Rationale
African-Americans have been fighting for civil rights for years. Even though some legislation was supposed to protect African-Americans, many times this legislation had loopholes that dismantled the rights the legislation was supposed to give. For instance, the 13th amendment was supposed to free African-Americans from being enslaved but this amendment also had rhetoric which said criminals were not free. This led to many African-Americans becoming criminalized and being enslaved for the sole purpose of continuing to be forced to give labor for free. Another example we should consider is Brown v. Board of Education that states segregation in schools isn’t legal. This did not occur and many schools were still segregated.
When we think about the government’s sole purpose is to protect its constituents, and the history it has in not doing that for African-Americans, students need to understand what this means for their lives today and what this has meant for African-Americans historically. This very history and awareness are often lacking in school curriculum, presenting a need for this unit to be taught. These thought processes help children explore their own connection to the past, empower them to imagine possible futures, and encourage them to be critical readers of historical narratives.
Additionally, my school is 96% African-American which makes the Civil Rights Movement especially relevant to their lives.
This unit provides a foundation to understanding the role policy plays in systemic racism and how people fight to change these policies. Living in a disenfranchised community, it is crucial for the students in my school to understand this history, along with the role they play in the public policy process. Many times, communities who have experienced multigenerational poverty have lost hope in the public policy process to address their everyday needs. Sometimes, people do not understand this process or the role they play in it. Becoming aware of this process and the history of how everyday people have fought for policies to better their lives, will hopefully lead students to feel empowered to fight for justice as well.
This unit will be taught to 2nd graders in a Chicago Public School. It will be taught over the course of 6 weeks for 30 minutes daily. Students will learn the history of African-Americans since slavery in order to guide them to put in context the systemic racism still prevalent today. Oppressed people can often feel as if they are failing by society’s standards. When history is used to put this into perspective, oppressed people can understand that civil rights were denied to them and that is the true failure, not themselves. In this unit, students will not only learn about the events that were catalysts to the civil rights movement, they will also learn about the actions African-Americans took to push back from government policies that denied their civil rights.
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