http://www.coreknowledge.org/blog/2008/02/05/the-10-most-famous-americans-in-history/ Closing the Achievement Gap: Teaching Content Mon, 06 Oct 2008 21:45:11 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6 http://www.coreknowledge.org/blog/2008/02/05/the-10-most-famous-americans-in-history/#comment-180 bobbyjoel Mon, 11 Feb 2008 12:05:54 +0000 http://www.coreknowledge.org/blog/2008/02/05/the-10-most-famous-americans-in-history/#comment-180 Just because people such as MLK and Rosa Parks were black, are you suggesting that PC is the main reason kids consider them famous and know that black people broadened the fight for liberty the way the founders originally did? Does a fight to live out constitutional guarantees have to be white only? Are you suggesting that liberty is not RED, WHITE AND BLUE? Being able to choose a seat in a restricted section of a bus was an inalienable right with a footnote pointing some Americans to the back of the bus. When I was a boy in the 50s, I can remember, as if it were today, when we were barred accommodations in a hotel that said "No Carp Eaters Allowed!" That was not in Mississippi, but in the bastion of liberalism --Massachusetts. I haven't seen that sign since King and Parks, nor have I been barred accommodations because of my last name or the kind of food my grandmother enjoyed. Didn't King's struggle for liberty to participate equally, partly remove America's blinders so that Colon Powell and Condi Rice could be respected faces of America because of their talent, instead of being ignored because of their color? Could they have been prominent faces in 1958? Whether we believe in the Iraq war or not, my bet is that had we stayed out of Iraq, and really won in Afghanistan, today's war weary kids and their parents may have had them in the top 10 too. Just because people such as MLK and Rosa Parks were black, are you suggesting that PC is the main reason kids consider them famous and know that black people broadened the fight for liberty the way the founders originally did? Does a fight to live out constitutional guarantees have to be white only? Are you suggesting that liberty is not RED, WHITE AND BLUE? Being able to choose a seat in a restricted section of a bus was an inalienable right with a footnote pointing some Americans to the back of the bus. When I was a boy in the 50s, I can remember, as if it were today, when we were barred accommodations in a hotel that said “No Carp Eaters Allowed!” That was not in Mississippi, but in the bastion of liberalism –Massachusetts. I haven’t seen that sign since King and Parks, nor have I been barred accommodations because of my last name or the kind of food my grandmother enjoyed. Didn’t King’s struggle for liberty to participate equally, partly remove America’s blinders so that Colon Powell and Condi Rice could be respected faces of America because of their talent, instead of being ignored because of their color? Could they have been prominent faces in 1958? Whether we believe in the Iraq war or not, my bet is that had we stayed out of Iraq, and really won in Afghanistan, today’s war weary kids and their parents may have had them in the top 10 too.

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