Extra Exercices of Barack Obama & Martin Luther King

Questions for preparing Martin Luther King’s text:

1. What rights did black people have in the USA in the 1960’s?
They haven't any rights.

2. What was “segregation”?
The separation between black and white people.

3. What did states as Georgia, Mississippi or Alabama have in common in the 1960’s?
That they were the states where the racism was more pronounced.

4. Who were the “Pilgrims”?
A pilgrim is one who undertakes a pilgrimage (long journey or search of great moral significance).

4. What is a “spiritual”?
This word comes from the word: Spirit, which means the soul, the natural part of being and it's identificate with the mind or the brain.

Vocabulary

Rooted: arrelat.
Rise up: aixacar.
Creed: ideologia.
Hold: celebrar/aguantar.
Swelter: cansar-se.
Heat: calor.
Rough: aspre.
Crooked: tort.
Straight: recte.
Flesh: carn.
Despair: desesperació.
Hope: esperança.
Swelter: cansar-se pel sol i no poder fer res per remediar-ho.

___________________________________________________


Questions for preparing Barack Obama’s text:

1. When did women get the right to vote in the United States? (par. 2)
In 1920.

2. What was the “New Deal”? (par. 5)
The state encouraged people to buy things.

3. Paragraph 6 refers to “the bombs” falling on “our harbor”. Which bombs and which harbor is B. Obama referring to? (par. 6)
He refears to Pearl Harbor.

4. What was the “Montgomery bus boycott”? (par. 7)
It was a political and social protest campaign started in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, intended to oppose the city's policy of racial segregation.

5. To know who the “preacher from Atlanta” was, check
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1964/king-bio.html
The preacher from Atlanta was Marthin Luther King.

6. When did the Berlin wall fall down?
In 1989.

7. What happened in the Edmund Pettus Bridge, outside Selma, in 1965?
There, the voting rights marchers were violently confronted by law enforcement personnel on March 7, 1965. The day became known as Bloody Sunday.

Vocabulary to look up:
Ballot: vot.
Cast a ballot: emetre un vot.
Slavery: esclavitud.
Creed: credo.
Despair: desesperar.
Conquer: conquerir.
Witness: testimoni.
Preacher: predicador.
Sum up: resumir.