Alicia: My Story
Lesson Plan for Chapter 8
“My Brother Zachary”
RATIONALE
Sit-ins, Seder, and Salt:
Fighting for Human Dignity through Non-violence
In this lesson, students will examine civil disobedience as a means for
social and political change. Through the analysis of primary and secondary
sources, students will examine the following historical acts of civil
disobedience, Jews during the Holocaust, Gandhi’s Salt March, and the
Civil Rights Movement. Emphasis will be placed on the degradation of
humanity that leads to civil disobedience and the various ways individuals
use non-violence to fight for their dignity. After careful discussion and
analysis, students will construct a definition for civil disobedience. The idea
for this lesson came from page 65 of Alicia: My Story. Alicia states, “After
Zachary got well we saw very little of him…but we understood his need to
fight murderers in his own way. To sit and wait, as most of us did, was
unbearable to my brother. Somehow I believed that Zachary and his friends
would find a way to save at least some of us.”
OBJECTIVE(S)
Students will be able to:
• Identify ways individuals used non-violent resistance to maintain their
human dignity during the Holocaust, Civil Rights Movement, and British
occupation of India.
• Infer ways Jews, Indians and African Americans experienced degradation.
• Construct a definition of civil disobedience using primary and secondary
sources.
• Identify individuals that are experiencing degradation today and analyze
how they might use civil disobedience to enact change.
TITLE
NEXT
GENERATION
SUNSHINE
STATE
STANDARD(S)
SS.912.C.2.8
[Civics and Government]
Analyze the impact of citizen participation as a means of achieving
political and social change
SS.912.A.6.3
[American History]
Analyze the impact of the Holocaust during World War II on Jews as well
as other groups
SS.912.W.7.8
[World History]
Explain the causes, events, and effects of the Holocaust (1933-1945)
including its roots in the long tradition of anti-Semitism, 19th century ideas
about race and nation, and Nazi dehumanization of the Jews and other
victims
COMMON
CORE STATE
STANDARD(S)
MATERIALS
AND
RESOURCES
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.1
Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary
sources, connecting insights gained from specific details to an
understanding of the text as a whole.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.7
Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in diverse
formats and media (e.g., visually, quantitatively, as well as in words) in
order to address a question or solve a problem.
• Transparency 1 (Quotes)
• Transparency 2 (Anti-Jewish Legislation)
• Transparency 3a-e (Holocaust Images)
• Transparency 4 (Viewing Guide: Salt March)
• Transparency 5 (Discussion Guide: Birmingham Jail)
• Student Handout 1 (Non-Violence Chart)
• Student Handout 2 (Letter from Birmingham Jail)
• Video Clip: “Gandhi’s Salt March”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj8Gf1rkJK8
• Projector / Computer / Speakers
PREPARATIONS
• Divide the class and arrange desks into groups of 3-5 students.
• Print and copy student handouts and prepare a packet for each student.
Each packet should include Student Handouts 1-2.
• Print Teacher Transparencies 1-5.
• Download and cue video clip “Gandhi’s Salt March”.
• Research the following websites for background information related to the
lesson.
Jewish Spiritual Resistance During the Holocaust
o Spiritual Resistance in the Ghettos (United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum)
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005416
o Spiritual Resistance (University of Minnesota Center for Genocide
Studies)
http://www.chgs.umn.edu/museum/exhibitions/ravensbruck/spiritualR
esistance.html
o Spiritual Resistance (Yad Vashem)
http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/education/newsletter/13/main_articl
e.asp
Indian Resistance During British Occupation
o Gandhi Leads Civil Disobedience (History.com)
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/gandhi-leads-civildisobedience
o Gandhi and Civil Disobedience (Constitutional Rights Foundation)
http://www.crf-usa.org/black-history-month/gandhi-and-civildisobedience
African American Civil Rights Movement
o Civil Rights Movement (History Channel)
http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/civil-rights-movement
o King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, 50 years later (History Channel)
http://www.history.com/news/kings-letter-from-birmingham-jail-50years-later
INTRODUCTION
1. Display the quotes by Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.
(Transparency 1).
2. Ask the student how the quotes are similar in meaning.
(Possible Responses: injustice, law-breaking, non-violence,
punishment)
3. Tell students that resistance is the refusal to accept or comply with
something. Explain to them that non-violent resistance is a tool that can
be used to enact social or political change, and when this occurs it is
called civil disobedience.
4. Tell students that today they will be learning about civil disobedience
by examining historical acts of non-violent resistance—Jews during the
Holocaust, Gandhi’s Salt March, and the Civil Rights Movement. State
that emphasis will be placed on the degradation of humanity that leads
to civil disobedience and the various ways individuals use non-violence
to fight for their dignity and social change.
5. Explain to students that at the end of the lesson they will be able to
construct their own definition of civil disobedience.
PROCEDURES
Activity 1: Image Analysis of “Jewish Resistance”
1. Ask students for examples of how students can be dehumanized or
degraded at school. (Possible Responses: name calling, bullying,
isolation, teacher drawing attention to mistakes)
2. Explain to students that during the Holocaust many Jews practiced nonviolent resistance in response to Nazi attempts to dehumanize and
degrade them. This resistance was an attempt by individuals to maintain
their humanity and dignity.
3. Display examples of anti-Jewish legislation in Germany from 19331939 (Transparency 2).
4. Distribute Non-Violence Chart (Student Handout 1). Discuss how the
laws dehumanized Jews. Have the students write down examples in the
first column of the chart.
5. Show the images of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust
(Transparencies 3a-e). Pause at each image. Orient the students to what
they are viewing. Ask students to infer how the image illustrates a
degradation of humanity by the Nazis and have them add to their list in
column one. Then ask the students to infer how the Jews attempted to
maintain their dignity. Have students record their thoughts to this in the
second column.
Activity 2: Video Analysis of “Gandhi’s Salt March”
6. Explain that non-violent resistance was also practiced in India against
British imperialism.
7. Display group discussion questions (Transparency 4). Tell students to
listen for the answers as they watch a short video clip.
8. Play History Channel video clip Gandhi’s Salt March.
9. Display group discussion questions again. Students will discuss the clip
with their group using the questions provided. Have one member from
each group record their answers on a blank sheet of paper. Then have
them complete the “Indians during British Imperialism” row on the
Non-Violence Chart.
10. Debrief as a class by discussing the group discussion questions. Then
have each group share one example of dehumanization and one example
of resistance they recorded on their chart.
Activity 3: Text Analysis of King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”
11. Explain that civil disobedience was the tool used by Martin Luther
King, Jr. to change discriminatory race laws in the 1960’s.
12. Distribute handout of excerpts from King’s “Letter from Birmingham
Jail” (Handout 2).
13. Display the reading guide questions (Transparency 5). Students read the
excerpts out loud as a group and will discuss the letter using the
questions provided. Have one student from the group record their
answers on a blank sheet of paper. Students will then complete the
“Civil Rights” row on the Non-violence Chart.
14. Debrief as a class by asking each group to share one example of
dehumanization and one example of resistance from their chart.
CLOSURE
ASSESSMENT
1. Have students use their charts to construct their own definition of civil
disobedience. They will write their definition below their chart.
2. Give students the opportunity to share their definition with a partner.
3. Call on three students to voluntarily share with the class.
4. Assign the final row of the chart. Students will identify a group of
individuals who are being dehumanized today. They will identify how
they are being degraded along with non-violent actions they have taken
or could take to enact change.
• Identify ways individuals used non-violent resistance to maintain their
human dignity during the Holocaust, Civil Rights Movement, and
British occupation of India via answers to group discussion questions.
• Infer ways Jews, Indians and African Americans have experienced
degradation by completing a civil disobedience chart.
• Construct a definition of civil disobedience using primary and
secondary sources from various historical time periods.
• Identify individuals that are experiencing degradation today and analyze
how they might use civil disobedience to enact change by completing
the civil disobedience chart.
•
•
EXTENSIONS & •
MODIF’S FOR
DIFFERENTIAT
ED
INSTRUCTION
•
•
Invite students to journal examples from their own life where they have
been degraded or dehumanized. Ask them to consider ways in which
non-violence could be used to better the situation. Encourage them to
consider whether further action is appropriate.
Divide students into groups and have each group choose one of the
three historical examples of civil disobedience from this lesson. Have
them create a poster with images illustrating the resistance in action.
Divide the class into two groups. Assign students from one group
research on non-violent resistance during the Holocaust and assign the
other group research of the Jewish partisan movement. Hold a class
discussion on the merits of both. If preferred, the class could be divided
into two additional groups researching non-violent and violent
resistance during the Civil Rights movement.
Assign students the essay “Resistance to Civil Government” by
transcendentalist Henry David Thorough. Have students make a
connection between his essay and the actions taken by the various
groups discussed in class. Assign students a writing task related to the
topic.
Direct students to explore the “Do Something” website
(www.dosomething.org) to discover ways they can enact social change.
Encourage students to participate in a current campaign or start a
campaign of their own.
Appleman-Jurman, A. (1988). Alicia: My story. New York: Bantam Books.
Bergen, D. L. (2009). The Holocaust: A concise history. Maryland:
Rowman & Littlefield.
Civil rights movement. (2014). Retrieved 03/24, 2014, from
http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/civil-rights-movement
Examples of anti-Semitic legislation, 1933–1939. (2013). Retrieved 03/24,
2014, from
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007459
Gandhi and civil disobedience. (2014). Retrieved 03/24, 2014, from
http://www.crf-usa.org/black-history-month/gandhi-andcivildisobedience
Gandhi leads civil disobedience. (2014). Retrieved 03/24, 2014, from
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/gandhi-leads-civildisobedience
Gandhi's salt march. (2013). Retrieved 03/24, 2014, from
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj8Gf1rkJK8
REFERENCES
King Jr., M. L. (1963). Letter from Birmingham jail. Retrieved 03/24, 2014,
from http://www.thekingcenter.org/archive/document/letterbirmingham-city-jail-0
King’s letter from Birmingham jail, 50 years later. (2014). Retrieved 03/24,
2014, from http://www.history.com/news/kings-letter-frombirmingham-jail-50-years-later
Nazi propaganda and censorship. (2013). Retrieved 03/24, 2014, from
http://www.ushmm.org/outreach/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007677
Ochayon, S. (2014). Who took the pictures? Retrieved 03/24, 2014, from
http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/education/newsletter/29/who_took_p
icture.asp
Spiritual resistance. (2014). Retrieved 03/24, 2014, from
http://www.chgs.umn.edu/museum/exhibitions/ravensbruck/spiritualRe
sistance.html
Spiritual resistance in the ghettos. (2013). Retrieved 03/24, 2014, from
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005416
Weinstock, Y. G. (2014). We are children just the same. Retrieved 03/24,
2014, from
http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/education/newsletter/15/main_article
.asp
Weinstock, Y. G. (2014). What we value: spiritual resistance during the
Holocaust. Retrieved 03/24, 2014, from
http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/education/newsletter/13/main_article
.asp
Transparency 1
“An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him
is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of
imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the
community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the
highest respect for the law”
― Martin Luther King Jr.
“Now the law of nonviolence says that violence should be
resisted not by counter-violence but by nonviolence. This I
do by breaking the law and by peacefully submitting to
arrest and imprisonment.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
Transparency 2
Examples of Anti-Jewish Legislation
in Germany from 1933-1939
Jews removed from government service.
Citizenship of naturalized Jews revoked.
Jewish editors banned from editorial posts.
Jewish officers expelled from the army.
Jews expelled from veterinary profession.
Jews banned from health spas.
Jews required to adopt an additional name:
"Sara” for women and “Israel” for men.
Transfer of assets required from Jews to non-Jewish Germans.
Jewish passports valid only with a “J” stamp.
Decree closes all Jewish-owned businesses.
All Jewish children expelled from public schools.
Reich restricts the freedom of movement of Jews.
Jews must surrender precious metals and stones.
Sale of lottery tickets forbidden to Jews.
Transparency 3a
Jews around a Seder table in the Warsaw ghetto
read from the Passover Haggada.
©2012 Yad Vashem
Transparency 3b
This photograph was taken in secret by Mendel Grossman, a Jewish photographer who was
forbidden to take photographs in the Lodz ghetto.
©2012 Yad Vashem
Children held at the Lodz ghetto prison saying
goodbye before they were deported to the
Chelmno extermination camp in September 1942.
Transparency 3c
The Nazis took control of all forms of media in Germany and censored or eliminated
anything that threatened their ideology.
©2012 Yad Vashem
Teenager Peter Ginz edited and circulated the youth
newspaper Vedem in the Theresienstadt ghetto.
Transparency 3d
A notice for a concert by a Jewish symphony
orchestra in the Warsaw ghetto.
©2012 United States Holocaust Memorial Musem
Transparency 3e
A doll made by a prisoner at the
Ravensbrück concentration camp.
©2012 University of Minnesota Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies
Transparency 4
Viewing / Discussion Guide: “Gandhi’s Salt March”
Answer the following questions as you watch the video clip. Discuss your answers as a group
and fill in the next row of the chart.
1. What was the salt march?
2. What was its purpose?
3. What happened when they reached the sea?
4. What was the immediate impact on the Indian people?
5. What was the long-term effect of the salt march?
6. Fill in the next row of the chart “Indians during British Imperialism” by identifying how
they were both dehumanized and how they resisted.
ANSWER KEY
Viewing / Discussion Guide: “Gandhi’s Salt March”
Answer the following questions as you watch the video clip. Discuss your answers as a group
and fill in the next row of the chart.
1. What was the salt march?
200 Mile march to the sea led by Gandhi.
2. What was its purpose?
To non-violently protest the British ban on Indian salt.
3. What happened when they reached the sea?
They broke British law and made salt.
4. What was the immediate impact on the Indian people?
People were imprisoned.
5. What was the long-term effect of the salt march?
India gained its independence 17 years later. Other leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr. were inspired by Gandhi’s non-violent resistance.
6. Fill in the next row of the chart “Indians during British Imperialism” by identifying how
they were both dehumanized and how they resisted.
Answers will vary. See chart answer key for possible answers.
Transparency 5
Discussion Guide: “Letter from Birmingham Jail”
Answer the following questions as you read the excerpts from King’s “Letter from Birmingham
Jail”. Discuss your answers as a group and fill in the next row of the chart.
1. What did King say was the purpose of non-violent action?
2. What did King say about “waiting”?
3. What two laws does King say exist?
4. What differentiates the two types of laws?
5. Fill in the next row of the chart, “African Americans during Civil Rights Movement”, by
identifying how they were both dehumanized and how they resisted.
ANSWER KEY
Discussion Guide: “Letter from Birmingham Jail”
Answer the following questions as you read the excerpts from King’s “Letter from Birmingham
Jail”. Discuss your answers as a group and fill in the next row of the chart.
1. What did King say was the purpose of non-violent action?
The purpose was to create a crisis and tension that forces a community to confront the
issue; to dramatize the issue so that is can no longer be ignored.
2. What did King say about “waiting”?
Negros been told to “wait” too long and to them it means “never.”
3. What two laws does King say exist?
The two laws are just and unjust.
4. What differentiates the two types of laws?
Any law that uplifts humanity is just. Any law that degrades humanity is unjust.
5. Fill in the next row of the chart “African Americans during Civil Rights Movement” by
identifying how they were both dehumanized and how they resisted.
Answers will vary. See chart answer key for possible answers.
Student Handout 1
How were the individuals
degraded or dehumanized?
Jews during the
Holocaust
Indians during British
Imperialism
African Americans
during the Civil
Rights Movement
Identify individuals
who are being
dehumanized today:
_________________
Define Civil Disobedience:
How did the individuals resist?
ANSWER KEY
How were the individuals
degraded or dehumanized?
Jews during the
Holocaust
(Possible Answers: loss of
property, livelihood, careers,
education, citizenship, freedom,
movement, culture, childhood,
speech, and government
influence.)
(Possible Answers: economically,
Indians during British
prohibited from collecting or
Imperialism
selling salt.)
African Americans
during the Civil
Rights Movement
Identify individuals
who are being
dehumanized today:
(Possible Answers: segregated,
acts of violence, poverty,
discrimination, not allowed into
amusement parks or hotels,
treated inferior.)
Student answers will vary.
_________________
Define Civil Disobedience: Student answers will vary.
How did the individuals resist?
(Possible Answers: practiced their
religion, printed Jewish
newspapers and took photographs
of Jewish experience.)
(Possible Answers: marched,
protested, and collected salt from
the Arabian Sea.)
(Possible Answers: sit ins,
demonstrations, and refusal to
ride segregated buses.)
Student answers will vary.
Student Handout 2
Excerpts from King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”
…You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better
path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action.
Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which
has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks to so dramatize the issue that
it can no longer be ignored….
… We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it
must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was
“well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For
years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity.
This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never”…
…Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, “Wait”. But
when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and
brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black
brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering
in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue
twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't
go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in
her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of
inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by
developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a
five-year-old son who is asking: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when
you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable
corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day
out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”… There comes a time when the cup of endurance
runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can
understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience…
…One may want to ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer
lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying
just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a
moral responsibility to disobey unjust law… How does one determine whether a law is just or
unjust… Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is
unjust…
…I wish you had commended the Negro sit-inners and demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime
courage, their willingness to suffer and their amazing discipline in the midst of great provocation…
There will be the old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy-two-year-old woman
in Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride
segregated buses… There will be the young high school and college students, the young ministers of
the gospel and a host of their elders, courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and
willingly going to jail for conscience’s sake…thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of
democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and
the Declaration of Independence…