Integrity and Character Theme

Test Review Games: PPT or Text

Great collection of Information on Watergate from the Washington Post

Iran-Contra Affair at Wikipedia

CNN Timeline of the Clinton Scandals

Possible Test Essay Topics:

• Use the pursuit of equality as a theme to illuminate American integrity and character

• Use failures of integrity and character to illustrate how we have struggled to hold on to our sense of national integrity (monopolies, political corruption, segregation, Watergate, Iran Contra, etc.)

• Use several prominent figures from this theme to provide a definition of American integrity and character that crosses class, race, and gender lines

State Standards Covered Include:

• Analyze the effect of urban political machines and responses to them by immigrants and middle-class reformers.
• Analyze the similarities and differences between the ideologies of Social Darwinism and Social Gospel (e.g., using biographies of William Graham Sumner, Billy Sunday, Dwight L. Moody)
• Examine the effect of political programs and activities of Populists.
• Understand the effect of political programs and activities of the Progressives (e.g., federal regulation of railroad transport, Children’s Bureau, the Sixteenth Amendment, Theodore Roosevelt, Hiram Johnson).
• Describe the contributions of various religious groups to American civic principles and social reform movements (e.g., civil and human rights, individual responsibility and the work ethic, antimonarchy and self-rule, worker protection, family-centered communities).
• Analyze the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment and the changing role of women in society.
• Explain how demands of African Americans helped produce a stimulus for civil rights, including President Roosevelt’s ban on racial discrimination in defense industries in 1941, and how African Americans’ service in World War II produced a stimulus for President Truman’s decision to end segregation in the armed forces in 1948.
• Examine and analyze the key events, policies, and court cases in the evolution of civil rights, including Dred Scott v. Sandford, Plessy v. Ferguson, Brown v. Board of Education, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, and California Proposition 209.
• Describe the collaboration on legal strategy between African American and white civil rights lawyers to end racial segregation in higher education.
• Examine the roles of civil rights advocates (e.g., A. Philip Randolph, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcom X, Thurgood Marshall, James Farmer, Rosa Parks), including the significance of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and “I Have a Dream” speech.
• Discuss the diffusion of the civil rights movement of African Americans from the churches of the rural South and the urban North, including the resistance to racial desegregation in Little Rock and Birmingham, and how the advances influenced the agendas, strategies, and effectiveness of the quests of American Indians, Asian Americans, and Hispanic Americans for civil rights and equal opportunities.
• Analyze the passage and effects of civil rights and voting rights legislation (e.g., 1964 Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act of 1965) and the Twenty-Fourth Amendment, with an emphasis on equality of access to education and to the political process.
• Analyze the women’s rights movement from the era of Elizabeth Stanton and Susan Anthony and the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the movement launched in the 1960s, including differing perspectives on the roles of women.

In this theme we will delve into the American definition of integrity and character by exploring times of great American integrity and character, as well as moments when integrity and character were found wanting.

One major requirement of this theme will be a community service activity that you will carry out with a group of team members.  This is a chance for you to demonstrate your personal integrity and character. You will be asked to spend between 6-7 hours actively addressing a need that you have identified in our community.  On Monday, February 27th, you will create a PowerPoint presentation that recounts your activities and on Tuesday, February 28th each pair will present their PowerPoint to the team.  Click here for more information on this activity.

Online Assignment (due March 6th)
We're not doing this in 2007

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