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Lesson Four: Strategy of the Movement

1965-1968

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Lesson Four: Strategy of the Movement - 1965-1968 - Lessons - Life Stories Interviews

Courtesy of Library of Congress

Essential Question: What strategic decisions and actions did Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) make to achieve the goal of equality for all in America?

In this lesson, students will examine the course of Dr. King’s and the SCLC’s activism between 1965 and 1968, and uncover and identify the strategic goals and underpinnings of different strategies and tactics they undertook during their struggle for equality.

Students will analyze documentary film clips, historical documents, and first-person interviews to understand the strategic decisions of Dr. King and other Civil Rights leaders. Students will practice the skill of historical corroboration and build their understanding of the essential question. As a demonstration of learning and/or assessment students will use evidence to write an essay analyzing one of the strategic decisions made by Dr. King or other Civil Rights leaders during the years 1965-1968.

Materials: Equipment for viewing film segments and copies of handouts

Length: Three 50-minute class periods with a writing assessment

Download Lesson Plan PDF

Lesson Objectives

Students will examine the course of the Civil Rights Movement between 1965 and 1968 by:

*Analyzing historical source material on the strategies of the Civil Rights Movement

*Critically viewing documentary film clips and first-person interviews to inform their understanding of history

*Synthesizing new learning through developing questions for further historical inquiry

*Demonstrating their understanding of the lesson topic through a final writing exercise

1. Do-Now: Opening Exercise

Teacher Note: Have students discuss or respond in writing to these Opening Questions:

*What were some of the most visible successes of the Civil Rights Movement?

*What do you know about how the movement and its leaders accomplished those changes?

Distribute and Read Handout 1: 1965 Voting Rights Act

*As a class, come to a consensus about what the Voting Rights Act entailed and why it was important.

*Read aloud Clifford Alexander’s account of how the 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed.                                              What can we learn from his words about how social change happens? Who was involved? What different kinds of expertise were required?

*Clifford Alexander asserts, “Very few members of Congress, senators or members of Congress, do things just because it's right or we'd have a far better world than we have today. So, they do something because there's pressure on it.” In what ways did the Civil Rights Movement put pressure on Congress?

2. Analyzing film as text

Teacher Note: There are four clips associated with this lesson. The first clip is an introduction to Dr. King’s view of the movement’s purpose during this time. Watch the first clip as a group and have students use Handout 2: Note Catcher for “Dream into a Nightmare.”

Distribute Handout 1: "From a Dream to a Nightmare" Note Catcher in "Resources" section and review questions with students before viewing Clip 1.

Watch Clip 1: "From a Dream to a Nightmare" (run time: 2:30) in "Film Clips" section and complete the Note Catcher.

Consider splitting the class into small groups to watch the remaining three clips using a jigsaw exercise, where each group watches one clip and presents its respective Note Catcher observations and conclusions to other groups. After each group has presented a summary of its clip and its conclusions, discuss as a class the Historical Synthesis Question exercise and summarize their understanding of the movement’s overarching strategy.

Distribute Handouts 2 - 4 in the "Resources" section. Review the Note Catcher questions to help students watch the film clips actively and with critical eyes. You may choose, and the jigsaw groups may choose, to watch the clips more than once to collect detailed notes.

Watch Clip 2: "More Than a Tactic" (run time: 4:17), Clip 3: "Relevance in the North" (run time: 7:24),  Clip 4: "This May Be My Last Campaign" (5:07) in "Film Clips" section.

Historical Synthesis Questions:  After the jigsaw groups have presented their notes and observations in small groups, discuss these questions as a class:

*In Clip 1, Dr. King mentions racism, poverty, and militarism as key challenges in the struggle for equality. How do you see those challenges reflected in his strategies in Los Angeles and Chicago, and with the Poor People’s Campaign?

*How do you see Dr. King’s commitment to nonviolence as strengthening, or challenging, the movement?

