So in case you haven’t caught up on my last post, we’re going a unit on the Civil Rights Movement. Well, we just finished it. The end product was a wonderful video that I made with Hannah

Okay, that was probably a lot to take in. So let’s take a step back. How did we get here? Now, I could go through every single historical event. But for those of you who aren’t readers, feel free to skip past these. It’s just a few bullet points of the ‘who, what, where, when, why’ when it comes to segregation.

Pre-1950’s:

  • American Civil War 
    • Basically North vs. South
    • Confederates vs. Republicans
    • Led to the 13th Amendment
  • Thirteenth Amendment (Dec 1865)
    • Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery
    • He added onto the constitution saying that all men were equal
    • The last state to ratify the amendment was Mississippi in 2013
  • Separate But Equal – Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896)
    • Plessy was on train, didn’t want to sit on black car
    • Court didn’t agree with him
    • Enforced laws about discrimination
    • “There is a seat for you, but it’s just separate”
  • Jim Crow Laws (1896)
    • Laws after slavery laws
    • Based off of 1820’s song
    • Racist laws that made segregation a thing
    • Seperate But Equal
  • De Facto vs. De Jure Segregation
    • Helped enforce the above two
    • Difference between laws being enforced by preference instead of by law
    • De Facto: Preference (water fountains) De Jure: Law (interracial marriage)

1950’s:

  • End of School Segregation (1954)
    • School girl had to go an hour to her all black school
    • Sued the school board to be able to go to closer all white school
    • Went to Supreme Court
    • Smashed down on laws related to segregation in schools
    • Argued that it wasn’t equal because she had to commute an hour and the resources weren’t at the same level
  • Claudette Colvin (1954)
    • Refused to give up her seat
    • Was arrested and kept in an adult jail
    • Happened before Rosa Parks, but didn’t have the same affect
    • She got pregnant so the NAACP didn’t want to have her be the face of the movement
  • Murder of Emmett Till (July 1955)
    • ‘Winked’ at a white woman
    • Was lynched by white men
    • Got killed and his mother put his body on display for people tosee
    • Lost the court case
    • Men who killed him admitted it to Time
    • Still nothing happened
  • Rosa Parks (1955)
    • Refused to give up her seat
    • The news spread quickly in Mongomery
    • Myth that she was tired is wrong, it was an act of protest
    • Sparked the bus boycott
  • Bus Boycott (Dec 5, 1955 – Dec 20, 1956)
    • Led by event where Rosa Parks didn’t give up her seat
    • Black people in Montgomery decided to stop taking buses until they stopped segregation
    • Had white people join their side
    • Took over a year before the busses gave in
    • Made the busses loose a lot of business
  • Little Rock Nine (1957)
    • Group of nine African American students who enrolled in an all white high school. Organizer: Daisy Bates brought the students together. Elizabeth Echford, Carlotta Walls, Ernest Green, Minnijean Brown, Gloria Ray, Terrence Roberts, Thelma Mothershed, Melba Beals, Jefferson Thomas
    • White protesters outside, military sent to protect
    • Little Rock, Arkansas, Deep South, America, Central High School (Little Rock High?)
    • 1957, September 4th, 3 years after the Brown v. Board of education ruling
    • Created a pathway for other black students, showed that they were equals and also deserved rights.

1960’s:

  • Lunch Counter Sit-Ins (1960):
    • Group of kids sitting at lunch counters meant for white people
    • Were harassed and arrested
    • Didn’t spark legal action
    • Forms SNCC, Student Non-Violent Coordinating Comittee
  • Freedom Riders (1961):
    • Fighting to end segregation on interstate busses
    • Got attacked, one bus blown up
    • First group were arrested, then young people showed up to take their place
    • MLK didn’t join them, not wanting to cause an outrage
    • Caused the prisons to fill up to prove they couldn’t be stopped
  • March On Washington (1963)
    • For jobs and freedom
    • JFK at first didn’t support it, but then was forced to
    • March was very successful, showing that they were a large group of people who supported this
    • Biracial march
    • Civil Rights Act is passed
  • Freedom Summer (1964):
    • Wanted to register to vote
    • Teach people how to vote
    • White people put in so many obsticals so black people couldn’t vote
    • Three men went missing because they tried to vote
    • Found dead in river after whole town denied knowing them
    • People helping others to vote
  • Selma March (1965):
    • MLK wanted to lead March from Selma to Montgomery
    • First time the group was beaten by police and retreated
    • Second time, they were unprepared. Police stepped aside but MLK walked away
    • Third time they were more prepared and did the full march, wanting to prove that they could vote without racism from people who run the polls
    • To get LBJ to pass laws for legal rights to vote without complications
    • Afterwards, the act to let people vote with no issues is passed
  • Black Power (1966)
    • More violent than MLK
    • More political
    • Led by Malcom X
    • Tied in with Nation of Islam (African Political Religious Movement)
    • Popular in prisons
    • Formed by members of SNCC because they were tired of non-violence
  • MLK Assassination (1968):
    • MLK was shot in Memphis, Tennessee
    • Goes to support Black Sanitation Public workers on strike for better wages and better treatment
    • Gives the I’ve Been To The Mountaintop speech
    •  Was used to living under threat of death, shown by the fact that his plane was delayed due to a bomb threat
    • Stood on balcony and was shot from longe range
    • James Earl Ray had escaped prison and shot King and then charged
    • Many conspiracies about his death

Another thing we studied was the book Dear Martin. It’s about a boy called Justyce and his experiences with racism and police brutality in 2017. I personally really enjoyed it, and I suggest you go read it. Yes, you reading this right now. As part of our reflection on the book, and a few other things we studied, we had a Socratic Seminar.

A Socratic Seminar is basically a time where we reflect on the book, and then go deep into discussion on themes, characters, and relations to today. There’s two circles, and people sit like this:

I know, aren’t I just an artist. But we had a few of these. Some were on the book, others were on things like the Freedom Riders (see above) and the March from Selma to Montgomery (also see above).

Now we get into the meat of the project: the final product. We had to make another video, but this was a bit different.

We started the unit with the basic driving question: How Can The Acts Of An Individual Change A System? We got to look at some really cool people, such as Claudette Colvin and Little Rock Nine. The original plan was to choose a Canadian who had changed a system. Then… plans changed. We were put into groups, told us to think of a driving question and make a six minute video.

I know. I got paired with Hannah, and we got to work researching. We eventually settled on something that both of us are passionate about, and really impacted the Civil Rights Movement: music.

It was easy from there, just finding examples such as We Shall Overcome, which was the anthem of the Civil Rights Movement, and Same Love by Macklemore.

Over all, I really liked this unit. It got us to look at the bigger picture of what the Civil Rights Movement represented, not just the historical events and people. We focussed a lot on the youth, and how much they did. It makes me feel like I could be that person, I can do something simple and change an entire system. We have people now that are doing that. Emma Gonzalez, a survivor of the Parkland shooting. Rahaf Mohammed, who escaped Saudi Arabia and is now an activist.

We have historical figures here in 2019, they will be remembered. All of us can be, if we just speak out.

Read you later

Sincerely, Parker