Education Resources and Lesson Planning
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Educational Resources
Exhibit Background
Information
For All the World To See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights is an
exploration of the power of the image in America’s pursuit of racial justice. The exhibit
material is not intended to portray the history of the Civil Rights movement, nor is it an
attempt to collect all of the visual culture of the time. Instead, it examines the
relationship between the two. The purpose of this section of the Programming Guide is
to give the reader greater insight into the historical context of this crossroads. Not all
events, images, objects or episodes of the Civil Rights movement will be conveyed here.
Instead the background information will focus on examples that most vividly or typically
demonstrate how the visual image converged with and propelled America’s struggle for
civil rights.
It is also important to note that civil rights in America transcends the modern era of
focus. For All the World To See investigates the visual culture of the modern Civil
Rights movement – from the early 1950s to the mid-1970s. Certainly, humankind has
been using visual imagery to document and express injustice for centuries beyond this
period. It also focuses on the African American experience of the Civil Rights
movement, the focus of the original scholarly work conducted by Curator Dr. Maurice
Berger. We acknowledge and fully respect the struggle of a multitude ethnicities for
justice throughout American History and encourage you to investigate the many and
varied stories within your own community.
A Choice of Weapons
Trapped and desperate in a world of relentless racism, young Gordon Parks once
contemplated robbing a trolley car conductor with a switchblade. He was at his breaking
point and “it was becoming more and more difficult [for me] to live with the indifference,
the hate…I wouldn’t allow my life to be conditioned by what others thought or did, or
give in to anyone who would have me be subservient.”
The crusade for dignity and freedom led Parks to photography, where he finally found his
voice. He saw power in photographs, specifically the Farm Security Administration’s
images that documented American poverty and racism
(http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa/). Like Gordon Parks, Civil Rights leaders
themselves realized that the struggle for equal rights and access was also a struggle over
images.
The Modern Civil Rights Movement in America
The modern Civil Rights movement in America began after World War II and lasted into
the mid-1970s. The post-World War II period was one marked by great political and
social unrest, creating an environment ripe for social change. Despite the fact that over
2.5 million African Americans registered for the draft and over 1 million served in the
U.S. military during World War II, black soldiers were initially enlisted into segregated
troops and deemed unfit to face combat. On the homefront, black Americans served in
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all capacities, contributing to the Great Migration as they moved to Northern cities and
towns where help was needed to build the Allies seemingly unending resources.
In fact, African American leaders called for a “Double V,” a campaign for Victory over
fascist leaders abroad and racism at home. Even though the Allies proved to be the
victorious defenders of freedom and democracy, Hispanic, Native American and African
American soldiers returned home to prejudice, discrimination, and Jim Crow.
As a new world leader, America was under global scrutiny and called upon to face its
own history of injustice. African American leaders saw this as an opportune time to fight
for true equality as the United States’ sense of justice was piqued. Adding to the
environment of activism was the fact that African Americans escaping the rural poverty
of the South during the war attained success and empowerment in the northern cities,
where institutions were dedicated to African American expression and solidarity.
In addition, post war America also saw the enlargement of the NAACP and the
beginning of other Civil Rights groups like the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE).
African Americans who served in the military also gained access to education and job
training through the GI Bill. For these reasons, post-World War II America represented
the beginning of a break with the past that informed the Civil Rights movement of the
1950s and 1960s.
Public memory of the Civil Rights era generally falls on civil disobedience as the primary
force of change. Lunch counter sit-ins and bus boycotts readily come to mind as
instruments of change. Marches, demonstrations, and Freedom Rides propelled the
movement on the streets.
For All the World to See looks at the Civil Rights movement through a different lens –
that of the visual image made public. Curator and author Maurice Berger focuses on this
particular and often historically overlooked element of the civil rights arsenal, bringing to
light that “the struggle for racial justice in the United States was fought as assuredly on
television and in movies, in magazines and newspapers, and through artifacts and images
of everyday life as it was on the streets of Montgomery, Little Rock and Watts.”
Images from the Civil Rights era not only reflected racism, but also documented its shift
in American culture. While the white media used imagery as a tool to control and
maintain the Jim Crow status quo, the same imagery soon became a target for equal
rights groups. Eventually, imagery was used to change beliefs and attitudes. This exhibit
examines the relationship between the visual image and the struggle for racial justice.
Jim Crow Laws & Racist Imagery and Artifacts
Jim Crow laws both supported and reflected the offensive and hostile imagery targeting
African Americans in the first half of the twentieth century. Initially conceived as a
stereotypical character in a minstrel show, Jim Crow came to represent the laws and
actions that systematically disenfranchised and brutally segregated African Americans.
While segregation went into effect immediately after the Civil War, the Supreme Court
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sanctioned it in the 1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson case. Plessy vs. Ferguson upheld state’s
rights to implement “separate but equal” language. The federal government also refused
to enact anti-lynching laws. In essence, a legally enforced caste system had been
established, that was reinforced through terror (mob violence) and a visual culture that
consistently publicized black inferiority.
Visual imagery of African Americans during this time took on several forms, varying in
malevolence. Advertisements, early TV and kitchenware portrayed African Americans as
humble and doting servants, always eager to please their white employers. The Aunt
Jemima character was “the ultimate symbol and personification of the black cook,
servant, and mammy.” Like Jim Crow, Aunt Jemima was originally a character in a
blackface minstrel show. She was later adopted as a product trademark when a milling
company executive thought white consumers could easily connect black cooks and
servitude to southern hospitality and comfort. White social status could comfortably stay
intact with Aunt Jemima and her husband Uncle Mose promoting images of racial
nostalgia.
Early TV shows like The Beulah Show (ABC, 1950-1953) resonated with white
audiences for similar reasons. Beulah (she was played by three actors over show’s threeyear run, including Oscar winner Hattie McDaniel), a housekeeper for a white family,
focused all of her efforts and antics on the needs of her white employers. White
Americans could accept mainstream black representation if it occurred in the form of a
non-threatening and inferior character.
More overtly hostile imagery also took hold in a visual culture rife with racial anxiety.
Mainstream versions of “savage tribesman, illiterate handyman, enfeebled child, and
other black character types” were extremely popular imagery during complex and tension
filled times in race relations. These hate-producing nostalgic items (like the alligator pen
or postcard featuring the boy eating a watermelon), remnants of slaveholding days,
continued in the Deep South well into the civil rights era to further the cause of Jim Crow
laws. “Subhuman cannibal and wretched Sambo with bee-stung lips” imagery proved
that alienating the races and preventing any interracial contact was indeed “unhealthy.”
In Film
The film industry also played a part in bringing nostalgic images to the big screen that
harkened back to a time when race relations took on a solid hierarchy. Films such as
Show Boat, Gone with the Wind, and Song of the South featured imagery that came from
the “plantation tradition.” Movie-goers could lose themselves in a time when a “slave’s
traditional attitude of respect and easy-going trustfulness” ruled the day. African
American actors typically found themselves playing socially acceptable clichés instead of
complex human beings. The year after Show Boat (1937) was released, actor and activist
Paul Robeson expressed, “[I am] sick and tired of caricatures…because the South is
Hollywood’s box office.”
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Invisibility
The only alternative to overtly hostile or subservient imagery was complete lack of
representation. Images of African Americans were virtually erased in the majority of
mainstream media and rarely seen in pop culture. Viewing the series of For All the World
to See exhibit clips Black Out will give the exhibit visitor a sense of this invisibility when
public service announcements and messages regarding national wellness and patriotism
did not include African Americans. Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952) explores the
notion of African Americans remaining unseen and voiceless in mainstream culture. He
advocated that when the full complexity of black life and culture is recovered and
acknowledged, true power will follow.
The Culture of Positive Images
African American activists and leaders recognized that the obliteration and subjugation of
black life and culture must be made visible. With a keen understanding of the power of
information in visual form, media became both a target and a tool for Civil Rights
leaders. In 1946, in New York City and several subsequent cities, Civil rights groups
protested the negative stereotyping in Disney’s Song of the South. The film romanticized
slavery and the master-slave relationship, reducing the main black character to simpleton
status on the same level as the cartoon woodland animals he befriended. The NAACP
also took on Disney, publicizing that racist clichés were harmful to black people, children
and the principles of our nation.
The government responded with begrudging attempts to make mainstream
representations of African Americans positive. U.S. Congress selected Booker T.
Washington as the first African American to be featured on a coin (1940) and postage
stamp (1946). While the stamp was intended for general use, the coin remained
commemorative and non-circulating. Also of note, selecting Washington to represent
African Americans was tactical in itself. Washington was known for advocating for
compromise and not active protest or resistance. He also suggested that black people
accept segregation.
Professional sports represented another form of early mainstream black representation.
Generally this took the form of sports memorabilia like the race-neutral baseball card that
simply provided performance statistics on the field. Periodicals featuring up-and-coming
black athletes characterized them as simple and lacking complexity. African American
sports figures were only accepted by mainstream culture because they were rendered
unthreatening. The black press was much more supportive and progressive in their
coverage of black sportsmanship. Frequently, stories of great athleticism were also tied
to stories of prejudice and discrimination. It was the black press that also repeatedly
revealed racism Jackie Robinson endured during his first season in a newly integrated
league.
Black Pictorials
According to Dr. Maurice Berger, “the early years of the modern civil rights movement,
black photographers, artists, filmmakers, producers, publishers, and editors worked
arduously to recast the negative image of the race that was then common in popular
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culture. The rise of African-American pictorial magazines was arguably the most public
and far-reaching of this activity.” W.E.B. Du Bois was one of the first African
Americans to envision a widely circulated pictorial magazine that used state-of-the-art
technology to serve the needs and aspirations of African Americans.
A year after co-founding the NAACP (1909), Du Bois launched the monthly magazine
The Crisis. Through a balance of words and images, the Crisis’ objective was to inspire
black resistance to racism by revealing “the danger of race prejudice.” Among its pages,
images of gruesome racial violence served as a stark and persuasive contrast to images of
black success and accomplishment. In 1910, a picture of an accomplished African
American was “an innovation” in relationship to a mainstream media that inevitably
depicted black people as criminals, clowns, and servants.
Later in 1942, a young entrepreneur named John H. Johnson started a publishing
enterprise after he discovered an “almost total white-out on positive black news.”
Adopting a format similar to Reader’s Digest, Johnson’s series of successful publications
began with Negro Digest. Johnson quickly learned the power of the photograph, and
incorporated pictures into his publications because of their immediacy and ability to
persuade in a way that text could not. Three years later he launched Ebony, illustrated in
the style of Life magazine. Even when it covered racial injustice, Ebony’s message was
upbeat and played to an upwardly mobile middle class.
Emmett Till
As the Civil Rights movement moved forward, leaders contemplated how to shift the
focus from perpetuating positive black images to jolting white America out of its racial
stupor. In 1955, the black press media coverage following the vicious beating and
murder of Emmett Till provided the visual confirmation needed to wake a sleeping
nation.
Fourteen-year old Emmett Till was visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi during the
summer of 1955. Unaware of the stringent Jim Crow etiquette governing the South,
young Till had a brief (reports of exactly what occurred vary) exchange with a white
woman. Three days later, Till was forcibly abducted, savagely beaten and tortured, and
left for dead on the banks of the Tallahatchie River. His body could only be identified by
the ring on his finger, once belonging to his father, a World War II veteran. The
Mississippi county sheriff tried to order the immediate burial, then only released the body
to his mother on the condition that the casket stay sealed. The corpse was packed with
lye, which hastens decomposition.
Mamie Till Bradley, Emmett’s mother, insisted that the casket be opened. When she
took in the horror of her disfigured son, she knew she had to make visible what the state
of Mississippi so desperately wanted to hide. The corpse was never retouched for the
funeral, as Mamie knew the power of letting “the world see what I’ve seen.”
She permitted several photographs to be taken of her son’s corpse, explaining the “I knew
that if they walked by that casket, if people opened the pages of Jet magazine and the
Chicago Defender, if other people could see it with their own eyes, then together we
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might find a way to express what we had seen.” It was John H. Johnson who decided to
publish the photo in the September 15, 1955 issue of Jet. Till became a symbol of racial
injustice and motivated black involvement civil rights causes that would override the fear
of Jim Crow.
African American Civil Rights leaders knew that “if our story is to be told, we will have
to write and photograph it and disseminate it ourselves,” (Mary King, 1964, SNCC).
Civil Rights photographers did not just provide documentary evidence of race relations.
They were skilled commentators and agitators. Yet the persuasive evidence offered by
photographers could only go as far as their public reach. By the 1960s, images of racial
violence were regularly picked up by mainstream magazines and newspapers (Life, Time,
Look, and Newsweek) and aggressively used in black periodicals (Ebony, Jet, the
Amsterdam News, the Arkansas State Press, the Baltimore Afro-American, the
Philadelphia Tribune, the Chicago Defender, the Norfolk Journal and Guide, and the
Pittsburgh Courier).
TV: Bringing the Movement Home
The critical event that ultimately brought white America out of its apathy was the 1963
Birmingham demonstrations. The images, especially of attack dogs lunging at
demonstrators and water cannons aimed at children, were distributed to mainstream
publications like Time and Life. Perhaps more importantly to the advancement of the
movement (and most memorable) was the fact that television cameras captured the
water’s force pushing young, black protesters down the street.
The Civil Rights movement was television’s first recurring news story. It provided an
unending stream of emotionally intense images that enthralled viewers and kept them
tuning in night after night. These events were unfolding at the same time that the
percentage of American homes equipped with television sets jumped from 56 to 92%.
TV documented the March on Washington in August 1963 in unprecedented fashion. The
visual image, frozen and stilled in magazines and newspapers, could not capture the
excitement and instantly transmit the message to millions of people around the world the
way the TV did. TV became an “indispensable force,” a means of awakening “the
indifferent white millions whom integration or segregation was of scant personal concern.
