How do ordinary, everyday people make change? How do you teach this to students?

Another angle to figuring out how to teach civil rights history throughout the year.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Johnathan Chase on February 9, 2009 at 1:01pm

Great question and topic.

I recently posted two music videos on my profile that deal with this very topic...."Every Day" and "If Everyone Cared"

I used them both to introduce social justice writing activities earlier this school year.

Permalink Reply by Kathy Emery on April 8, 2009 at 12:13pm

We (a group of us in SF) are trying to create lessons or mini-lessons connecting the ideas of how to make change, how to rebel with civil rights history. e.g., using the Declaration of Independence's "right to rebel" as a document, or to refer to it in various circumstances like . . .?

Do you have anything more specific than "encourage adults to "speak" to young people . . .agree to say an encouraging word to every teen or child we meet, everyday. Sometimes its just a smile or a thumbs up" - if so, can you post it to this site?

thanks for joining!!!

Permalink Reply by Kathy Emery on July 14, 2009 at 3:23pm

When Meg and Judy and I met last week, we shared some ideas. I thought a good way to address civil rights history throughout the year was Judy's suggestion to ask the question, "HOW DO YOU REBEL?"

Speak Truth to Power:
Quaker Petition to Congress (see excerpts in attachment at end of this message In White America)
Douglass and Downing to Andrew Johnson (In White America)
Trotter to Woodrow Wilson (In White America)

Research that contributes to the development of an accurate power structure analysis that then leads to myth busting, legal action or the development of effective strategy and tactics:
Ida B. Wells
WEB Dubois
U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (set up in 1957)

Bearing Witness to atrocities/injustice
???????

Violence AND Self Defense
Nat Turner
John Brown
Deacons for Defense

Nonviolent Resistance done properly
NAACP Silent March in 1917
Journey of Reconciliation
Montgomery Bus Boycott
Nashville Sit-Ins
Freedom Rides
Voter Registration in Mississippi in 1962-64

Challenging those who have allowed themselves to be co-opted:
Dubois v Washington
black abolitionist movement v American Colonization Society
Douglass v Garrison

Attachments: