Implementing District Standards
The Great African/African-American Intellectual Tradition For Liberation:
Resistance Past, Present and Beyond unit addresses core values, key figures and events of the Civil Rights Movement. The standards addressed in this unit revolve around the areas of critical examination of US History as it pertains to the fight for Black civil rights. The following are standards I feel this unit addresses.
Standard 11.1.3 reads, "Examine the effects of the Civil War and Reconstruction and of the industrial revolution, including demographic shifts and the emergence in the late nineteenth century of the United States as a world power." We will be studying the impact of Reconstruction on the lives of America's newly free slaves of African descent. This is the starting point for understanding the Modern Civil Rights Movement.
11.5.2 reads, " Analyze the international and domestic events, interests, and philosophies that prompted attacks on civil liberties, including the Palmer Raids, Marcus Garvey's ‘back-to-Africa' movement, the Ku Klux Klan, and immigration quotas and the responses of organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Anti-Defamation League to those attacks." We will explore Marcus Garvey's UNIA and the NAACP as an important organizational response to white supremacy.
11.5.6 reads, "Describe the Harlem Renaissance and new trends in literature, music, and art, with special attention to the work of writers (e.g., Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes). The central role of African-American culture to the civil rights movement will be explored.
11.10.1 reads, "Examine and analyze the key events, policies, and court cases in the evolution of civil rights, including Dred Scott v. Sandford, Plessy v. Ferguson, Brown v. Board of Education, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, and California Proposition 209." These key court decisions will be examined as a critical aspect of the legal struggle for civil rights.
11.10.2 reads, "Describe the collaboration on legal strategy between African American and white civil rights lawyers to end racial segregation in higher education." We will highlight the significance of solidarity across race as key to the advancement of civil rights for African-Americans.
11.10.3 reads, "Examine the roles of civil rights advocates (e.g., A. Philip Randolph, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Thurgood Marshall, James Farmer, Rosa Parks), including the significance of Martin Luther King, Jr. ‘s ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail' and ‘I Have a Dream' speech." Two distinct views of attaining civil and human rights for African Americans will be highlighted through comparing and contrasting Malcolm X's and Dr. King's approach to fighting for these rights.
11.10.4 reads, "Discuss the diffusion of the civil rights movement of African Americans from the churches of the rural South and the urban North, including the resistance to racial desegregation in Little Rock and Birmingham, and how the advances influenced the agendas, strategies, and effectiveness of the quests of American Indians, Asian Americans, and Hispanic Americans for civil rights and equal opportunities." The successes of the Black struggle for civil rights will be examined and related to the lives of my diverse students.
11.10.5 reads, "Analyze the passage and effects of civil rights and voting rights legislation (e.g., 1964 Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act of 1965) and the Twenty-Fourth Amendment, with an emphasis on equality of access to education and to the political process." Lastly, we will explore the lasting effects of civil rights to today and the identify where the fight for these rights continues.
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