This Little Light of
Mine:
Children and Young
People of the Civil Rights Movement
By: Carla Vincent-Westfield
American History Teachers’
Collaborative
Summer Institute 2010
Abstract:
In this
lesson aimed at 4th and 5th graders and above, students will
learn about some of the experiences, contributions, and sacrifices of several
children and young adults during the Civil Rights Movement. The lesson will
focus on a Power Point presentation that introduces some of the children whose
lives, and, in some cases, deaths, were pivotal in the
Civil Rights Movement.
Essential Questions:
1.
What
role did children and young people in the South play in the Civil Rights
Movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s?
2.
How
do the actions and sacrifices of these young people and their families affect
children, families, and our society today?
3.
Why
should we care about events that happened 50 or 60 years ago?
Background Information/Setting the
Purpose/Activities to Follow:
1.
Prior
to this lesson, students will have spent several days reading about and
discussing the Civil Rights Movement, especially focusing on the children’s
book, If You Lived at the Time of Martin Luther King, by Ellen Levine,
illustrated by Anna Rich, Scholastic:
1994.
2.
Before
viewing the Power Point presentation, each student will begin a KWL chart, indicating
what he/she already knows about children and young people during the Civil
Rights Movement, as well as what he/she would like to learn.
3.
The
teacher (or student helper) will record the information on a class KWL chart,
which will be saved and edited/added to at the end of the mini-unit on children
and young people of the Civil Rights Movement.
4.
In
the days after this lesson, students will learn more about the children/young
adults featured in the PowerPoint presentation, by analyzing local and national
primary documents, as well as by reading books about the children. (See attached list of documents and
recommended books.)
Presentation/Discussion of Power
Point:
Present the PowerPoint, “This Little Light
of Mine: Children and Young People of
the Civil Rights Movement”. Allow for
questions or discussion after each slide.
The students need time for clarification, connection, and discussion in
a timely matter. Questions and
discussion should also occur after the entire presentation has been made.
Assessments:
*Assessment
#1: All students will review their KWL charts that were created at the
beginning of the lesson. Each student
will complete the “L” column of the chart, indicating what he/she learned from
the PowerPoint presentation and discussion.
*Assessment
#2: In the spirit of differentiated learning, each student will choose how
he/she would like to demonstrate his/her understanding of the material
presented in the PowerPoint. These
activities can be used now, or after more discussion/learning about the
children and young people and their contributions to the Civil Rights Movement.
Suggestions include the following activities:
1.
Write
a letter to one of the featured children or to that child’s family, expressing
feelings, gratitude, questions, etc. Such letters do not have to actually be
sent to anyone…they merely serve as a way for the student to connect with the
person and to express his/her feelings, ideas, and gratitude. If a student wishes to send the letter, the
teacher and student can work together to find the address to which to mail it.
2.
Create
a visual representation inspired by one or more of the children and/or events.
3.
Write
a short reflection of the Power Point presentation, including comments and
questions. This might include ideas of
how children’s lives in our community might have been affected by the lives of
the children in the presentation.
4.
Short
project of the student’s choice.
Ties to National Primary Sources:
· Highly recommended source for primary sources about the Civil Rights Movement: http://crdl.usg.edu/
·
School
Desegregation Primary Sources: http://crdl.usg.edu/cgi/crdl
·
Correspondence
related to the Emmett Till case, including a telegram from Emmett’s mother to
President Eisenhower: http://crdl.usg.edu/cgi/crdl?query=id:dde_emmetttillcase
·
Claudette
Colvin: Twice Toward Justice, by Phillip
Hoose, 2009:
Many photos of primary sources, including Claudette’s arrest record and
fingerprints, photos of common signage in the South during Jim Crow times, etc.
·
The
arrest records of Rosa Parks: http://archives.gov/education/lessons/rosa-parks/index.html#documents
·
Bus
Boycott Suggestions: http://www.archives.state.al.us/teacher/rights/lesson1/doc7.html
·
Children’s
Crusade News Reports: http://crdl.usg.edu/
·
Sixteenth
Street Baptist Church Bombing newspaper article: http://bplonline.cdmhost.com/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/p4017coll2&CISOPTR=552
Analysis of Local Primary Sources:
After this
lesson, students will take several class sessions to view primary documents
from the Champaign-Urbana community. All documents available on the AHTC disc
in the “Champaign County Archives” section will be made available for the
students. The topics include the housing and restaurant/cafeteria dilemma for
African-American University of Illinois students, the barbershop practices and
subsequent boycott, the hiring practice at the JCPenney
store, etc. These documents will show that African-American residents here have
experienced some of the same discriminatory practices that were experienced in
the South.
For a more
in-depth study, students will analyze the primary sources from the AHTC disc
that document the procedure used to desegregate the Urbana Illinois elementary
schools, particularly of interest to the students at Martin Luther King, Jr.
Elementary School, formerly called Hays School, which served most of the
African-American elementary students at the time.
Annotated list of materials and
resources for the lesson:
Please see
the list of sources in the “Notes” section at the bottom of each PowerPoint
slide.