Location of article:    http://dbs.ohiohistory.org/africanam

Location of photograph: http://www.nara.gov

Introduction:Over the next four days we will  investigate the evolution of suffrage and civil rights guarantees for African Americans  from the Civil War Era to the  civil rights movement of the  1960s. In 1868 Congress passed the  Fourteenth Amendment to  guarantee citizenship to all African Americans born or naturalized in the United States; in 1870 the Fifteenth Amendment guaranteed the right ot vote to all adult males, regardless of race, color, creed, or previous condition of servitude.  Nonetheless, many southern states enacted Jim Crow laws that restricted the rights of newly enfranchised African Americans to exercise the right to vote. Nearly one hundred years later, Congress took steps to eliminate these restrictions by passing civil rights and voting rights legislation .
 
 

Task:The US Justice Department has received  reports of several voting irregularities that may have occurred during the presidential election of 2000. The reports emphasize that many of the reported irregularities have been occurring since the 1860s and that subsequent civil rights legislation has had minimal impact on various rural and remote counties in the south.  You will be one member of a group of five students, appointed by the US Justice Department to serve on  the newly formed Civil Rights Task Force. Each of you must select one of the following roles:  Justice Department Attorney, Local  Historian, Writer for a Well-known national newsmagazine, Assistant to the Town Mayor who is up for reelection, and President of the State Chapter of the NAACP.  You are to research the process of enfranchisement from the mid-1860s to the late-1960s, then observe, investigate, and report to the Justice Department your determination of voting irregularities from the presidential election of 2000 in the form that correlates with your selected role.The task force must also present their research in a power point presentation that the Justice Department plans to archive at the Library of Congress and eventually release to the state educational television station.
 
 

Process:    The roles and responsibilities of  the Civil Rights Task Force participants in the investigation include:
 
 

Justice Department Attorney:	write your findings in a legal brief.
Local Historian:	write your findings in the form of lecture notes
Writer for a  newsmagazine:	write your findings in an article for your magazine
Assistant for the Town Mayor:	write your findings in a campaign speech for the mayor
President  of the State Chapter of the NAACP:	write your findings in a letter to the editor of the state paper

 

Each participant will provide a different perspective on the investigation. During Day1, you will given twenty  minutes to brainstorm ideas for the investigation and locate and read resources including supplementary reading and internet sites.
During Day 2, you will continue your investigation and begin to identify the the pertinent information from various sources that will go into your final report.
On Day 3, you will prepare your final report and begin designing your power point presentation.
On Day 4, your will present your written task and power point presentation to the class.

Resources: Members of the task force may use the suggested resoures listed below but you are not limited by the list below. Your research should uncover additional resources; remember to provide a bibliography with your final report and correctly cite your sources..

Internet Resources  http://www.loc.gov/ammem http://www.ohiohistory.org  http://www.pbs.org  http://www.nara.gov/  http://www.sas.upenn.edu/african studies  http://www.sclc.org

Supplementary Reading  Civil Rights and Civil Liberties,  Magruder's American Government, William McClenaghan  articles from periodicals and newspapers: Time, Newsweek  US News and World Reports,

Evaluation
Reports and presentations wil be evaluated according to the following rubric:

                                                1                                2                                3                                4                                Total
                                        Unsatisfactory           Developing               Accomplished               Exemplary

Conclusion
The goal of the webquest is to expose students to a variety of resources and perspectives on the events and people involved in the quest for voting rights in the United States. Students will be able to analyze the diverse opinions on voting rights, and evaluate the role of local, state and the federal governments from the mid-1860s to the present in restricting or protecting voting rights for African Americans. Students will also be able to identify biases that may exist in different sources, internet and non-internet.

Teacher Page
The South Carolina Social Studies Standards for Government have been included in this webquest. http://www.myscschools.com