American History Teachers' Collaborative Lesson Plan: Protests to Segregation

Protests to Segregation

Amy Kellogg-Bouchard

AHTC Summer Institute 2010

The Civil Rights Movement

To download this lesson in PDF format, click here.

Unit/Topic:

8^th Grade—Social Studies, Civil Rights Movement, Protests

Abstract:

This lesson spends five days covering segregation and objections to it. We will start with viewing segregation signs, then discuss the Greensboro sit-in, and finish with a look at segregation and protests in Champaign-Urbana. We will be primarily focusing on the 1960s, after Brown v. Board of Education.

Essential Questions:

What were Jim Crow Laws?

What were sit-ins?

What did sit-ins look like?

Were there other types of protests?

Were all protests peaceful?

Was there segregation in Champaign-Urbana?

Were there protests in Champaign-Urbana?

Lessons:

Day One:

1. View PowerPoint slides 1 -13

2. Pose the question “What were segregation laws?, and we will briefly review some of the Jim Crow Laws that we learned about during Reconstruction.

3. View segregation signs (slides 3-10)

4. Discuss ideas of what they would do if they were in that situation

5. Briefly talk about the Greensboro Sit-In (slides 11-12)

6. Close class by using the Open Mind graphic organizer to visualize what they think a Sit-in was like (slide 13).

Day Two:

1. Listen as some of the students share their vision of a sit-in.

2. Read the Greensboro Record newspaper article about the sit-in (slide 14) and discuss the questions, “What did sit-ins look like?”

3. Read the book Sit-in: How Four Friends Stood Up By Sitting Down by Andrea Davis Pinkney.

4. Discuss how this Sit-in was followed (slide 15)

5. Discuss, “Were there other types of protests?”(slide 16)

Day Three:

1. Pose the question. “Were all protests peaceful?”

2. Watch a portion of Eyes of the Prize entitled “Ain’t Scared on Your Jails.”

3. As students are watching this, they will also fill out the Imagery Eye graphic organizer and answer the question. “Were all protests peaceful?”

4. Discuss what we saw and look at a lynching and protest map (slide 19)

5. View and discuss people and look at photos from the book Free At Last book by Sara Bullard.

6. To close the lesson, compare visions from the Open Mind graphic organizer and the reality of the protests from the Imagery Eye graphic organizer by creating a Venn diagram.

Day Four:

1. Pose the questions, “Was there segregation in Champaign-Urbana? and “Were there protests in Champaign-Urbana?”

2. Divide the class up into pairs so that each pair receives a local newspaper articles about activities occurring during the Civil Rights Movement. Differentiate by giving students articles that correspond to their reading levels.

3. Each pair will fill out a document analysis sheet and prepare to give a brief summary.

Day Five:

1. Ask the questions, “Was there segregation in Champaign-Urbana? and “Were there protests in Champaign-Urbana?”

2. Each group will give a brief summary of their article.

3. Close with the question, “What would you do if Urbana Middle School began segregating the students based solely on eye color?”

4. Each student will create a newspaper article regarding this question.

5. The writing will be due in three days. Use a rubric to assess the writing. Refer back to the paper and discuss consequences of the choices that they made.

Assessment:

Each student will complete an Open Mind graphic organizer, an Imagery Eye graphic organizer, a Venn diagram graphic organizer, and document analysis sheet. All of those will be used to write a response to the question, "What would you do if Urbana Middle School began segregating the students based solely on eye color?”

Setting the Purpose:

I will show segregation photos from the Library of Congress’ collection to give students the feel of what it was like during this time period.

Analysis of local primary sources:

We will look at 14 different local newspaper articles from the Champaign County Archives folder from the AHTC Summer Institute 2010 CD.

Ties to national primary sources:

View segregation photos from the Library of Congress

Read an article from Greensboro Record

Watch selected scenes for “Eyes on the Prize”

Annotated list of materials and resources for the lesson or series of lessons:

Segregation Laws

http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/what.htm

Segregation photos: