Thursday, March 14, 2024
Happy Pi day. When you are in middle school, you get pie on Pi day. You get pie even if you are not in a math class. The math teachers would never assign people to bring pie, but they also seem to tell the kids that it is okay to bring a pie to share on Pi day. Inevitably, there is more pie than needed and kids get to run around offering other teachers pie. It is the best day!!
I wasn’t in middle school today. It is 4th grade week and 4th graders do not know about Pi. Also, I don’t think telling little kids to bring a pie on the bus is a good idea, from the pies-on-the-floor-of-the-bus side of the deal. So, no pie for me today, but I TOLD my 4th graders about it. They are hyped for middle school now! I do enjoy motivating students!
We went to the History Theatre tonight to see the world premiere (it was the first preview) of a play called A Unique Assignment by Harrison David Rivers. It is set during the Ole Miss riots in the fall of 1962 when James Meredith was the first black student admitted to the University of Mississippi. Lieutenant Henry Gallagher – from Minnesota – was assigned to be in charge of his protection duty and the play tells the story of his arrival and stay in Mississippi as that historic event unfolds.
The four actors (one was Henry Gallagher, the other three were everyone else, including a present-day Henry Gallagher!) were just terrific. With a quick change of overcoat, robe, or shirt they portrayed everyone from JFK to Henry’s mom.
I didn’t know anything about this incident and now I know quite a bit. We have been reading about Ruby Bridges (the 6-year-old who first integrated a school in Louisiana in 1960) in 4th grade this week. It is a super weird thing to read to kids a story about adults protesting a little girl going to school and sending her death threats. I won’t give them any details about the events I learned about tonight, but I will tell them that James Meredith had to do the same thing for a college that Ruby Bridges did for an elementary school – and that white people had just as much of a problem with it there.
Dark times…. It’s unbelievable that there are places where they don’t want young people to know about this stuff. When I was little, I knew a LOT of people who weren’t in favor of integration (in Arkansas, where I grew up) – but I didn’t understand where they were coming from THEN other than it was just a nasty way to think of other people. I’m glad Harrison David Rivers wrote about it.