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Educational Resources Exhibit Background Information

For All the World To See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights is an exploration of the power of the image in America’s pursuit of racial justice. The exhibit material is not intended to portray the history of the Civil Rights movement, nor is it an attempt to collect all of the visual culture of the time. Instead, it examines the relationship between the two. The purpose of this section of the Programming Guide is to give the reader greater insight into the historical context of this crossroads. Not all events, images, objects or episodes of the Civil Rights movement will be conveyed here. Instead the background information will focus on examples that most vividly or typically demonstrate how the visual image converged with and propelled America’s struggle for civil rights.

It is also important to note that civil rights in America transcends the modern era of focus. For All the World To See investigates the visual culture of the modern Civil Rights movement – from the early 1950s to the mid-1970s. Certainly, humankind has been using visual imagery to document and express injustice for centuries beyond this period. It also focuses on the African American experience of the Civil Rights movement, the focus of the original scholarly work conducted by Curator Dr. Maurice Berger. We acknowledge and fully respect the struggle of a multitude ethnicities for justice throughout American History and encourage you to investigate the many and varied stories within your own community.

A Choice of Weapons Trapped and desperate in a world of relentless racism, young Gordon Parks once contemplated robbing a trolley car conductor with a switchblade. He was at his breaking point and “it was becoming more and more difficult [for me] to live with the indifference, the hate…I wouldn’t allow my life to be conditioned by what others thought or did, or give in to anyone who would have me be subservient.”

The crusade for dignity and freedom led Parks to photography, where he finally found his voice. He saw power in photographs, specifically the Farm Security Administration’s images that documented American poverty and racism (http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa/ ). Like Gordon Parks, Civil Rights leaders themselves realized that the struggle for equal rights and access was also a struggle over images.

The Modern Civil Rights Movement in America The modern Civil Rights movement in America began after World War II and lasted into the mid-1970s. The post-World War II period was one marked by great political and social unrest, creating an environment ripe for social change. Despite the fact that over 2.5 million African Americans registered for the draft and over 1 million served in the U.S. military during World War II, black soldiers were initially enlisted into segregated troops and deemed unfit to face combat. On the homefront, black Americans served in

The Educational Programming Guide for For All the World To See © 2011, NEH on the Road., a Division of Mid-America Arts Alliance all capacities, contributing to the Great Migration as they moved to Northern cities and towns where help was needed to build the Allies seemingly unending resources.

In fact, African American leaders called for a “Double V,” a campaign for Victory over fascist leaders abroad and racism at home. Even though the Allies proved to be the victorious defenders of freedom and democracy, Hispanic, Native American and African American soldiers returned home to prejudice, discrimination, and Jim Crow.

As a new world leader, America was under global scrutiny and called upon to face its own history of injustice. African American leaders saw this as an opportune time to fight for true equality as the United States’ sense of justice was piqued. Adding to the environment of activism was the fact that African Americans escaping the rural poverty of the South during the war attained success and empowerment in the northern cities, where institutions were dedicated to African American expression and solidarity.

In addition, post war America also saw the enlargement of the NAACP and the beginning of other Civil Rights groups like the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE). African Americans who served in the military also gained access to education and job training through the GI Bill. For these reasons, post-World War II America represented the beginning of a break with the past that informed the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

Public memory of the Civil Rights era generally falls on civil disobedience as the primary force of change. Lunch counter sit-ins and bus boycotts readily come to mind as instruments of change. Marches, demonstrations, and Freedom Rides propelled the movement on the streets.

For All the World to See looks at the Civil Rights movement through a different lens – that of the visual image made public. Curator and author Maurice Berger focuses on this particular and often historically overlooked element of the civil rights arsenal, bringing to light that “the struggle for racial justice in the United States was fought as assuredly on television and in movies, in magazines and newspapers, and through artifacts and images of everyday life as it was on the streets of Montgomery, Little Rock and Watts.”

Images from the Civil Rights era not only reflected racism, but also documented its shift in American culture. While the white media used imagery as a tool to control and maintain the Jim Crow status quo, the same imagery soon became a target for equal rights groups. Eventually, imagery was used to change beliefs and attitudes. This exhibit examines the relationship between the visual image and the struggle for racial justice.

Jim Crow Laws & Racist Imagery and Artifacts Jim Crow laws both supported and reflected the offensive and hostile imagery targeting African Americans in the first half of the twentieth century. Initially conceived as a stereotypical character in a minstrel show, Jim Crow came to represent the laws and actions that systematically disenfranchised and brutally segregated African Americans. While segregation went into effect immediately after the Civil War, the Supreme Court

The Educational Programming Guide for For All the World To See © 2011, NEH on the Road., a Division of Mid-America Arts Alliance sanctioned it in the 1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson case. Plessy vs. Ferguson upheld state’s rights to implement “separate but equal” language. The federal government also refused to enact anti-lynching laws. In essence, a legally enforced caste system had been established, that was reinforced through terror (mob violence) and a visual culture that consistently publicized black inferiority.

Visual imagery of African Americans during this time took on several forms, varying in malevolence. Advertisements, early TV and kitchenware portrayed African Americans as humble and doting servants, always eager to please their white employers. The Aunt Jemima character was “the ultimate symbol and personification of the black cook, servant, and mammy.” Like Jim Crow, Aunt Jemima was originally a character in a blackface minstrel show. She was later adopted as a product trademark when a milling company executive thought white consumers could easily connect black cooks and servitude to southern hospitality and comfort. White social status could comfortably stay intact with Aunt Jemima and her husband Uncle Mose promoting images of racial nostalgia.

Early TV shows like The Beulah Show (ABC, 1950-1953) resonated with white audiences for similar reasons. Beulah (she was played by three actors over show’s three- year run, including Oscar winner Hattie McDaniel), a housekeeper for a white family, focused all of her efforts and antics on the needs of her white employers. White Americans could accept mainstream black representation if it occurred in the form of a non-threatening and inferior character.

More overtly hostile imagery also took hold in a visual culture rife with racial anxiety. Mainstream versions of “savage tribesman, illiterate handyman, enfeebled child, and other black character types” were extremely popular imagery during complex and tension filled times in race relations. These hate-producing nostalgic items (like the alligator pen or postcard featuring the boy eating a watermelon), remnants of slaveholding days, continued in the Deep South well into the civil rights era to further the cause of Jim Crow laws. “Subhuman cannibal and wretched Sambo with bee-stung lips” imagery proved that alienating the races and preventing any interracial contact was indeed “unhealthy.”

In Film The film industry also played a part in bringing nostalgic images to the big screen that harkened back to a time when race relations took on a solid hierarchy. Films such as Show Boat , Gone with the Wind , and Song of the South featured imagery that came from the “plantation tradition.” Movie-goers could lose themselves in a time when a “slave’s traditional attitude of respect and easy-going trustfulness” ruled the day. African American actors typically found themselves playing socially acceptable clichés instead of complex human beings. The year after Show Boat (1937) was released, actor and activist Paul Robeson expressed, “[I am] sick and tired of caricatures…because the South is Hollywood’s box office.”

