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Teaching the Civil Rights Era: A Student-Active Approach
Joe P. Dunn
Converse College
| THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT is the most important historical event of the last fifty years, and it remains central to contemporary society. For many years I have taught courses on the civil rights movement at the freshman, advanced undergraduate, and graduate levels; and I am struck by how woefully ignorant students at all these educational levels are of the events and people that transformed America. For all the purported attention at the elementary and secondary school levels, students and their teachers appear to know very little if anything beyond the names Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks. Student ignorance is bad enough, but the lack of knowledge among teachers is more disturbing. I created my course originally as a graduate offering for teachers in our Masters of Education program. I have found teachers in my courses for the most part to be intelligent, highly engaged, and dedicated professionals, but both black and white, their unfamiliarity with this crucial subject in disappointing.1 I cannot, of course, speak with authority beyond the students that I have had in my classes, although I venture to think that they reflect national trends. |
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For undergraduates I generally teach the course as an honors offering, either as a senior-level or a freshman-level seminar. The students in these courses are decidedly bright, high achievers, and very talented individuals. Several past course participants are now college professors themselves. Our student body comes primarily from the South, and many, if not most, attended public schools with large African-American populations. Yet both black and white students exhibit only rudimentary exposure to a subject so crucial to this region of the country. The continual refrain throughout my course is, "Why have we never heard about these individuals or events before." The stories of what passes for coverage of the civil rights movement in high school are depressing. The brief references to the subject are augmented with a school assembly, often of dubious quality, during Black History (or Diversity or some other such nomenclature) Week. If any portion of the accounts that I have heard are accurate, it is disheartening. |
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Student innocence is even more frustrating than their unawareness. Weakly grounded in historical consciousness, students tend to assume that things have always been much like they experienced them. Because they have attended fully-integrated schools, they have little appreciation that a time existed not that long ago when this was not the case. For most of these middle-class college students, both black and white, race is not a hugely significant issue. They acknowledge some social distinctions, but they take equal political and economic rights for granted. If I am continually shocked by their naivete, they are incredulous as they learn about how things were a little more than a generation ago. Consequently, I am convinced that the courses that I offer at both the undergraduate and graduate levels are vitally important. Students and teachers must know the appalling conditions through the 1950s, the inspirational saga of changing race relations from then through the 1970s, and the contribution of this era to contemporary racial political issues. |
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At both the undergraduate and graduate levels, my civil rights course operates much the same way. Only the parameters of expectations differ. When I teach at the freshman level, I have a bit less reading and I do not expect as much sophistication in discussion. In Spring 2005, I offered the course as a senior-level undergraduate honors class during the day and as a graduate class in the evening. The undergraduate course met twice per week for one and one-half hours each session. One day was devoted to the book and the other to the weekly video. The graduate course met one night per week for three hours, which provided ample time for the discussions and videos. The readings and procedures were exactly the same. It was interesting to compare the two offerings. Often the discussions of the books were quite similar, but at other times the two constituencies focused on quite different issues. Although the graduate students, who were older, brought more life experience to the table, the undergraduates usually provided more lively and profound discussions. At whatever level, these discussion seminars have been limited to fifteen students, twenty at absolute maximum. |
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The soul of my teaching philosophy and methodology is student- active pedagogy and peer modeling. Several of my courses, including the civil rights seminar, are set up using a similar basic format. These courses do not deal in packaged information. Because the courses are based entirely on discussion, students must take responsibility for their own learning and the process works best when done collectively. They are expected to do considerable reading and to think, write, and talk about what they read. My goal is to make myself irrelevant to the course as rapidly as I can. In the first two or three weeks, I direct the discussion but that often is limited to throwing out the first question and letting the students take the discussion where it goes. I strive to maintain order by keeping everyone from talking at once, and occasionally I intervene to redirect the discussion or to throw out a new question. Experienced students, who have done this kind of course with me before, showcase expectations, practices, and procedures for their peers.2 |
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As soon as I can, I turn the class completely over to the students. I designate one or two students to be the discussion leaders for each respective class session and I move to the side, but I always retain the right to intervene if I desire to do so. Once the class has taken complete ownership, they generally resent any involvement from me. The daily discussion leaders are usually thoroughly prepared and they do not like me interfering with how they wish to focus and lead the discussion. If I am a minute late for class, they start without me. |
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The class reads and discusses a book each week and discussions are augmented with relevant films and videos. We proceed chronologically through the civil rights era of the mid-1950s through the early 1970s. Prior to the weekly discussions, students write in their reading journals a two or three-page analysis and reaction to the book for the week. Immediately following the class discussion, they add a one-page single-spaced reaction responding to the issues treated and showing how the discussion brought about any new understanding of the book and topic. Both the initial entries and the post-discussion follow-ups are intended to be analytical although primarily personal responses. Grades are based on class discussion (I record a grade for each class session and failure to participate is not an option), on the quality and insight of the journals and postscripts, and on a final exam paper which addresses themes of the entire course. |
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At the first class session, I am very clear about expectations and the commitment necessary to complete the course. The level of commitment is more important than actual academic ability. If a student continues to engage the material every week, adequate performance will follow. Very few individuals sign up and begin these courses without knowing what it will require of them. Occasionally, a student in either the undergraduate or graduate course falls behind and must leave the class, but this does not happen often. |
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At the undergraduate level, senior majors experienced with this kind of activity set the norms and take a leading role in the discussions. They know how to read a book, what to focus upon, what questions to ask, and how to articulate their thoughts, concerns, and perspectives. Younger students witness the enthusiasm, passion, commitment, and standards of performance necessary for success. During the first weeks, I distribute the best journal entries from the immediate class and examples from previous semesters for the class to read. Every year I am amazed by the quality of the discussion, how quickly younger students begin to emulate their more experienced peers, and how much the younger ones desire to become like their role models. |
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In the freshman honors seminars, I bring in experienced majors during the first weeks to provide demonstrations for the novice students. Some students have volunteered to be unofficial teaching assistants for the entire term. I maintain a file of past journals as examples of what to do. Quite quickly, the freshmen see the expectations and are able to proceed on their own. The task is a bit more difficult for graduate students. For the most part, the teachers who populate these seminars have not been socialized in the expectations and practices of our department as have the undergraduate majors. My approach is often quite different from what they have experienced either as undergraduates in other institutions or in other graduate courses. Thus I employ graduate students who have taken a previous course with me or I bring in undergraduate majors to provide peer modeling. |
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The readings in the course are selected with the highest priority accorded to being interesting. I am willing to sacrifice more analytical studies for those that truly engage the reader. I like participant accounts either by or about key actors in the events, and I tend toward books about women. Although I teach at a women's college, I doubt that my choices would differ much at a coed institution. Our graduate program is coed and I employ the same books that I do at the undergraduate level. The fact is that women played the key roles in the civil rights movement. Men may have held the high profile leadership roles, but women disproportionately were the "movers and shakers" who made the movement happen at the grassroots level.3 |
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I constantly reassess the books employed in the course, and I make changes regularly. At the end of the academic term, the students evaluate each book individually and tell me which ones they believe should be retained or replaced. Often their perspective on a book by the end of the course, seen in context of all that we have read, is different from what it was when we originally discussed the volume. The number of applicable books is almost overwhelming, and many other books exist that I would like to include. Students remark that the course should be a year long to include more readings. Each week I mention other books on the topic and students later report that they have read some of these titles. The single strongest endorsement of the lasting impact of the course may be that I regularly receive emails from past students with suggestions and commentary on new potential readings. The following are the books in the course at the moment.4 |
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First Week | |
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The course begins with the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Because students do not have the opportunity to complete the reading for the first meeting of the class (although I email the syllabus and first-week assignment in advance), I begin with a video. For years I used the television movie Separate but Equal starring Sidney Poiter and Carlton Heston. More recently, I have switched to the three-part PBS video Simple Justice, which is less "Hollywood." Both are enactments and reflect the ills of that form of popular cinema, but they are quite entertaining and have value. The former contains more inaccuracies and takes greater dramatic license. |
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For the reading, in Spring 2005 for the first time I employed Robert J. Cottrel, et al., Brown v. Board of Education: Caste, Culture, and the Constitution. It is an excellent introduction, which provides sound background; but its treatment of constitutional and judicial interpretation issues is a bit heavy for students unfamiliar with constitutional jurisprudence. A couple of students who had taken a Constitutional Law course provided good leadership in the discussions. I needed to focus the questions to help many in the class understand the constitutional questions involved. Many students raised the question, if the decision was morally right, did it matter whether it was constitutional or not. That issue sparked lively debate over the nature of Constitutional interpretation, the role of the courts, and judicial activism in the areas of civil rights and civil liberties in both historical and contemporary situations. Students came to appreciate the book more as they proceeded through the course and legal issues continued to be a theme. |
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Successful as this book was, I may nevertheless return to the work that I previously used, James T. Patterson's Brown vs. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy, which provides a good overview of the case and the continuing issue of integration through the present day. Peter H. Irons' Jim Crow's Children: The Broken Promise of the Brown Decision is an absorbing account that emphasizes the failures of the post-Brown years. Jack M. Balkin, ed., What Brown v. Board of Education Should Have Said: The Nation's Top Legal Experts Rewrite America's Landmark Civil Rights Decision, is a most interesting collection, although it is more appropriate for a Constitutional Law course than a sweeping review of the civil rights era. |
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Second Week | |
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Stephen J. Whitfield's A Death in the Delta: The Story of Emmett Till is my choice to address the famous 1955 incident. Every year I am shocked by how few students, undergraduate or graduate, black or white, have heard of Emmett Till. With all the media attention on the 50th anniversary of the Brown vs. Board decision in 2004 and the resulting coverage of the history of the civil rights movement, including the Till case, the Spring 2005 course was the first time that a significant number of the students had heard of Till. A Death in the Delta allows students to learn the importance of this incident in the early civil rights movement, and the author's emphasis on sexual fears in the South and the pathology of hate in Mississippi is illuminating. Most younger students have no conception of the depth of this hatred. An alternative, the paperback version of Mamie Till-Mobley and Christopher Benson, Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America became available in 2005. Although it is much longer and indeed is also the story of Emmett's mother as much as the event in Money, Mississippi, it is an engaging read, and it traces how Emmett Till has become an icon in the history of the civil rights movement. Our video is the first in the Eyes on the Prize series, "Awakenings 1954–1956," which addresses the Emmett Till case. |
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Third Week | |
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This week is devoted to the two other major civil rights events of the 1950s: the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955–56 and the integration of Little Rock Central High School in 1956. I use two books this week, both short, quick reads. David J. Garrow, ed., The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It: The Memoir of Jo Ann Gibson Robinson is brief, very readable, and it introduces students to how a social movement transpired. Students learn that this signal event involved far more than the actions of icons Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. Indeed the unheralded E.D. Nixon and the amazing Women's Political Council, the main subject of the book, were the prime movers. The "Awakenings" video shown the previous week covers this event. |
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Melba Patillo Beals' moving and poignant Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High every year ranks as my students' favorite book in the course. The Eyes on the Prize video "Fighting Back 1957–1962" shown this week covers the Brown decision and the Little Rock Crises and introduces James Meredith's integration of the University of Mississippi, which is treated in Week 4. |
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Fourth Week | |
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Because I have not found the right source yet, I do not use a book on the sit-ins or the Freedom Rides. David Halberstam's epic The Children is exceptional but far too long. When two works presently in preparation on the Freedom Rides are available, I will give them consideration and may carve out a week for this subject. In the meantime, these two vital events in the movement are well treated in the Eyes on the Prize video for the week, "Ain't Scared of Your Jails 1960–1961. For now the central focus of this week is William Doyle's An American Insurrection: The Battle of Oxford, Mississippi, 1962, a fascinating, almost minute-by-minute study of the traumatic days surrounding James Meredith's integration of the University of Mississippi. The book is one of students' favorites in the course. I am continually amazed that almost none of the undergraduates or teachers in the graduate course have previously heard of Meredith. |
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Fifth Week | |
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Students refer to the next several sessions as the Mississippi weeks as we devote several classes to the dark and violent resistance within the Magnolia State. Primary focus is on the voter registration campaigns. We begin with Anne Moody's Coming of Age in Mississippi, one of the must- read classics on college campuses. Moody's account of growing up black and poor in rural Mississippi in the 1950s and early 1960s is as unflattering to the black community as to the racist white society. It details how she became active in the movement, provides a picture of activities in the state, and depicts why Mississippi blacks had reason to fear that the civil rights efforts for social change could be very dangerous for their lives. Although rather long, the book receives very favorable reviews and it sparks spirited discussion. Students begin to appreciate the plight of blacks in the rural deep South at a whole new level. The video for the week is Eyes on the Prize, "No Easy Walk 1962–1966." |
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Sixth Week | |
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After dropping the book for a couple of cycles, I restored Maryanne Vollers' The Ghosts of Mississippi because it introduced students to Medgar Evers, the head of the NAACP in Mississippi and the central figure in the state until his 1963 assassination by the erratic, classic white-racist stereotype, Byron De La Beckwith. None of the students in the Spring 2005 undergraduate class and few in the graduate course knew anything about Medgar Evers, but they found the portraits of him, his wife Myrlie, and brother Charles absorbing. Admittedly, the book is journalistic and theatrical, but it is a quick and lively read and students enjoy it. It also brings the story of the efforts for justice against Beckwith forward for the next thirty years. The commercial movie, "The Ghosts of Mississippi" is not the greatest piece of cinema, but the depictions of the characters are entertaining. |
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Seventh Week | |
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Freedom Summer 1964 was the central event of the voter registration years, and the murder of three civil rights workers near Philadelphia, Mississippi was the defining incident. I have used various books for this topic, including William Bradford Huie's Three Lives for Mississippi and Nicolaus Mills, Like a Holy Crusade: Mississippi 1964: The Turning of the Civil Rights Movement in America, but I now employ Howard Ball's eminently readable new study, Murder in Mississippi: United States v. Price and the Struggle for Civil Rights. Like The Ghosts of Mississippi the previous week, it also reports a decades-long pursuit of justice in the courts. The video for the week is Eyes on the Prize, "Mississippi: Is This America? 1962–1964." |
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Eighth Week | |
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I have used or considered various books for the broader coverage of Freedom Summer, including: Doug McAdam's long and uninspiring Freedom Summer; Sally Belfrage's more interesting book with the same title; Elizabeth Sutherland Martinez, ed., Letters from Mississipp; Charles Marsh's engrossing God's Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights; and even John Dittmer's classic Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi. The latter is an extraordinary book (which I have employed successfully in another class), as is Charles M. Payne's I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle, but both books are too long and detailed for this particular course. |
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Every student of the civil rights movement should confront the amazing Fannie Lou Hamer, the Ruleville, Mississippi sharecropper who rose to national celebrity stature. In the past I have used Kay Mills' This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer, which is too long, and Chana Kai Lee, For Freedom's Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer, which is too dry. My present choice is Vicki L. Crawford, et. al, eds., Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearers, 1941–1965, which has a fine chapter on Mrs. Hamer and articles on several other overlooked women, including Modjeska Simkins, Septima Clark, Gloria Richardson, and the grand dame of the movement Ella Baker. The video, Standing on My Sisters' Shoulders, produced by Woman Make Movies is the perfect compliment to this book. |
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Ninth Week | |
