Civil Rights Milestones

Oral History Project The excitement is building as you think about your project, a topic and a person to interview. You have the guidelines, the rubric and the preliminary interview sheet. The preliminary sheet should be completed as quickly as possible so your person and topic can be approved. Sheets were due on Friday but many of you were out due to field trips so you have until Monday to hand in your preliminary interview questions. You have lots of ideas from our Decades Project to select from and if you missed that activity, take a walk along the timelines posted in the classroom starting with 1950 and ending with 2000. A number of students have told me they have found a friend or relative who would speak with them on such diverse topics as Beatlemania, the Great Depression, Vietnam, and the Civil Rights Movement. You have a great deal of flexibility in this project but you must make some decisions early in the process so you have time to put together a quality interview. Think hard about the questions you will ask and be prepared with follow-up questions. You will have one day in the library next week to do research on your topic so you can develop quality questions. Once you are prepared, you are ready to talk with your interviewee. Your final product can be written, taped or recorded…your choice. Civil Rights Movement We continued with our study of this movement by first looking at the diverse strategies and leaders. Dr. Martin Luther King stood at one end of the spectrum…a man who advocated nonviolent confrontation. Other leaders, such as Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael, were discouraged by the slow progress and turned towards the threat of violence and advocating for separate black communities. You have a chart for homework that you need to fill out after reading the one page handout on the movement. We can see that the Civil Rights movement had numerous leaders who employed different tactics with the aim of winning civil liberties for all. Brown versus Board of Education We read an excerpt from the Supreme Court ruling in 1954 that outlawed segregation in schools. The unanimous court ruled that separate facilities were unequal and thus schools had to be integrated. This was not a popular decision in the South, and northern schools struggled to integrate by busing children out of their own neighborhoods to schools in other parts of the city where either white or black students were needed to meet the court orders. Little Rock Nine Of all the events within this era, the one that speaks loudest to students is the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. We watched a clip from a 6 hour PBS documentary “Eyes on the Prize” that highlighted this effort to have nine African American students attend what had been an all-white high school. Officials at first did not think it would be a problem, but once the day arrived, a mob of opponents from all over the South formed. The Governor brought in the National Guard to keep the African American students out of the school. President Eisenhower, who had to uphold the Supreme Court ruling on integration, met with Governor Faubus at the summer White House in Newport, near Fort Adams, and urged him to allow the students to enter. When the Governor returned to Arkansas, he replaced the National Guard with local police, again with the intent to keep the African American students from entering. It was at this point the President sent in federal troops. At one point as the mob surged someone suggested they lynch one of the students to placate the crowd. What a chilling thought that an adult would actually suggest hanging a teenager as a way to calm the crowd! But frequent lynchings were a way of life for African Americans living in the Deep South. If you are interested in learning more about this heinous time in our history you should read “Lynching and Spectacle” by Amy Wood. As one of the students, Ernie Green, said, “It was a year like no other school year.” A story of courage - and to think it happened just a little over 50 years ago. Four Little Girls We also watched a clip from Spike Lee’s documentary on the bombing of a church in Birmingham Alabama in 1963 that resulted in the death of four young girls who had just finished their Sunday school lessons. Americans saw the faces of these young innocent children and felt a new surge of disgust with how African Americans were being treated. The accumulation of outrageous actions finally led President Johnson and the Congress to address these injustices with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. While the law clearly states that all Americans must be treated equally we all know that the law may say one thing but some people will continue to act in a bigoted manner. We must as a society be constantly on guard not to let our civil liberties erode and we must come to the defense of any group that may be feeling this persecution. There may be a time when we will feel the sting of prejudice and we want to know that others will stand up for our rights. Quiz Time You will have a quiz on chapter 27, section 4, of your text during our next class meeting. Make sure you understand the significance of the Brown case, Jackie Robinson, Thurgood Marshall and the influence World War II had on the civil rights movement. You also need to know about the role of President Eisenhower and the focus of the NAACP during the 1950’s. Stay Safe Our mock car crash this week was a chilling reminder of what can happen when people make bad decisions. As we enter prom season, please take the time to think about your decisions and never get into a car with someone who has been drinking or is impaired in any other way. As a parent, I would want my child to call me and a safe ride will be provided with no questions asked.