8th Grade Civics & U.S. History: Choices in Little Rock Unit

Choices in Little Rock:

Guiding Questions:

• Who was Emmett Till?
• How should we define what a pivotal moment is?
• When was the Civil Rights movement?
• Why did the South need slaves?
• Who was Dred Scott?
• How did the Dred Scott Supreme Court Decision change America?
• Who was Frederick Douglas?
• What was the Emancipation Proclamation?
• Why did the Emancipation Proclamation not free slaves in the North?
• Who was the 54th Regiment?
• What political and social barriers did the 54th Regiment have to fight?
• What were the political and social outcomes of the Union winning the Civil War?
• What did the 13th, 14th, 15th and 24th Amendments do?
• What was Jim Crow?
• How did Plessy vs. Ferguson change America?
• Who was Rosa Parks?
• How were Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. different?
• How did the Montgomery Bus Boycott help the Civil Rights Movement?
• How did Brown vs. Board of education change America?
• What creates racism? Why are humans racist? Nature vs. Nurture?
• How did the Little Rock 9 actions change America?
• What should be considered the pivotal moment in the history of the Civil Rights Movement?
• Should affirmative action be allowed?
• Has the election of Barack Obama, America’s first “black” president, mean that we as a people have reached the “promised land”?

Key Vocabulary:

• Pivotal
• Slavery
• Union
• Confederacy
• Racism, discrimination and segregation
• Civil War vs. War of Northern Aggression
• Civil War & Abraham Lincoln
• Outcome
• Jim Crow
• Plessy vs. Ferguson
• Brown vs. Board of Education
• Social barriers
• Political barriers
• Civil disobedience
• Pool tax & literacy exams
• Promise Land & courage
• Affirmative Action

Films & Short Videos:

• Emmett Till Story: Eyes on the Prize
• Glory
• Ethnic Notions
• Boycott OR Mighty Times
• Mendez vs. Westminster
• The Ernest Green Story
• Little Rock Central: 50 Years Later
• The Eyes on the Storm
• Not in Our Town
• Klan Youth Corps

Primary Sources:

• Undying Glory: The Story of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment: Book by Clinton Cox
• Jackie Robinson letter to President Eisenhower
• Emancipation Proclamation: Abraham Lincoln
• I Have a Dream by MLK Jr.
• I Have Been to the Mountaintop by MLK Jr.
• The Ballot or the Bullet by Malcolm X (Selected passages).
• Remarks on the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. by Bob Kennedy (Selected passages)

Assessments:

• Notebook
• Homework assignments including reading Undying Glory over Christmas vacation
• Online Question (Questions will come from the guiding questions)
• No unit exam (at the end of the unit we will briefly discuss foreign policy and criminal justice and review for the final exam)