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This week we briefly leave the southern campaigns to discuss one of the most fascinating and controversial figures in the black struggle. Although almost all students have heard the name Malcolm X, few understand anything about him. Malcolm comes and goes in vogue, so students of different ages have varying perspectives. A few graduate students who actually saw the 1992 Spike Lee movie starring Denzel Washington have a more favorable impression than those whose cognizance comes from the violent rap musicians who invoke the name. Some older students remember baseball caps with an X on them when they were a fashion statement during the early and mid 1990s, but few know what the symbol was about. However, whatever era the students represent, most, whether black or white, associate the name Malcolm X with hatred. I have experimented with several books on Malcolm X, including Bruce Perry's Malcolm: The Life a Man Who Changed Black America; Eric Dyson's Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X; and James Cone's Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare. The latter has certain advantages because it also focuses on the premier figure of the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King, Jr. The book is generally popular, but it is a bit too idiosyncratic for my tastes. I have returned to the book that I employed when I began the course: Alex Haley's The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Despite its length, the work still generates the magnetism that impacted me when I first read it in the early 1970s. I ask that after reading the book, students rent and watch the Denzel Washington movie. The subsequent discussions on the book and movie are among the best classes of the term. |
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Tenth Week | |
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Returning to the voting rights campaigns in the South this week, I use one of the most contentious books in the course. Mary Stanton's From Selma to Sorrow: The Life and Death of Viola Liuzzo is a journalist's effort to resurrect the life of the Detroit housewife and civil rights volunteer murdered in Selma, Alabama during the Voting Rights Bill marches in the summer of 1965. This emotive volume, unique from every other book in the course, captures the mercurial nature of Mrs. Liuzzo and the impact of her death on her family. Class discussions are spirited with very divided opinions expressed about Ms. Liuzzo. The video for the week is Eyes on the Prize,"Bridge to Freedom 1965" on the Selma March. |
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Eleventh Week | |
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In the latter part of the 1960s, the civil rights campaigns melded into the black revolution. I have used several books for this transition, including Clayborne Carson's In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s. But I always return to Cleveland Sellers' River of No Return: The Autobiography of a Black Militant and the Life and Death of SNCC. The book is short, readable, and instructive. That Sellers grew up in South Carolina, where I teach, and is now a professor at the University of South Carolina, provides a local perspective in the course. Students in the past have had the opportunity to hear him speak at conferences, and he has been a guest at our institution. The low-key, graying academic today, who now campaigns for mainstream issues such as quality public education, appears a far cry from the militant firebrand of the 1960s. Because Sellers' book is a fast read, I often add a second book this week to offer another activist perspective. Cynthia Griggs Fleming's Soon We Will Not Cry: The Liberation of Ruby Doris Smith Robinson is not one of the best books written, but it provides a short account of an unheralded and tragic female activist. My students react strongly and positively to her. |
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Twelfth Week | |
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Again this week I focus on a topic of strong local interest. Jack Bass and Jack Nelson, The Orangeburg Massacre is an in-depth treatment of this 1968 tragedy at the historically-black South Carolina State College. The event is significant in this state, and the book is quite interesting. A recent video produced at South Carolina State University that includes interviews with wounded survivors of the incident is the perfect companion piece for the book. At present the video is a rough version only available by loan from the University library, but it is supposed to be upgraded to commercial quality for distribution. |
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Thirteenth Week | |
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The most controversial reading in the course is Hugh Pearson's The Shadow of the Panther: Huey Newton and the Price of Black Power in America, which brings the story of black militancy to its nihilistic apex. Huey Newton, head of the Black Panthers, was a brilliant, perverted, hedonistic thug, but his role in the most militant phase of the black revolution cannot be ignored. The stark ugliness, gratuitous sex and violence, and the language of the book are shocking for many; the events in Newton's life are appalling for everyone. The book captures the madness of the time and the perversion of the civil rights movement into sick caricature. As an alternative, I have used Elaine Brown's A Taste of Power: A Black Woman's Story, which equally depicts the insanity of the time and individuals. It is a more palatable read than The Shadow of the Panther, but Brown's flagrant self-serving recreation of herself qualifies the book more as novel or therapy than historical reality. Two brief excerpts from the Eyes on the Prize II series also provide insight into the Black Panthers. |
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Fourteenth Week | |
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The final week of the course has been the least successful. After descending to the depths of the movement with Huey Newton, I would like to end the term on a different note with a book that addresses successes and challenges to the contemporary racial situation in America. However, I have yet to find a volume with which I am satisfied. Stephen Carter's Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby and Cornell West's Race Matters did not work well. Lately, I have employed a series of photocopied articles that treat present topics, including perspectives on the racial situation today and how the civil rights movement has expanded from black-white race relations to the plethora of other racial, ethnic, gender, sexual orientation, and handicapped rights issues. Obviously, the readings for this last week will constantly change and I will continue to search for the best sources for this culminating week. |
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Final Thoughts | |
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My course evaluations have been extremely positive. Most pleasing are the numerous comments about how the course and the books have changed lives. Several teachers have contacted me a year or more after taking the course to tell me how they have incorporated the material in their classrooms, including having students read some of the books. These testimonials reemphasize that the civil rights era is too critical to allow it to be as summarily treated as it is in too many schools. The adage is true that we cannot learn from the past if we do not know the past. This vital slice of our recent history must be reclaimed and presented to the present and future generations. |
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Bibliography | |
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All citations are the latest paperback edition.
Books Used in My Course (in order as they appear in the text)
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| Robert J. Cottrel, et al., Brown v. Board of Education: Caste, Culture, and the Constitution (Lawrence, KS, 2003).Stephen J. Whitfield, A Death in the Delta: The Story of Emmett Till (Baltimore, 1991).David J. Garrow, ed., The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It: The Memoir of Jo Ann Gibson Robinson (Knoxville, TN, 1987).Melba Patillo Beals, Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High (New York, 1995).William Doyle, An American Insurrection: The Battle of Oxford, Mississippi, 1962 (New York, 2003).Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi (New York, 1992).Maryanne Vollers, The Ghosts of Mississippi: The True Story (Boston, 1996).Howard Ball, Murder in Mississippi: United States v. Price and the Struggle for Civil Rights (Lawrence, KS, 2004).Vicki L. Crawford, et. al, eds., Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearers, 1941–1965 (Bloomington, IN, 1993).Alex Haley's The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York, 1992).Mary Stanton, From Selma to Sorrow: The Life and Death of Viola Liuzzo (Athens, GA, 2000).Cleveland Sellers, River of No Return: The Autobiography of a Black Militant and the Life and Death of SNCC (Jackson, MS, 1990).Cynthia Griggs Fleming, Soon We Will Not Cry: The Liberation of Ruby Doris Smith Robinson Lanham, MD, 2000).Jack Bass and Jack Nelson, The Orangeburg Massacre (Macon, GA, 1999).Hugh Pearson, The Shadow of the Panther: Huey Newton and the Price of Black Power in America (Reading, MA, 1995).
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Other Books Cited in Article (in order as they appear in the text)
| Peter H. Irons' Jim Crow's Children: The Broken Promise of the Brown Decision (New York, 2004).James T. Patterson, Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy (New York, 2002).Jack M. Balkin, ed., What Brown v. Board of Education Should Have Said: The Nation's Top Legal Experts Rewrite America's Landmark Civil Rights Decision (New York, 2002).Mamie Till-Mobley and Christopher Benson, Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America (New York, 2004).David Halberstam, The Children (New York, 1999).William Bradford Huie, Three Lives for Mississippi (Jackson, MS, 2000).Nicolaus Mills, Like a Holy Crusade: Mississippi 1964—The Turning of the Civil Rights Movement in America (Chicago, 1993).Doug McAdam, Freedom Summer (New York, 1990).Sally Belfrage, Freedom Summer (Charlottesville, VA, 1990).Elizabeth Sutherland Martinez, ed., Letters from Mississippi (Chicago, 2002).Charles Marsh, God's Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights (Princeton, NJ, 1999).John Dittmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (Chicago, 1995).Charles M. Payne, I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (Berkeley, CA, 1996).Kay Mills, This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer (New York, 1994).Chana Kai Lee, For Freedom's Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer (Chicago, 2000).Bruce Perry, Malcolm: The Life a Man Who Changed Black America (Barrytown, NY, 1992).Eric Dyson, Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X (New York, 1996).James Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare (Maryknoll, NY, 1992).Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (Cambridge, MA, 1995).Elaine Brown, A Taste of Power: A Black Woman's Story (New York, 1993).Stephen Carter, Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby (New York, 1992).Cornell West, Race Matters (New York, 1992).
