Beka > Recent Status Updates

"It was the club women of southern CA who helped establish a juvenile court system + raised awareness + funds to hire probation officers. It was the club women who helped organize kindergarten + playgrounds. It was the club women who fought for labor laws, + who organized for women's suffrage."

"The women's club movement began in the 19th century + flourished in the early 20th, as women sought community, education, + organization.

Clubs existed for a variety of purposes, but often they were involved in some kind of civic engagement or community service."

"...she wasn't the suffragist picketing the White House encouraging President Wilson to give votes to women. She didn't chain herself to courthouses, get arrested, + go on hungry strikes. She didn't win elections or defeat foes in battle. But what she did was -and is- important. Her words light the way of truth: our shared history as a nation + the direction in which we should be heading."

"I seem to find Katherine again, not in vision, but within myself, the courage in my fried, the comfort in my weariness, and the guidance in my perplexity..."

I already see why so many have read this in a quick fashion. Gripping.

"Virginia was so beloved that her methods and philosophy of schooling spread far and wide. She traveled and trained other teachers on how to approach education as something that must address the whole child, their family, and the community at large."

"Farming had understandably been discarded by the vast majority of Black Americans, in part because they were denied the opportunity to purchase property, but Virginia wanted to show her rural students how to be self-sufficient."

"Richmond was where Jefferson Davis launched the phrase 'Give me liberty or give me death!' In an impassioned speech in 1775, while never offering liberty to the people he enslaved. Liberty was apparently only for me, not for thee."

Next time you want a book that engages you with tales of lesser known people throughout history - retold with tenderness and grit - pick up this book from your local library. You may cry by page 40 and bless the day you heard of this author, former teacher, and fellow lover of learning.

"Clara Brown was living in Missouri + Kansas while the bejoweled Roger Taney said she + everyone who looked like her wasn't a citizen. Her missing daughter, Eliza, was still the first thought in her mind each morning + the last before bed.

Hope, that thing with feathers, perched in her peripheral vision, just out of reach, as she cooked + cleaned, singing quietly to herself, as Bleeding Kansas exploded around her."

"Zombies are our creations, + also projections of ourselves, our worse traits that we would rather pretend we didn't have.
If we take a hard look at zombies, we have to take a hard look at ourselves. And maybe, just maybe, we'll decide that we don't like what we see + that we can change. Maybe then we'll begin to build a better, more humane world rather than wait eagerly for the end of one."