The Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of the Civil Rights Movement

Rationale

I used to think that it was ironic that the Civil Rights Movement appeared as a distant and intangible piece of history to many of my black, brown and working class students. But upon further reflection, for all of its victories, the movement for Civil Rights has fallen short of addressing the particular injustices that many of my students currently experience.

It is within this context, that the apathy I have perceived from 10 years of teaching is born. What is further ironic, tragically, is that much of the immediate suffering that my students face, is either self-inflicted or inflicted from members of our own families, our own communities. From gang and neighborhood violence, petty-crime, defiant and disrespectful attitudes, dysfunctional social relationships, drug and alcohol abuse, to low motivation for school, among many others, this behavior reflects values symptomatic of a larger, disturbing world-view.

So long as my students who are struggling most see these particular issues as isolated and disconnected from the larger history of the struggle of their forbears for Civil Rights, any study of this key part of history is rendered insignificant - just more things "we need to needlessly memorize". In their exploration of Civil Rights history, they will see that the positive values of self-determination, sacrifice, responsibility to self and community, intellectual discipline, creativity, faith in humanity, resistance to oppression, love of life and commitment to justice, run deep and permeate the fight for civil rights.

I see in teaching the history of Civil Rights, the opportunity to inspire my students to take the lessons from this period for their benefit. In engaging my students with this rich history, I hope to counteract some of the layers of dysfunction, that manifests in the form of ditching class, truancy and general defiance that gets our youth into trouble, incarcerated, or even killed. Daniel Solorzano and Dolores Delgado-Bernal classify such tendencies as "reactionary" and/or "self-destructive resistance" behavior and as something that must be redirected.¹ I intend to use this Unit to move my students toward a "transformative resistance", that summon the lessons of our past - in the fight for civil rights - to positively shape their future.

In William Julius Wilson's book, More than Just Race, Wilson identifies as one of the "legacies of historic racial subjugation...the extremely high crime rate among black males, including the violent crime rate".² He provides a useful framework for understanding the larger context under which teachers of black and brown youth operate. He continues,

I hope to further our understanding of the complex and interrelated factors that continue to contribute to racial inequality in the United States. In the process, I call for reexamining the way social scientists discuss two important factors associated with racial inequality: social structure and culture. Although the book highlights the experiences of inner-city African Americans....[f]ormal and informal aspects of inequality have also victimized Latinos, Asian Americans, and Native Americans.³

Using this framework, I hope to raise student consciousness about the larger systemic forces (social structures) at play as they shape, and in many instances, determine the opportunities available to them. At the same time, I want to raise consciousness about the harmful ways of how they see and interact with the world (culture) and how the interplay between social structures and culture poses a tremendous challenge to their uplift.

Within education, the social structure is facially non-discriminatory. In other words, on the surface level it treats our children equally and without malice. However, there are negative outcomes that arise from design. Though on an individual level, a teacher or a test may not be biased, the impact is. Educational researcher, Howard Berlak states, "the bias is systemic and structural that is, built into in the basic assumptions and technology of standardized testing in the way the tests are constructed and administered, the way results are reported, and in the organizational structure and administrative rules of the accountability system itself.""⁴

Currently, the institutional standard of progress is represented by student performance on the California State Standardized Testing And Reporting (STAR) tests. On these standardized exams, my black and brown students score well below their white and middle class peers. They comprise a main part of what has come to be known as our "gap" students. According to the Education Research Project (ERP),

"The 'achievement gap' in education refers to the disparity in academic performance between groups of students. It is most often used to describe the troubling performance gaps between many African-American and Hispanic students, at the lower end of the performance scale, and their non-Hispanic white peers, and the similar academic disparity between students from low-income and well-off families."⁵

Our "gap" students come from a location in society that is a product of the historically unjust systems that are rooted in the institutional practice of white supremacy.⁶

This backward world-view has historically shaped the rules of our society and is responsible for giving whites a head start, masking their progress as innate to their "superior" being. While one group is seen as "naturally" gifted, those who are unsuccessful are personally seen as responsible for their own lack of progress. All the while, the systemic nature of this lack of success is hidden.⁷ The reality that historical, structural and cultural reasons underlie in this achievement gap provides on the one hand, a key to exposing the real roots of the problem and on the other, the opportunity of freeing our students from the burden of the narrative that their lack of performance is somehow intrinsic to their race.⁸

Through the use of equitable and student-centered teaching, I will deepen my students' understanding of the role the fight for civil rights has had in the opportunities they now have. I want to connect this with their understanding of their role to fight for the civil and human rights we have yet to achieve. I want my unit plan to inspire them to action and help begin the "connect-the-dots" process of understanding how structural processes (racist legislation, economic trends, institutionalized discrimination, etc) that caused and causes inequality in our society is behind much of the inequity in our society. Furthermore, I would like, in concert with the students, to identify concrete steps that can be taken to reverse such injustice.

This unit will be implemented in my 11th grade, US History Class, at Balboa High School. Couched in the Southeast section of San Francisco - an historically working-class and immigrant community of the city - my students will have a broad range of issues and problems from which to apply their newly acquired knowledge and skills. I will have this emerging group of intellectuals for the next two years, both as their US History teacher this year, and as their Civics and Economics teacher come senior year.

This class will emphasize uncovering and critically contrasting multiple and varying narratives to the official telling by the institution - the so-called "master narrative." If in fact this narrative is to be challenged and overturned, my students need to see examples of courage, intellectual brilliance and creativity in the history of the most oppressed. And indeed they will, through the likes of escaped slaves turned civil rights champions, David Walker and Frederick Douglass to modern examples of leaders extolling the virtues of this struggle, like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and Malcolm X.

They will explore history from various vantage points and cull out the conflicting interests that led to the numerous conflicts that resulted in the dramatic change that has occurred since this nation's inception, and its impact upon their reality. My students will explore the powerful words of resistance that represent a collective spirit organized against injustice and slavery. Escaped slave turned abolitionist David Walker reflects,

"...[they] beat us inhumanely, sometimes almost to death, for attempting to inform ourselves, by reading the Word of our Maker, and at the same time tell us, that we are beings void of intellect!!!!

...Let me cry shame upon you Americans, for such outrages upon human nature!!! ...But glory, honour and praise to Heaven's King, that the sons and daughters of Africa, will, in spite of all the opposition of their enemies, stand forth in all the dignity and glory that is granted by the Lord to his creature man and make the best of their time while it lasts.⁹

As my students enter broader society, I wish for this lesson to provide concrete, relevant and convincing arguments to move them to reverse the tragic irony of self-destructive behavior and motivate them to excel academically. Using this as my framework throughout my teaching, I believe that once inspired and tooled with useful skills, my students will rise to the occasion. With equitable pedagogy, community support, individual discipline, commitment and hard work, my students will close this gap "and make the best of their time while it lasts."