Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Civil Rights, Day 2 - Class Recap

Kanye West (left) and Jay Z (right) at the Watch The Throne tour stop in Boston, 2011.

Hi everyone,

Welcome back from your long weekend! A short three day week is now a third of the way done. Read on to see what we did today in class.

Learning Targets Addressed:
SS.HS.KN.ALT.17: I can explain the process of change and continuity in a society, place or region.
SS.HS.KN.ALT.19: I can explain the role and impacts of social hierarchies.

Soundtrack: “Through the Wire” by Kanye West. Selected for today because of the lyrics - a verse reads:
How do you console my mom or give her light support?Telling her your son's on life supportAnd just imagine how my girl feelOn the plane scared as hell that her guy look like Emmett Till
AGENDA 3/11/14:
News Brief
Emmett Till
Plessy v. Ferguson
Early Struggles

Homework: Read the blog! Next news brief: Sadia

News Brief: Ethan needs to email me or comment with his link, please!

Emmett Till: We finished watching a documentary called The Murder of Emmett Till, which we started last class. There were about 30 minutes left. If you missed one or both days, here's the video again:


After the film, we went over the documentary questions that I passed out last class. My main point in showing this was to drive home the point how brutal and unjust life was in the era we are talking about. I wanted to drive home the point that civil rights are not just about speeches in black and white - this happened less than 60 years ago, and to this day, we still have hate crimes happen all the time. This case of a 14 year old boy being murdered and mutilated for whistling at a white woman, and his killers being totally freed of all responsibility inflamed the passions of so many people. How could this happen? These are the same sorts of questions we ask today.

Plessy v. Ferguson: The rest of class focused on going over the U.S. Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). Here is a recap of the case, which said that segregation of races was legal, because it was not discrimination - specifically, segregation of different railroad cars in Louisiana. I passed out a worksheet that looked at the case and had the class answer five questions related to it. Next class, we will move on to looking at some of the early struggles of the civil rights movement and how they were overcome.

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