Social Studies Curriculum

United States History

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Civil Rights And The Social Revolution

Three weeks (through Week 14)

Enduring Understandings

The student will understand:

1. Civil rights are a basic guarantee for everyone under the U.S. Constitution. 
2. All citizens have a responsibility to protect civil liberties and basic democratic principles. 
3. The interpretation of “rights” is constantly evolving. 

Essential questions

1. How does WWII provide the foundation for the American Civil Rights movement? 
2. How does a counter culture movement bring about social and political change in America?
3. How does social revolution come about; how do individuals or groups achieve power, keep power, or lose power?
4. How does the early American Civil Rights Movement provide a framework for other disenfranchised groups?
5. How do we measure the achievements of the Civil Rights Movement?
6. How does the idea of universal human rights evolve, and what is its relation to the American Civil Rights Movement?

Objectives

• Survey the milestones of American civil rights.
• Discuss the role of the media in affecting social change.
• Explore civil rights and how have they been abused and protected?
• Examine the significance of legislation and court decisions that are integral to the Civil Rights Movement. 
• Distinguish between de jure and de facto segregation.
• Analyze the effectiveness of affirmative action programs. 
• Assess the reasons for an effectiveness of the escalation from civil disobedience to more radical protest in the civil rights movement. 
• Analyze the ongoing effects of various social and economic programs that attempt to achieve equality such as the War on Poverty, EEO, explore reform movements that promote environmental, women’s liberation, and other civil rights agendas.
• Survey the counterculture that grew in the 60’s and 70’s.
• Survey significant cultural movements (literature, art, music, dance, theater, film, sports) and their superstars.
• Define essential terms including: segregation, discrimination, entitlement program, sit-in, demonstration, protest, march, boycott, activism, Freedom Riders, Freedom Summer, draft card, picketing, Black Power, separate but equal, sexual revolution, anti-war movement, equal rights, Title IX, women’s liberation, 1968 Democratic Convention.
• Describe the role of important people and groups: Elizabeth Peratrovich, Thurgood Marshall, Jackie Robinson, A. Philip Randolph, Rosa Parks, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, Bull Connor, James Meredith, George Wallace, the Little Rock Nine, Black Panthers, Nation of Islam, CORE, SCLC, SNCC, SDS, ACLU, Caesar Chavez, AIM, La Raza, the Women’s Rights Movement, Gloria Steinem, Betty Freidan, Dennis Banks, Russell Means, Vine Deloria, Jr., Timothy Leary, Tom Hayden, Abby Hoffman, the Beatles, Woodstock, Joan Baez, Grateful Dead, Andy Warhol, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Vonnegut, Tom Wolfe, Bob Dylan.

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