Voting Rights

We began class today with a look at the March on Washington from August, 1963. We narrowed our focus to an examination of the speech that John Lewis prepared to give and the one that he actually gave during the rally on the National Mall.  Here is a LINK to those documents.  We then watched Eyes on the Prize: Power and the Vote which introduced Malcolm X and followed the activities of activists from SNCC and CORE in Mississippi during Freedom Summer of 1964. You can see the video by watching both of these clips: Power and the Vote 1 and Power and the Vote 2. After our discussion about Freedom Summer, we watched the next phase of the movement in Eyes on the Prize: Selma which showed the continued pressure applied by activists as they planned a march from Selma to Montgomery in the winter of 1965 to highlight the voting discrimination that continued to plague Alabama and other areas of the South.  You can see the video by watching both of these clips: Selma 1 and Selma 2.
After Mr. Kramer explained the Voting Rights Act of 1965, students were given a series of current articles and statements by John Lewis, concerning the current status of voting rights as well as commentary on the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases. Students were asked to read those for Friday and potentially use them as a basis for Friday's "Sharing Your Voice" activity (see the post from earlier this week).
All of our notes and reflections today were done in a different format than normal. Instead of using our journals, we put details, quotations, reflections, images, and interpretations on big paper, forming a collage of ideas from these periods.  Here is an example:

Rachel's 1964-65 Collage

Birmingham

Today in class we finished our discussion of Native Son, Book II. Then we explored the Birmingham campaign of 1963.  You can see the video that we looked at in class by watching both of the following clips: Birmingham Part I and Birmingham Part II.  We followed that by taking a close look at excerpts from Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter From Birmingham City Jail, focusing on the detail, structure, and philosophy of individual quotes and then presenting their meanings in a series of physical tableau with our groups.

Sharing Your Voice

As we explained in class today, we will set aside time on Friday for you to share your voice - to freely express your thoughts about the recent series of events we have been discussing, including the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases and the protests that followed.  Perhaps you want to lead us in a discussion, play a song or video, write a poem, give a speech, or anything else you'd like to express. The time is yours - we are simply giving you the forum and opportunity.

Please use this form by the end of class on Wednesday to sigh up for a time slot.  We'd like to be able to make sure everyone has the opportunity to share / participate.

Sharing Your Voice registration form

Native Son Book 2

Today we'll be continuing our look at Native Son by focusing in on Bigger Thomas.  We will begin with a piece of individual writing considering two key moments from Book Two.  Then, in our groups, we will consider not merely his actions but also the factors and motivations that are influencing those actions.
To do so, each of your groups will be assigned one section of Book Two to examine with one person taking notes on this CHART.  In your discussions you will be asked to consider the aggravating and mitigating circumstances surrounding Bigger's actions.
Mitigating circumstances are circumstances that partially explain or excuse behavior. Mitigating circumstances are often referred to in the legal context as factors that make a crime or other action more understandable. Mitigating circumstances are not an absolute excuse, and do not mean that no culpability will be attached to the actions; they simply mean that the actions are viewed as less egregious in light of the circumstances. Mitigating factors are the opposite of aggravating factors. Aggravating factors are those factors that make a crime or other action seem more egregious, such as prior felony convictions or choosing an especially vulnerable victim.

For your discussion of the mitigating and aggravating factors surrounding Bigger's actions, you will take note that some of these will be “internal” factors, in other words things that Bigger is thinking or telling the reader about his behavior that might be considered mitigating (things that help to explain his behavior) or aggravating (things that make his behavior seem more egregious or outrageous).  Others will be “external” factors or in other words things from other people or society around him that might be considered mitigating or aggravating circumstances. When finished, you will be asked to share your findings.

Strategies for Change

Last week we explored the legal strategy that went into the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Mr. Kramer used this powerpoint lecture to lead us through the strategy and then we looked at the key excerpts from the decision itself to understand the change in the law as a result of the strategy. When looking at the decision in CDW or AR, make sure that you understand the holding and the reasoning behind it.
We also looked at the decision's direct impact on schools by watching a video about the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957.  You can watch a long form of the video HERE (the first 30 minutes or so highlight the Little Rock 9).  We discussed the different forms of resistance shown from multiple perspectives in the story.
We closed the week by reading a fictionalized account of the Emmett Till case and then a short VIDEO showing the key elements of the story.  We discussed the different forms of resistance shown by Emmett Till, Mamie Till Bradley, Mose Wright, as well as J.T. Milam and Roy Bryant.
We then talked about how the "Emmett Till" generation would react to the Jim Crow society that continued around them first by looking back at Little Rock, and then by watching this VIDEO about the Sit-In movement in Nashville in 1960.

Native Son into the Harlem Renaissance

Yesterday in class we continued our look at Native Son by sharing our intial work on pages 1-42 with this chart. We then followed that by using this second chart to begin to make conclusions about how the topic of fear is represented in the novel.  We created new "scenes" by combining important quotations.
Today in class we will be looking at the Harlem Renaissance by focusing on the works of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston.  We will also be examining these paintings by Archibold Motley and Jacob Lawrence. We will finish class by writing a paragraph in which students will be asked to evaluate the Harlem Renaissance as a response to the Jim Crow Era.  This paragraph is due tomorrow in class.
Here are the paintings we'll be looking at in class.

"Cocktails" by Archibald Motley

"Nightlife" by Archibald Motley

Migration Series: Panel #3 by Jacob Lawrence

Lynching

After our day exploring responses to the Jim Crow era by looking at Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois creatively with the use of Haiku, today we worked to put additional information on the table to further inform how we may evaluate ways in which to respond.  First we brought our attention back to the present day with a discussion of Eric Garner and the New York grand jury's failure to press charges against the police officer involved. We then read and talked about this ARTICLE and how the information from our webquests and documents might have influenced the author.  After a segue into the topic of lynching, we looked at Without Sanctuary, a short film with images of lynchings put to the music of Billie Holliday as she sings Strange Fruit.  A different version of the images can be found HERE (although it has narration rather than the music). The song can be found HERE.  After responding to the images in our notebooks, we worked to answer some questions by reading excerpts from Hellhounds an essay by Leon Litwack.
We spent the last part of class thinking about the first part of Native Son.  In groups, we were assigned one section of Book One to consider and filled out this CHART corresponding to that section.  We'll continue our look at Book One on Monday.

Plessy and Jim Crow

Today in class we reviewed our conclusions about Reconstruction. We then discussed the 14th Amendment (CDW p. 296) and discussed the Plessy v. Ferguson Decision (CDW p. 423) by using these QUESTIONS.
During the 2nd part of class, we explored what kind of society the Plessy decision created (Jim Crow) by completing and discussing these WEB ACTIVITIES with partners and keeping track of our conclusions in our notebooks.

Ferguson - linking history and current events

Last week's events in Ferguson, Missouri raised a wide range of questions as well as links to historical events.  We'll start today by looking at some articles published over the weekend, and then ask our own questions about what else we need to know to fully understand them.

Here is a link to the handout of excerpts we used in class.

Here are some links to some other articles that might be helpful:

• "What Happened in Ferguson?" - New York Times
• "Barack Obama, Ferguson, and the Evidence of Things Unsaid" - The Atlantic

Here are the questions we generated in response to the articles we read

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During the second part of class today we were in the computer lab, catching up with the historical chronology by looking at the era of Reconstruction in the years after the Civil War.

Here is a link to the chart you'll use for your work

Here is a link to the website we'll use