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One Final Source | |
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In the past I have used Raymond D'Angelo's The American Civil Rights Movement: Readings and Interpretations (New York, 2001), an anthology of readings far above any of the other many good collections available, to fill in areas that the books in the course did not cover. However, adding selected articles to the reading load on top of the books each week was simply too much to ask. Regretfully, I no longer use this excellent volume, but it is a source that anyone teaching a course of the civil rights era should consider. |
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Notes
1. In the graduate course during Spring 2005, I did a quick survey to see what the teachers and those preparing to be teachers knew about the key individuals and events that we would study during the course. This was a very unscientific snapshot impression and results have varied in previous years. For what it is worth, the teachers came form diverse fields, including elementary education and disciplines outside the "social studies." However, of seventeen individuals in the course, only eight could identify Emmett Till (all the black students did), even though he had received quite a bit of profile during the 2004 civil rights emphasis on the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Only seven recognized the name James Meredith and several weren't sure what he did; ten claimed to have heard of Medgar Evers, but only two knew that he was head of the NAACP in Mississippi and a few more identified his significance as having been killed. Only three had heard of Fannie Lou Hamer; Ella Baker was unknown. Five could loosely identify Stokely Carmichael; four, Huey Newton. Every class member knew the name Rosa Parks, but they could relate little about the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Not surprisingly, no one could identify E.D. Nixon or Jo Ann Gibson Robinson and the Women's Political Council. All but one person at least claimed to know the name Malcolm X, but the typical reaction was little more than that he was a radical who hated whites.
2. The following are a few of my articles on student-active, peer modeling, and other innovative approaches in my courses: "Peer Role Modeling: A Signature 'Way' for Excellence," The Department Chair (Fall 2004), 21–22; "First Person Sources in Teaching the Vietnam War," Teaching History: A Journal of Methods (Spring 2003), 29–36; "Teaching Islamic and Middle East Politics: The Model Arab League as a Learning Venue," The Journal of Political Science (Fall 2002), 121–129; "Circle the Chairs: Some Thoughts on Classroom Architectural Pedagogy," The Department Chair (Summer, 2000), 15–16; "Finding Connie in the Rock," The Teaching Professor (May 1999), 4–5; "Reflections of a Recovering Lectureholic," The National Teaching and Learning Forum 3:6 (1994), 1–3; "The Winning Teacher: Metaphors From Coaching," The Teaching Professor (November 1992), 1–2; "Briefing Teams in World Affairs Class," College Teaching (Spring 1992), 61–62; Teaching Teachers to Teach the Vietnam War," Social Education (January 1988), 37–38; "Islamic and Middle East Studies: An Institute for Teachers," The Clearing House (March 1985), 287–289.
3. The literature available on the civil rights era is immense. Many hundreds, possibly thousands, of monographs and other scholarly studies, biographies and autobiographies, memoirs and other personal narratives, edited collections, and textbooks exist. Numerous bibliographies and websites, too many to name, also are available for those seeking sources.
4. A total of fifteen books is expensive; however, all the books are available as used copies on line. Students savvy in acquiring used books on line can get individual copies sometimes for a few dollars each or less. Since I make relatively few changes each year, many copies of the books are available from former students. My undergraduates brag about how inexpensively they acquire the books. The graduate students come from various different communities so several are able to acquire many of the books from their local libraries.
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