The sociologists of tomorrow may find that it was television more than anything else that
finally penetrated this huge camp of the uncommitted.”
Broadcasting Race
Capturing racial violence as it unfolded on the nightly news documented the changing
social fabric in America as it happened. But how would America portray its new
understanding of race relations on entertainment television? One of the most
groundbreaking TV dramas of its time was Julia (NBC, 1968). Julia, starring Diahann
Carroll, was the first prime time TV show to star an African American actor since The
Beulah Show and Amos ‘n Andy. Creators deemed Julia groundbreaking because the
show refused to perpetuate stereotyping. In doing so, they neglected the social and
political realities that African Americans face every day. Critics, including Diahann
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Carroll herself, criticized the show because it portrayed a “happy-go-lucky racial
harmony” where Julia was consistently isolated from, and rarely interacted with, other
African Americans.
The answer to race neutral TV shows came in the form of the ghetto comedy of the
1970s. With predominantly African American casts, sitcoms like Sanford and Son
(NBC, 1972-1977), and Good Times (CBS, 1974-1979) often times reverted to
stereotypes as they equated race with poverty. At first, these shows would attempt to
make social commentary on the state of race relations and even portrayed uplifting
images of the black community. But such serious storylines eventually faded into the
background in favor of stereotypes for comic effect.
The most provocative of Civil Rights era entertainment TV was CBS’s East Side/West
Side (1963-1964). It grappled with controversial topics, “honestly and sensitively”
dealing with vital problems facing the African American community. It was cancelled
after one season.
All in the Family (CBS, 1971-1979) also pushed the envelope, taking an unapologetic
view of the racial attitudes of the Bunker family. Archie Bunker, the patriarch, voiced
what millions of white men feared – that minority groups were causing working class
whites undue hardships. Archie revealed his bigotry through the absurdity and stupidity
of his character, thus avoiding the possibility that they show was glorifying prejudice. All
in the Family shattered the view that all was well among races in America, a
misconception put forth by numerous other primetime shows.
Variety shows served as a consistent outlet for black entertainers and presented both
black and white performers interacting as equals. The Ed Sullivan Show (CBS, 19481971) was TV’s most successful variety hour. The show was an early and reliable forum
for African American singers, actors, and comedians. Sullivan battled with conservative
sponsors who balked at the show’s attempt to enfranchise black entertainers. Even so,
the Ed Sullivan Show regularly featured black and white performers interacting as equals.
The program also brought African American entertainers into the living rooms of all
Americans and in doing so, helped instill pride in the African American community.
Television for Black Audiences
From the late 1960s, television programs produced, written, and hosted by black
journalists and entertainers began to appear on local and affiliate stations nationwide.
Restraints on content were completely lifted because white sponsors were not needed to
produce the shows. This made it possible for shows like Like It Is (WABC, 1968present) to examine the cultural, political, and social concerns specific to the black
community. In fact, the objective of the series Colored People’s Time (PBS, 1968-1976)
was to offer an “alternative to the objectification and negative imagery of blacks.” Other
shows included Black Horizons (Pittsburgh), Black Perspectives on the News
(Philadelphia), Cliff Alexander – Black on White (Washington DC), Face to Face
(Seattle), For You Black Women (syndicated), Haney’s People (Detroit), Inside Bedford-
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Stuyvesant (New York), Job Man Caravan (South Carolina), Minority Matters (Kansas
City, Kansas), Our People (Chicago), Say Brother (Boston), and Soul! (New York).
Rethinking Blackness
TV, the very medium that held so much promise for African American enfranchisement,
also failed its black audiences, because depictions were most often one-dimensional and
shaped by white people. The complexity of the human being was still missing from
representation. African Americans began seeking opportunities to broadcast an
alternative representation, free of white control and interpretation.
As a result of taking control of racial representation in the 1960s and 1970s, black artists,
media and business endeavors revealed greater self-expression in multiple venues.
Periodicals like Tan and Essence celebrated black beauty, black filmmakers challenged
stereotypical characters, and local and regional black TV programs (both news and
entertainment) gave voice to African American interests and viewpoints.
Writer Thulani Davis observed of the time, “White America at the time did not know that
we lived in a complete universe. In our private lives we were whole.”
Black Panther Party
In the 1960s, the Civil Rights movement grew divided– one arm advocating nonviolence
and collaboration with whites, and the other committed to black power, insurrection, and
self-sufficiency. The Black Panther Party (est. 1966) “broadcast their intention to fight
back against those who sought to exploit them.” This soon gave way to community based
activism that advocated for free health care, adequate housing, and programs to end
hunger, drug abuse, and police brutality. The Black Panther’s visual campaign,
coordinated by Emory Douglas, sought to integrate the visual message of overcoming
struggle through revolutionary art. Striking graphics with bold color, iconography, and
catchphrases were easily recognizable and represented the party’s ideology. Douglas’
ambition was “art for the people’s sake.” The Black Arts movement then came in 1965,
calling for a singular expression of African American culture. It rejected the idea of
integration, stating that African American life was already full, rich, and complete.
Black Panther party activism mirrored the broader Black Power movement led by
Malcolm X. As spokesperson for the Black Muslim religious group, the Nation of
Islam, Malcolm X refuted that civil disobedience was the best way of procuring equal
rights. Maintaining freedom and justice, to Malcolm, sometimes required aggressive
tactics. Malcolm X recognized and used the mainstream media to make his message
known. By the time of his assassination in 1965, he had appeared on radio, TV,
magazines, and newspapers more times than Martin Luther King, Jr.
Snapshots of Everyday Life
Requiring absolutely no media cooperation, a quiet visual revolution was taking place
through a simple ever present device – the snapshot camera. The Kodak camera was first
marketed in 1888 and within one decade, over 1.5 million units were sold. The Brownie
was marketed in 1900 and at the end of World War I camera sales took off again when
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film rationing ended. After World War II, the snapshot camera was a common device in
many American homes that documented family and personal life.
By taking pictures of themselves, their families, their lives, African Americans could play
a part in their own image-making, thus providing confirmation of black “humanity,
complexity, beauty, and cultural and intellectual authority.” bell hooks writes “shot
spontaneously, without any notion of remaking black bodies in the image of whiteness,
snapshots gave us a way to see ourselves, a sense of how we looked when we were not
‘wearing the mask,’ when we were not attempting to perfect the image for the white
supremacist gaze.” For an in depth look at the power of personal photography to protect
and buoy the African American spirit during Jim Crow, read Elizabeth Arnold Hull’s
thesis entitled Family Pictures “Out of Place”: Race, Resistance, and Affirmation in the
Pope Family Photograph Collection, 1890 – 1920. You can find the document here:
http://libres.uncg.edu/edocs/etd/1093/umi-uncg-1093.pdf
From the big screen to the personal photo, the struggle for racial justice and equality
skillfully made use of the power of visual image to create a cultural and political
transformation.
Key Figures and Groups of the Civil Rights Movement
(Listed in order of exhibit appearance)
Gordon Parks (1912–2006)
Photographer, filmmaker, writer, composer, and musician, Gordon Parks was born in Fort
Scott, Kansas. He was the youngest of 15 children. His father was a tenant farmer and the
family struggled as a result of poverty. After his mother died when he was 15, Parks left
Kansas and moved north to St. Paul, Minnesota.
Parks attended Central High and Mechanical Arts High School in St. Paul but was forced
to quit before graduation. While working as a railroad porter in 1937, he saw a magazine
spread of photography that sparked his interest. Parks purchased a camera from a pawn
shop and within a month presented his first exhibit at an Eastman Kodak store. He soon
became a successful fashion and portrait photographer. He shot a photo essay of
Chicago’s South Side ghetto and received a fellowship from the Farm Security
Administration. He shot one of his best known photographs, American Gothic,
Washington, D.C., of Ella Watson, on the cleaning crew, standing in front of an
American flag with brooms in hand.
Parks’ next venue was Harlem, where he worked as a freelance photographer for Vogue.
He received a contract for the Standard Oil Photography Project in New Jersey. A photo
essay of a Harlem gang leader earned Parks a staff position with Life. During the next
two decades, he recorded images of post-war America, depicting black America
emerging from the Civil Rights Movement.
In 1963 Parks published an autobiographical novel of his youth, The Learning Tree,
which he adapted to the movie screen in 1969. He continued making movies with the
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highly successful Shaft, its sequel Shaft's Big Score, and Super Cops. His ballet, Martin,
based on Martin Luther King, Jr., premiered in 1969 and was screened on national
television the following year. Parks died in March 7, 2006, in New York. He is buried in
the Fort Scott cemetery.
Source:
Gordon Parks, Kansapedia, Kansas Historical Society, http://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/gordon-parks/12164.
Additional:
Andy Grundberg, “Gordon Parks, a Master of the Camera, Dies at 93,” The New York Times (online),
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/08/arts/design/08parks.html.
The Gordon Parks Museum, http://www.gordonparkscenter.org/.
Ralph Ellison (1914–1994)
Ralph Waldo Ellison was born on March 1, 1914, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. As
Ellison himself says in reference to his parents, “no matter what their lives had been, their
children’s lives would be lives of possibility.” His mother, Ida Ellison, a maid, would
bring home books, magazines, and record albums that had been discarded in the homes
she cleaned.
When he was a teenager, Ellison and his friends daydreamed of being “Renaissance
Men.” Ellison admired the musicians of his area. At Douglas High School, Ellison
followed his inclination toward music and went to Tuskegee Institute on a scholarship,
dreaming of writing a symphony. After there was a mix-up with his scholarship, Ellison
chose to go to New York where he found it difficult to find work especially as a
musician. The result was a succession of odd jobs which eventually led him to Richard
Wright, who encouraged him to be a writer rather than a musician.
From this point on, Ellison followed a life of writing in which he earned many awards.
His best known work is the novel Invisible Man, though he also wrote several short
stories. He began a second novel that has recently been published posthumously. He was
a professor at Rutgers, New York University, and Bard College. Ellison died on April 16,
1994. In 1996, Flying Home: And Other Stories was published after being discovered in
his home.
Source:
Ralph Ellison, 1914–1994, Modern American, 1914 – present: Literature,
http://www.uncp.edu/home/canada/work/allam/1914-/lit/ellison.htm.
Additional:
Ralph Ellison, An American Journey, American Masters, http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/ralphellison/an-american-journey/587/.
W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963)
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was an American civil rights activist, sociologist,
writer, and educator, widely recognized as the foremost black intellectual and
spokesperson in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century. Du Bois
was born and raised in Massachusetts, and graduated in 1888 from Fisk University, a
black liberal arts college in Nashville, Tennessee. During the summer, he taught in a rural
school and later wrote about his experiences in his book The Souls of Black Folk.
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In 1895, Du Bois became the first African American to receive a Ph.D. in history from
Harvard University. With the publication of The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study in
1899, the first case study of a black community in the United States, as well as papers on
black farmers, businessmen, and black life in Southern communities, Du Bois established
himself as the first great scholar of black life in America.
He taught sociology at Atlanta University between 1898 and 1910. Du Bois had hoped
that social science could help eliminate segregation, but he eventually came to the
conclusion that the only effective strategy against racism was agitation. He challenged
the dominant ideology of black accommodation as preached and practiced by Booker T.
Washington, then the most influential black man in America. In 1905, Du Bois took the
lead in founding the short-lived Niagara Movement, intended to be an organization
advocating civil rights for blacks. It would become the forerunner of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which was founded in
1909. Du Bois played a prominent role in the organization’s creation and became its
director of research and the editor of its magazine, The Crisis.
For many young African Americans in the period from 1910 through the 1930s, Du Bois
was the voice of the black community. He attacked Woodrow Wilson when the president
allowed his cabinet members to segregate the federal government. He continued to fight
against the demand by many whites that black education be primarily industrial and that
black students in the South learn to accept white supremacy.”
In the 1930s, Du Bois found himself in a bitter dispute with Walter White, the head of the
NAACP, regarding Du Bois’ endorsement of voluntary segregation. He resigned from the
editorship of The Crisis and the NAACP in 1934. He taught for the next ten years at
Atlanta University and published two of his major works, Black Reconstruction: An
Essay Toward a History of the Part which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to
Reconstruct Democracy in America 1860-1880 and Dusk of Dawn. In 1951, when he was
83 years old, the federal government prosecuted Du Bois for his affiliation with the
Communist Party. A judge eventually threw out the case. Disillusioned with the United
States, he officially joined the Communist Party in 1961 and moved to Ghana. Du Bois
died August 27, 1963 at the age of 95 in Accra, Ghana, one day before Martin Luther
King, Jr. delivered his I have a Dream speech.
Source:
W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963), The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow,
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_people_dubois.html.
Additional:
WEBDuBois.org, http://www.webdubois.org/index.html.
W.E.B. Du Bois: Online Resources, Web Guides, The Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/dubois/.
Booker T. Washington (1856–1915)
Booker T. Washington was considered the most influential black educator of the late 19th
and early 20th centuries. Born a slave on a small farm in the Virginia backcountry, he
worked in the salt furnaces and coalmines of West Virginia as a child. Determined to
educate himself, he traveled hundreds of miles under great hardship until he arrived at
Hampton Institute.
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He became a star pupil under the tutelage of General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, head
of Hampton. In 1881, Washington founded Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute on
the Hampton model in the Black Belt of Alabama. He reassured whites that nothing in his
educational program challenged white supremacy or offered economic competition with
whites. He accepted racial subordination as a necessary evil, at least until such time as
blacks could prove themselves worthy of full civil and political rights.
Invited to speak at the 1895 Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta,
Washington publicly accepted disfranchisement and social segregation as long as whites
would allow black economic progress, educational opportunity, and justice in the courts.
“The wisest of my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the
extremist folly and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to
us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than artificial forcing. The
opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than to spend a
dollar in an opera house.”
An organized resistance to Washington grew within the black intellectual community. A
new era had begun in the black community, and a younger generation would no longer
accept white supremacy. Under the leadership of Du Bois and others, they would demand
their political and civil rights.
