Different and the Same

This excerpt explains that families are defined by love, caring and sharing, not the number or gender of its members.

This poem, told by a third-person omniscient narrator, paints a picture of José, an immigrant student who carries the burden of being from the “borderlands.”

This text explores the relationship between Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, two self-made men whose lives intersected near the end of America's Civil War.

Felipe Morales' telling account of an encounter with a blind woman on the streets of Washington, D.C. was recorded for This I Believe. The NPR project features brief personal essays in which people from diverse backgrounds discuss how their values affect their daily lives.

On April 14, 1947, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld the lower court decision in Mendez v. Westminster, which required the school to integrate and set the stage for Brown v. Board of Education.

“In response to legislation that would have criminalized immigrants, thousands of high school students from across the country walked out of their classrooms and into history.”

In this excerpt from his book, Walking with the Wind, John Lewis describes his involvement in the sit-ins in Nashville, Tenn., in the spring of 1960.

In this poem, the speaker traces the senseless killings taking place abroad and at home, with a particular focus on the African-American community. The speaker also calls communities to action to "grow our hope and heal our hearts" in order to live together in peace.

In his 1941 State of the Union Address, President Franklin D. Roosevelt outlined four fundamental human freedoms—the freedom of speech, of worship, from want, and from fear—for the United States and the rest of the world.