The Educational Programming Guide for For All the World To See © 2011, NEH on the Road., a Division of Mid-America Arts Alliance Invisibility The only alternative to overtly hostile or subservient imagery was complete lack of representation. Images of African Americans were virtually erased in the majority of mainstream media and rarely seen in pop culture. Viewing the series of For All the World to See exhibit clips Black Out will give the exhibit visitor a sense of this invisibility when public service announcements and messages regarding national wellness and patriotism did not include African Americans. Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952) explores the notion of African Americans remaining unseen and voiceless in mainstream culture. He advocated that when the full complexity of black life and culture is recovered and acknowledged, true power will follow.

The Culture of Positive Images African American activists and leaders recognized that the obliteration and subjugation of black life and culture must be made visible. With a keen understanding of the power of information in visual form, media became both a target and a tool for Civil Rights leaders. In 1946, in New York City and several subsequent cities, Civil rights groups protested the negative stereotyping in Disney’s Song of the South . The film romanticized slavery and the master-slave relationship, reducing the main black character to simpleton status on the same level as the cartoon woodland animals he befriended. The NAACP also took on Disney, publicizing that racist clichés were harmful to black people, children and the principles of our nation.

The government responded with begrudging attempts to make mainstream representations of African Americans positive. U.S. Congress selected Booker T. Washington as the first African American to be featured on a coin (1940) and postage stamp (1946). While the stamp was intended for general use, the coin remained commemorative and non-circulating. Also of note, selecting Washington to represent African Americans was tactical in itself. Washington was known for advocating for compromise and not active protest or resistance. He also suggested that black people accept segregation.

Professional sports represented another form of early mainstream black representation. Generally this took the form of sports memorabilia like the race-neutral baseball card that simply provided performance statistics on the field. Periodicals featuring up-and-coming black athletes characterized them as simple and lacking complexity. African American sports figures were only accepted by mainstream culture because they were rendered unthreatening. The black press was much more supportive and progressive in their coverage of black sportsmanship. Frequently, stories of great athleticism were also tied to stories of prejudice and discrimination. It was the black press that also repeatedly revealed racism Jackie Robinson endured during his first season in a newly integrated league.

Black Pictorials According to Dr. Maurice Berger, “the early years of the modern civil rights movement, black photographers, artists, filmmakers, producers, publishers, and editors worked arduously to recast the negative image of the race that was then common in popular

The Educational Programming Guide for For All the World To See © 2011, NEH on the Road., a Division of Mid-America Arts Alliance culture. The rise of African-American pictorial magazines was arguably the most public and far-reaching of this activity.” W.E.B. Du Bois was one of the first African Americans to envision a widely circulated pictorial magazine that used state-of-the-art technology to serve the needs and aspirations of African Americans.

A year after co-founding the NAACP (1909), Du Bois launched the monthly magazine The Crisis . Through a balance of words and images, the Crisis’ objective was to inspire black resistance to racism by revealing “the danger of race prejudice.” Among its pages, images of gruesome racial violence served as a stark and persuasive contrast to images of black success and accomplishment. In 1910, a picture of an accomplished African American was “an innovation” in relationship to a mainstream media that inevitably depicted black people as criminals, clowns, and servants.

Later in 1942, a young entrepreneur named John H. Johnson started a publishing enterprise after he discovered an “almost total white-out on positive black news.” Adopting a format similar to Reader’s Digest , Johnson’s series of successful publications began with Negro Digest . Johnson quickly learned the power of the photograph, and incorporated pictures into his publications because of their immediacy and ability to persuade in a way that text could not. Three years later he launched Ebony , illustrated in the style of Life magazine. Even when it covered racial injustice, Ebony ’s message was upbeat and played to an upwardly mobile middle class.

Emmett Till As the Civil Rights movement moved forward, leaders contemplated how to shift the focus from perpetuating positive black images to jolting white America out of its racial stupor. In 1955, the black press media coverage following the vicious beating and murder of Emmett Till provided the visual confirmation needed to wake a sleeping nation.

Fourteen-year old Emmett Till was visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi during the summer of 1955. Unaware of the stringent Jim Crow etiquette governing the South, young Till had a brief (reports of exactly what occurred vary) exchange with a white woman. Three days later, Till was forcibly abducted, savagely beaten and tortured, and left for dead on the banks of the Tallahatchie River. His body could only be identified by the ring on his finger, once belonging to his father, a World War II veteran. The Mississippi county sheriff tried to order the immediate burial, then only released the body to his mother on the condition that the casket stay sealed. The corpse was packed with lye, which hastens decomposition.

Mamie Till Bradley, Emmett’s mother, insisted that the casket be opened. When she took in the horror of her disfigured son, she knew she had to make visible what the state of Mississippi so desperately wanted to hide. The corpse was never retouched for the funeral, as Mamie knew the power of letting “the world see what I’ve seen.” She permitted several photographs to be taken of her son’s corpse, explaining the “I knew that if they walked by that casket, if people opened the pages of Jet magazine and the Chicago Defender , if other people could see it with their own eyes, then together we

The Educational Programming Guide for For All the World To See © 2011, NEH on the Road., a Division of Mid-America Arts Alliance might find a way to express what we had seen.” It was John H. Johnson who decided to publish the photo in the September 15, 1955 issue of Jet . Till became a symbol of racial injustice and motivated black involvement civil rights causes that would override the fear of Jim Crow.

African American Civil Rights leaders knew that “if our story is to be told, we will have to write and photograph it and disseminate it ourselves,” (Mary King, 1964, SNCC). Civil Rights photographers did not just provide documentary evidence of race relations. They were skilled commentators and agitators. Yet the persuasive evidence offered by photographers could only go as far as their public reach. By the 1960s, images of racial violence were regularly picked up by mainstream magazines and newspapers (Life, Time, Look, and Newsweek ) and aggressively used in black periodicals (Ebony , Jet , the Amsterdam News, the Arkansas State Press , the Baltimore Afro-American, the Philadelphia Tribune , the Chicago Defender , the Norfolk Journal and Guide , and the Pittsburgh Courier ).

TV: Bringing the Movement Home The critical event that ultimately brought white America out of its apathy was the 1963 Birmingham demonstrations. The images, especially of attack dogs lunging at demonstrators and water cannons aimed at children, were distributed to mainstream publications like Time and Life . Perhaps more importantly to the advancement of the movement (and most memorable) was the fact that television cameras captured the water’s force pushing young, black protesters down the street.

The Civil Rights movement was television’s first recurring news story. It provided an unending stream of emotionally intense images that enthralled viewers and kept them tuning in night after night. These events were unfolding at the same time that the percentage of American homes equipped with television sets jumped from 56 to 92%.

TV documented the March on Washington in August 1963 in unprecedented fashion. The visual image, frozen and stilled in magazines and newspapers, could not capture the excitement and instantly transmit the message to millions of people around the world the way the TV did. TV became an “indispensable force,” a means of awakening “the indifferent white millions whom integration or segregation was of scant personal concern. The sociologists of tomorrow may find that it was television more than anything else that finally penetrated this huge camp of the uncommitted.”

Broadcasting Race Capturing racial violence as it unfolded on the nightly news documented the changing social fabric in America as it happened. But how would America portray its new understanding of race relations on entertainment television? One of the most groundbreaking TV dramas of its time was Julia (NBC, 1968). Julia, starring Diahann Carroll, was the first prime time TV show to star an African American actor since The Beulah Show and Amos ‘n Andy. Creators deemed Julia groundbreaking because the show refused to perpetuate stereotyping. In doing so, they neglected the social and political realities that African Americans face every day. Critics, including Diahann

The Educational Programming Guide for For All the World To See © 2011, NEH on the Road., a Division of Mid-America Arts Alliance Carroll herself, criticized the show because it portrayed a “happy-go-lucky racial harmony” where Julia was consistently isolated from, and rarely interacted with, other African Americans.

The answer to race neutral TV shows came in the form of the ghetto comedy of the 1970s. With predominantly African American casts, sitcoms like Sanford and Son (NBC, 1972-1977), and Good Times (CBS, 1974-1979) often times reverted to stereotypes as they equated race with poverty. At first, these shows would attempt to make social commentary on the state of race relations and even portrayed uplifting images of the black community. But such serious storylines eventually faded into the background in favor of stereotypes for comic effect.

The most provocative of Civil Rights era entertainment TV was CBS’s East Side/West Side (1963-1964). It grappled with controversial topics, “honestly and sensitively” dealing with vital problems facing the African American community. It was cancelled after one season.

All in the Family (CBS, 1971-1979) also pushed the envelope, taking an unapologetic view of the racial attitudes of the Bunker family. Archie Bunker, the patriarch, voiced what millions of white men feared – that minority groups were causing working class whites undue hardships. Archie revealed his bigotry through the absurdity and stupidity of his character, thus avoiding the possibility that they show was glorifying prejudice. All in the Family shattered the view that all was well among races in America, a misconception put forth by numerous other primetime shows.

Variety shows served as a consistent outlet for black entertainers and presented both black and white performers interacting as equals. The Ed Sullivan Show (CBS, 1948- 1971 ) was TV’s most successful variety hour. The show was an early and reliable forum for African American singers, actors, and comedians. Sullivan battled with conservative sponsors who balked at the show’s attempt to enfranchise black entertainers. Even so, the Ed Sullivan Show regularly featured black and white performers interacting as equals. The program also brought African American entertainers into the living rooms of all Americans and in doing so, helped instill pride in the African American community.

Television for Black Audiences From the late 1960s, television programs produced, written, and hosted by black journalists and entertainers began to appear on local and affiliate stations nationwide. Restraints on content were completely lifted because white sponsors were not needed to produce the shows. This made it possible for shows like Like It Is (WABC, 1968- present) to examine the cultural, political, and social concerns specific to the black community. In fact, the objective of the series Colored People’s Time (PBS, 1968-1976) was to offer an “alternative to the objectification and negative imagery of blacks.” Other shows included Black Horizons (Pittsburgh), Black Perspectives on the News (Philadelphia), Cliff Alexander – Black on White (Washington DC), Face to Face (Seattle), For You Black Women (syndicated), Haney’s People (Detroit), Inside Bedford-

The Educational Programming Guide for For All the World To See © 2011, NEH on the Road., a Division of Mid-America Arts Alliance Stuyvesant (New York), Job Man Caravan (South Carolina), Minority Matters (Kansas City, Kansas), Our People (Chicago), Say Brother (Boston), and Soul! (New York).

Rethinking Blackness TV, the very medium that held so much promise for African American enfranchisement, also failed its black audiences, because depictions were most often one-dimensional and shaped by white people. The complexity of the human being was still missing from representation. African Americans began seeking opportunities to broadcast an alternative representation, free of white control and interpretation.

As a result of taking control of racial representation in the 1960s and 1970s, black artists, media and business endeavors revealed greater self-expression in multiple venues. Periodicals like Tan and Essence celebrated black beauty, black filmmakers challenged stereotypical characters, and local and regional black TV programs (both news and entertainment) gave voice to African American interests and viewpoints. Writer Thulani Davis observed of the time, “White America at the time did not know that we lived in a complete universe. In our private lives we were whole.”

Black Panther Party In the 1960s, the Civil Rights movement grew divided– one arm advocating nonviolence and collaboration with whites, and the other committed to black power, insurrection, and self-sufficiency. The Black Panther Party (est. 1966) “broadcast their intention to fight back against those who sought to exploit them.” This soon gave way to community based activism that advocated for free health care, adequate housing, and programs to end hunger, drug abuse, and police brutality. The Black Panther’s visual campaign, coordinated by Emory Douglas, sought to integrate the visual message of overcoming struggle through revolutionary art. Striking graphics with bold color, iconography, and catchphrases were easily recognizable and represented the party’s ideology. Douglas’ ambition was “art for the people’s sake.” The Black Arts movement then came in 1965, calling for a singular expression of African American culture. It rejected the idea of integration, stating that African American life was already full, rich, and complete.

Black Panther party activism mirrored the broader Black Power movement led by Malcolm X. As spokesperson for the Black Muslim religious group, the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X refuted that civil disobedience was the best way of procuring equal rights. Maintaining freedom and justice, to Malcolm, sometimes required aggressive tactics. Malcolm X recognized and used the mainstream media to make his message known. By the time of his assassination in 1965, he had appeared on radio, TV, magazines, and newspapers more times than Martin Luther King, Jr.

Snapshots of Everyday Life Requiring absolutely no media cooperation, a quiet visual revolution was taking place through a simple ever present device – the snapshot camera. The Kodak camera was first marketed in 1888 and within one decade, over 1.5 million units were sold. The Brownie was marketed in 1900 and at the end of World War I camera sales took off again when

The Educational Programming Guide for For All the World To See © 2011, NEH on the Road., a Division of Mid-America Arts Alliance film rationing ended. After World War II, the snapshot camera was a common device in many American homes that documented family and personal life.

By taking pictures of themselves, their families, their lives, African Americans could play a part in their own image-making, thus providing confirmation of black “humanity, complexity, beauty, and cultural and intellectual authority.” bell hooks writes “shot spontaneously, without any notion of remaking black bodies in the image of whiteness, snapshots gave us a way to see ourselves, a sense of how we looked when we were not ‘wearing the mask,’ when we were not attempting to perfect the image for the white supremacist gaze.” For an in depth look at the power of personal photography to protect and buoy the African American spirit during Jim Crow, read Elizabeth Arnold Hull’s thesis entitled Family Pictures “Out of Place”: Race, Resistance, and Affirmation in the Pope Family Photograph Collection, 1890 – 1920. You can find the document here: http://libres.uncg.edu/edocs/etd/1093/umi-uncg-1093.pdf

From the big screen to the personal photo, the struggle for racial justice and equality skillfully made use of the power of visual image to create a cultural and political transformation.

Key Figures and Groups of the Civil Rights Movement (Listed in order of exhibit appearance)

Gordon Parks (1912–2006) Photographer, filmmaker, writer, composer, and musician, Gordon Parks was born in Fort Scott, Kansas. He was the youngest of 15 children. His father was a tenant farmer and the family struggled as a result of poverty. After his mother died when he was 15, Parks left Kansas and moved north to St. Paul, Minnesota.

Parks attended Central High and Mechanical Arts High School in St. Paul but was forced to quit before graduation. While working as a railroad porter in 1937, he saw a magazine spread of photography that sparked his interest. Parks purchased a camera from a pawn shop and within a month presented his first exhibit at an Eastman Kodak store. He soon became a successful fashion and portrait photographer. He shot a photo essay of Chicago’s South Side ghetto and received a fellowship from the Farm Security Administration. He shot one of his best known photographs, American Gothic, Washington, D.C., of Ella Watson, on the cleaning crew, standing in front of an American flag with brooms in hand.

Parks’ next venue was Harlem, where he worked as a freelance photographer for Vogue . He received a contract for the Standard Oil Photography Project in New Jersey. A photo essay of a Harlem gang leader earned Parks a staff position with Life . During the next two decades, he recorded images of post-war America, depicting black America emerging from the Civil Rights Movement.

In 1963 Parks published an autobiographical novel of his youth, The Learning Tree , which he adapted to the movie screen in 1969. He continued making movies with the

The Educational Programming Guide for For All the World To See © 2011, NEH on the Road., a Division of Mid-America Arts Alliance highly successful Shaft , its sequel Shaft's Big Score , and Super Cops . His ballet, Martin , based on Martin Luther King, Jr., premiered in 1969 and was screened on national television the following year. Parks died in March 7, 2006, in New York. He is buried in the Fort Scott cemetery.

Source: Gordon Parks, Kansapedia, Kansas Historical Society, http://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/gordon-parks/12164 . Additional: Andy Grundberg, “Gordon Parks, a Master of the Camera, Dies at 93,” The New York Times (online), http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/08/arts/design/08parks.html . The Gordon Parks Museum, http://www.gordonparkscenter.org/.

Ralph Ellison (1914–1994) Ralph Waldo Ellison was born on March 1, 1914, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. As Ellison himself says in reference to his parents, “no matter what their lives had been, their children’s lives would be lives of possibility.” His mother, Ida Ellison, a maid, would bring home books, magazines, and record albums that had been discarded in the homes she cleaned.

When he was a teenager, Ellison and his friends daydreamed of being “Renaissance Men.” Ellison admired the musicians of his area. At Douglas High School, Ellison followed his inclination toward music and went to Tuskegee Institute on a scholarship, dreaming of writing a symphony. After there was a mix-up with his scholarship, Ellison chose to go to New York where he found it difficult to find work especially as a musician. The result was a succession of odd jobs which eventually led him to Richard Wright, who encouraged him to be a writer rather than a musician.

From this point on, Ellison followed a life of writing in which he earned many awards. His best known work is the novel Invisible Man , though he also wrote several short stories. He began a second novel that has recently been published posthumously. He was a professor at Rutgers, New York University, and Bard College. Ellison died on April 16, 1994. In 1996, Flying Home: And Other Stories was published after being discovered in his home.

Source: Ralph Ellison, 1914–1994, Modern American, 1914 – present: Literature, http://www.uncp.edu/home/canada/work/allam/1914-/lit/ellison.htm . Additional: Ralph Ellison, An American Journey, American Masters, http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/ralph- ellison/an-american-journey/587/.

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was an American civil rights activist, sociologist, writer, and educator, widely recognized as the foremost black intellectual and spokesperson in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century. Du Bois was born and raised in Massachusetts, and graduated in 1888 from Fisk University, a black liberal arts college in Nashville, Tennessee. During the summer, he taught in a rural school and later wrote about his experiences in his book The Souls of Black Folk.

The Educational Programming Guide for For All the World To See © 2011, NEH on the Road., a Division of Mid-America Arts Alliance In 1895, Du Bois became the first African American to receive a Ph.D. in history from Harvard University. With the publication of The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study in 1899, the first case study of a black community in the United States, as well as papers on black farmers, businessmen, and black life in Southern communities, Du Bois established himself as the first great scholar of black life in America.

He taught sociology at Atlanta University between 1898 and 1910. Du Bois had hoped that social science could help eliminate segregation, but he eventually came to the conclusion that the only effective strategy against racism was agitation. He challenged the dominant ideology of black accommodation as preached and practiced by Booker T. Washington, then the most influential black man in America. In 1905, Du Bois took the lead in founding the short-lived Niagara Movement, intended to be an organization advocating civil rights for blacks. It would become the forerunner of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which was founded in 1909. Du Bois played a prominent role in the organization’s creation and became its director of research and the editor of its magazine, The Crisis.

For many young African Americans in the period from 1910 through the 1930s, Du Bois was the voice of the black community. He attacked Woodrow Wilson when the president allowed his cabinet members to segregate the federal government. He continued to fight against the demand by many whites that black education be primarily industrial and that black students in the South learn to accept white supremacy.”

In the 1930s, Du Bois found himself in a bitter dispute with Walter White, the head of the NAACP, regarding Du Bois’ endorsement of voluntary segregation. He resigned from the editorship of The Crisis and the NAACP in 1934. He taught for the next ten years at Atlanta University and published two of his major works, Black Reconstruction: An Essay Toward a History of the Part which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America 1860-1880 and Dusk of Dawn . In 1951, when he was 83 years old, the federal government prosecuted Du Bois for his affiliation with the Communist Party. A judge eventually threw out the case. Disillusioned with the United States, he officially joined the Communist Party in 1961 and moved to Ghana. Du Bois died August 27, 1963 at the age of 95 in Accra, Ghana, one day before Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his I have a Dream speech.

Source: W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963), The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_people_dubois.html. Additional: WEBDuBois.org, http://www.webdubois.org/index.html. W.E.B. Du Bois: Online Resources, Web Guides, The Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/dubois/.

Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) Booker T. Washington was considered the most influential black educator of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born a slave on a small farm in the Virginia backcountry, he worked in the salt furnaces and coalmines of West Virginia as a child. Determined to educate himself, he traveled hundreds of miles under great hardship until he arrived at Hampton Institute.

He became a star pupil under the tutelage of General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, head of Hampton. In 1881, Washington founded Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute on the Hampton model in the Black Belt of Alabama. He reassured whites that nothing in his educational program challenged white supremacy or offered economic competition with whites. He accepted racial subordination as a necessary evil, at least until such time as blacks could prove themselves worthy of full civil and political rights.

Invited to speak at the 1895 Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Washington publicly accepted disfranchisement and social segregation as long as whites would allow black economic progress, educational opportunity, and justice in the courts. “The wisest of my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremist folly and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than artificial forcing. The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than to spend a dollar in an opera house.”

An organized resistance to Washington grew within the black intellectual community. A new era had begun in the black community, and a younger generation would no longer accept white supremacy. Under the leadership of Du Bois and others, they would demand their political and civil rights.

Source: Booker T. Washington (1856–1915), The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_people_booker.html. Additional: Booker T. Washington, 1856–1915, Documenting the American South, http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/washington/bio.html.

John H. Johnson (1918 – 2005) Born in 1918 in Arkansas City, Arkansas, Johnson was the grandson of slaves. His family later moved north because there was no high school for black students in Arkansas City. After graduation from DuSable High School in Chicago in 1936, Johnson was invited to speak before the Urban League, an early Civil Rights organization. The president of an insurance company that served the black community was in the audience and offered Johnson a job and tuition for college. He never earned his college degree, but after a few years came up with the idea for a new magazine based on Reader's Digest. He sent out a subscription offer to Supreme Life policyholders, and when 3,000 signed up, Negro Digest was born. The first issue came out in November of 1942, and soon boasted a circulation of 50,000.