Source:
Booker T. Washington (1856–1915), The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow,
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_people_booker.html.
Additional:
Booker T. Washington, 1856–1915, Documenting the American South,
http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/washington/bio.html.
John H. Johnson (1918 – 2005)
Born in 1918 in Arkansas City, Arkansas, Johnson was the grandson of slaves. His family
later moved north because there was no high school for black students in Arkansas City.
After graduation from DuSable High School in Chicago in 1936, Johnson was invited to
speak before the Urban League, an early Civil Rights organization. The president of an
insurance company that served the black community was in the audience and offered
Johnson a job and tuition for college. He never earned his college degree, but after a few
years came up with the idea for a new magazine based on Reader's Digest. He sent out a
subscription offer to Supreme Life policyholders, and when 3,000 signed up, Negro
Digest was born. The first issue came out in November of 1942, and soon boasted a
circulation of 50,000.
His next magazine project would be based on Life, another widely read publication of the
day and renowned for its photojournalism. He later said his goal was to "show not only
the Negroes but also white people that Negroes got married, had beauty contests, gave
parties, ran successful businesses, and did all the other normal things of life," New York
Times writer Douglas Martin quoted him as saying. The name of the new magazine was
Ebony, and the 25,000 copies printed for its premier issue in November of 1945 sold out
entirely.
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In 1951, Johnson launched Jet, which covered the achievements of blacks in
entertainment, politics, and sports. It, too, became enormously successful, and with
Ebony was a staple in nearly every middle-class African-American household for a
generation and more. As the Civil Rights era gathered steam, Johnson's magazines
profiled the movement's leaders, covered important events, and delivered strong opinions
in both its editorials and feature articles about race relations in America.
Source: Encyclopedia of World Biography, John H. Johnson http://www.notablebiographies.com/newsmakers2/2006Ei-La/Johnson-John-H.html
Jackie Robinson (1919–1972)
Jack Roosevelt Robinson was born in Cairo, Georgia in 1919 to a family of
sharecroppers. His mother, Mallie Robinson, single-handedly raised Jackie and her four
other children. They were the only black family on their block, and the prejudice they
encountered only strengthened their bond.
Jackie excelled early at all sports and learned to make his own way in life. At UCLA,
Jackie became the first athlete to win varsity letters in four sports: baseball, basketball,
football and track. In 1941, he was named to the All-American football team. Due to
financial difficulties, he was forced to leave college, and eventually decided to enlist in
the U.S. Army. After two years in the army, he had progressed to second lieutenant.
Jackie's army career was cut short when he was court-martialed in relation to his
objections with incidents of racial discrimination. In the end, Jackie left the Army with an
honorable discharge.
In 1945, Jackie played one season in the Negro Baseball League, traveling all over the
Midwest with the Kansas City Monarchs. In 1947, Brooklyn Dodgers president Branch
Rickey approached Jackie about joining the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Major Leagues had
not had an African-American player since 1889, when baseball became segregated. When
Jackie first donned a Brooklyn Dodger uniform, he pioneered the integration of
professional athletics in America.
At the end of Robinson’s rookie season with the Brooklyn Dodgers, he had become
National League Rookie of the Year with 12 homers, a league-leading 29 steals, and a
.297 average. In 1949, he was selected as the NL's Most Valuable player of the Year and
also won the batting title with a .342 average that same year. As a result of his great
success, Jackie was eventually inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962.
Source:
Jackie Robinson Official Web site, Biography, http://www.jackierobinson.com/.
Additional:
Jackie Robinson. Biography, Bio. True Story, http://www.biography.com/people/jackie-robinson-9460813.
James Baldwin (1924–1987)
Civil rights activist, author, playwright, and poet, James Baldwin grew up in poverty in
Harlem. From 14 to 16 he was active as a preacher in a small revivalist church, a period
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he would write about in his semiautobiographical first and finest novel, Go Tell It on the
Mountain (1953) and in the play The Amen Corner (performed 1965).
In 1957 Baldwin became an active participant in the civil-rights struggle. A book of
essays, Nobody Knows My Name (1961), explores black-white relations, a theme also
central to his novel Another Country (1962). In the impassioned The Fire Next Time
(1963), perhaps his most powerful civil-rights statement, he said that blacks and whites
must come to terms with the past and make a future together or face destruction.
Baldwin’s later works include the bitter play about racist oppression Blues for Mister
Charlie (produced 1964), the story collection Going to Meet the Man (1965), the novel
Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone (1968), and the essay collection No Name in
the Street (1972).
Source:
James Baldwin, C-Span American Writers, http://www.americanwriters.org/writers/baldwin.asp.
Additional:
James Baldwin. Biography, Bio. True Story, http://www.biography.com/people/james-baldwin-9196635.
James Baldwin, American Masters, http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/james-baldwin/about-theauthor/59/
Mamie Till Mobley (1921–2003)
In 1955, Mamie Till was unwillingly thrust into American history. The murder of her
son, Emmett, catapulted the quiet Chicago civil service employee into a lifetime of
advocacy, starting with seeking justice for the death of her son.
At age 18, she met Louis Till from Madrid, Missouri. They married on October 14, 1940.
Their only child, Emmett Louis Till, nicknamed “Bobo,” was born at Cook County
Hospital in Chicago. Aside from a bout with polio at age five, after which Emmett would
speak with a mild stutter, he was a healthy and happy boy. Emmett would never know his
father, who was shipped out to Europe as an Army private. Mamie and Louis Till
separated in 1942. Three years later, Louis Till was killed in Italy.
In 1955, Emmett was set on joining his cousins and spending the end of the summer in
Mississippi. When Mamie put her son on the train, it was the last time she would see him
alive. When Emmett was brutally murdered, Mamie turned to the strength of her family
and faith. Horrified by the mutilation of her son’s body, Mamie made the stunning
decision that Emmett would have an open casket funeral. “I think everybody needed to
know what had happened to Emmett Till,” she said. Some 50,000 people streamed in to
view Emmett’s corpse in Chicago.
After two of her son’s killers, J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, were acquitted of murder
leading to international condemnation of the verdict and Mississippi. The NAACP, black
leaders and Mamie were hopeful that Milam and Bryant would at least be punished for
kidnapping. On November 9, 1955, a Mississippi grand jury refused to indict Milam and
Bryant on kidnapping charges. Both men were free.
Mamie took her fight to the people and gave speeches to overflowing crowds across the
country. Blacks were galvanized. Membership in the NAACP soared. African Americans
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were angered by Emmett’s killing and the injustice, and moved by the loss of an only
child to a young mother.
Source:
Mamie Till Mobley (1921–2003), The Murder of Emmett Till, American Experience,
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/till/peopleevents/p_parents.html.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968)
Martin Luther King, Jr., was born in 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia, later attending segregated
public schools where he graduated from high school at the age of fifteen. He received a
B. A. degree in 1948 from Morehouse College, a distinguished Negro institution of
Atlanta from which both his father and grandfather had graduated. After three years of
theological study at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania where he was elected
president of a predominantly white senior class, he was awarded the B.D. in 1951. He
then enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University, completing his residence for the
doctorate in 1953 and receiving the degree in 1955. In Boston he met and married Coretta
Scott, a young woman of uncommon intellectual and artistic attainments. Two sons and
two daughters were born into the family.
In 1954, Martin Luther King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in
Montgomery, Alabama. Always a strong worker for civil rights for members of his race,
King was, by this time, a member of the executive committee of the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the leading organization of its kind in
the nation. He accepted the leadership of the first great Negro nonviolent demonstration
of contemporary times in the United States, the Montgomery Bus Boycott which lasted
382 days. During the boycott, King was arrested, his home was bombed, he was
subjected to personal abuse, but at the same time he emerged as a Negro leader of the
first rank.
In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
(SCLC), an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil
rights movement. In the eleven-year period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over
six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there
was injustice, protest, and action. He wrote five books as well as numerous articles. In
these years, he led a protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the attention of the
entire world, providing what he called a coalition of conscience and inspiring his “Letter
from a Birmingham Jail,” a manifesto of the Negro revolution. In 1963, he directed the
peaceful march on Washington, D.C., where he delivered his address, “I Have a Dream.”
At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received
the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn
over the prize money to the furtherance of the civil rights movement. On the evening of
April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee,
where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that
city, he was assassinated.
Source:
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Martin Luther King Jr., The Noel Peace Prize 1964 Biography,
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1964/king-bio.html.
Additional:
Martin Luther King, Jr. (biography), The Martin Luther King J. Center for Nonviolent Social Change,
http://www.thekingcenter.org/history/about-dr-king/.
Ernest Withers (1922-2007)
Ernest Withers made photographs for almost sixty years. His subjects were individuals
and groups and the events which they create for themselves.
Withers’ very particular point of view was informed by his personal history, that of a
socially conscious citizen who worked hard to support his community and raise a family
of eight children in Memphis, Tennessee, his hometown and a city which was segregated
until the 1960s. In 1955, a photograph of the mutilated body of fourteen year old Emmett
Till, published in Jet magazine, shocked Black communities through the U.S. Withers’
identification as a civil rights photographer began with his coverage of the ensuing trail
of two white men for the murder of Till.
Withers was not just an observer of the movement, but a participant too. He regularly
received phone calls from activists and organizations to alert him to current and future
actions. Withers saw his work as a contribution to the movement for social change, and
therefore, his role was that of social documentarian, a recorder of real people engaged in
historic events. He compiled hundreds of images (including the iconic image of the
sanitation workers strike in Memphis) during the civil rights years and made tangible a
sense of the scale and consistency of the movement.
Source: Massachusetts College of Art and the Department of African American Studies, Northeastern University,
Boston, Massachusetts. Let Us March On! Selected Civil Right Photographs of Ernest C. Withers, 1955-1968.
Ed Sullivan (1901 – 1974)
One of the most important contributions Ed Sullivan will be remembered for is how he
embraced African American performers and promoted them to a national television
audience. When faced with criticism by white viewers and advertisers, Ed Sullivan
refused to back down. He refused to listen to critics who claimed that he booked too
many African American artists or that African American musicians shouldn’t be backed
by white bands.
The Ed Sullivan Show defied the ignorant attitudes of the times and promoted diversity in
living rooms throughout the country. Ed Sullivan, the man, upheld these same values of
equality in his personal life. He formed close friendships with many of the African
American artists who came on his show including lifetime bonds with Louis Armstrong
(Ed was a pall bearer at Armstrong’s funeral), and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson (Ed
covered all the expenses for the legendary dancer’s Harlem funeral).
Since it ended in 1971 no other program on American television has approached the
diversity and depth of Sullivan's weekly variety show. Periodic specials drawing from the
hundreds of hours of Sullivan shows as well as the venue of The Late Show with David
Letterman continue to serve as tribute to Sullivan's unique place in broadcasting. Ed
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Sullivan remains an important figure in American broadcasting because of his talents as a
producer and his willingness to chip away at the entrenched racism that existed in
television's first decades.
Source: The Museum of Broadcast Communications http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=sullivaned
and
The official Ed Sullivan site http://www.edsullivan.com/black-history-month-the-ed-sullivan-show
Amiri Baraka (1934 – )
Amiri Baraka is a prolific writer, an acclaimed playwright, and political activist. He was
key in the formation of the progressive Black Arts Movement in the mid-1960s and mid1970s. His 1964 Obie Award-winning play Dutchman dramatically and powerfully
examines race relations in America. In 2001, he was inducted into the American
Academy of Arts & Letters. He also received the James Weldon Johnson medal for his
contributions to the arts.
From 1968 to 1975, Baraka headed the black Committee for United Newark. During this
period, he also founded the Congress of African People, a Pan-Africanist group that grew
to have affiliates in 15 cities. Baraka backed Kenneth Gibson’s successful bid to become
the first black mayor of Newark in 1970; and he also played a major role in putting
together the National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana, in 1971.
Baraka is the author of more than 40 works of poetry, political essays and short fiction,
including Somebody Blew Up America & Other Poems and Tales of the Out & the Gone,
a winner of the 2008 PEN/Beyond Margins Award.
Source:
Amiri Baraka, http://www.nationalblackwritersconference.org/baraka.html.
Additional:
Amiri Baraka Official Web site, http://www.amiribaraka.com/.
Amiri Baraka (biography), Poetry Foundation, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/amiri-baraka.
Malcolm X (1925–1965)
African American civil rights leader Malcolm X was a major twentieth-century
spokesman for Black Nationalism. He was born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925, in
Omaha, Nebraska. His father, a Baptist minister, was an outspoken follower of Marcus
Garvey (1887–1940), the Black Nationalist leader. During Malcolm’s early years, his
family moved several times because of racism.
In 1946, at the age of twenty, Malcolm was sentenced to ten years in prison for burglary.
While in prison he began to transform his life. He began reading books on history,
philosophy, and religion. In prison his brother Reginald visited him and told Malcolm
about the Black Muslims. The Black Muslims were an Islamic religious organization
whose official name was the Lost-Found Nation of Islam. The leader of the group was
Elijah Muhammad. Malcolm X soon became the most visible national spokesman for the
Black Muslims. As the voice of the organization he was a speech-writer, a philosopher,
and an inspiring speaker who was often quoted by the media. His debating talents against
white and black opponents helped spread the movement's message.
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At this time in the United States there was a major movement for racial integration, or
bringing the races together in peace. However, Malcolm X and the Black Muslims were
calling for racial separation. He believed that the civil rights gains made in America
amounted to almost nothing. He criticized those African Americans who used nonviolent
methods in order to achieve integration. Malcolm X called for self-defense in the face of
white violence.
