but equal” constitutional and ushered in six decades of racial segregation in the United States. The overturning of that decision in 1954, and the court-ordered integration of public schools across the country a year later, likewise signaled national trends, fueling a mass exodus of New Orleans’ white population into the newly completed suburbs and sparking the downward spiral into urban blight that was tragically revealed by Katrina.
|