Primary Source Analysis
Background information on how to teach using Primary Sources
www.loc.gov/teachers/usingprimarysources/
www.loc.gov/teachers/usingprimarysources/
Primary Source Analysis
1. The teacher will show the Jim Crow BrainPop video. (8 minutes) https://www.brainpop.com/socialstudies/ushistory/jimcrow/
2. Students will be divided into 4 groups.
3. Each group will be given a photo. They will work through the Primary Source Analysis as a group. (10 minutes) http://www.loc.gov/teachers/usingprimarysources/resources/Analyzing_Primary_Sources.pdf (Instructions)
http://www.loc.gov/teachers/usingprimarysources/resources/Primary_Source_Analysis_Tool.pdf (Worksheet that can printed for each person or group)
https://www.loc.gov/resource/mss85943.001906/?sp=2 (Rosa Parks)
assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2015/03/FT_15.03.05_selmaMontgomeryMLK.jpg (Martin Luther King Jr.)
www.loc.gov/item/92522562/(Malcolm X)
www.loc.gov/exhibits/brown/brown-brown.html#obj97(Brown v. Board of Education)
4. After working through each analysis section, students will read some information with their group (provided by the teacher) about the photo and the person in the photo. Why is this person important in the Civil Rights Movement?
(5 minutes)
Information cards: (Print these out for each group. Information comes from the S.C. 5th Grade Social Studies Support Document as well as the sites listed under each name.)
Rosa Parks
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an African-American civil rights activist. She was called the "Mother of the Modern-Day American civil rights movement" and "the mother of the freedom movement".
Parks is best known for what she did in her home town of Montgomery, Alabama on December 1, 1955. While she sat in a seat in the middle of the bus, the bus driver told her to move to the back of the bus so a white passenger could take the seat in the front of the bus. Parks refused to move. She was a member of the local chapter of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Like so many others she was tired of being treated as a lower class person because of the color of her skin.
She was arrested. This led to the Montgomery bus boycott. The boycott lasted 381 days. This caused a change in the law. After that, black people could sit wherever they wanted to on the bus. Her refusal to let others treat her differently was an important symbol in the campaign against racial segregation. kids.kiddle.co/Rosa_Parks
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American pastor, activist, humanitarian, and leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for improving civil rights by using nonviolent civil disobedience, based on his Christian beliefs. Because he was both a Ph.D. and a pastor, King is sometimes called The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. (abbreviated the Rev. Dr. King), or just Dr. King. He is also known by his initials, MLK.
King worked hard to make people understand that not only blacks but that all races should always be treated equally to white people. He gave speeches to encourage African Americans to protest without using violence.
Led by Dr. King and others, many African Americans used nonviolent, peaceful strategies to fight for their civil rights. These strategies included sit-ins, boycotts, and protest marches. Often they were attacked by white police officers or people who did not want African Americans to have more rights. However, no matter how badly they were attacked, Dr. King and his followers never fought back. These activities educated the general public and gained sympathy from many Americans, including President John F. Kennedy, because television brought the abuses of Jim Crow into living rooms across the country. Kennedy proposed a civil rights bill to Congress.
King also helped to organize the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. The next year, he won the Nobel Peace Prize.
King fought for equal rights from the start of the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 until he was murdered by James Earl Ray in April 1968. kids.kiddle.co/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.
Malcolm X
Malcolm X was a very passionate defender of African Americans' civil rights. He was the leader of the Nation of Islam, a group that believed African Americans should form a separate nation from white Americans. Upon converting to Islam, Malcolm "Little" changed his last name to 'X'. Slaves in America were forced to take on the last name of their slave owners. Wanting to no longer identify with this, he replaced his last name with 'X'. Malcolm believed that African Americans should not be afraid to do whatever it takes to defend their rights, including the use of violence. Malcolm X believed that change was not happening quickly enough. He did not believe that white Americans would ever support equal rights for African Americans and encouraged his followers to rely on themselves as opposed to newly passed civil rights laws. (Achieve your goals by "any means necessary.") But after returning from a trip to Mecca, a holy city for Muslims like Malcolm, he changed his beliefs. He said that blacks and whites should try to live together in peace. He believed that true equality would not be fully achieved without white citizens working together with African Americans. But Malcolm X did not live long enough to pursue that dream. In 1965, he was killed during a meeting in New York City. Malcolm X remains, though, an important hero for many African Americans.
pbskids.org/aaworld/ecards_12.html
study.com/academy/lesson/malcolm-x-lesson-for-kids-biography-facts.html
Brown v. Board
Brown versus Board of Education (1954) (full name Oliver Brown, et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas) was a Landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States. In 1950 in Topeka, Kansas, a black third-grade girl named Linda Brown had to walk more than a mile through a railroad switchyard to get to her segregated school for black children. However, there was an elementary school for white children less than seven blocks away. At that time, many schools in the United States were segregated. Black children and white children were not allowed to go to the same schools. Her father, Oliver Brown, tried to get Linda into the white school, but the principal of the school refused. The two schools were supposed to be "separate but equal." However, they were not.
In 1951, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) helped the parents file a class action lawsuit. In 1896, the Supreme Court had ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that segregation was legal, as long as separate places for blacks and whites were "separate but equal." The NAACP's lawyers argued that the white and black schools in Topeka were not "separate but equal.
The case eventually went all the way to the Supreme Court. After years of work, in 1954, Thurgood Marshall and a team of other NAACP lawyers won the case. The United States Supreme Court declared the practice of school segregation unconstitutional in its landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. According to the Supreme Court, the schools were to be integrated “with all deliberate speed.” With “deliberate speed” open for interpretation, the process of integrating the public schools was in fact deliberate but far from speedy. Over the course of the next fourteen years from the Brown decision, until the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968, the civil rights movement gained momentum.
kids.kiddle.co/Brown_v._Board_of_Education
5. After learning information about an important Civil Rights leader, the students will watch: Selma - John Legend ft. Common Music Video - "Glory" (2015) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzbKaDPMoDU
(5 minutes)
6. Now students will create a cheer, chant, song or rap to teach the rest of the class about their important Civil Rights Leader.
(10 minutes)
7. Students will perform their cheer, chant or rap for the class to teach the rest of the class about the important figure they learned about through photo analysis and information.
(10 minutes)