Who actually forces a broken system to change — the people in charge, or the people being harmed? Hold your answer. Four real voices are about to weigh in.
Every one of these texts was written to change something. Your job is to find the claim, the evidence, and the assumption underneath.
What is this person arguing about how change happens?
What proof or reasoning do they use to move you?
What do they take for granted about power and justice?
Yesterday: Sinclair the journalist and Douglass the witness. Today we investigate Fannie Lou Hamer (the ordinary citizen) and Dr. King (the moral voice) — same protocol, more independence.
1964. A Mississippi sharecropper tells a national TV audience what happened when she tried to register to vote — and the President tried to cut the cameras away.
Read and annotate: mark the price she paid, and the exact moment her words turn from story to demand.
Do the protocol (2.0 → 3.0) + Questions 1–3. Why is a personal testimony more dangerous to power than a policy speech?
1963. King writes to clergymen who agree with him but tell him to wait. "Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."
Mark who he's really arguing with and how he defines a "just" law. Then finish the protocol + Questions. Which reformer convinces you most?
"When a system fails the people it serves — what does it take to fix it, and who has to do the work?"
Sinclair aimed at the heart and hit the stomach. Explain why the public responded to food safety, not to the workers.
Compare two reform strategies — exposure journalism vs. putting your body on the line. What can each do that the other can't?
"The people who fix broken systems are almost never the people the system was built to serve." Evaluate that claim with evidence.
In 3–5 sentences: what does it take to force a broken system to change — and who has to do the work? Use one quote from a text handout as evidence.