On March 8, 1964, Malcolm X publicly announced that he was leaving the Nation of
Islam. He started two new organizations: the Muslim Mosque, Inc., and the Organization
of Afro-American Unity. Together, these organizations would work on voter registration,
on black control of community public institutions such as schools and the police, and on
other civil and political rights for black people. Malcolm X began holding meetings in
Harlem at which he discussed the policies and programs of his new organizations. On a
Sunday afternoon, February 21, 1965, as he began to address one such meeting, Malcolm
X was assassinated.
Source:
Malcolm X Biography, Encyclopedia of World Biography, http://www.notablebiographies.com/Lo-Ma/MalcolmX.html.
bell hooks (1952 - )
Considered among the foremost intellectuals of her generation, bell hooks is a social
critic and educator who writes about social and cultural topics ranging from racism to
feminism to the theory of art and the practice of education. Well known in academic
circles for her essays collected in the books Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and
Feminism and Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics, among others, hooks has
also written movingly of her own childhood in the memoir Bone Black: Memories of
Girlhood, and of writing in both Wounds of Passion: A Writing Life and Remembered
Rapture: The Writer at Work. Beginning with 1999's Happy to Be Nappy, hooks
broadened her audience to include younger children, and the picture books she has
produced have been commended for instilling young African Americans with cultural
pride and self-esteem.
Born Gloria Jean Watkins in 1952, hooks grew up in Kentucky, the daughter of a
custodial worker and a homemaker. Poetry was a family-shared interest, and when
frequent storms caused power outages, the Watkins family would sit in candlelight and
recite poetry to one another. Writing her own poetry at an early age, hooks was also
inspired by the writings of Emily Dickinson. While she dreamed about becoming an
architect when she grew up, the power of words would ultimately prove more compelling
than design, although hooks has discussed both art and design in her nonfiction writing.
Hooks’ experiences growing up in a segregated community have caused her to focus
predominately on the effects of racism in much of her published work. Additionally, her
father's rigid traditional beliefs regarding gender roles made her question, early on, the
sexism alive in both the black community and U.S. society at large. Her feminist stance is
rooted in the strong female role models that figured largely in her early life; in fact, her
adopted name is that of her great grandmother, adopted in order, according to Paula
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Giddings in Ms., to "honor the unlettered wisdom of her foremothers." Hooks writes the
name in the lower case, as she explained to Michel Marriott in the New York Times, "to
emphasize her message and not herself."
Source: Bell Hooks (1952–) Biography - Personal, Addresses, Career, Honors Awards, Writings, Sidelights - Review,
Black, York, and Book - JRank Articles http://biography.jrank.org/pages/2287/Hooks-Bell-1952.html#ixzz1cVdq502u
.
Civil Rights Groups
NAACP
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded
in 1909 in New York City by a group of bi-racial activists. Originally called the National
Negro Committee, it is the nation’s oldest civil rights organization. United in its
opposition to the preaching of Booker T. Washington, who urged blacks to accept
segregation, the NAACP first sought to make whites aware of the need for racial equality.
The organization launched a program of speechmaking, lobbying, and publicizing the
issue of racial discrimination and inequality in housing, education, employment, voting,
and transportation. It also launched the Crisis, a magazine edited for 25 years by the
black intellectual and leader, W.E.B. DuBois.
It appealed to the Supreme Court to rule as unconstitutional several laws passed by
Southern states, and, beginning in 1915, won several important judgments regarding
housing and voting rights. In 1916, the NAACP began to expand its membership in the
South, under the leadership of field secretary James Weldon Johnson, where the
organization faced its most fierce opposition. By 1920, membership had grown to 90,000,
of which nearly half was in the South. The NAACP began to publicize the evils of the
Jim Crow laws that sanctioned racial discrimination, and fought for a federal antilynching law.
In the 1920s and 1930s, the NAACP devoted much of its energy to publicizing the
lynching of blacks throughout the United States. To show to the world that the members
of the organization would not be intimidated, it held its 1920 annual conference in
Atlanta, Georgia, considered at the time to be located in one of the most active Ku Klux
Klan areas in the nation. In 1948, the NAACP pressured President Harry Truman into
signing an Executive Order to ban discrimination by the federal government. In 1950, the
NAACP began its campaign against the legal doctrine that separate but equal schools for
black and white children were constitutional. The Supreme Court had ruled that separate
schools were acceptable as long as they were “separate but equal.” The NAACP set out to
prove that separate facilities provided to black students were not equal to those for
whites. Five desegregation lawsuits were launched in different states. The 1954 Supreme
Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (Kansas) declared segregation
in public schools to be unconstitutional.
In 1955, NAACP member Rosa Parks was arrested and fined for refusing to give up her
seat to a white man on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Following Parks’
arrest, a local Baptist pastor, Martin Luther King Jr., helped to organize protests against
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bus segregation. He began to travel the country, make speeches and inspire people to
become involved in what became known as the modern civil rights movement. Rivalry
among different civil rights groups was a continual problem within the movement,
particularly among the leadership. Despite this, there also were numerous instances of
cooperation and mutual support, most notably the March on Washington in 1963. The
march was held as an attempt to persuade Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act. More
than 200,000 people marched peacefully to the Lincoln Memorial to demand equal
justice for all citizens under the law. At the end of the march, King made his famous “I
Have a Dream” speech.
Fifty-five years after the NAACP’s founding, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of
1964. The act made racial discrimination in public places illegal, and also required
employers to provide equal employment opportunities. A year later, the Voting Rights
Act was also passed, despite Southern lawmakers’ resistance. The act, which states that
no person shall be denied the right to vote on account of race or color, is generally
considered to be the most successful piece of civil rights legislation ever adopted by
Congress. In the late 1970s, the NAACP broadened its scope by committing itself to the
struggle for equal rights around the world. Today, the NAACP is governed nationally by
a 64-member board of directors. Headquarters are in Baltimore, Maryland, with regional
offices located in California, New York, Michigan, Missouri, Georgia, and Texas. As of
2004, the NAACP had approximately 500,000 members.
Source:
NAACP, United States History, http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1595.html.
Additional:
NAACP Official Web site, http://www.naacp.org/content/main.
NAACP. The Free Dictionary by Farlex (Legal Dictionary), http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/NAACP.
SCLC
As a principal organization of the Civil Rights Movement, the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference (SCLC) championed the use of nonviolent direct action to end
legal and social discrimination against African Americans. Identified strongly with its
original leader, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., the SCLC organized and sponsored
many protest marches and demonstrations during the late 1950s and the 1960s. Although
the group’s influence declined after King’s assassination in 1968, the SCLC continues to
work for the betterment of the lives of African Americans.
The SCLC emerged in the wake of a successful boycott of buses in Montgomery,
Alabama, by the city’s black citizens in 1955, which had led to a December 1956
Supreme Court ruling upholding the desegregation of those buses. Prodded by African
American social activist Bayard Rustin, who hoped to carry the Montgomery victory to
the rest of the South, King and other clerics formed the Southern Negro Leaders
Conference, forerunner of the SCLC, during a meeting in Atlanta in January 1957. Later
in 1957, the group changed its name to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Through a non-violent approach, the SCLC sought to take the Civil Rights cause out of
the courtroom and into the community, hoping to negotiate directly with whites for social
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change. As one of its first actions, the group led the 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage to
Washington, D.C., which drew an estimated twenty-five thousand people. In 1959, it
organized a youth march on Washington, D.C., that attracted forty thousand people.
Between 1960 and 1964, the number of full-time SCLC staff members grew from five to
sixty, and the organization’s effect on the civil rights movement reached its zenith. The
group’s growth allowed it to coordinate historic demonstrations that played a vital role in
the civil rights movement. In April 1963, the SCLC led protests and boycotts in
Birmingham, Alabama, that prompted violent police repression. Television viewers
around the United States were shocked at the violence they saw directed at the clearly
peaceful demonstrators. The SCLC won the sympathy of the nation again in a difficult
1965 civil rights campaign in Selma, Alabama, which also drew a violent response from
whites. These protests are widely credited with hastening the passage of the Civil Rights
Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, laws that granted African Americans
many of the gains they had been seeking. By 1967, the SCLC launched several new
operations there: the Chicago Freedom Movement, Operation Bread-basket, and the Poor
People's Campaign. It brought in young, new leaders, including a divinity student named
Jesse Jackson, to lead these efforts.
The SCLC suffered a staggering setback when King was assassinated in April 1968.
Abernathy became president of the organization. By 1972, the staff had declined to
twenty and leaders such as Young and Jackson had moved on to other pursuits. Joseph E.
Lowery succeeded Abernathy as president of the SCLC in 1977. The Atlanta-based group
has continued to work for the improvement of the lives of African Americans through
leadership training and citizen education. It has also created campaigns to battle drug
abuse and crime.
Source:
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), The Free Dictionary by Farlex (Legal Dictionary), http://legaldictionary.thefreedictionary.com/SCLC.
Additional:
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), http://sclcnational.org/.
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), The New Georgia Encyclopedia,
http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-2743.
SNCC
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee or SNCC (pronounced “snick”), was
one of the key organizations in the American civil rights movement of the 1960s.
Emerging from the student-led sit-ins to protest segregated lunch counters in Greensboro,
North Carolina, and Nashville, Tennessee, SNCC's strategy was much different from that
of already established civil rights organizations. In April 1960, on the Shaw University
campus in Raleigh, North Carolina, students of the sit-in movement met with Ella Baker,
executive secretary of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and they
established SNCC. SNCC sought to coordinate youth-led nonviolent, direct-action
campaigns against segregation and other forms of racism. SNCC members played an
integral role in sit-ins, Freedom Rides, the 1963 March on Washington, and such voter
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education projects as the Mississippi Freedom Summer. Leaders of the group include
Julian Bond, John Lewis, and Stokely Carmichael.
Source:
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), The New Georgia Encyclopedia,
http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-3482.
Additional:
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Martin Luther King, Jr. and The Global Freedom Struggle,
http://mlkkpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_student_nonviolent_coordinating_committee_sncc/.
SNCC 1960–1966, http://www.ibiblio.org/sncc/.
The Black Panther Party
U.S. African American revolutionary party founded in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby
Seale in Oakland, California. Its original purpose was to protect African Americans from
acts of police brutality. Eventually the Panthers developed into a Marxist revolutionary
group that called for the arming of African Americans, their exemption from the draft, the
release of all African American prisoners, and payment of compensation to African
Americans for centuries of exploitation by white Americans. By the late 1960s it had
more than 2,000 members, with chapters in several major cities; an early spokesman was
Eldridge Cleaver (1935 – 98). Conflicts with police in the late 1960s and early 1970s led
to shoot-outs in California, New York, and Chicago, one of which resulted in Newton’s
imprisonment for the murder of a police officer. Though some members of the party were
guilty of criminal acts, the entire group was subjected to violent attacks by police and
harassment by other government agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Police activities in dealing with the Panthers were later the subject of congressional
investigations. By the mid-1970s, having lost many members and having fallen out of
favor with African American leaders, the party turned to providing social services in
African American neighborhoods. By the early 1980s it had effectively disbanded.
Source:
Black Panther Party, Answers.com, http://www.answers.com/topic/black-panther.
Additional:
BlackPanther.org, http://blackpanther.org/.
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Civil Rights Timeline
1954
MAY 17: The U.S. Supreme Court's unanimously ruled in the landmark case
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas that public school segregation
was unconstitutional and paved the way for desegregation. The decision
overturned the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that said "separate educational
facilities were inherently unequal."
1955
AUGUST 27: While visiting family in Mississippi, fourteen-year-old Chicagoan
Emmett Till was kidnapped, brutally beaten, shot and dumped in the Tallahatchie
River for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Two white men, J. W. Milam and
Roy Bryant, were arrested for the murder and acquitted by an all-white jury. They
later boasted about committing the murder in a Look magazine interview. The
case became a cause célèbre of the civil rights movement.
DECEMBER 1: Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat at the front of the "colored
section" of a bus in Montgomery, Ala., to a white passenger, defying a southern
custom of the time. In response to her arrest, the Montgomery black community
launched a bus boycott that lasted over a year until the buses desegregated on
Dec. 21, 1956. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., the newly elected president of the
Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), was instrumental in leading the
boycott.
1957
FEBRUARY 14: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, comprised of
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Charles K. Steele and Fred L. Shuttlesworth, was
established. King was the organization's first president. The SCLC proved to be a
major force in organizing the civil rights movement with a principle base of
nonviolence and civil disobedience.
SEPTEMBER 2: Integration was easier said than done at the formerly all-white
Central High School in Little Rock, Ark. Nine black students, who became known
as the "Little Rock Nine," were blocked from entering the school on the orders of
Arkansas Governor Orval Fabus. President Eisenhower sent federal troops and the
National Guard to intervene on behalf of the students, but a federal judge granted
an injunction against the governor's use of National Guard troops to prevent
integration. They were withdrawn on Sept. 20, 1957.
1960
FEBRUARY 1: Four black university students from N.C. A&T University began a
sit-in at a segregated F.W. Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C.
Although they were refused service, they were allowed to stay at the counter. The
event triggered similar nonviolent protests throughout the South. Six months later,
the original four protesters are served lunch at the same Woolworth's counter.
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APRIL: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was founded
at Shaw University in Raleigh, N.C., providing young blacks with a more
prominent place in the civil rights movement.
1962
OCTOBER 1: James Meredith became the first black student to enroll at the
University of Mississippi. President Kennedy sent 5,000 federal troops to contain
the violence and riots surrounding the incident.
1963
JUNE 12: Mississippi's NAACP field secretary, 37-year-old Medgar Evers, was
murdered outside his home in Jackson, Miss. Byron De La Beckwith was tried
twice in 1964, both trials resulting in hung juries. Thirty years later, he was
convicted of murdering Evers.
AUGUST 28: More than 250,000 people join in the March on Washington.
Congregating at the Lincoln Memorial, participants listened as Martin Luther
King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.
SEPTEMBER 15: Four young girls attending Sunday school were killed when a
bomb exploded at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, a popular location for civil
rights meetings. Riots erupted in Birmingham, Ala., leading to the deaths of two
more black youth.
