Cynthia H. Roberts
This Unit was written for Special Education students in grades 9-12th, who are not easily motivated and who reading levels are below grade level. I am always in search of new ideals to use with them. In writing this unit, it is my wish that it will interest and motivate students in what they are learning.
In this Unit, students will study, discuss, explore, reflect, debate, write, create and expand their knowledge about themselves and the world around them.
This unit will offer students the strength of diversity the values that allows diversity to flourish, the history and literature that have shaped our country and our world. Students will also be provided with “hands on activities”. I will utilize both the cognitive and affective domains to help students internalize the similarities and differences.
The Cognitive Components of this unit are designed to increase the students ability to conceptualize and generalize about ethnically related events and to collect and evaluate data related to race and ethnicity . . . The Affective Component is designed to help students analyze and clarify their attitudes and feeling related to racial and ethnic groups and to reduce racial and ethnic prejudices.
It was about thirty years ago, when a peaceful revolution took place in the U.S., as African Americans sought equal rights. That revolution which occurred between 1954 and 1968, is called the civil rights movement.
The Civil Rights Movement has served as a catalyst for political activism among other subordinated groups in the society.
This Unit will focus on the struggle for minorities rights. It describes the civil rights movement of the late 1950’s and the 1960’s. It traces the roots of the movement in the second-class treatment accorded many black Americans and describes attempts to correct unfair laws and customs. This unit also points out how the civil rights movement inspired other groups, such as, farm workers and women, to combat what they too considered unequal treatment.
Students will also focus on a series of controversial decisions made by the U.S. Supreme Court:
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1) The 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, declared school segregation unconstitutional.
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2) The 1896 decision in the Plessy v. Ferguson case in regard to segregated railroads cars.
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3) The decision of the Gideon case in which the court ruled that all accused people are entitled to counsel, whether or not they can pay for it.
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4) The 1955 incident that sparked black protest against segregation. A black women (Rosa Parks), refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus to a white person as was required by law.
