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City schools, store sponsor African-American Read-In
The 22nd annual African American Read-In
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The African-American Read-In Sunday, Feb. 13, 2011, at Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Boardman. The theme of this year's gathering was “Voices of Hope and Courage.”
By Sean Barron
BOARDMAN
Five-year-old Kaylee Cerbus enjoyed sharing a book with her audience about a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, but the ingredients that went into the words were more than what goes between the slices of bread.
The Paul C. Bunn Elementary School kindergarten student was reading about George Washington Carver, an educator, scientist and inventor of peanut agricultural science that led to more than 100 recipes that used peanuts.
Her selection, “Making a Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwich,” also was part of Sunday’s 22nd annual African-American Read-In at Barnes & Noble Booksellers, 381 Boardman-Poland Road.
About 100 children, educators, writers and others attended the two-hour gathering themed “Voices of Hope and Courage” that was part of Black History Month.
The program was to celebrate black writers and poets while recognizing their contributions to American history, organizers said.
Sponsors were Youngstown city schools’ literacy consultants and Barnes & Noble.
Following Kaylee was her 7-year-old brother, Andrew, a Paul C. Bunn second-grader, who also read excerpts pertaining to black history.
The children attended with their mother, Michelle.
The audience heard about the education, marriage, teachings and struggles of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. through a poem by Juliette Taylor of Youngstown, whose straightforward title was “The Greatest 20th Century Civil Rights Leader.”
“I decided it was appropriate to write a poem about the late Martin Luther King for the competition in the contest,” Taylor said, referring to a poetry contest she entered last year at Youngstown State University.
“I tied for second place.”
Attendees also were treated to an animated reading of “Under African Skies,” a series of children’s stories by Roland C. Barksdale-Hall, an AIDS educator and founder of the Pittsburgh-based Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society.
The book uses animals to convey various life lessons, he explained.
Barksdale-Hall also performed a skit with Dr. Martha Bruce, the city schools’ Adopt-a-School liaison.
Yvette Kirksey, a Williamson Elementary School teacher, read a book called “Sit-In,” about four black college students who began a nonviolent sit-in movement Feb. 1, 1960, at a Woolworth’s department-store lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., when employees refused to serve them.
The lunch counter was for whites only, but the students’ demonstration led to many more similar protests and the signing of a civil-rights law by President Lyndon B. Johnson that made such segregation illegal.
Youngstown Mayor Jay Williams read a speech then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama wrote pertaining to the groundbreaking of a memorial in Washington, D.C., to honor King.
Obama wrote about how he imagined his daughters, Sasha and Malia, would react after seeing the finished memorial, and that he would tell them that King “tried to love someone and gave his life for others,” Williams said.
“We must remember that African-American history is American history,” the mayor said.
Teachers and students from Bunn, Kirkmere, Martin Luther King, Warren G. Harding and Williamson elementary schools as well as William H. Taft and Volney Rogers middle schools read selections by Obama and writer Maya Angelou.
They also read about and discussed several famous black people such as Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Jackie Robinson and Thurgood Marshall.
Narrating the event was Deborah Zitella, Youngstown city schools’ administrative specialist of literacy and gifted programs.