1964
JANUARY 23: The 24th Amendment abolished the poll tax, which had originally
been instituted in 11 southern states. The poll tax made it difficult for blacks to
vote.
MAY 4 (FREEDOM SUMMER): The Mississippi Freedom Summer Project was
organized in 1964 by the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), a coalition
of four civil rights organizations: the Student Non-Violent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC); the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE); the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The project was to carry out a unified
voter registration program in the state of Mississippi.
The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) began sending student volunteers on
bus trips to test the implementation of new laws prohibiting segregation in
interstate travel facilities. One of the first two groups of "Freedom Riders," as
they are called, encountered its first problem two weeks later when a mob in
Alabama sets the riders' bus on fire. The program continued and by the end of the
summer, more than 1,000 volunteers, black and white, participated.
.
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The Educational Programming Guide for For All the World To See © 2011, NEH on the Road., a Division of Mid-America Arts Alliance
JULY 2: President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The most
sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Act
prohibited discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, religion or national
origin. The law allowed the federal government to enforce desegregation and
prohibits discrimination in public facilities, in government and in employment.
The "Jim Crow" laws in the South were abolished, and it became illegal to
compel segregation of the races in schools, housing or hiring. Enforcement
powers were initially weak, but they grew over the years, and later programs, such
as affirmative action, were made possible by the Act. Title VII of the Act
established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
AUGUST 4: The bodies of three civil-rights workers - two white, one black were found in an earthen dam. James E. Chaney, 21; Andrew Goodman, 21; and
Michael Schwerner, 24, had been working to register black voters in Mississippi,
and on June 21, went to investigate the burning of a black church. They were
arrested by the police on speeding charges, incarcerated for several hours, and
released after dark into the hands of the Ku Klux Klan, who murdered them.
1965
FEBRUARY 21 MALCOLM X Assassinated.
MARCH (The Selma to Montgomery Marches): The Selma to Montgomery
marches, which included Bloody Sunday, were actually three marches that
marked the political and emotional peak of the American civil rights movement.
MARCH 7 (Bloody Sunday): Blacks began a march to Montgomery in support
of voting rights, but were stopped at the Edmund Pettus Bridge by a police
blockade in Selma, Ala. State troopers and the Dallas County Sheriff's
Department, some mounted on horseback, awaited them. In the presence of the
news media, the lawmen attacked the peaceful demonstrators with billy clubs, tear
gas and bull whips, driving them back into Selma. The incident was dubbed
"Bloody Sunday" by the national media, with each of the three networks
interrupting telecasts to broadcast footage from the horrific incident. The march
was considered the catalyst for pushing through the Voting Rights Act five
months later.
MARCH 9: Ceremonial Action within 48 hours, demonstrations in support of the
marchers, were held in 80 cities and thousands of religious and lay leaders,
including Dr. Martin Luther King, flew to Selma. He called for people across the
country to join him. Hundreds responded to his call, shocked by what they had
seen on television.
However, to prevent another outbreak of violence, marchers attempted to gain a
court order that would prohibit the police from interfering. Instead of issuing the
court order, Federal District Court Judge Frank Minis Johnson issued a restraining
order, preventing the march from taking place until he could hold additional
hearings later in the week. On March 9, Dr. King led a group again to the Edmund
Pettus Bridge where they knelt, prayed and to the consternation of some, returned
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to Brown Chapel. That night, a Northern minister who was in Selma to march,
was killed by white vigilantes.
MARCH 21-25 (Selma to Montgomery March): Under protection of a
federalized National Guard, voting rights advocates left Selma on March 21, and
stood 25,000 strong on March 25 before the state capitol in Montgomery. As a
direct consequence of these events, the U.S. Congress passed the Voting Rights
Act of 1965, guaranteeing every American 21 years old and over the right to
register to vote.
AUGUST 10: Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, making it easier
for Southern blacks to register to vote. Literacy tests, poll taxes and other such
requirements that were used to restrict black voting were made illegal.
SEPTEMBER 24: President Lyndon Johnson issued Executive Order 11246 to
enforce affirmative action for the first time because he believed asserting civil
rights laws were not enough to remedy discrimination. It required government
contractors to "take affirmative action" toward prospective minority employees in
all aspects of hiring and employment.
1967
JUNE 12: In Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court ruled that prohibiting
interracial marriage was unconstitutional. Sixteen states that still banned
interracial marriage at the time were forced to revise their laws.
AUGUST 30: Senate confirmed President Lyndon Johnson's appointment of
Thurgood Marshall as the first African American Justice of the U.S. Supreme
Court after he served for two years as a Solicitor General of the United States.
1968 APRIL 4: Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., at age 39, was shot as he was standing on
the balcony outside his hotel room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn.
Escaped convict and committed racist James Earl Ray was convicted of the crime.
The networks then broadcast President Johnson's statement in which he called for
Americans to "reject the blind violence," yet cities were ignited from coast to
coast.
APRIL 11: President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968, prohibiting
discrimination in the sale, rental and financing of housing.
Timeline courtesy The International Civil Rights Center and Museum, Greensboro, NC
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Educational Resources for
Teachers
Glossary
Black Nationalism/Black Muslims – Black leaders emphasized separatism and
identification with Africa. One of the most important expressions of the separatist
impulse during the 1960s was the rise of the Black Muslims, which attracted 100,000
members. Founded in 1931, in the depths of the depression, the Nation of Islam drew its
appeal from among the growing numbers of urban blacks living in poverty. The Black
Muslims elevated racial separatism into a religious doctrine and declared that whites were
doomed to destruction. The most controversial exponent of Black Nationalism was
Malcolm X.
Digital History, Black Nationalism and Black Power
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?HHID=370
Boycott – A campaign of withdrawal of support from a company, government or
institution which is committing an injustice, such as racial discrimination.
Boycott. Glossary of Nonviolence. The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change.
http://www.thekingcenter.org/history/glossary-of-nonviolence/
Brown v. Board of Education – Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 47 S. Ct.
686, 98 L. Ed. 873, was the most significant of a series of judicial decisions overturning
segregation laws—laws that separate whites and blacks. Reversing its 1896 decision in
Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 16 S. Ct. 1138, 41 L. Ed. 256, which established the
“separate-but-equal” doctrine that found racial segregation to be constitutional, the
Supreme Court unanimously decided in Brown that laws separating children by race in
different schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,
which provides that “[n]o state shall … deny to any person … the equal protection of the
laws.” In making its decision, the Court declared that “separate educational facilities are
inherently unequal.” Moreover, the Court found that segregated schools promote in
African American children a harmful and irreparable sense of inferiority that damages not
only their lives but the welfare of U.S. society as a whole.
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The Free Dictionary by Farlex (Legal Dictionary). http://legaldictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Brown+v.+Board+of+Education
Civil Disobedience – The act of openly disobeying an unjust, immoral or
unconstitutional law as a matter of conscience, and accepting the consequences, including
submitting to imprisonment if necessary, to protest an injustice.
Civil Disobedience. Glossary of Nonviolence. The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change.
http://www.thekingcenter.org/history/glossary-of-nonviolence/
Civil Rights – “Civil rights” are the rights of individuals to be free from unfair or
unequal treatment (discrimination) in a number of settings, when that negative treatment
is based on the individual's race, gender, religion, national origin, disability, sexual
orientation, age, or other protected characteristic.
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Civil Rights. Civil Rights and Discrimination Glossary. FindLaw. http://public.findlaw.com/civil-rights/civil-rightsbasics/civil-rights-glossary.html
Civil Rights Act of 1964 – A federal law that prohibits discrimination in a number of
settings: Title I prohibits discrimination in voting; Title II: public accommodations; Title
III: Public Facilities; Title IV: Public Education; Title VI: Federally-Assisted Programs;
Title VII: Employment.
Civil Rights Act of 1964. Civil Rights and Discrimination Glossary. FindLaw. http://public.findlaw.com/civilrights/civil-rights-basics/civil-rights-glossary.html
Civil Rights Movement – Historically, the term “Civil Rights Movement” has referred
to efforts toward achieving true equality for African Americans in all facets of society,
but today the term “civil rights movement” is also used to describe the advancement of
equality for all people regardless of race, sex, age, disability, national origin, religion,
sexual orientation, or other protected characteristic.
Civil Rights Movement. Civil Rights and Discrimination Glossary. FindLaw. http://public.findlaw.com/civilrights/civil-rights-basics/civil-rights-glossary.html
Demonstrations – Gatherings and protest activities organized to build support for peace,
justice or social reform.
Demonstrations. Glossary of Nonviolence. The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change.
http://www.thekingcenter.org/history/glossary-of-nonviolence/
Desegregation – The breaking down of imposed racial separation. Desegregation has
always been a fundamental aim of the civil rights movement in United States and was
given special impetus by the Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of
Education that ruled segregated schools unconstitutional.
Desegregation. Civil Right Glossary. Civil Rights 101.
http://www.civilrights.org/resources/civilrights101/glossary.html
Discrimination – Discrimination is unfair or unequal treatment of an individual (or
group) based on certain legally-protected characteristics—including age, disability,
ethnicity, gender, national origin, race, religion, sexual orientation. Federal and state laws
prohibit discrimination against members of these protected groups in a number of
settings, including education, employment, government services, housing, lending, public
accommodations, transportation, and voting.
Discrimination. Civil Rights and Discrimination Glossary. FindLaw. http://public.findlaw.com/civil-rights/civil-rightsbasics/civil-rights-glossary.html
Ghetto Comedy – Television sitcoms that emerged during the 1970s featuring all black
casts and set in urban impoverished areas like Washington D.C., Watts, and Chicago.
These shows offered mainstream viewers a humorous view of working class African
American inner city life. While some of ghetto comedies attempted to make social
commentary on race relations, many reverted to black stereotypes for comic effect.
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Hate Crimes – A hate crime is an act of violence or threat of violence that is intended to
injure and/or intimidate the victim(s) because of their race, ethnicity, national origin,
religious, sexual orientation, or disability.
Discrimination. Civil Rights and Discrimination Glossary. FindLaw. http://public.findlaw.com/civil-rights/civil-rightsbasics/civil-rights-glossary.html
Invisibility – The notion explored in Ralph Ellison’s book Invisible Man that African
Americans are rendered voiceless and unseen in mainstream culture. His words advocate
a freedom from invisibility and to be recognized as “a man of substance, of flesh and
bone, fiber and liquids and I might even be said to possess as mind. I am invisible,
understand, simply because people refuse to see me.”
Jim Crow – The name that was given to the de jure or legal segregation of blacks from
whites before the civil rights movement. The name itself comes from a black minstrel
caricature popularized in song during the 1830s. Thus, laws restricting African
Americans to the back of a bus or creating separate restrooms, drinking fountains or
eating facilities were known as “Jim Crow” laws.
Jim Crow. Civil Right Glossary. Civil Rights 101. http://www.civilrights.org/resources/civilrights101/glossary.html
Lynching – The term is derived from the "vigilante justice" practiced by Captain
William Lynch and his neighbors in Pittsylvania County, Virginia, in the late 18th
century. In the 19th century, lynching—usually associated with hanging but also
including tar and feathering, burning and other methods of killing—became increasingly
directed against African Americans. In the last 16 years of the 19th century, there were
some 2,500 reported lynchings. The quest for federal laws against lynching was among
the first crusades of the NAACP in the early decades of the 20th century.
Lynching. Civil Right Glossary. Civil Rights 101. http://www.civilrights.org/resources/civilrights101/glossary.html
“Mainstream” – Popular culture, visual media and their perspectives, produced by and
for the majority. Publications represent the highest readership and largest audience. In
this case, mainstream can also be equated with the trends and behaviors of the white
middle class.
Mass March – A large number of people walk in a group to a place of symbolic
significance to protest an injustice.
Mass March. Glossary of Nonviolence. The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change.
http://www.thekingcenter.org/history/glossary-of-nonviolence/
Media – The means of communication that reach large numbers of people, such as
television, newspapers, radio, and the Internet.
Media. Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged. HarperCollins Publishers, 2003.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/media
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Passive Resistance – Challenging an injustice by refusing to support or cooperate with
an unjust law, action or policy. The term “passive” is misleading because passive
resistance includes pro-active nonviolence, such as marches, boycotts and other forms of
active protest.
Passive Resistance. Glossary of Nonviolence. The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change.
http://www.thekingcenter.org/history/glossary-of-nonviolence/
Picketing – A group of individuals walk with signs bearing protest messages in front of a
site where an injustice has been committed.
Picketing. Glossary of Nonviolence. The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change.
http://www.thekingcenter.org/history/glossary-of-nonviolence/
Pictorial Magazines – A print publication containing many pictures; viewpoints are
often expressed through visual material as well as text. Pictorial magazines had the ability
to evoke life-like images within the mind.
Racial Nostalgia – An emotional longing for times when race relations were simplistic
and clearly hierarchical, as during the enslavement of Africans in the American South.
This term includes both public and private expressions of nostalgia.
Segregation – Separation or isolation of a race or class from the rest of the population. In
the United States, segregation has taken two forms: de jure and de facto. De jure
segregation is where a set of laws mandates separation, like those that prevailed in the
South from the end of Reconstruction. De facto segregation prevailed in the North after
Reconstruction and is enforced by cultural and economic patterns rather than by law,
especially in housing.
Segregation. Civil Right Glossary. Civil Rights 101. http://www.civilrights.org/resources/civilrights101/glossary.html
Sit-ins – Tactic of nonviolence in which protesters sit down at the site of an injustice and
refuse to move for a specified period of time or until goals are achieved. Examples
include Flint (Mich.) sit-down strike of 1936-37 in which auto workers sat down on job
for 44 days in protest for union recognition and the student sit-ins to desegregate lunch
counters in Greensboro, NC in 1960.
Sit-ins. Glossary of Nonviolence. The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change.
http://www.thekingcenter.org/history/glossary-of-nonviolence/
Status Quo – The existing state of affairs, especially in regard to social and political
issues. In exploring the evolution of media alongside civil rights, there was a general
trend for the majority to maintain the status quo and resist change. This meant continuing
to represent African Americans through a mainstream, white lens.
Strikes – Organized withholding of labor to correct injustice.
Strikes. Glossary of Nonviolence. The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change.
http://www.thekingcenter.org/history/glossary-of-nonviolence/
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Educational Resources for
Teachers
Educational Museum Activities
The hands-on activities listed here are intended for use on-site to engage visitors in a
creative exploration of the exhibits primary themes. These activities can also be adapted
for use in off-site programming for more specialized audiences. Either way, they are best
suited for a pre-scheduled activity in a museum classroom or non-gallery location. While
the activities are geared primarily for older children, they are appealing to many ages.
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Educational Resources for
Teachers
Educational Museum Activities
Activity One: In Our Lives, we are…
Age Appropriateness: grades 4 and up
Time Needed: 1 – 2 hours, with some pre-visit preparation
Introduction: For All The World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights
explores the notion that at its worst, media can narrowly define us. At its best, media can
motivate, inspire, and produce social change. This activity may require pre-registration
so that you can adequately prepare participants. Registered participants are invited to
bring in 5 -10 photos (or photocopied pictures) that they feel “help tell the story of who I
am.”
Required Materials:
• Several copies of recent magazines that represent a wide array of backgrounds.
This might include AARP publications; fashion magazines like Seventeen,
Redbook, Glamour, Vogue; parenting magazines; travel and leisure magazines;
sports magazines like ESPN and Sports Illustrated; fitness magazines; pictorial
and news magazines like TIME, Newsweek, People, Essence, Ebony; and
business magazines like Black Enterprise, Forbes, Business Week, etc.
• Optional: internet access and printer for participants to download and print online
images
• Scissors and glue sticks for each participant
• Heavy card stock paper, 8 1/2 x 11”
• If participants have brought in their own photographs, you may consider making
photocopies of these before beginning the project.
Program Directions:
1. Ask participants their thoughts about the last section of the exhibit, entitled
“In Our Lives We are Whole: Snapshots from Everyday Life: “
Ask them how they felt at the end of the exhibit. Did the conclusion offer a
sense of optimism?
2. Contrast this section of the exhibit with other sections that focused on either
negative or extremely narrow castings of an entire group of people. What do
the photographs we keep at home, often considered that one item we would
run back in to a burning house to retrieve, contribute to our lives and our
identities?
3. In an era of media saturation, we continue to be bombarded with images that
don’t give accurate representation of who we are at our most personal level.
These images create expectations for both young and old, for people of all
backgrounds – that we should strive, even as a complex and diverse group of
people, to model our appearance, our finances, our politics, and our
livelihoods after media subjects and representations.
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4. In this activity, participants will have an opportunity to examine and
graphically illustrate print media’s version of who they are or should be. The
cover of this collage project represents exterior expectations placed on
individuals by the media world; the inside pages display the true richness of
the individual through the incorporation of personal photographs and/or
statements. Symbolic images and graphic statements cutout from print media
could also be added to the collage.
5. To begin, participants should locate an image from a magazine or online
source that perpetuates an “ideal” standard or extremely narrow interpretation
of an individual or social group similar to the participant’s own. Instruct the
participant to study the image and note their initial emotional reaction. Is this
image, this personification of your social group achievable? Is it accurate and
representative? What kind of message is the visual image trying to
communicate to the public? What does it communicate to you, the participant?
6. Next, instruct participants to fold the sides of length-wise paper inwards,
creasing as the edges meet in the middle-- in essence, they are creating a
“double door.” Participants will then paste the “ideal” images on the outside.
They can also use words or phrases that represent expectations or negative
messages. The interior of the folded paper will contain images (from the
participants own collection), words and phrases that give life to the richness of
the true individual.
7. Consider displaying these collages in an adjacent gallery with the participant’s
permission.
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Educational Resources for
Teachers
Educational Museum Activities
Activity Two: I AM
Age Appropriateness: grades 4 & up
Time Needed: 1-2 hours
Introduction: From curator Maurice Berger: “The stark “I AM A MAN” poster was
published shortly after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. It stands as a tribute
to the slain leader, a poignant reminder of the continued urgency of the struggle he died
for. The design paid homage to the placards carried by black sanitation workers in the
strike that brought Dr. King to Memphis on the day of his murder in April 1968, an event
immortalized in a now iconic photograph by Ernest C. Withers.”
This activity explores the messages that we express about ourselves and the character
traits that enable change. Participants will recreate a history-based and personal version
of the “I AM A MAN” placard with an accompanying creative piece.
Required Materials:
• 2 pieces of heavy card stock paper for each participant
• Pencils and markers
• Stencils of block letters (optional)
• Display mechanism
Program Directions:
1. Take program participants back through the exhibit to review section 3: “Let the
World See What I’ve Seen”: Evidence and Persuasion. Target the Memphis
sanitation workers photo by Ernest Withers. Begin a discussion about this photo
by asking open-ended questions like: “What do you see in this photo?” “What do
you see that makes you say that?”
2. Return participants to program room and inform them that they will be
completing their own placard. Recount the history behind the original poster:
In February of 1968, two African American Sanitation Workers in Memphis,
Tennessee were crushed to death by the compactor mechanism on their trash
truck. In a separate incident occurring the same day, 22 African American sewer
workers were sent home without pay because of inclement weather while their
white supervisors remained at work. About 2 weeks later, over 1,000 black
sanitation workers in Memphis began to strike for better pay, safer working
conditions, and union recognition. They created signs displaying the message “I
Am a Man” in hopes that their humanity and dignity would be recognized. You
can read actual articles printed in the Memphis Commercial Appeal during this
tumultuous time here: http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/mlk/
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3. Have students pick one of the Civil Rights activists or legends featured in the
exhibit whom they admire. Examples might include: a Memphis sanitation
worker, Emmett Till, Malcolm X, Jackie Robinson, Gordon Parks, etc. Then, have
participants select one character trait that this individual exemplifies. Examples
might include: brave, determined, loyal, patient, passionate, courageous, innocent,
strong, etc.
4. On one side of the card stock paper, instruct participants to take 5-10 minutes to
write about how this individual displayed this trait during the Civil Rights
movement. Then on the opposite side, in the block letter style of the “I AM A
MAN” placard, have participants write: “
(insert civil rights activist’s
name)
WAS
(insert character trait)
. Example: JACKIE
ROBINSON WAS COURAGEOUS.
5. For the second half of this activity, ask participants to think of a time that they
witnessed injustice, discrimination, or hatred. For younger participants, injustice
defined is: acts or conditions that cause people to suffer hardship or loss
undeservedly. A violation of a person's rights; the term can also refer to unfair
treatment of another or others: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice
everywhere" (Martin Luther King, Jr.). Writing prompts could include: Did you
ever witness bullying in school, on the bus, or in your neighborhood? Have you
ever seen someone being mistreated? When you look around your school or
community, what seems unfair to you? On the second piece of card stock paper,
have each participant take 5-10 minutes to write about their personal experiences
with injustice.
6. Next, ask participants what they can do to stop this kind of injustice from
occurring again. Encourage them to look for examples in the behavior and
actions of individuals from the civil rights movement. What trait would they need
to possess or practice to combat injustice or unfairness? Once they have
determined this trait, have them turn the second piece of card stock paper over.
On the back side (opposite their personal stories) have each participant write
(again in the block letter style of the “I AM A MAN” placard): “I WILL BE
(insert character trait they will try to adopt to stop injustice)
.”
7. The result should be two graphically similar placards that can be displayed next to
each other for a powerful reminder of the work we are called to do as members of
a community. Example: JACKIE ROBINSON WAS COURAGEOUS. I WILL
BE STRONG or EMMETT TILL WAS INNOCENT. I WILL BE WATCHFUL.
Participants can choose to NOT have their pieces displayed.
8. Follow-up questions: How does it feel to make a statement on paper, “for all the
world to see,” instead of verbally? What is the difference?
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Educational Resources for
Teachers Quick Craft: Mobile
Educational Museum Activities
Messages Age Appropriateness:
grades 4 & up
Time Needed: 1 hour
Introduction: From curator Maurice Berger: “Civil rights activists often turned to
portable images—buttons, decals, brochures, comic books, and other artifacts—to
disseminate persuasive messages meant to incite action or enthusiasm for political
causes. These objects represented a variety of political causes, and include the campaign
materials of black politicians as well as the broadsides of civil rights organizations. Their
need to attract attention and their disposable nature inspired adventurous, spirited, and
creative use of graphic design.”
During this activity, participants will create a graphic message on a button, bumper
sticker, poster, or leaflet representing a cause they are passionate about.
Materials (for each participant):
• Button maker. To purchase, see:
http://www.hobbylinc.com/htm/nsi/nsi33109.htm?source=froogle
• Blank bumper stickers. To purchase see: http://www.amazon.com/Glossy-WhiteSheets-Bumper-Sticker/dp/B0043FWG7S
• Scratch paper
• 8 ½ x 11” paper (for brochure)
• 11 x 17” card stock paper (for poster)
• Markers, colored pencils, etc.
• Stamps and stamp pads, stencils (optional)
Instructions:
1. Invite your visitors to revisit the section of the exhibit that focuses on portable
messages (Section 3), specifically those objects that were made specifically for
the March on Washington. Ask participants, “What stands out about these
objects? Why were they used? Why were they effective?” Ask if anyone has
something similar to these at home that they have saved as souvenir from
participation in a social or political movement. Why did they keep the object?
What does it mean to him/her?
2. Ask each participant to think about a cause that is important to them. Ask
stimulating questions like, “When you look at the world around you, what are you
passionate about changing?” or “If you could change one thing about our
community, what would it be?” Prior to designing their message, direct
participants to create a word web. In a word web, they begin with placing a word
or two describing their chosen cause in the middle of the paper. Outlying words
circulate around the center words as new ideas, concepts, and descriptors emerge.
It is similar to a flow-of-consciousness exercise.
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3. On an additional piece of paper or on the back side of the word web paper, ask
participants to begin sketching symbols that represent their word web concept.
4. Have participants choose a design format to convey their message. They can
choose from a button, bumper sticker, poster, or leaflet.
5. Follow-up questions: “Where would you display your mobile message?” “How
would you promote it?” “Who would you hope sees your mobile message?” and
“How has social media changed our ability to get the message out?”
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Educational Resources for
Teachers
Lesson Plans
These lesson plans are designed for teachers who are interested in taking their students to
see For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights. In advance
of the exhibition’s arrival at your museum, send program announcements to local schools
inviting them to set up a tour. Provide teachers with these lesson plans as well as
introductory readings, glossary, or other pertinent information that is included in this
programming guide. You may also distribute copies of the For All the World to See
outreach video to teachers.
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Educational Resources for
Teachers
Lesson Plans
Pre-Visit Lesson #1: Representations in Media For
standards in your state see:
http://www.educationworld.com/standards/state/toc/index.shtml#math
Grades: 5-12
Time Required: 1-2 class periods
National Curriculum Standards (McREL):
• Visual Arts, Standard 1: Understands and applies media, techniques, and
processes related to the visual arts
•
Visual Arts, Standard 3: Knows a range of subject matter, symbols, and
potential ideas in the visual arts
•
Civics, Standard 11: Understands the role of diversity in American life and the
importance of shared values, political beliefs, and civic beliefs in an increasingly
diverse American society
•
Civics, Standard 14: Understands issues concerning the disparities between
ideals and reality in American political and social life
•
History, United States, Standard 29: Understands the struggle for racial and
gender equality and for the extension of civil liberties
•
History, United States, Standard 31: Understands economic, social, and cultural
developments in the contemporary United States
•
Language Arts, Standard 5: Uses the general skills and strategies of the reading
process
•
Language Arts, Standard 9: Uses viewing skills and strategies to understand
and interpret visual media
Objectives:
• Students will gain an understanding of how the strategic use of visual media can
help propel a social movement.
• Students will gain an understanding of the varying types of visual imagery used
during the Civil Rights movement
• Students will gain an understanding of the visual elements of a historic
photograph as well as develop photograph analysis skills.
• Students will gain fluency in using and managing technology-based information
sharing resources
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Materials:
• Computer and internet access
• Copies of “Analyzing Historical Photographs” for each student (attached)
Student Instruction:
1. Inform your students that your class will be visiting an exhibit at your local
museum called For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil
Rights. Ask your students if they can predict the subject matter of the exhibit.
2. Have a discussion about the differences between the written word and the visual
image in their ability to communicate, inform, and even persuade. Follow this
discussion with the following quote by Walter Cronkite: “I don’t think that simply
words could have aroused the emotions of the American people as much as seeing
pictures of the confrontation…that consciousness could have never have come to
the American people without pictures.”
3. Ask your students what qualities photographs have that make them sometimes
more powerful than words. Inform them that in the For All the World to See:
Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights exhibit, many of the images they
will encounter are deemed powerful in the transformation of the civil rights
movement because they represent one of the following:
a. Positive images of African American success and achievement
b. The promise of integration
c. Documentation of the Civil Rights activism (sit-ins, marches, boycotts)
d. Violence and aggression
e. Black solidarity and anti-establishmentarianism
4. Inform your students that in a few minutes they will be viewing a seven minute
video that shows images from the Civil Rights movement. The video captures
photographs that fall into all of the categories above and possibly more. While
the video does come with sound (music), please mute it so that students can view
the photos in silence. The video can be found here:
http://www.neok12.com/php/watch.php?v=zX740e5d78506742784d7c7f&t=Civil
-Rights-Movement
5. Following the video, take another moment of silence. Then ask students how they
felt as they were viewing the images. This should underscore the fact that images
are powerful vehicles of emotional content.