*In Chicago and in the Poor People’s Movement, Dr. King laid out specific changes he would like to see. How do clear goals strengthen the message and momentum of a movement?

Habit of a Historian
Have students write down their observations and questions about the different stages of movement building within SNCC and SCLC. What evidence can you cite that supports how and why Dr. King and the SCLC chose these actions and strategies?

3. Analyzing Supporting Documents

Teacher Note: In this exercise, students will examine primary sources such as correspondence, meeting notes, and telegrams to glean more information about the considerations and information upon which the strategic movements of Dr. King and the SCLC were made. The documents are not included as PDF Handouts but are accessible through The King Center website. 

Have students to do a Close Read exercise of the documents. Remind students to read through the documents multiple times in order to Identify the source and date of the document, the author(s), their point of view, the intended audience, and the meaning of the text. Encourage students to code the documents by underlining, circling, or making other notations to signify their close reading.

Watts: Dr King's Press Statement regarding the Watts Riots  http://www.thekingcenter.org/archive/document/mlk-press-statement-regarding-riots-los-angeles

Chicago: Letter from Bernard Lafayette, Jr. to Dr. King about Chicago    http://www.thekingcenter.org/archive/document/letter-bernard-lafayette-jr-mlk

Notes on the Airlie Farm Strategy Meeting                                                                                                                                        http://www.thekingcenter.org/archive/document/black-beautiful-and-its-so-beautiful-be-black

Poor People's Campaign 

*Information sheet about the Poor People's Campaign                                                                                            http://www.thekingcenter.org/archive/document/you-and-poor-peoples-campaign  

*Letter from the Poor People's Campaign Committee in Grenada, Michigan to Dr. King about their needs              http://www.thekingcenter.org/archive/document/letter-poor-peoples-committee-grenada-mississippi

After completing a close read of the documents, have students share with the class what they learned about each of these three-movement actions (Chicago, Airlie Farm Strategy, and Poor People's Campaign) that augment information from the film clips. What new questions do the documents generate?

4. Close View of Interviews

Teacher Note: The film-makers conducted 19 interviews to produce King in the Wilderness. The complete interviews and academic notes for each interviewee are available at www.kunhardtfilmfoundation.org/interview-archive.

For each lesson, interview segments that were not used in the film, but contain insights relevant to the lesson topic, are edited together to create “interview threads.“ There are four threads of interview segments that teachers and/or students can choose from or use together, to deepen understanding. Consider offering students the opportunity to choose the thread that interests them the most, or to continue with the same groups they used in the previous jigsaw exercise. 

Print and distribute Handouts 6, 7, 8, and 9 in the "Resources" section and have students choose one or more of the interviews with the transcripts to watch.

Watch the Interview Threads
As they watch, students will:

* Follow along on the transcript.

* Underline details that catch their attention. 

* Jot down questions and insights that come to mind after viewing the threads.

Thread One: Strategy and Goals (run time 12:05)
Featuring Clifford Alexander, Cleveland Sellers, Joan Baez, and Dorothy Cotton

Thread Two: Chicago (run time 6:07)
Featuring Mary Lou Finley and Harry Belafonte

Thread Three: Poor People's Campaign (run time 7:55)
Featuring Marian Wright Edelman and Bernard Lafayette, Jr.

Thread Four: Financial Considerations (run time 5:16)
Featuring Clifford Alexander and Clarence Jones

Discuss: 

*What do you learn from these interviews that you might not learn anywhere else? 

5. Research and Corroborate

Teacher Note: After viewing and reading the interview threads, have students choose one or more historical details to practice their habit of sourcing and corroborating -- in other words research and identify a credible historical source that will verify, or corroborate, the detail they selected from the interview. Here are some questions to keep in mind:

*Where did you find the document? Is it a credible source? How do you know?

*What is the date of the document and who is the author? When and why is this important?

*How does the source confirm or undermine the detail you selected from the interview?

