By Sam Chiron

After exploring their connection to the Black Lives Matter movement in previous activities, my 11th and 12th grade students at Thurgood Marshall Academy worked through the #LastWords lesson.

They started by making observations, inferences, and recorded their feelings for several of Shirin-Banou Barghi’s images before learning more about each person memorialized by the series.

After analyzing "41 Bullets Off-Broadway," a poem by Willie Perdomo, students were given space to create their own poetry, song, rap, and/or art to express their connection to the Black Lives Matter movement. 

Overall, this work provided an opportunity for students to see how art, words, music and poetry can be powerful components of social justice movements and to see themselves as activists.