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Third Reading: Text-Dependent Questioning
Now read the passage again, this time with the focus of reading to respond to the Key Ideas and Details interpretive questions. Write your responses to each question and highlight or underline the textual evidence that supports your answer.
Congolese
Independence
Speech
June 30, 1960
by Patrice Lumumba
1 Men and women of the Congo,
2 Victorious fighters for independence, today victorious, I greet you in the name of the Congolese Government. All of you, my friends, who have fought tirelessly at our sides, I ask you to make this June 30, 1960, an illustrious date that you will keep indelibly engraved in your hearts, a date of significance of which you will teach to your children, so that they will make known to their sons and to their grandchildren the glorious history of our fight for liberty.
3 For this independence of the Congo, even as it is celebrated today with Belgium, a friendly country with whom we deal as equal to equal, no Congolese worthy of the name will ever be able to forget that is was by fighting that it has been won, a day-to-day fight, an ardent and idealistic fight, a fight in which we were spared neither privation nor suffering, and for which we gave our strength and our blood.
4 Weareproudofthisstruggle,oftears,offire,andofblood,tothedepthsofourbeing, for it was a noble and just struggle, and indispensable to put an end to the humiliating slavery which was imposed upon us by force.
5 This was our fate for eighty years of a colonial regime; our wounds are too fresh and too painful still for us to drive them from our memory. We have known harassing work, exacted in exchange for salaries which did not permit us to eat enough to drive away hunger, or to clothe ourselves, or to house ourselves decently, or to raise our children as creatures dear to us.
key ideas and deTails
What emotional impact might the word “victorious” have on the Congolese audience for this speech? How might the King and other representatives of Belgium respond differently?
key ideas and deTails
Which of Lumumba’s descriptions of the “eighty years” of Belgian rule
might have the strongest emotional impact on his audience? Which use logic or reasoning to point out the injustice?
Close Reading Workshop 2 • Close Reading of Argumentative Nonfiction Texts 31
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