Teacher's Discussion Guide to Anne Frank by Salimah Perkins

To honor them, and to help their vision grow, I created the Kindred Spirits project. They knew they might never live to see the world they envisioned, but they hoped their words would inspire those who followed – us – to continue the relay and to leave the world more just, more loving, and more inclusive than the way we found it. And while we lost both of them much too early, nothing can kill the way Martin inspired others, just as Anne’s words will never die.īoth Martin and Anne saw the goals of justice, love, and inclusion as an ongoing human struggle. King in speeches and Anne Frank in her diary. Whenever prejudice is accepted in any culture, minorities are always the first at risk.īoth Martin and Anne used words to articulate their vision of a better world, Dr.

Hitler also discriminated against the visually impaired. Of course, just as Blacks were not the only group that experienced persecution in America, Jews were not the only group that experienced persecution in Nazi Germany. Hitler used those same laws as the basis of his Nuremberg Laws, which enforced segregation, forbid marriages between Jews and Christians, and made sure Jews didn’t have the same rights as other citizens. I learned that Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany, sent his lawyers to the American South to study the Jim Crow laws that enforced segregation, forbid marriages between Blacks and whites, and made sure Blacks didn’t have the same rights as other citizens. The similarity of their experiences was no accident. They may have been different genders, faiths, races, from different countries, who spoke different languages, but both knew how it felt to be told they couldn’t attend their local school, Martin because of the color of his skin and Anne because of being Jewish. When I saw that both had been born in 1929, the year of the stock market crash and the beginning of the Great Depression, times of great uncertainty and fear in the world, I began to see the parallels between their lives more clearly. King, whose life was threatened daily, said, “that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” I marveled at how Anne Frank, hiding in a cramped attic for two years from her persecutors, wrote that “people are really good at heart.” King, who had fought for civil rights in America and Anne Frank, who wrote in her diary about the injustice of singling out Jews or any group for persecution, and they filled me with hope.

King and Anne Frank for inspiration because they had lived through the darkest times in our history and yet had never given up faith in humanity. The idea for the book sprang up from the despair at the hate I was seeing in our country. and Anne Frank, the February Book of the Month from the National Braille Press.

That was my inspiration for Martin & Anne, the Kindred Spirits of Dr. We are all one human family and we need to stand up for the vulnerable among us.

Teacher's Discussion Guide to Anne Frank by Salimah Perkins