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Martin Luther King, Jr.
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!”
The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., said these words in his famous “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, D.C., in 1963. He was America’s most prominent civil rights leader. The civil rights movement was the struggle to get laws and attitudes changed so that black Americans could have rights equal to those of white Americans.
Nathan Hale
One of the first heroes of the American Revolution (1775-1783) was a young man named Nathan Hale. Early in the war, Hale spied on the British, gathering important information for the American Continental Army. But he was caught by the British and hanged.
Nathan Hale was born in Coventry, Connecticut, in 1755. For a boy of that time he was well educated, attending Yale College (now Yale University). He graduated from Yale at age 18 and taught school for two years. In 1775, Hale joined the Continental Army to fight against the British. The next year, he earned a promotion to captain.
Patrick Henry
“Give me liberty or give me death!” Patrick Henry’s fiery words made him one of the great patriot leaders of the American Revolution.
EARLY LIFE
Born in 1736, Patrick Henry grew up on a tobacco plantation in Virginia. Patrick went to school only for a short time. His father, John Henry, taught him at home.
As a young man, Henry tried storekeeping and farming. He failed at both. Henry then studied law. He earned his license to practice law in 1760. Henry's speaking skills and sharp legal mind made him an outstanding lawyer.
Native Americans
Imagine arriving at the edge of an unexplored land. There are no roads or trails or buildings of any kind. A vast, untracked wilderness extends beyond you for thousands of miles. Wherever you go, your footprints will be the first.
This was the world encountered by the first Americans, the ancestors of today’s Native Americans, or Indians. They arrived in North America more than 10,000 years ago. Before long, they had spread out across the Americas.
THE FIRST AMERICANS
Scholars believe the first Americans got to North America by walking from Asia. Back then, a strip of land connected Alaska in North America to Siberia in Asia.
Pilgrims
A ship called the Mayflower drifted on the cold waters off Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The ship's passengers—102 men, women, and children—had spent three months crowded onboard. Now they looked eagerly ashore to their new home. That day, December 21, 1620, they founded the second English colony in North America. They called the settlement Plymouth, after the place in England from which they’d set sail three months before.
The Mayflower passengers became known as Pilgrims. The name comes from the word pilgrimage. A pilgrimage is an important trip, often taken for religious reasons.