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Civil Rights as globally connected

Last post 07-17-2008, 10:13 PM by Davarian Baldwin. 1 replies.
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  •  07-09-2008, 1:02 PM 4631

    Civil Rights as globally connected

    Lesson Plan Proposal on Civil Rights

     

    1) Description:  The lesson is part of the Civil Rights Unit during the peak civil rights period. The lesson will focus on the US’s struggle, especially in the south, as it is connected to and part of a larger decolonization struggle that is taking place world wide.

     

     

    I will begin with producing a definition of colonization using think pair share followed by a word splash. Once we get to a common definition we will apply it to the US south and look for a fit.

     

    Following that I will give them the definitions of 1st world, 2nd world, and 3rd world.

     

    Next we will look at four documents and two video clips. The first document will be the Declaration of Human Rights; the next will be the Ebony Magazine article in the Book Testament of Hope called My Trip to The Land of Gandhi, “To Mississippi Youth” from Malcolm X, “Break the Silence from MLK, and the excerpt from The Greatest with Muhammad Ali (with Richard Durham)

     

    For the video clips, I will show Malcolm X’s talk about going to the UN after he comes back from his hajj and another clip of him at the UN.

     

    For the Declaration of Human rights and the My Trip, there will be a reading assignment prior to with questions written out for them to answer. These will be followed by in class discussions.

     

    The rest we will do as a class together.

     

    2) Essential Question: During the peak US Civil Rights period, are there direct connections to global decolonization/civil rights events? If so how are they connected and how do they affect each other?

     

    3) I would say that this is going go for about four days

     

    4) For the assessments, aside for looking at their answers and listening to the discussion, I want theme to have a research day. During this day in the library I will give them a list of key words, phrases, and dates. Each student will have a different set. For example one kid may have Vietnam Veterans Against the War and Sukarno at the opening of Bandung, while another has Che speaking at the UN and the OAU in 1963 etc. After they have looked up this material and answered questions about them, the class will come together and created a dived time line of There and Here- the top is outside the US or at the UN and the bottom is Here. They will take al of this and put it together on poster papers that each depicts five years.

     

    Following this project I will give them the essential question and ask them to write the answer using three specific examples.

     

    5) Declaration of Human Rights, Testament of Hope “My Trip to The Land of Gandhi”, “To Mississippi Youth” from Malcolm X, “Break the Silence from MLK, and the excerpt from The Greatest with Muhammad Ali (with Richard Durham)

     

     Malcolm X’s talk about going to the UN after he comes back from his hajj and another clip of him at the UN (I watch them on YouTube and will have to find them again)

     

    6) My chief concern is the scale. In trying to narrow things down I have in fact made it much larger


    Zachary Simmons
  •  07-17-2008, 10:13 PM 5334 in reply to 4631

    Re: Civil Rights as globally connected

    Zachary,

    I think this project looks pretty good, but I think instead of simply trying to make them find direct "causal" links between "Here" and "There" I think the most interesting thing is: How did global conditions/realities help U.S. activists rethink/reimagine/discuss local struggles in international/structural terms. As far as scaling back, I was curious why you added the reading from Muhammad Ali versus the video clip we found (since a clip versus a reading would scale things back considerably). Since you are looking for direct causal links, I am also wondering how the "human rights" document is directly related, since many of these global connections preceded the "human rights" language. I think in many ways Surkarno's speech at Bandung was MUCH more influential than a human rights document (one being more color blind whereas all of these projects were quite color conscious: that race could not be just transcended with a term like "human" but race (colonialism) had to be directly engaged. Its too bad you could not have discussed all that stuff we found on the black panthers as they were the most articulate. But even within your time frame I felt that the stuff of SNCC and their international travels/speeched was much more articulate most thing syou have here.

    Good Luck
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