Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Communists?

Fellowship Lesson 2008

Krista Ruud

Champaign County Archives

Lesson 3 - Champaign County Response to Communism

To download this lesson in PDF format, click here.

Length: 2-3 class periods

Set-up: Group work (same or different from the previous day)

Procedures:

§ Review previous unit work at the beginning of class (definitions, where Communist nations were located, why Americans feared Communism, etc).

§ Inform students they will be viewing local primary documents and articles from the Cold War era. Their job is to fill out a Written Document Analysis Worksheet for each of the 4 articles they will view.
*There are 3 different sets of 4 documents each. Ideally different groups should have different sets of documents. However, the documents can be arranged as desired to fit the needs of the classroom.
**Due to the nature of the final project students will need work done as a part of the unit as a resource. Teachers may require each student in a group to complete all or some Analysis Worksheets for each document or the group can fill out Analysis Worksheet per document and results can be divided/shared later on.

o Set 1: “’Clock of Doom’ moves one minute closer to midnight;” Letter to Kennedy; “Communists must register;” National Security Committee Annual Report

o Set 2: “Hodge’s group asks state ban on Communism;” “County prepares for nuclear attack;” Letter to Cronkite; Bumper Emblems

o Set 3: “Six new laws asked on reds by commission;” “Small h-bomb war could bring ‘creeping suicide;’” List of Target Organizations of Communist Infiltration; It Can Happen Here

§ When students have analyzed all 4 documents in their set, groups should receive a blank sheet of white paper and have the 4-Square Chart example. Using the set-up example, students will organize/summarize the documents into a 4-Square Chart. *Optional: have students create an illustration to go in each square on the chart based on the document’s content.

• One at a time groups should share the documents they had and what each document told them about Communism at the time. The 4-Square Charts can then be posted around the room for future reference.

Local Primary Sources: Students will view newspaper articles from the Champaign-Urbana Courier and the Champaign News-Gazette and documents kept by Mr. & Mrs. Elmer Martin of Urbana, Illinois.

Assessment: The local primary documents will first be analyzed using the Written Document Analysis Worksheet and then the information will be reorganized onto a 4-Square Chart.