His next magazine project would be based on Life, another widely read publication of the day and renowned for its photojournalism. He later said his goal was to "show not only the Negroes but also white people that Negroes got married, had beauty contests, gave parties, ran successful businesses, and did all the other normal things of life," New York Times writer Douglas Martin quoted him as saying. The name of the new magazine was Ebony, and the 25,000 copies printed for its premier issue in November of 1945 sold out entirely.

In 1951, Johnson launched Jet, which covered the achievements of blacks in entertainment, politics, and sports. It, too, became enormously successful, and with Ebony was a staple in nearly every middle-class African-American household for a generation and more. As the Civil Rights era gathered steam, Johnson's magazines profiled the movement's leaders, covered important events, and delivered strong opinions in both its editorials and feature articles about race relations in America.

Source: Encyclopedia of World Biography, John H. Johnson http://www.notablebiographies.com/newsmakers2/2006- Ei-La/Johnson-John-H.html

Jackie Robinson (1919–1972) Jack Roosevelt Robinson was born in Cairo, Georgia in 1919 to a family of sharecroppers. His mother, Mallie Robinson, single-handedly raised Jackie and her four other children. They were the only black family on their block, and the prejudice they encountered only strengthened their bond.

Jackie excelled early at all sports and learned to make his own way in life. At UCLA, Jackie became the first athlete to win varsity letters in four sports: baseball, basketball, football and track. In 1941, he was named to the All-American football team. Due to financial difficulties, he was forced to leave college, and eventually decided to enlist in the U.S. Army. After two years in the army, he had progressed to second lieutenant. Jackie's army career was cut short when he was court-martialed in relation to his objections with incidents of racial discrimination. In the end, Jackie left the Army with an honorable discharge.

In 1945, Jackie played one season in the Negro Baseball League, traveling all over the Midwest with the Kansas City Monarchs. In 1947, Brooklyn Dodgers president Branch Rickey approached Jackie about joining the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Major Leagues had not had an African-American player since 1889, when baseball became segregated. When Jackie first donned a Brooklyn Dodger uniform, he pioneered the integration of professional athletics in America.

At the end of Robinson’s rookie season with the Brooklyn Dodgers, he had become National League Rookie of the Year with 12 homers, a league-leading 29 steals, and a .297 average. In 1949, he was selected as the NL's Most Valuable player of the Year and also won the batting title with a .342 average that same year. As a result of his great success, Jackie was eventually inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962.

Source: Jackie Robinson Official Web site, Biography, http://www.jackierobinson.com/. Additional: Jackie Robinson. Biography, Bio. True Story, http://www.biography.com/people/jackie-robinson-9460813 .

James Baldwin (1924–1987) Civil rights activist, author, playwright, and poet, James Baldwin grew up in poverty in Harlem. From 14 to 16 he was active as a preacher in a small revivalist church, a period

The Educational Programming Guide for For All the World To See © 2011, NEH on the Road., a Division of Mid-America Arts Alliance he would write about in his semiautobiographical first and finest novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953) and in the play The Amen Corner (performed 1965).

In 1957 Baldwin became an active participant in the civil-rights struggle. A book of essays, Nobody Knows My Name (1961), explores black-white relations, a theme also central to his novel Another Country (1962). In the impassioned The Fire Next Time (1963), perhaps his most powerful civil-rights statement, he said that blacks and whites must come to terms with the past and make a future together or face destruction. Baldwin’s later works include the bitter play about racist oppression Blues for Mister Charlie (produced 1964), the story collection Going to Meet the Man (1965), the novel Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone (1968), and the essay collection No Name in the Street (1972).

Source: James Baldwin, C-Span American Writers, http://www.americanwriters.org/writers/baldwin.asp . Additional: James Baldwin. Biography, Bio. True Story, http://www.biography.com/people/james-baldwin-9196635. James Baldwin, American Masters, http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/james-baldwin/about-the- author/59/

Mamie Till Mobley (1921–2003) In 1955, Mamie Till was unwillingly thrust into American history. The murder of her son, Emmett, catapulted the quiet Chicago civil service employee into a lifetime of advocacy, starting with seeking justice for the death of her son.

At age 18, she met Louis Till from Madrid, Missouri. They married on October 14, 1940. Their only child, Emmett Louis Till, nicknamed “Bobo,” was born at Cook County Hospital in Chicago. Aside from a bout with polio at age five, after which Emmett would speak with a mild stutter, he was a healthy and happy boy. Emmett would never know his father, who was shipped out to Europe as an Army private. Mamie and Louis Till separated in 1942. Three years later, Louis Till was killed in Italy.

In 1955, Emmett was set on joining his cousins and spending the end of the summer in Mississippi. When Mamie put her son on the train, it was the last time she would see him alive. When Emmett was brutally murdered, Mamie turned to the strength of her family and faith. Horrified by the mutilation of her son’s body, Mamie made the stunning decision that Emmett would have an open casket funeral. “I think everybody needed to know what had happened to Emmett Till,” she said. Some 50,000 people streamed in to view Emmett’s corpse in Chicago.

After two of her son’s killers, J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, were acquitted of murder leading to international condemnation of the verdict and Mississippi. The NAACP, black leaders and Mamie were hopeful that Milam and Bryant would at least be punished for kidnapping. On November 9, 1955, a Mississippi grand jury refused to indict Milam and Bryant on kidnapping charges. Both men were free.

Mamie took her fight to the people and gave speeches to overflowing crowds across the country. Blacks were galvanized. Membership in the NAACP soared. African Americans

The Educational Programming Guide for For All the World To See © 2011, NEH on the Road., a Division of Mid-America Arts Alliance were angered by Emmett’s killing and the injustice, and moved by the loss of an only child to a young mother.

Source: Mamie Till Mobley (1921–2003), The Murder of Emmett Till, American Experience, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/till/peopleevents/p_parents.html .

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) Martin Luther King, Jr., was born in 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia, later attending segregated public schools where he graduated from high school at the age of fifteen. He received a B. A. degree in 1948 from Morehouse College, a distinguished Negro institution of Atlanta from which both his father and grandfather had graduated. After three years of theological study at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania where he was elected president of a predominantly white senior class, he was awarded the B.D. in 1951. He then enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University, completing his residence for the doctorate in 1953 and receiving the degree in 1955. In Boston he met and married Coretta Scott, a young woman of uncommon intellectual and artistic attainments. Two sons and two daughters were born into the family.

In 1954, Martin Luther King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Always a strong worker for civil rights for members of his race, King was, by this time, a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the leading organization of its kind in the nation. He accepted the leadership of the first great Negro nonviolent demonstration of contemporary times in the United States, the Montgomery Bus Boycott which lasted 382 days. During the boycott, King was arrested, his home was bombed, he was subjected to personal abuse, but at the same time he emerged as a Negro leader of the first rank.

In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement. In the eleven-year period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action. He wrote five books as well as numerous articles. In these years, he led a protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a coalition of conscience and inspiring his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” a manifesto of the Negro revolution. In 1963, he directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., where he delivered his address, “I Have a Dream.”

At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money to the furtherance of the civil rights movement. On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city, he was assassinated.

Source:

The Educational Programming Guide for For All the World To See © 2011, NEH on the Road., a Division of Mid-America Arts Alliance Martin Luther King Jr., The Noel Peace Prize 1964 Biography, http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1964/king-bio.html . Additional: Martin Luther King, Jr. (biography), The Martin Luther King J. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, http://www.thekingcenter.org/history/about-dr-king/.

Ernest Withers (1922-2007) Ernest Withers made photographs for almost sixty years. His subjects were individuals and groups and the events which they create for themselves.

Withers’ very particular point of view was informed by his personal history, that of a socially conscious citizen who worked hard to support his community and raise a family of eight children in Memphis, Tennessee, his hometown and a city which was segregated until the 1960s. In 1955, a photograph of the mutilated body of fourteen year old Emmett Till, published in Jet magazine, shocked Black communities through the U.S. Withers’ identification as a civil rights photographer began with his coverage of the ensuing trail of two white men for the murder of Till.

Withers was not just an observer of the movement, but a participant too. He regularly received phone calls from activists and organizations to alert him to current and future actions. Withers saw his work as a contribution to the movement for social change, and therefore, his role was that of social documentarian, a recorder of real people engaged in historic events. He compiled hundreds of images (including the iconic image of the sanitation workers strike in Memphis) during the civil rights years and made tangible a sense of the scale and consistency of the movement.

Source: Massachusetts College of Art and the Department of African American Studies, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts. Let Us March On! Selected Civil Right Photographs of Ernest C. Withers, 1955-1968.

Ed Sullivan (1901 – 1974) One of the most important contributions Ed Sullivan will be remembered for is how he embraced African American performers and promoted them to a national television audience. When faced with criticism by white viewers and advertisers, Ed Sullivan refused to back down. He refused to listen to critics who claimed that he booked too many African American artists or that African American musicians shouldn’t be backed by white bands.

The Ed Sullivan Show defied the ignorant attitudes of the times and promoted diversity in living rooms throughout the country. Ed Sullivan, the man, upheld these same values of equality in his personal life. He formed close friendships with many of the African American artists who came on his show including lifetime bonds with Louis Armstrong (Ed was a pall bearer at Armstrong’s funeral), and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson (Ed covered all the expenses for the legendary dancer’s Harlem funeral).

Since it ended in 1971 no other program on American television has approached the diversity and depth of Sullivan's weekly variety show. Periodic specials drawing from the hundreds of hours of Sullivan shows as well as the venue of The Late Show with David Letterman continue to serve as tribute to Sullivan's unique place in broadcasting. Ed

The Educational Programming Guide for For All the World To See © 2011, NEH on the Road., a Division of Mid-America Arts Alliance Sullivan remains an important figure in American broadcasting because of his talents as a producer and his willingness to chip away at the entrenched racism that existed in television's first decades.

Source: The Museum of Broadcast Communications http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=sullivaned and The official Ed Sullivan site http://www.edsullivan.com/black-history-month-the-ed-sullivan-show

Amiri Baraka (1934 – ) Amiri Baraka is a prolific writer, an acclaimed playwright, and political activist. He was key in the formation of the progressive Black Arts Movement in the mid-1960s and mid- 1970s. His 1964 Obie Award-winning play Dutchman dramatically and powerfully examines race relations in America. In 2001, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Letters. He also received the James Weldon Johnson medal for his contributions to the arts.

From 1968 to 1975, Baraka headed the black Committee for United Newark. During this period, he also founded the Congress of African People, a Pan-Africanist group that grew to have affiliates in 15 cities. Baraka backed Kenneth Gibson’s successful bid to become the first black mayor of Newark in 1970; and he also played a major role in putting together the National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana, in 1971.

Baraka is the author of more than 40 works of poetry, political essays and short fiction, including Somebody Blew Up America & Other Poems and Tales of the Out & the Gone, a winner of the 2008 PEN/Beyond Margins Award.

Source: Amiri Baraka, http://www.nationalblackwritersconference.org/baraka.html . Additional: Amiri Baraka Official Web site, http://www.amiribaraka.com/. Amiri Baraka (biography), Poetry Foundation, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/amiri-baraka.

Malcolm X (1925–1965) African American civil rights leader Malcolm X was a major twentieth-century spokesman for Black Nationalism. He was born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925, in Omaha, Nebraska. His father, a Baptist minister, was an outspoken follower of Marcus Garvey (1887–1940), the Black Nationalist leader. During Malcolm’s early years, his family moved several times because of racism.

In 1946, at the age of twenty, Malcolm was sentenced to ten years in prison for burglary. While in prison he began to transform his life. He began reading books on history, philosophy, and religion. In prison his brother Reginald visited him and told Malcolm about the Black Muslims. The Black Muslims were an Islamic religious organization whose official name was the Lost-Found Nation of Islam. The leader of the group was Elijah Muhammad. Malcolm X soon became the most visible national spokesman for the Black Muslims. As the voice of the organization he was a speech-writer, a philosopher, and an inspiring speaker who was often quoted by the media. His debating talents against white and black opponents helped spread the movement's message.

The Educational Programming Guide for For All the World To See © 2011, NEH on the Road., a Division of Mid-America Arts Alliance At this time in the United States there was a major movement for racial integration, or bringing the races together in peace. However, Malcolm X and the Black Muslims were calling for racial separation. He believed that the civil rights gains made in America amounted to almost nothing. He criticized those African Americans who used nonviolent methods in order to achieve integration. Malcolm X called for self-defense in the face of white violence.

On March 8, 1964, Malcolm X publicly announced that he was leaving the Nation of Islam. He started two new organizations: the Muslim Mosque, Inc., and the Organization of Afro-American Unity. Together, these organizations would work on voter registration, on black control of community public institutions such as schools and the police, and on other civil and political rights for black people. Malcolm X began holding meetings in Harlem at which he discussed the policies and programs of his new organizations. On a Sunday afternoon, February 21, 1965, as he began to address one such meeting, Malcolm X was assassinated.

Source: Malcolm X Biography, Encyclopedia of World Biography, http://www.notablebiographies.com/Lo-Ma/Malcolm- X.html. bell hooks (1952 - ) Considered among the foremost intellectuals of her generation, bell hooks is a social critic and educator who writes about social and cultural topics ranging from racism to feminism to the theory of art and the practice of education. Well known in academic circles for her essays collected in the books Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism and Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics , among others, hooks has also written movingly of her own childhood in the memoir Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood , and of writing in both Wounds of Passion: A Writing Life and Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work. Beginning with 1999's Happy to Be Nappy , hooks broadened her audience to include younger children, and the picture books she has produced have been commended for instilling young African Americans with cultural pride and self-esteem.

Born Gloria Jean Watkins in 1952, hooks grew up in Kentucky, the daughter of a custodial worker and a homemaker. Poetry was a family-shared interest, and when frequent storms caused power outages, the Watkins family would sit in candlelight and recite poetry to one another. Writing her own poetry at an early age, hooks was also inspired by the writings of Emily Dickinson. While she dreamed about becoming an architect when she grew up, the power of words would ultimately prove more compelling than design, although hooks has discussed both art and design in her nonfiction writing.

Hooks’ experiences growing up in a segregated community have caused her to focus predominately on the effects of racism in much of her published work. Additionally, her father's rigid traditional beliefs regarding gender roles made her question, early on, the sexism alive in both the black community and U.S. society at large. Her feminist stance is rooted in the strong female role models that figured largely in her early life; in fact, her adopted name is that of her great grandmother, adopted in order, according to Paula

The Educational Programming Guide for For All the World To See © 2011, NEH on the Road., a Division of Mid-America Arts Alliance Giddings in Ms. , to "honor the unlettered wisdom of her foremothers." Hooks writes the name in the lower case, as she explained to Michel Marriott in the New York Times, "to emphasize her message and not herself."

Source: Bell Hooks (1952–) Biography - Personal, Addresses, Career, Honors Awards, Writings, Sidelights - Review, Black, York, and Book - JRank Articles http://biography.jrank.org/pages/2287/Hooks-Bell-1952.html#ixzz1cVdq502u

. Civil Rights Groups

NAACP The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded in 1909 in New York City by a group of bi-racial activists. Originally called the National Negro Committee, it is the nation’s oldest civil rights organization. United in its opposition to the preaching of Booker T. Washington, who urged blacks to accept segregation, the NAACP first sought to make whites aware of the need for racial equality. The organization launched a program of speechmaking, lobbying, and publicizing the issue of racial discrimination and inequality in housing, education, employment, voting, and transportation. It also launched the Crisis , a magazine edited for 25 years by the black intellectual and leader, W.E.B. DuBois.

It appealed to the Supreme Court to rule as unconstitutional several laws passed by Southern states, and, beginning in 1915, won several important judgments regarding housing and voting rights. In 1916, the NAACP began to expand its membership in the South, under the leadership of field secretary James Weldon Johnson, where the organization faced its most fierce opposition. By 1920, membership had grown to 90,000, of which nearly half was in the South. The NAACP began to publicize the evils of the Jim Crow laws that sanctioned racial discrimination, and fought for a federal anti- lynching law.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the NAACP devoted much of its energy to publicizing the lynching of blacks throughout the United States. To show to the world that the members of the organization would not be intimidated, it held its 1920 annual conference in Atlanta, Georgia, considered at the time to be located in one of the most active Ku Klux Klan areas in the nation. In 1948, the NAACP pressured President Harry Truman into signing an Executive Order to ban discrimination by the federal government. In 1950, the NAACP began its campaign against the legal doctrine that separate but equal schools for black and white children were constitutional. The Supreme Court had ruled that separate schools were acceptable as long as they were “separate but equal.” The NAACP set out to prove that separate facilities provided to black students were not equal to those for whites. Five desegregation lawsuits were launched in different states. The 1954 Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (Kansas) declared segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional.

In 1955, NAACP member Rosa Parks was arrested and fined for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Following Parks’ arrest, a local Baptist pastor, Martin Luther King Jr., helped to organize protests against

The Educational Programming Guide for For All the World To See © 2011, NEH on the Road., a Division of Mid-America Arts Alliance bus segregation. He began to travel the country, make speeches and inspire people to become involved in what became known as the modern civil rights movement. Rivalry among different civil rights groups was a continual problem within the movement, particularly among the leadership. Despite this, there also were numerous instances of cooperation and mutual support, most notably the March on Washington in 1963. The march was held as an attempt to persuade Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act. More than 200,000 people marched peacefully to the Lincoln Memorial to demand equal justice for all citizens under the law. At the end of the march, King made his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

Fifty-five years after the NAACP’s founding, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The act made racial discrimination in public places illegal, and also required employers to provide equal employment opportunities. A year later, the Voting Rights Act was also passed, despite Southern lawmakers’ resistance. The act, which states that no person shall be denied the right to vote on account of race or color, is generally considered to be the most successful piece of civil rights legislation ever adopted by Congress. In the late 1970s, the NAACP broadened its scope by committing itself to the struggle for equal rights around the world. Today, the NAACP is governed nationally by a 64-member board of directors. Headquarters are in Baltimore, Maryland, with regional offices located in California, New York, Michigan, Missouri, Georgia, and Texas. As of 2004, the NAACP had approximately 500,000 members.

Source: NAACP, United States History, http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1595.html. Additional: NAACP Official Web site, http://www.naacp.org/content/main. NAACP. The Free Dictionary by Farlex (Legal Dictionary), http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/NAACP.

SCLC As a principal organization of the Civil Rights Movement, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) championed the use of nonviolent direct action to end legal and social discrimination against African Americans. Identified strongly with its original leader, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., the SCLC organized and sponsored many protest marches and demonstrations during the late 1950s and the 1960s. Although the group’s influence declined after King’s assassination in 1968, the SCLC continues to work for the betterment of the lives of African Americans.

The SCLC emerged in the wake of a successful boycott of buses in Montgomery, Alabama, by the city’s black citizens in 1955, which had led to a December 1956 Supreme Court ruling upholding the desegregation of those buses. Prodded by African American social activist Bayard Rustin, who hoped to carry the Montgomery victory to the rest of the South, King and other clerics formed the Southern Negro Leaders Conference, forerunner of the SCLC, during a meeting in Atlanta in January 1957. Later in 1957, the group changed its name to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Through a non-violent approach, the SCLC sought to take the Civil Rights cause out of the courtroom and into the community, hoping to negotiate directly with whites for social

The Educational Programming Guide for For All the World To See © 2011, NEH on the Road., a Division of Mid-America Arts Alliance change. As one of its first actions, the group led the 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage to Washington, D.C., which drew an estimated twenty-five thousand people. In 1959, it organized a youth march on Washington, D.C., that attracted forty thousand people.

Between 1960 and 1964, the number of full-time SCLC staff members grew from five to sixty, and the organization’s effect on the civil rights movement reached its zenith. The group’s growth allowed it to coordinate historic demonstrations that played a vital role in the civil rights movement. In April 1963, the SCLC led protests and boycotts in Birmingham, Alabama, that prompted violent police repression. Television viewers around the United States were shocked at the violence they saw directed at the clearly peaceful demonstrators. The SCLC won the sympathy of the nation again in a difficult 1965 civil rights campaign in Selma, Alabama, which also drew a violent response from whites. These protests are widely credited with hastening the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, laws that granted African Americans many of the gains they had been seeking. By 1967, the SCLC launched several new operations there: the Chicago Freedom Movement, Operation Bread-basket, and the Poor People's Campaign. It brought in young, new leaders, including a divinity student named Jesse Jackson, to lead these efforts.

The SCLC suffered a staggering setback when King was assassinated in April 1968. Abernathy became president of the organization. By 1972, the staff had declined to twenty and leaders such as Young and Jackson had moved on to other pursuits. Joseph E. Lowery succeeded Abernathy as president of the SCLC in 1977. The Atlanta-based group has continued to work for the improvement of the lives of African Americans through leadership training and citizen education. It has also created campaigns to battle drug abuse and crime.

Source: Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), The Free Dictionary by Farlex (Legal Dictionary), http://legal- dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/SCLC . Additional: Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), http://sclcnational.org/. Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), The New Georgia Encyclopedia, http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-2743 .

