AMERICAN DREAM
The belief that anyone, regardless of where they were born or what class they were born into,
can attain their own version of success.
Jackie Robinson
Life is not a spectator sport. If you’re going to spend your whole life in the grandstand just watching what goes on, in my opinion you’re wasting your life.”—Jackie Robinson
Let’s set the scene. April 15, 1947, years before the Civil Rights movement officially takes flight. The Dodgers’ opening-day game at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, New York, is in full swing and the game of baseball is about to change forever. It’s this day that future Hall of Famer, Jackie Robinson, broke the color barrier and marked the beginning of the end of segregation in Major League Baseball.
Jackie’s position on the Dodgers not only fulfilled his own version of the American Dream but gave hope to future athletes hoping to compete and play on the same national scale. But his story, specifically as it’s portrayed in the book, Thank You, Jackie Robinson, by Barbara Cohen, was [affected by book bans in the state of Florida] — taking one way of teaching that American Dream we value to students across the country.
There are other dreamers at risk of going missing.
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Mildred and Richard Loving’s dream to marry the person she loved led to Loving v. Virginia, which stated bans on interracial marriages were unconstitutional.Selina Alko’s picture book, The Case for Loving: The Fight for Interracial Marriage, based on Mildred and Richard Loving was banned from Pennsylvania classrooms in 2021.
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Indigenous peoples whose ancestors were pushed off their native lands dream of reclaiming not just land but their values, culture, language, and more.
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Audre Lorde dreamed of showing people that they were more than just “Black” or “Women,” but could be so many things, while also working to support various liberation movements.
Her book, Sister Outsider, was banned by Tennessee administrators in 2022.
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Black Tulsans’ dream of financial independence became a reality and by 1921 it was one of the most prosperous Black communities in the nation before it was destroyed.