1. Daybreak in Alabama
Langston Hughes

2. DOW NOW! In groups of four:
Imagine you are shopping online at a website such as amazon.com or toysrus.com for a child who is celebrating her or his 5th birthday.
Half the class shops for a girl and half shops for a boy.

3. Stereotypes
Definition: A stereotype is “...a fixed, over generalized belief about a particular group or class of people.” (Cardwell, 1996). 

4. Historical Context Alabama was stirring with racial oppression
within the America of the 1930s.
Hence, daybreak in Alabama is a metaphor
for the kind of peace and harmony across
various communities that Hughes envisioned
in the future.

5. Stereotypes
Racial stereotypes are exaggerated by Hughes to emphasize how ridiculous they truly are. So, the white population is referred to as “red necks” (lower class white peoples in America), and the hands of African-Americans are described as “fat.

6. Synecdoche Synecdoche operates by substituting a part for a whole.
When the speaker talks about “poppy coloured faces” and “field daisy eyes”, he doesn’t just mean faces and eyes, but the entire bodies of the peoples belonging to the different communities inhabiting the state of Alabama. 

7. Extra Credit Task
Read and annotate two poem (Dreams – “Dream Variations” – “Dream Deferred” by Langston Hughes) and write an analysis of the poem using those annotations

8. EXIT SLIP Students I Learned From the Most
Write notes to peers describing what you learned from them during class discussions.