Dialogue Assignment

Setting-White House at the Tell Your Story Conference.

Characters- Helen Keller, Malcolm X, Fredrick Douglass, and Slave 1

Presenter-Hi welcome to the Tell Your Story Conference at the White House. Today in just a few minutes we will have three speakers talking about their own stories about their learning obstacles, thank you for coming.

Fredrick Douglass, Malcolm X, Helen Keller are behind stage getting to know each other as they are approached by the helper. 

Slave 1-Hello, thank you for coming we will be ready for you in just a couple of minutes.

Fredrick Douglass- As I was saying, while trying to learn how to read “I had no regular teacher.”

Malcolm X-Yes, I know what you mean. From not having a teacher I was “frustrated at not being able to express what I wanted to convey in letters that I wrote.”

Helen Keller-“There were barriers” since I am deaf and blind, but that didn’t matter because barriers “be swept away.”

Fredrick Douglass-I think we all had obstacles, correct? Eventually “I soon learned the names of these letters.” So how did you guys get to be at this conference? For me to develop my speech it “enabled me to utter my thoughts, and to meet the arguments brought forward.”

Helen Keller-When I was invited to come it “made me hop skip with pleasure.”                            

Malcolm X-I at first didn’t want to come, but then “it was because of my letters” from my readers “that I helped” wrote to me.  

Fredrick Douglass- I, like Helen Keller, was also excited for this; it was like a “silver trump of freedom had rousel my soul to eternal weight fullness.”

Slave 1-I’m sorry to overhear on your conversation, but for me as a slave, “literacy was a two-edged sword.”

Malcolm X-We are all in the same boat little boy, trying to “write simple English, I not only wasn’t articulate, I wasn’t even functional.”

Fredrick Douglass-Well “my copy-book was the board fence, brick wall, and pavement; my pen and ink was a lump of chalk.” I also “got hold of a book entitled “The Columbian Orator.” Every opportunity I got, I used to read this book” I can only imagine how it was for you little boy.

Slave1- “If they caught you trying to write they cut your finger off and if they caught you again they would cut your head off.” Also, “Patrols, mobs, and social ostracism faced owners who taught their slaves.”

Helen Keller-I’m so sorry that you had to face those fears every day, when I started to develop my skills, the “living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free!”

Malcolm X-Excitement went through my body too, “I saw that the best thing I could do was get hold of a dictionary—to study, to learn some words.” “In my slow, painstaking, ragged handwriting, I copied into my tablet everything printed on the first page, down to the punctuation marks.”

Helen Keller-Just like the dictionary “everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new though.” “I remembered the doll…picked up the pieces, I tried vainly to put them together” just like putting words together, but only in a different form.

Fredrick Douglass-My liberation with learning is when I got “kindly aid obtains at different and in different places, I finally succeeded to read” it was the best feeling in the world.

Slave1 –You are very lucky sir to have help from others, “former slaves mentioned themselves as their own teachers.”

Fredrick Douglass- Yes, I was very fortunate, and very fortunate not to get caught, “by going one part of my errand quickly, I found time to get a lesson before my return.”

Slave 1-“A large number held a leadership position in the ministry government and education.” As much as I am into our conversation about our obstacles on learning how to read and write, I think it is time to tell your speeches to the crowd of people at the White House, thank you.

Helen Keller, Fredrick Douglass and Malcolm X-Yes, of course, let’s go tell our remarkable stories to others.