in-class #9: The Civil Rights Movement

VIDEO: Episode Guide for The Century: America's Time -- episode #10 1960-1964 Poisoned Dreams

           Beset by both international and domestic pressures, America during the early 1960s was swiftly approaching a political-cultural meltdown. This ABC News program anchored by Peter Jennings documents U.S.-Soviet conflicts of interest in Cuba and Vietnam and the growing polarization at home between civil rights activists and segregationist hard-liners, which resulted in the Birmingham riots and the freedom march on Washington, D.C. (44 minutes)

       On the back of this sheet or on composition paper, write a reaction essay after the film discussing how the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s changed in its approaches from the approaches taken in the 1950s (as illustrated by the textbook reading and by the movie SIMPLE JUSTICE).

Then, complete the textbook questions below (which you did NOT finish on Thursday):

Read in the textbook chapter 25 ("The Civil Rights Movement 1954-1968") section 1 only on pages 850-857 and answer the questions below:

1. Why was Rosa Parks' decision to not give up her seat on a bus (just months after the Emmitt Till trial) considered the starting point for the  modern civil rights movement?

2. Why did the migration of African-Americans to northern cities increase their political power as a voting bloc?

3. How were "sit-ins" used to promote desegregation?

4. How did many white Southerners react to the BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION decision?

5. What was the Montgomery Bus boycott?

6. Martin Luther King supported non-violent resistance through civil disobedience. What does that mean?

7. What happened to Rosa Parks' legal case when it reached the Supreme Court?

8. Why was President Dwight Eisenhower opposed to the Supreme Court's decision in BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION?

9. What led to the crisis over high school students in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957?

10. How was the crisis at Central High School in Little Rock ended?

11. What was the Civil Rights Act of 1957 intended to accomplish?