Hope Lions Host Liberty Day for Hempstead County 5th Graders

The Hope Lions Club conducted a field trip for all 5th grade  students in Hempstead County on March 12th.  Students from Beryl Henry, H.A.P.S., Spring HIll, Blevins, and Garrett Memorial gathered in Hempstead Hall.  They were participating in an Arkansas Lions state project called Liberty Day.  This is a program designed to teach 5th grade students the rights and obligations of citizenship.

The day began in the theater at Hempstead Hall with a lesson in geography as it was in the 1600’s. prior to the establishment of the United States.  Emphasis was placed on why so many people at that time felt persecution in Europe and wanted to move to a “New World”.

The students moved into the ballroom for a series of lectures, bedtime stories, quizzes, and videos.  The spent the day following the time-line of events from the late 1600’s for the next hundred years as the United States of America became a country with its own government.

There were lessons on the Founding Fathers and the cooperation between the colonists and the native Americans.  There was a listing of the grievances suffered by the colonists and their reaction.  The students were told of the injustices being put upon the colonists.  These included the Boston Massacre, the Tea Tax, the Boston Tea Party, The Intolerable Tax, and others.  The students also learned of the colonist’s reaction by the formation of colonial conventions leading to the writing of the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution.  The students were reminded even as the revolution was being fought, the U.S. Constitution was being written. It was explained to the students that with a new American government being established, there was a need for guidance of what was included for the individual citizen.  This led to the program for the day concluding with a study of the first amendments to the Constitution.  These became known as the “Bill of Rights”.