Students will be able to describe key ideas about the civil rights movement of the 1940s:
The fight for civil rights happened all over the United States.
Ordinary people played an important role in the civil rights movement.
The need for labor led to conflict between black and white workers over jobs, housing, and transportation.
City, state, and federal governments began to pass laws banning discrimination.
Students will be able to match specific information in a secondary source with broader categories and concepts. Â
Students will be able to write explanatory text that summarizes a series of historical events.Â
Preparation: To prepare materials for this activity, teachers should print out and cut apart a set of cards for each student or group of students in the class. The teacher may want to print the cards on cardstock and/or laminate materials for durability. There are 14 event cards and corresponding "who", "what", and "where" mini-cards. The teacher may wish to reduce the number of event cards depending on ability of students or time allotted. Â
Step 1: Ask students to think about basic rights--what should a person in the United States be able to do? List the rights on the board: i.e., get hired for any job they are qualified for; live any place they can afford; vote if they meet age and citizenship requirements; eat in any restaurant they choose; sit anywhere they want at the movies; etc. After brainstorming some of these concepts, tell students that they will be looking at how African-American activists in the 1940s worked to gain those rights.Â
Step 2: Review the "what" mini-cards representing fair housing; voting; fair employment; and segregation in public places so that students understand what each symbol represents. Then show the map and review the four shaded regions that are represented on the "where" mini-cards: Northeast, South, Midwest, and West.Â
Have a student select one event card from the deck and read it aloud. Ask the group for answers to the "who", "what", and "where" categories. Demonstrate that they will need to fill in the "who" on the blank line provided.Â
Divide students into small groups of 3-6 students. Hand out complete decks of event cards and sets of mini-cards to each group. Ask the students to work together in their groups to add the who, what, and where mini-cards to each event card. Allow time for students to work.Â
The teacher can differentiate the activity by giving some students fewer cards.Â
Step 3: After students have completed their decks of cards, ask for volunteers to summarize the event and who/what/where details for each card. As they do, mark each location on the map (in Smartboard, if using) and note recurring themes in the events such as:
The significance of World War II for creating conditions for conflict between black and white workers but also opportunities for black workers to make demands for equal treatment.
The gradual nature of the demands
The mixture of local direct action campaigns and federal court cases
The involvement of young people
When activism failed or succeeded
The geographic diversity of the movement and how demands were similar or different in different parts of the country
Pass out the graphic organizer and review the four historical understandings on it. Ask students to review their cards and find examples of events that match each of the four historical understandings, making notes of those events in the space provided. Some events may match more than one historical understanding.Â
Step 4: (Optional) Post or pass out one of the following writing prompts (also included in list of materials):Â
LETTER
It is a few years after World War II. You are an African American living in the United States. Your older brother joined the army back in 1942 and is now stationed overseas in Europe, where there is no legal racial segregation. On days off, black and white soldiers can eat together at restaurants, go to any movie theater or club, and sit anywhere on the local trains and busses. Your brother will be returning home soon and wants to know whether or not conditions have improved for African Americans. Specifically, he wants to know:
Where are civil rights activists having success in fighting segregation?
Who is supporting their efforts and who is opposing them?
What effect has World War II had on race relations between whites and blacks in the United States?
Write a letter to your brother in which you answer his questions and describe your own role in the civil rights activism of the 1940s. Â
PARAGRAPHS
Organize your cards by what was being demanded (Jobs, Access to Public Places, Voting, Housing) What patterns do you see in this arrangement of cards by what? Write a paragraph using your own words to explain the patterns you see in the cards. You must write a topic sentence and provide at least three supporting details from the cards.Â
Organize your cards by where the events took place. (North, South, Midwest, West). What patterns do you see in this arrangement of cards by where? Write a paragraph using your own words to explain the patterns you see in the cards. You must write a topic sentence and provide at least three supporting details from the cards.Â
NOTE:Â These cards can be used to help open up discussions of various aspects of civil rights activism. For example, you could have students identify all of the cards that mention World War II and ask them to consider why that event might have played a role. You could also ask students to find all of the cards where the effort failed as a way of looking at why activism doesn't always succeed. Or you could prompt students to sort the cards based on where the activism was seeking change (e.g., courts, local government, federal government, local business, etc.) as a way of helping them understand the range variety of avenues that activists use to bring about social change.