6. Next, instruct each student to pick one type of image from the Civil Rights era (it
can be one from the video if they wish) to investigate in further detail. The
Library of Congress website has photo documentation of the Civil Rights
movement (http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/084_civil.html), as does the Civil
Rights Movement Veterans website at http://www.crmvet.org/index.htm. The
image they select should fall into one of the following five categories: positive
images of African American success and achievement, black solidarity and
anti-establishmentarianism, racial violence and aggression, promise of
integration, documentation civil rights activism.
7. After students have selected an image to analyze, ask them the question: “Can a
photograph tell the whole story?” According to Dr. Maurice Berger, the curator
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for For All the World To See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights
(and author of the book by the same name): “No image could act alone, of course.
No image, could, by itself, change the world, for every visual representation is
dependent on context: the words, circumstances, distribution, and beliefs that
endow pictures with greater levels of meaning and influence.”
8. Next, instruct each student that they will be learning the more complete story
behind the image by giving it some historical context. Distribute a copy of the
“Analyzing Historical Photographs” worksheet for each student to complete
(attached). This worksheet is suitable for all categories of photographs.
9. Extension: As a follow- up to your visit to For All the World To See: Visual
Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights turn your student’s attention to a video
that was produced by the Ad Council following the 9/11 attacks. The PSA,
entitled “I am an American,” can be viewed here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDzEz6-v4Wc
10. Have an open discussion comparing and contrasting the visual media from the
civil rights movement to the visual media used in the PSA. Ask you students,
“Have we progressed as a society? Are we more tolerant than we were in the
1950s and 1960s?”
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Analyzing Historical Photographs
1. What category does the image you selected represent? Why did you choose it?
2. Describe the setting of the photograph.
3. Who is featured in the photograph?
If the photograph contains a specific individual who was actively or historically
involved in the Civil Rights movement, can you identify the person? Who is it?
Write about the contributions this person made to the Civil Rights movement.
If the photograph contains a crowd of people or more generalized subject
matter, what practice or idea does it represents?
4. What do you notice about the background of the photograph? The foreground?
5. How does knowing about a photo’s time period and location help you to figure
out what is going on?
6. How can you learn about history from a photograph?
7. What lessons from these photographs can be applied to your life today?
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Educational Resources for
Teachers
Lesson Plans
Post-Visit Lesson #1: The ME in MEdia For standards in
your state see:
http://www.educationworld.com/standards/state/toc/index.shtml#math
Grades: 5-12
Time Required: Two class periods, with one homework assignment in between
National Curriculum Standards (McREL):
• Life Skills, Standard 1: Contributes to the overall effort of a group
•
Life Skills, Standard 4: Displays effective interpersonal communication skills
•
Visual Arts, Standard 3: Knows a range of subject matter, symbols, and
potential ideas in the visual arts
•
Arts & Communication, Standard 1: Understands the principles, processes, and
products associated with arts and communication media
•
History, Standard 29: Understands the struggle for racial and gender equality
and for the extension of civil liberties
Objectives:
• Students will gain an understanding of the differing media forms present during
the Civil Rights movement and today
• Students will gain an understanding of how media influenced opinions during the
Civil Rights movement and today.
• Students will gain an understanding of the messages communicated by the media
to their target audiences.
Materials:
• Copies of handout “The ME in MEdia” (attached)
• Media access (internet, print, TV, film)
Student Instruction:
1. Remind your students of their recent visit to the local museum to see the exhibit
called For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights.
Ask your students what the exhibit was about, using the title as reference.
2. While students may have a working knowledge of the historical period of United
States history known as the Civil Rights movement, they may struggle more with
the concept of visual culture. First ask them to roughly define the time frame for
the modern Civil Rights movement in the United States (post WW2 – early 1970s).
Then, define visual culture on the board as follows: the total range of visual images
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characteristic of a group of people with shared traditions, transmitted and
reinforced by members of the group. Ask your students to give examples of the
range of visual images that social groups living during the civil rights movement
may have witnessed (examples include: photography, film, TV, newspapers,
magazines, books, art, objects, etc.).
3. Follow the discussion on what constituted the visual imagery of the time period
with questioning about the social groups consuming and represented in the imagery.
Ask students “Were all social groups represented in visual form during this time?”
“Were people of all ethnicities equally represented in visual imagery?” This should
lead directly to the point that the African American position in visual media
mirrored their status in the mainstream culture: marginalized, oppressed, yet poised
to overcome. In fact, African Americans were either portrayed negatively in the
media, or erased from it completely. Follow this statement with another question,
“When you recall your visit to the exhibit, what images or artifacts stand out in your
memory? Why did these make an impression on you?”
4. Bring the discussion into contemporary society and media by asking students “Do
you think all social groups (this includes gender, sexual orientation, religious, and
ethnic groups) are represented equally in the visual media of today?”
5. Cite information from a 2001 study by Children Now:
• The 8 o’clock “family hour” is the least racially diverse hour on television. Only
one in eight (13%) of the programs broadcast during this hour have mixed
opening credits casts. By contrast, two thirds (67%) of programs during the ten
o’clock hour, when the least children are watching, have mixed opening credits
cast.
• African Americans account for the majority of non-white prime time characters,
comprising 17%, followed by Asian Pacific Americans (3%), Latinos (2%) and
Native Americans (0.2%). In addition, the study found that most on-screen racial
number of diverse programs decreases significantly when focusing on a show’s
main characters only.
• Latino representation on prime time decreased from 3% of total characters last
year to 2% this year. Asian Pacific American characters increased from 2% to
3%. By contrast, Latinos and Asian Pacific Americans make up 12% and 3.6%
respectively of the national population, according to the 2000 U.S. Census
6. How do your students feel about this representation (or misrepresentation) in the
media? Has this changed as our outlets for media and entertainment have become
more internet- based?
7. Inform your students that several scholars have studied this phenomenon and ways
to combat it. For example, social activist bell hooks examined the powerful forces
and motives behind race representations in Hoop Dreams, the OJ Simpson case,
Madonna, Spike Lee, and Gangsta rap. She noted, “The issue is not freeing
ourselves from representations. It’s really about being enlightened witnesses when
we watch representations.”
8. Ask students what they think bell hooks means when she calls on people to be
“enlightened witnesses.” Inform your students that they will have an opportunity to
be “enlightened witnesses” as they watch representations in their own media
worlds.
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9. Divide students into four groups, each group representing a different form of media
that they will in turn “witness” and document.
• Group one: movies/film
• Group two: TV
• Group three: the internet, including outlets like YouTube and social media
forums (Facebook, twitter, blogs, etc.)
• Group four: print media, including magazines and newspapers.
10. Media assignments are in group format, but work will occur individually. Distribute
a copy of the attached observation sheet, “The ME in MEdia” to each student. Give
them at least 2-3 days to complete it in order to accumulate a large sample.
11. Review students’ observations in class. Ask questions like:
• Have we progressed as a society in our representations of social groups in
the media since the modern civil rights movement?
• What do you think about media outlets that cater to specific social groups?
Is this ok?
• What specific media outlets should consider and respect the range of
diversity in America as they produce and distribute images?
• Will this exercise change the way you view and respond to images in your
media world?
• If you could take a photograph of the social or ethnic group you most
readily identify with, what would it look like?
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The ME in MEdia
What form of media are you analyzing?
Describe the media:
Additional media description:
Photography/images:
Relationship between words and images:
Colors:
Computer graphics:
Vocabulary used in the media:
Other:
What is the message of the media?
How does the design support this message?
What grabs your attention?
Is there an intended audience? Who is it? What audience group, if any, is left out?
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Educational Resources for
Teachers
Lesson Plans
Pre-Visit Lesson #2: Approaches to Social Change For
standards in your state see:
http://www.educationworld.com/standards/state/toc/index.shtml#math
Grade level: 9-12
Time Required: 1-2 class periods
National Curriculum Standards (McREL):
• Life Skills, Standard 1: Contributes to the overall effort of a group
•
Life Skills, Standard 4: Displays effective interpersonal communication skills
•
Arts & Communication, Standards 4 & 5: Understands ways in which the
human experience is transmitted and reflected in the arts and communication
AND Knows a range of arts and communication works from various historical
and cultural periods
•
Technology, Standard 6: Understands the nature and uses of different forms of
technology
•
Civics, Standard 28: Understands how participation in civic and political life can
help citizens attain individual and public goals
•
History, Standard 29: Understands the struggle for racial and gender equality
and for the extension of civil liberties
Objectives:
• Students will gain an understanding of how visual culture and social movements
intersect.
• Students will gain an understanding of three approaches to social change
• Students will utilize technology and information sharing systems to express views
and accumulate sources
Materials:
• Internet access
• Library access (optional)
Student Instruction:
1. Inform your students that your class will be visiting an exhibit at your local
museum called For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil
Rights. Ask your students if they can predict the subject matter of the exhibit.
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2. After approximately 5 minutes of discussion about the exhibit’s potential subject
matter, create a Venn diagram. The two intersecting circles presented are as
follows: Visual Culture and Civil Rights. Examples for Visual Culture might
include: photography, art, TV, film/movies, visual, surroundings, media, press,
documentation, symbolism, etc. Examples for Civil Rights might include: race,
prejudice, race relations, equality, equal rights, segregation, lynching, prejudice,
hate, tolerance, non-violence, sit-ins, movement, 1960s, boycott, violence,
integration, power, Black Panther, etc.
3. Begin a discussion with the following question: “How are the Civil Rights
movement and visual culture related?” Eventually, you should arrive at a deeper
level of discussion with questions like, “How does visual culture and media
advance or impede social change?”
4. Inform students that in order to mobilize the Civil Rights movement, leaders
strategically utilized the media, from pictorial magazines to the network news.
They were keenly aware of the power of a picture to represent the truth, to
persuade the public, and call people to action. They knew that some of the most
powerful and convincing images of all were also at times the most graphic. While
visiting For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil
Rights, you will view several graphic and emotional images and artifacts.
5. Announce that in preparation for their visit to For All the World to See: Visual
Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights, students will complete an assignment
wherein they collectively examine three historical approaches to social change:
conventional politics, violence, and non-violence. For additional teacher
background information, you can read Brian Martin’s article “Paths to social
change: conventional politics, violence and nonviolence” here:
http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/06eolss.html or refer to Charles Harper’s book
Exploring Social Change: America and the World (5th Edition.)
6. This assignment will be achieved in group format, through the creation of a
classroom wiki. You can create a free wiki (with password protection) especially
designed for K-12 teachers here: http://www.wikispaces.com/content/for/teachers
7. Divide you students into 4 groups, assigning each group a separate responsibility
in the building of a wiki.
• Group one: Summary for Conventional Politics. This group will create a
summary, along with sources, related to using conventional politics as a
means of social change. It should include both advantages and
disadvantages as well as previous use in United States history.
• Group two: Summary for Violence. This group will create a summary,
along with sources, related to using violence as a means of social change.
It should include both advantages and disadvantages as well as previous
use in United States history.
• Group three: Summary for Non-Violence. This group will create a
summary, along with sources, related to using non-violence as a means of
social change. It should include both advantages and disadvantages as
well as previous use in United States history.
• Group four: Discussion leaders. These students will create a separate tab
on the wiki and facilitate discussion around each approach to social
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•
change. Specific, directed questions should be asked as opposed to an
open-ended call for commentary. Discussion leaders should be ready to
include visual culture and the media as questions for discussion.
As the teacher, you will serve as the site monitor for content. It is
advisable to state expectations and consequences for wiki content upfront.
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Educational Resources for
Teachers
Lesson Plans
Post-Visit Lesson #2: Approaches to Social Change For
standards in your state see:
http://www.educationworld.com/standards/state/toc/index.shtml#math
Grade Level: 9-12
Time Required: 1 class period
National Curriculum Standards (McREL):
• Civics, Standard 28: Understands how participation in civic and political life can
help citizens attain individual and public goals
•
History, Standard 29: Understands the struggle for racial and gender equality
and for the extension of civil liberties
•
Technology, Standard 3: Understands the relationships among science,
technology, society, and the individual.
•
Visual Arts, Standards 1 & 4: Understands and applies media, techniques, and
processes related to the visual arts AND Understands the visual arts in relation to
history and cultures
Objectives:
• Students will gain an understanding of the connection between visual media and
social change
• Students will gain an understanding of the ways in which technology impacts
society
• Students will gain an understanding of a contemporary political and/or social
conflict and how visual media and technology influenced their outcome
Materials:
• Internet access
• Poster board, glue, markers, scissors (option 1)
• Multi-media software (option 2)
Teacher Background (Taken from PBS Newshour “Social Media and Non-Violent Protest”): The
events in Cairo, Egypt and other Middle East cities in early 2011 have reset the political
paradigm for the region and created new challenges for the United States. It’s no secret
that most countries in the Middle East are run by autocratic dictators that allow
free expression only when it praises them, free assembly only when it supports them, and
free elections only when they pick the candidates. But young, tech-savvy activist,
employing nonviolent tactics are beginning to change that.
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Dissent and protest are not new to the region. For decades the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
has kept the pot of discontent boiling in the Middle East, often times targeting the United
States as the villain. But protests in Egypt and Tunisia have citizens demanding an end to
the dictatorial regimes and instituting democratic governments. Opposition groups
forming at a grass-roots level are employing resistance methods that go back decades to
the U.S. civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s. They are forming coalitions with
like-minded groups at all levels of society—professional, labor, and government workers.
They counsel nonviolence to their members and temper the anger with reminders to keep
their “eye on the prize” and not let the brutal methods of the pro-government forces
divert or discourage their cause. And they have employed the “new media” – Facebook,
Twitter, and blogging—to present their case, communicate with like-minded groups, and
encourage questioning and discussion that has not been seen in this region for decades.
Political analysts debate the extent to which the new media played a role in the toppling
of the regimes of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. The
massive public protests that ended these regimes were not just spontaneous reactions to
recent oppression, but rather the release of long standing grievances with the government
over poor economic conditions, corruption, and the suppression of freedoms. Each of
these revolutions was ignited by the deaths of young men facing oppression and the
brutality of the state when they dared complain of the abuse.
