Mary McLeod Bethune essays

Mary McLeod Bethune essays One day when Mary Jane was playing with the white children of her mothers first slave mistress, she saw a book and picked it up. When she it picked it up the little girl said, You cant read that. Put that down. The kids struck Mary Jane and stuck with her and she promised herself she would learn to read one day. (African Biographies, 16) For more than three decades (1920-1955) Mary McLeod Bethune was known as the "most influential black woman in the United States." For all blacks, but especially for black women, she emphasized the need for education and for the opportunity to break free from oppressive social and political boundaries. She urged blacks to unite in one political movement and believed that the government could be used to improve the black race. She once summarized her beliefs as "self-control, self-respect, self-reliance, and race pride." Born near Mayesville, South Carolina, Mary McLeod was the fifteenth of the seventeen children of Sam and Patsy McLeod, slaves freed after the Civil War. Beginning her education at a black mission school near Mayesville, McLeod quickly learned all its teachers could offer her, and in 1888 she won a scholarship to attend Scotia Seminary, a Presbyterian school for black girls in Concord, New Hampshire. At that school, which emphasized religion and industrial education and had both whites and blacks on its faculty, she enrolled in the normal and scientific course, which prepared her to teach. After graduating in July 1894, she received a scholarship to the Bible Institute for Home and Foreign Missions in Chicago, where she spent a year preparing for missionary work in Africa. When she learned there were no missionary openings for blacks in Africa, McLeod went to teach at the Haines Normal and Industrial Institute in Augusta, Georgia. There she met the dynamic founder and principal of the school, Lucy Laney, whose service to others made her an im...

An Online Tool Hyperlocally Targets Language Usage

An Online Tool Hyperlocally Targets Language Usage An Online Tool Hyperlocally Targets Language Usage An Online Tool Hyperlocally Targets Language Usage By Mark Nichol According to a recent news article, thanks to Internet magic, online companies can identify hyperlocal vocabulary, which might have an impact on language usage and the development of tomorrow’s vocabulary. Yelp, the popular online search and review site, now has a feature on its site called Wordmaps, which shows visitors the concentration of use of certain words in certain geographical areas as small as city intersections. (The service, as of this writing, is limited to eighteen words used in a dozen American and Canadian cities, plus London and Paris, but it’s certain to expand its linguistic and geographical scope.) What are the ramifications of such a surgically specific service? Think of the possibilities for advertising and marketing: Anyone will be able to search a neighborhood, city, or region to determine the relative prominence of certain words. Real estate agents can note the prevalence of Yelp reviews that mention great restaurants, exciting shopping opportunities, superior schools, and sophisticated cultural experiences. Cities, counties, and states can attract prospective residents and tourists by publicizing the incidence of inhabitant- and visitor-friendly keywords. Businesses in general can take advantage of such data to encourage customers and clients to flock to certain places. Is this a good thing, or a bad thing? I’m not passing judgment on it; I just find it interesting, although it’s simply a more technologically sophisticated way of selling a locale something people have been doing since the dawn of civilization (and perhaps earlier). Here’s what interests me: This kind of tool will also have an impact on our language not necessarily a sea change, but something worth commenting on. People who are more technologically savvy will be more likely to employ this type of service and its offshoots. Technologically savvy people are more likely to drive social and cultural change. Thus, Yelp’s Wordmaps and similar tools are likely to accelerate adoption of slang and trendy locutions, to raise the profile of some words and phrases and speed the obsolescence of others. Again, this is nothing new, but the way it is accomplished and the speed with which it might be accomplished is new. It’s analogous to any form of information dissemination: Think of how alphabets, the printing press, journalism, telegraphy, telephony, radio, television, and the Internet, in turn, each revolutionized the way we communicate, introducing new terms and concepts faster and more widely than ever before. Yelp’s Wordmaps is another chapter in that story. Will it have an effect on your professional or personal writing? To some extent, it will but whether it’s measurable or noticeable remains to be seen. However, if you’re in the business of selling and if you write professionally, you are you might want to keep an eye on this new technology. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Business Writing category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:The Yiddish Handbook: 40 Words You Should KnowAmong vs. AmongstIs "Number" Singular or Plural?