Log in
Sign up for FREE
arrow_back
Library

Paraphrase & Summarize

star
star
star
star
star
Last updated over 5 years ago
10 questions
Note from the author:
Summarize & Paraphrase
1 Central Idea
5
5
5
5
5
5
5
5
5
10
Question 1
1.

Set yourself up to summarize this text by simply identifying the who, what, when, where, why, and how after reading this passage.

Women have had to fight to be heard. For most of history, women were expected to keep silent. In their traditional roles as wives and mothers, their sphere of influence was home and family. That sphere kept them out of the public eye. Some determined women refused to be prevented from participating in public life. Even when they risked being accused of unacceptable female behavior, women began to speak up. In the 19th century, women were the moving force behind a number of reform issues. Many of those issues related to their sphere of influence: the home and what was in the best interest of families. Women worked to end slavery and child labor. In the 20th century, women’s roles in society changed more dramatically. More women spoke up addressing larger and broader audiences.

Question 2
2.

Set yourself up to summarize this text. This time set up your graphic organizer (5w's and the H), then summarize in 2-3 sentences.

Sojourner Truth's slave name was Isabella Baumfree. She was born into slavery in 1797. She escaped to freedom in 1826. She lived at a time when neither African Americans nor women were viewed as full citizens. She was both. She was deeply religious, and her faith called her to travel across the free states preaching the gospel. Contemporaries noted that she had “a heart of love” and “a tongue of fire.” She used her voice to fight slavery and to support women’s rights and temperance. After several lectures in New York City, one abolitionist wrote that, she “poured forth a torrent of natural eloquence, which swept everything before it.” She gave her most famous — and unprepared — speech in Ohio in 1851. It is known today as her “Ain’t I a Woman” speech, but historians now question whether she ever used those exact words. She pointed out the inequality that existed between the races and the genders.

Question 3
3.

PARAPHRASE this excerpt from Sojourner Truth's speech, Aint I Woman.

“I am a woman’s rights. I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that? I have heard much about the sexes being equal; I can carry as much as any man, and can eat as much too if I can get it. I am as strong as any man that is now. As for intellect, all I can say is, if woman have a pint and man a quart — why can’t she have her little pint full? You need not be afraid to give us our rights for fear we will take too much — for we can’t take more than our pint’ll hold.

Question 4
4.

What was Sojourner Truth known for?

Question 5
5.

Summarize the text.

As an African-American woman journalist living in the South, Ida B. Wells-Barnett had her life threatened for the work she did. She led a one-person campaign against lynching. She did that by gathering stories. She studied the information. She produced facts and statistics. And she spoke about it. In 1909, she gave a speech to the newly created National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). “This Awful Slaughter” presented hard facts about a subject that others refused to address publicly. Wells-Barnett forced people to face the reality of the horrors of lynching. She called on her listeners and the NAACP to do more to end it.

Question 6
6.

Paraphrase Ida B. Wells-Barnett's words.

Lynching is a national blight upon our nation, mocking our laws and disgracing our Christianity. ‘With malice toward none but with charity for all’ let us undertake the work of making the ‘law of the land’ effective — a shield to the innocent; and to the guilty, punishment swift and sure.”

Question 7
7.

Summarize the passage.

When Clara Lemlich was a teenager, her Jewish family fled from the Ukraine to escape religious persecution. The family settled in New York City. Lemlich found work in a textile factory. Factory employees worked long days — more than 10 hours — and six days a week. They earned only a few dollars. The terrible conditions motivated Lemlich to join the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. She became a leader in the effort to fight for workers’ rights. She organized several strikes. On November 22, 1909, she was part of a crowd listening to male organizers offer advice to workers. She insisted on speaking to the crowd. Her words sparked a massive strike known as the Uprising of the 20,000. Striking factory workers refused to work and protested in the streets. After more than two months, owners agreed to better pay and shorter workdays.

Question 8
8.

Summarize this passage.

African-American civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer gave an electrifying testimonial in 1964. Hamer was the vice chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. The party wanted to challenge Mississippi’s all-white state delegation to the Democratic National Convention. She shared her personal experience of trying to register to vote in the South. She described how she had been jailed and beaten. She testified that she been shot at and verbally abused because she wanted to vote. President Lyndon B. Johnson tried to prevent her testimony from being aired by making a speech of his own at the same time. But Hamer’s televised appearance made the news, and it reached a large audience. Her hope to have some of the Mississippi Freedom Democrats seated at the national convention did not succeed. But four years later, she was a delegate at the Democratic National Convention. She was the first woman to represent Mississippi and the first African American to be seated at a national convention since the 1870s.

Question 9
9.

Paraphrase this statement by Fannie Lou Hamer.

"I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings in America?”

Question 10
10.

This was an essay broken up into parts. What was the central idea?