Students will construct a timeline of the women's suffrage movement.
Students will analyze primary sources in order to determine the significance of social movements in creating constitutional change.Â
Students will be able to describe the goals and tactics of the women's suffrage movement. Â
In the early republic, despite a few scattered pleas and a short period of suffrage in New Jersey, women were excluded from the franchise and from civic life generally. In the antebellum period, though, women significantly participated in many reform movements, testing the boundaries of socially and politically acceptable behavior for their gender. In 1848, a small group of women and men gathered in Seneca Falls, New York to call for full civic rights for women. After the Civil War, when the national discourse centered around constitutional change and expanding voting and civil rights to former slaves, suffragists were hopeful that their enfranchisement might also be accomplished. Republican leaders, as well as some suffrage activists who had previously been active in the abolition movement, however, worried that including "sex" as a provision of the 15th Amendment would weaken its chances of passage, scuttled the proposal. Although the first call for a women's suffrage amendment was introduced into Congress in 1878, it would not be until 1920 that the nation ratified the 19th Amendment, guaranteeing women's right to vote.Â
Throughout this long period, suffrage activists adopted many different tactics, including circulating petitions, holding parades, and acts of civil disobedience. They made their case in the courts, in newspapers and magazines, and in the public sphere. They organized supporters at the local and state levels to put pressure on politicians to enfranchise women locally and to ratify an amendment should the opportunity arise. They also maintained a headquarters in Washington, D.C. to pressure Congressional leaders, as well as to demonstrate in front of the White House for their basic civic rights. Â
Note: This activity requires some preparation of materials ahead of time. The teacher should print out and cut apart the event cards and date cards, making enough sets for each group. The teacher should keep the date and event cards separate, so that the date cards can be passed out as "rewards" when the students finish analyzing each document. It is recommended to print cards on cardstock and laminate them, if possible, to improve sturdiness. In a professional development workshop for teachers, ASHP used sentence strips to create timelines and affixed the cards with velcro to the timelines.
The attached Smartboard Notebook file contains slides for each of the steps in the activity, as well as a completed timeline for reference. The Tic-Tac-Toe board numbered 1-9 allows students to pick at random a document to analyze, if the teacher wishes to introduce a more game-like element to the activity.Â
Step 1: Divide students into small groups of 3-5. Ask students to put their desks together to create a table and to clear it completely. All students will need for the activity is a writing utensil, but they will need lots of space to arrange their timelines.
Step 2: (Optional) Review the process for ratifying an amendment. Ask students to think about the role of activists and social movements in pressuring Congressional and state leaders to pass and ratify amendments.Â
Step 3:Â Project or write on the board the four steps of social movements and change (in random order):
DEMAND a change
ORGANIZE a movement
PERSUADE the public/officials
ACHIEVE the goal
Ask students to decide what the correct order for achieving a social change is. Why do they think some things have to happen before others?
Step 4: (Note: The teacher can modify the following steps by changing the number of documents in the activity.) Give each group a set of event cards and ask them to put them in the order they think they go, based on their prior knowledge or the logic of the DEMAND-ORGANIZE-PERSUADE-ACHIEVE rubric. After students have arranged their timelines, tell them they will use primary sources to determine the correct order of events.
Step 5: Lead students through analysis of some or all of the documents. Depending on the level of the students, the teacher may want to lead students through all documents or allow students to be self-directed.Â
If students are working at a self-directed pace:
For each document, the group should read the document together, then answer the questions on the "document understanding check" worksheet. When the group has answered the questions, they should send a "runner" to the teacher. The teacher should check the answers and give them a "date card" to add to the event card if they are correct. (If students are incorrect, they should try again.) When the student retrieves the date card, he or she should also pick up a new document and worksheet. Allow students to pick which document they would like to work on next, though they should complete all documents by the end of the activity.
Step 6: As groups finish, have them work independently to answer the following synthesis question:
Review the four steps of social movements and change: DEMAND a change, ORGANIZE a movement, PERSUADE the public/officials, ACHIEVE the goal. Write 1-2 paragraphs describing how the women's suffrage movement resulted in the 19th Amendment. Cite at least FOUR of the documents in the activity.Â
Allow students to work on the synthesis question as other groups finish the documents. Any students who don't complete the synthesis question in class should complete it for homework.Â