Human Rights

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Essential Questions

 

What does it mean to be human? 


 

How does our common existence connect our walks? 

 

How can we understand more about the human experience from reading and writing?

 
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Watch this video to learn more about Nelson Mandela’s life.

 

Nelson Mandela’s

Favorite Poem


Nelson Mandela, the anti-apartheid leader who was jailed for his activism and in 1994 became South Africa’s first black President, regularly recited one poem during his more than twenty-five years of imprisonment—the 1875 poem “Invictus” by English poet William Ernest Henley. The poem, which helped Mandela persist through extraordinarily challenging circumstances, includes the iconic lines, “I am the master of my fate: / I am the captain of my soul.” (poets.org)

 
 

Invictus

William Ernest Henley - 1849-1903

Out of the night that covers me,   

  Black as the Pit from pole to pole,   

I thank whatever gods may be   

  For my unconquerable soul.   


In the fell clutch of circumstance 

  I have not winced nor cried aloud.   

Under the bludgeonings of chance   

  My head is bloody, but unbowed.   


Beyond this place of wrath and tears   

  Looms but the Horror of the shade, 

And yet the menace of the years   

  Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.   


It matters not how strait the gate,   

  How charged with punishments the scroll,   

I am the master of my fate:

  I am the captain of my soul.