*What other sources can you use to help you better understand testimony and memory as a historical resource?

Here are suggested archives to use to find corroborating evidence:
1. The King Center 
2. Stanford University: The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute
3. Library of Congress 

6. Closing Discussion Questions

Discuss:
How does viewing the historical sources contribute to your understanding of how the Civil Rights Movement approached change, strategy, and decision making?

What can we extrapolate from this lesson that teaches us about how social movements make social change happen?

Resources

Handout 1: Do Now 1965 Voting Rights Act
Handout 1
Handout 2: Note Catcher From A Dream To A Nightmare
Handout 2
Handout 3: Note Catcher More Than a Tactic
Handout 3
Handout 4: Note Catcher Relevance in the North
Handout 4
Handout 5: Note Catcher This May Be My Last Campaign
Handout 5
Handout 6: Interview Thread One Strategies and Goals
Handout 6
Handout 7: Interview Thread Two Chicago
Handout 7
Handout 8: Interview Thread Three Transcript Poor People's Campaign
Handout 8
Handout 9: Interview Thread Four Transcipt Financial Considerations
Handout 9

Assessment

Analytical Essay

As an assessment assignment, have students write an analytical essay on one of the strategic decisions made by Dr. King, or other leaders in the Civil Rights movement during the years 1965-1968 studied in this lesson. Students can refer to any of the historical source material included in the lesson or resources they discover through independent research. Remind students that an analytical essay needs to have an argument with supporting evidence that is thoroughly analyzed.

Consider using this excerpt from Harry Belafonte in the Interview Archive as a starting place for students to select a detail to expand upon:

“I think that what I’m getting at was that no one place held a clearly defined set of conclusions-- ‘If we go there, this is what will happen.’ You always had to be prepared for what we did not expect and that constantly kept Martin at the ready. I don’t know how else to put it. He was constantly absorbing information about each location to become location specific so that people understood how deeply connected what he was doing was to their immediate experience. This is in your community. This is not just something taking place in some faraway place that you may never visit. This is really what America is about. And by making those parallels, he was able to bring a cohesiveness to movement mentality that although we had reasons for studying geographical opposites or 

 

differences, that those differences should never keep us uninformed about how much alike all of this was for our total interests. I’m stumbling through this because there’s so much to -- it’s just not easy.

“I remember, I think it was -- there was a labor leader by the name of Cleave Robinson and Cleave was perhaps one of the most forceful voices out of labor, and we talked about going down to the marches in which Doctor King tried to appeal to as broad a cross-section of Americans as he could, labor was very important. He met a lot of times with the labor movement, Walter Reuther and others, and convinced them that they should throw their lot in with us. He kept us constantly in a state of chess. He would do something that evoked a certain response and all of a sudden, the movement had to make a shift, not from what it was doing, but to expand on what it was doing. And the team around Doctor King had to be the visionaries, had to be those who sought these quarters of resistance out and to find the solutions to how to lessen that resistance. To that degree, I think the team that surrounded Martin did the task well. A lot of them paid a terrible price for the commitment, but as long as Doctor King stayed the course, the rest of us felt that anything that was happening to us was not that much -- was not that important.”

Standards

Anchor Standards

Reading Literature and/or Information: Integration of Knowledge and Ideas

RL/RI.X.7. Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words.

RL/RI.X.8. Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, including the validity of the reasoning as well as the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence.

RL/RI.X.9. Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches the authors take.

Speaking and Listening: Comprehension and Collaboration

SL.X.1. Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.

 

SL.X.2. Integrate and evaluate information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally.

SL.X.3. Evaluate a speaker’s point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence and rhetoric.

Writing: Research to Build and Present Knowledge

W.X.7. Conduct short as well as more sustained research projects based on focused questions, demonstrating understanding of the subject under investigation.

W.X.8. Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources, assess the credibility and accuracy of each source, and integrate the information while avoiding plagiarism.

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