What seems to make these revolutions different from ones the past is how social media
has accelerated the organizational capabilities and operations of the opposition
movements. By using social media, opposition groups are better than the government at
forming and carrying out strategy, instilling discipline within their ranks, and adapting to
quickly changing events. It seems that it wasn’t social media that toppled the regimes but
that social media served as a tool in that process; a process that also employed traditional
methods of dissent served up on mass media (primarily television) to citizens of Egypt
and Tunisia as well as the world.
Student Instruction:
1. Remind your students of their recent visit to the local museum to see the exhibit
For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights. Begin
a discussion about how the visual images of the Civil Rights Movement helped
propel the movement forward. Ask for examples from the exhibit that
specifically documented the movement (March on Washington video,
Breakthrough in Birmingham video, Emmett Till photographs, LIFE magazine
cover of Joe Bass, JR., etc.).
2. Next, inquire with your students whether or not an image’s ability to persuade and
galvanize a public response is due to the image alone. Ask what other factors
may be involved. Explain that in order for an image to make a difference, it had
to be published. (In today’s terms, this is equivalent to uploaded, posted, and/or
shared.) And the timing had to be right – the public had to be ready and eager to
see the world around them in new ways. Just as important are the words,
circumstances, distribution, and beliefs that endow a picture “with greater levels
of meaning and influence.”
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3. Now imagine what would have happened if the young activists fighting for equal
rights in the 1950s and 1960s would have had access to today’s technology. Ask
students how the movement may have differed.
4. Explain that the success of the Civil Rights movement was dependent on getting
the right images to the right people at the right time, all of which merged with the
development and use of the right technology (in this case, the camera). Inquire
about recent social movements in other countries that have been fought by
communicating messages with visual imagery, just like the Civil Rights
movement. Technology has also been a major factor in recent movements’
successes and/or failures.
5. Inform your students that you will be applying some of the lessons learned from
their For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights
exhibit experience to recent social and political movements. They are to choose
one recent social and/or political revolution to research, paying specific attention
to how visual communication intersected with technology.
6. Since the focus of this exhibit is on the power of the visual image, students will
create either a 1.) poster project or 2) multi-media presentation relying
predominantly (but not entirely) on images to communicate the following
components related to modern day revolutions:
• Title: choose a contemporary revolution to research and give it a title.
• Map: include a map of the region and specific locations involved in the
revolution. Identify the area’s natural resources, population statistics,
neighboring countries, and past political government system.
• Timeline: include a timeline of events leading up to the revolution.
• Turning Point: identify the turning point of the revolution. This could be
represented by a particular person, group, event or form of media.
• U.S. parallels: Compare and contrast global events that led to social
revolution to the Civil Rights movement in United States history.
• Summation: In your opinion, did this revolution lead to positive change
for the people of the country?
7. Students will present their projects to the rest of the class.
8. For more background information on recent social revolutions, you can refer your
students to:
• “Egyptian Revolution 2011: A Complete Guide to the Unrest” (Huffington
Post): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/30/egypt-revolution2011_n_816026.html
“Egypt’s Revolution by Social Media” (Wall Street Journal):
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870378680457613798025
2177072.html
• “The Cyberactivists who Helped Topple a Dictator” (Newsweek, 2011
Tunisian Revolution):
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/01/15/tunisia-protests-thefacebook-revolution.html
• “The Middle East in Revolt” (TIME magazine):
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/0,28757,2045328,00.html
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•
“Social Media Alone Do Not Instigate Revolutions” (PBS):
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2011/02/social-media-alone-do-notinstigate-revolutions034.html
“Spreading Revolution” (The New York Times):
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/world/middleeast/2011-spreadingrevolutions.html#intro
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Educational Resources for
Teachers
Lesson Plans
Pre-Visit Character Education: Understanding Stereotypes
Grades: 5-12
Time required: one class period
Materials:
• Chalk board or dry erase board
• Chalk/markers
• Stereotyping, Prejudice and Discrimination In Focus worksheet (optional)
Student Instruction:
1. Begin a discussion about stereotyping by asking your students the following
question, “What is a stereotype?” Create a word web on the board as students
offer their definitions.
2. Explain that stereotypes are when people use labels or categories to describe a
group of people, and often times these descriptions are based on exterior qualities,
like the way a person looks, acts, or talks. While this is a natural human
inclination to characterize people as we seek to understand them, it has the
potential to be harmful. Ask students how defining a group of people by exterior
qualities can potentially be harmful. The class should arrive at a conclusion that
broadly defining a group of people can force a person to make assumptions about
every person that may or may not belong to that group. Making assumptions
about people can then affect our behavior and attitudes toward that person.
Negative assumptions can also lead to injustice and mistreatment. Ask students if
they can name a few historical examples of stereotypes leading to injustice.
3. Next, begin listing groups of people on the board that would be familiar to your
students (at this point, omitting racial groups). Include the following groups:
teachers, athletes, women, men, teenagers, and celebrities. Ask them to list
descriptive characteristics about each group or ways that they have heard this
group of people described. Follow the group description list with the questions:
- How does it make you feel when you read these adjectives?
- What do you notice about this list?
- How have you seen these stereotypes portrayed?
4. Begin a discussion about how people from different racial and ethnic groups can
also be stereotyped. You will then conduct the same activity as above, but
students will do this privately on individual sheets of paper. Ask them to write
down five different racial or ethnic groups on their paper (examples can include
but certainly are not limited to: African Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian
Americans, people of Middle Eastern decent, and European (or Caucasian)
Americans.) They should take 2-3 minutes listing adjectives for each group.
5. Follow the activity with the same questions as above, with one addition:
- How does it make you feel when you read these adjectives?
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What do you notice about this list?
How have you seen these stereotypes portrayed?
How can these stereotypes lead to mistreatment of the
person or injustice for an entire group of people?
6. Next, inform your students that they will be visiting an exhibit at their local
museum called For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil
Rights. Some of the first object and images that they will see represent negative,
harmful stereotypes (thoughts, assumptions or statements) of African Americans.
In fact, the objects and images in the exhibit go beyond stereotypes and can also
be classified as prejudice. Ask them to clarify the difference between
stereotype, which is an oversimplified statement or assumption, and a prejudice.
Prejudice is an affective (feeling) state – where attitudes and opinions are
actively formed about stereotypes. Prejudice can then lead to discrimination,
which is the action (behavior) or treatment that follows a prejudice.
7. During their visit to the exhibit, ask students to record at least two examples of
images, objects, quotes, or video that they observe that demonstrate stereotyping,
prejudice, and discrimination. Students can use the worksheet that follows to
complete this activity.
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For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights
Stereotyping, Prejudice and Discrimination In Focus
Stereotyping: an
oversimplification of
thoughts, assumptions or
statements about a group
of persons.
Example from exhibit
(image, quote, objects,
video):
Example from exhibit
(image, quote, objects,
video):
Example from exhibit
(image, quote, objects,
video):
Example from exhibit
(image, quote, objects,
video):
Example from exhibit
(image, quote, objects,
video):
Example from exhibit
(image, quote, objects,
video):
Example: Diane is a girl so
.
she is probably
Prejudice: attitudes and
opinions formed about
members of a group (based
on stereotypes.)
Example: “I can’t stand
athletes because they are
all so
.”
Discrimination: behavior,
action, or treatment that is
the result of prejudice.
Example: “I will not employ
any people of color in my
company.”
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Educational Resources for
Teachers
Lesson Plans
Post-Visit Character Education: Facing Stereotypes
Grades: 5-12
Time required: one class period
Special Note: The following exercise may elicit some intense emotions. It is advised
that you split your class into smaller groups to conduct this activity. You might also try
splitting up males and females. Require that what happens during this activity remain
confidential. You can also ask the group to come up with their own group
rules/agreements that will govern the potentially controversial discussion. Good
examples of these kinds of rules are as follows:
• Respect other people
• Everyone’s opinions are valuable
• Take turns sharing ideas
• Do not share what occurs during this time with others outside of the group
Materials:
• Pen/marker
• Mailing label/sticker, one for each participant
Student Instruction:
1. Ask your students to recall their experience visiting For All the World to See:
Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights. Begin by asking them to
recapitulate the “story” told in the exhibition. What did they observe about
stereotypes? In what part of the exhibit did they witness prejudice? And in what
part did they see the harmful effects of discrimination? How did they feel? You
may wish to review their worksheets at this point.
2. Ask your students: “Even though the modern civil rights movement brought about
equal rights under the law for African American citizens, did it put an end to
discrimination?” Explore the idea that discrimination still exists, and ask students
for examples. (Some examples you might cite: The unemployment rate for young
African American men is over twice the rate for young white, Hispanic and Asian
men; African American men are disproportionately represented in the criminal
justice system. The percentage of young African American men in prison is
nearly three times that of Hispanic men and nearly seven times that of white men.
Nearly 4 out of 10 young African American men lack health insurance. Source:
Kaiser Family Foundation)
3. Wonder aloud if discrimination exists in your school. While racial discrimination
might be the most obvious form, suggest that discrimination also exists in the way
that members of certain social groups (or cliques) are judged and treated. Create
a listing of the social groups at your school that are often characterized in
oversimplified ways (stereotypes). This list might include, but is not limited to:
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4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
jocks, brains, nerds, emos, popular kids, goths, gays and lesbians, loners,
clowns/comedians, etc.
Next, go through the list and write one social group on each mailing label/sticker.
You may have to duplicate group names depending on the number of students.
Without the student seeing the label you have randomly chosen, place the mailing
sticker on their back. Each student should have one placed on their back.
Not knowing how they have been labeled, students will then proceed to interact
with the labeled student based on the stereotypes and prejudices generally
assigned to that group within your school. Since everyone is wearing a label,
everyone will receive unique treatment. Other students are to treat the labeled
student, perhaps in an exaggerated way, the way a member from that social group
is typically treated in your school. From this interaction, the label-wearer is to
guess their social group assignment.
Hold a debriefing of this experience. Debriefing (or processing) is just as
important (or more) than the active portion of the lesson. Ask:
• “What was it like to be treated based on a label or in this case,
membership in a certain group?”
• “How did it feel?”
• “What was it like treating someone else based on an oversimplified
statement of who they are?”
• “Do you see this kind of behavior in our school?”
• “How does it make you feel when you see it happen in reality?”
• “What can you do when you see someone being treated unfairly?”
Finally, have each student take 15 – 20 minutes to quietly write a journal entry
about their own experiences with stereotyping, prejudice, or discrimination. If
they have not experienced this type of treatment, they can write about a time they
observed someone else being treated unfairly.
In conclusion, inform your students that prejudice and stereotyping are
LEARNED, and the good news is that they can therefore be UNLEARNED. The
best way to combat stereotyping and prejudice is direct contact with the individual
or group so that you can get to know them beyond categories. Instead of
categorizing groups of people, we must work to get to know their unique qualities
as individuals.
Extension: The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Initiative “Mix It Up at Lunch” is
a great way to put this activity into school-wide action. This campaign to teach
tolerance is based on the finding that “students have identified the cafeteria as the
place where divisions are most clearly drawn. So on one day – October 18 this
school year – we ask students to move out of their comfort zones and connect
with someone new over lunch.” You can find out more here:
http://www.tolerance.org/mix-it-up/get-started
For even greater impact, have students explore the parallels and divergences
between our ability to “Mix It Up at Lunch” in the 21st century and the Sit-Ins of
the Civil Rights era. What has changed? Find out about those who bravely sat at
lunch counters with African Americans in solidarity.
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Educational Resources for
Teachers
Lesson Plans
Additional pdf lesson plans included on this CD are from the University of
Maryland/Baltimore County, Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture, the originating
institution behind For All the World To See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil
Rights.
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Educational Resources for
Teachers
Gallery Guides & Handouts
For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights exhibit also
comes with two handouts available for visiting children, families, and students. The
Family Gallery Guide is designed to help parents guide their younger companions
through some of the more difficult and sensitive content of the exhibit. You will receive
200 hard copies of this guide as well as a PDF to print out should you need more copies.
The Family Gallery Guide further explains and extends the exhibit content through
activities that can be completed in the gallery and at home. It offers a list of websites,
books, and other resources that allow the user to explore topics in greater depth.
Please contact Mary Susan Albrecht, Education Coordinator, if you have any questions
about the content of these materials.
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Mid‐America Arts Alliance
2018 Baltimore Avenue, Kansas City, MO 64108
www.eusa.org
(800) 473.EUSA (3872)
Programming Guide Evaluation Form
The purpose of the programming guide is to help your institute coordinate educational programs in
conjunction with your exhibition and make it accessible, interesting, and relevant to a wide range of your
constituents. In order to help us serve you, please take a few moments to evaluate the strengths and
weaknesses of this guide. We would also appreciate copies of any educational material you developed
with this exhibition.
Please return a completed copy to Mid‐America Arts Alliance, Attention: Mary Susan Albrecht, 2018
Baltimore Avenue, Kansas City, MO 64108, by fax (816) 421‐3918 or by email to [email protected]. A
downloadable version of this form is also available at www.EUSA.org/pgevaluation. Please contact Mary
Susan Albrecht at (816) 421‐1388 x210 for additional questions or comments.
Institution Name:
Exhibition Title:
Exhibition Dates:
Please rate the usefulness of the following sections of the programming guide by circling the appropriate
number from 1 to 5 or NA, with 1 being the least helpful and 5 being the most helpful.
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Overview
Exhibition Description
Educational Materials Checklist
ExhibitsUSA Contact Information
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Reference Materials
Text Panels
Narrative/Object Labels
Bibliography
Audio/video
Web sites
Programming Resources
Speaker Resources
List of Speakers
Community Event Planning
Program Suggestions
Educational Museum Activities
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Educational Images
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