The Civil Rights Movement

Calvin Bowers & Derek Cain

Driving Question: How did the events and people of the Civil Rights Movement transform race relations and social culture to its current status?

Targeted Grade Level and Class: 11th Grade American History

Project Description: The students six week project will cover The Civil Rights Movement.  Race Relations have drastically improved from the early 20^th century to the present time.  The students will pick a topic in regards to the Civil Rights Movement and the King Era.  They will research, summarize, and explain, through a research paper, how their topic aided the Civil Rights Movement, and how it helped transform race relations and social culture to its current status.

Background Information: This projects covers the Civil Rights Movement, including the events leading up to it and its’ effects on the following decades. The unit calendar emphasizes a short survey over slavery and civil rights, the causes of the movement, styles of protesting, leaders, organizations, court cases, and a survey over the movements’ effects and an evaluation of race relations today. If there are any questions over the historical aspect of the project a great resource is Taylor Branch’s Parting the Waters : America in the King Years 1954-63. The book has everything one would need to know about the Civil Rights Movement. There are also two debates in this project. If you are not sure how to organize a debate, http://www.csun.edu/~dgw61315/debformats.html is a website which is a good resource that thoroughly explains the rules and procedures. The calendar contains several class discussion and lecture days. If this does not fit your style of teaching then I would recommend using web quests, http://webquest.org/index.php, to replace some lectures. There are a substantial amount of web quests over the Civil Rights Movement and they are all very good. It is also important to understand one of the underlying themes of the lesson is to prepare students for the world beyond high school, to emphasize the importance of good race relations, and to prepare them to be upstanding young citizens in your community.