At school, the Freedom Writers immersed themselves in the study of the Holocaust, a genocide that took place during World War II, when the German Nazis aimed to exterminate Jews, as well as other populations, such as the Roma, homosexuals, and all political opponents. Gruwell’s students during their early years of high school. These events heightened racial and ethnic tensions dramatically, impacting Ms. In 1994, California’s Proposition 187 aimed to prohibit legal immigrants from accessing certain public services in the state of California (including healthcare and education), and was widely seen as a measure to punish immigrant communities-in particular the growing Latino and Asian populations. The riots, which lasted for six days, were the catastrophic end result of decades of mounting police brutality within Los Angeles’s communities of color, and were marked by extreme violence, destruction, and looting. In 1992, the Los Angeles Riots were sparked by the acquittal of the Los Angeles Police Department officers who were responsible for the brutal, videotaped beating of Rodney King, an unarmed black man. The students’ time in high school is marked by local and national moments of racial tension and violence. In 1999, they were able to publish a selection of the diary entries they wrote during their four years of high school, thereby spreading their personal tales of hardship and success through the rest of the world. Over the course of their four years of high school, their achievements were celebrated by local and national media, and their exceptional fight against intolerance was rewarded by institutions such as the Anne Frank Center USA. Through writing, these students found their voices and were able to share their stories of hardship with each other. Gruwell’s students wrote about their everyday lives in their diaries, which make up much of the book. Under the name “Freedom Writers,” chosen in homage to the historical Freedom Riders civil rights activists who fought against segregation in the American South, Ms. Gruwell also created the Freedom Writers Foundation, a non-profit organization that aspires to share the Freedom Writers method with other educators. She left high school teaching in 1998, the same year that her students graduated, and began to teach at California State University, Long Beach. Through her extraordinary dedication to her students, she transformed a class divided by ethnic tensions into a united group, passionate about history and about making the world a better place. Ultimately, she led her group of 150 “at risk” students to outstanding academic achievement. After intercepting a racist drawing in her class and discovering that many of her students had never heard of the Holocaust, she devoted her entire curriculum to teaching tolerance. In 1993, she began teaching at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, California, a school known for its ethnic and racial diversity. Erin Gruwell decided to become a teacher after witnessing the Los Angeles riots in 1992 and deciding that she wanted to teach young people to react in different ways to anger and frustration.
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