I.    Unit Organizer

        This unit will present an overview of the struggle for African-Americans' civil rights.  The following are issues, events and individuals that will be highlighted:

• Lunch Counter Sit-ins
• Rosa Parks
• Bus Boycotts
• Freedom Riders
• Little Rock Nine
• Brown vs. Board of Education
• Martin Luther King Jr.
• Malcolm X
• Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Bombing
• March on Washington

        1.    The students will be expected to explain how events in the Civil Rights Movement acted as catalysts for the eventual "equal rights" received by African-
               Americans through the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

        2.    The students will be expected to understand and articulate how freedom from slavery did not automatically guarantee equality for African-Americans.

        3.    The students will able contrast the intolerance that white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan embraced with the many white Americans who
               joined in the Civil Rights struggle.

        4.    Based upon their study of the Civil Rights Movement, the students will be expected to write a "mini biography" of an individual who fought for civil rights,    regardless if that individual is African-American, White, Hispanic-American or Asian-American.
 

III. Illinois Learning Standards

         A. Goal 14.C.2

         B. Goal 16.B.2d
 

IV. Professional Links
 

LINKS:

www.wmich.edu/politics/mlk

 National Civil Rights Museum

 4 Little Girls