SNCC The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee or SNCC (pronounced “snick”), was one of the key organizations in the American civil rights movement of the 1960s. Emerging from the student-led sit-ins to protest segregated lunch counters in Greensboro, North Carolina, and Nashville, Tennessee, SNCC's strategy was much different from that of already established civil rights organizations. In April 1960, on the Shaw University campus in Raleigh, North Carolina, students of the sit-in movement met with Ella Baker, executive secretary of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and they established SNCC. SNCC sought to coordinate youth-led nonviolent, direct-action campaigns against segregation and other forms of racism. SNCC members played an integral role in sit-ins, Freedom Rides, the 1963 March on Washington, and such voter

The Educational Programming Guide for For All the World To See © 2011, NEH on the Road., a Division of Mid-America Arts Alliance education projects as the Mississippi Freedom Summer. Leaders of the group include Julian Bond, John Lewis, and Stokely Carmichael.

Source: Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), The New Georgia Encyclopedia, http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-3482 . Additional: Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Martin Luther King, Jr. and The Global Freedom Struggle, http://mlk- kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_student_nonviolent_coordinating_committee_sncc/. SNCC 1960–1966, http://www.ibiblio.org/sncc/.

The Black Panther Party U.S. African American revolutionary party founded in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, California. Its original purpose was to protect African Americans from acts of police brutality. Eventually the Panthers developed into a Marxist revolutionary group that called for the arming of African Americans, their exemption from the draft, the release of all African American prisoners, and payment of compensation to African Americans for centuries of exploitation by white Americans. By the late 1960s it had more than 2,000 members, with chapters in several major cities; an early spokesman was Eldridge Cleaver (1935 – 98). Conflicts with police in the late 1960s and early 1970s led to shoot-outs in California, New York, and Chicago, one of which resulted in Newton’s imprisonment for the murder of a police officer. Though some members of the party were guilty of criminal acts, the entire group was subjected to violent attacks by police and harassment by other government agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Police activities in dealing with the Panthers were later the subject of congressional investigations. By the mid-1970s, having lost many members and having fallen out of favor with African American leaders, the party turned to providing social services in African American neighborhoods. By the early 1980s it had effectively disbanded.

Source: Black Panther Party, Answers.com, http://www.answers.com/topic/black-panther. Additional: BlackPanther.org, http://blackpanther.org/.

1954 MAY 17: The U.S. Supreme Court's unanimously ruled in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas that public school segregation was unconstitutional and paved the way for desegregation. The decision overturned the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that said "separate educational facilities were inherently unequal."

1955 AUGUST 27: While visiting family in Mississippi, fourteen-year-old Chicagoan Emmett Till was kidnapped, brutally beaten, shot and dumped in the Tallahatchie River for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Two white men, J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant, were arrested for the murder and acquitted by an all-white jury. They later boasted about committing the murder in a Look magazine interview. The case became a cause célèbre of the civil rights movement.

DECEMBER 1: Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat at the front of the "colored section" of a bus in Montgomery, Ala., to a white passenger, defying a southern custom of the time. In response to her arrest, the Montgomery black community launched a bus boycott that lasted over a year until the buses desegregated on Dec. 21, 1956. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., the newly elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), was instrumental in leading the boycott.

1957 FEBRUARY 14: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, comprised of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Charles K. Steele and Fred L. Shuttlesworth, was established. King was the organization's first president. The SCLC proved to be a major force in organizing the civil rights movement with a principle base of nonviolence and civil disobedience.

SEPTEMBER 2: Integration was easier said than done at the formerly all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Ark. Nine black students, who became known as the "Little Rock Nine," were blocked from entering the school on the orders of Arkansas Governor Orval Fabus. President Eisenhower sent federal troops and the National Guard to intervene on behalf of the students, but a federal judge granted an injunction against the governor's use of National Guard troops to prevent integration. They were withdrawn on Sept. 20, 1957.

1960 FEBRUARY 1: Four black university students from N.C. A&T University began a sit-in at a segregated F.W. Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C. Although they were refused service, they were allowed to stay at the counter. The event triggered similar nonviolent protests throughout the South. Six months later, the original four protesters are served lunch at the same Woolworth's counter.

APRIL: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was founded at Shaw University in Raleigh, N.C., providing young blacks with a more prominent place in the civil rights movement.

1962 OCTOBER 1: James Meredith became the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. President Kennedy sent 5,000 federal troops to contain the violence and riots surrounding the incident.

1963 JUNE 12: Mississippi's NAACP field secretary, 37-year-old Medgar Evers, was murdered outside his home in Jackson, Miss. Byron De La Beckwith was tried twice in 1964, both trials resulting in hung juries. Thirty years later, he was convicted of murdering Evers.

AUGUST 28: More than 250,000 people join in the March on Washington. Congregating at the Lincoln Memorial, participants listened as Martin Luther King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

SEPTEMBER 15: Four young girls attending Sunday school were killed when a bomb exploded at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, a popular location for civil rights meetings. Riots erupted in Birmingham, Ala., leading to the deaths of two more black youth.

1964 JANUARY 23: The 24th Amendment abolished the poll tax, which had originally been instituted in 11 southern states. The poll tax made it difficult for blacks to vote.

MAY 4 (FREEDOM SUMMER): The Mississippi Freedom Summer Project was organized in 1964 by the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), a coalition of four civil rights organizations: the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC); the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE); the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The project was to carry out a unified voter registration program in the state of Mississippi.

The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) began sending student volunteers on bus trips to test the implementation of new laws prohibiting segregation in interstate travel facilities. One of the first two groups of "Freedom Riders," as they are called, encountered its first problem two weeks later when a mob in Alabama sets the riders' bus on fire. The program continued and by the end of the summer, more than 1,000 volunteers, black and white, participated.

The Educational Programming Guide for For All the World To See © 2011, NEH on the Road., a Division of Mid-America Arts Alliance JULY 2: President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Act prohibited discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, religion or national origin. The law allowed the federal government to enforce desegregation and prohibits discrimination in public facilities, in government and in employment. The "Jim Crow" laws in the South were abolished, and it became illegal to compel segregation of the races in schools, housing or hiring. Enforcement powers were initially weak, but they grew over the years, and later programs, such as affirmative action, were made possible by the Act. Title VII of the Act established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

AUGUST 4: The bodies of three civil-rights workers - two white, one black - were found in an earthen dam. James E. Chaney, 21; Andrew Goodman, 21; and Michael Schwerner, 24, had been working to register black voters in Mississippi, and on June 21, went to investigate the burning of a black church. They were arrested by the police on speeding charges, incarcerated for several hours, and released after dark into the hands of the Ku Klux Klan, who murdered them.

1965 FEBRUARY 21 MALCOLM X Assassinated.

MARCH ( The Selma to Montgomery Marches): The Selma to Montgomery marches, which included Bloody Sunday, were actually three marches that marked the political and emotional peak of the American civil rights movement.

MARCH 7 (Bloody Sunday): Blacks began a march to Montgomery in support of voting rights, but were stopped at the Edmund Pettus Bridge by a police blockade in Selma, Ala. State troopers and the Dallas County Sheriff's Department, some mounted on horseback, awaited them. In the presence of the news media, the lawmen attacked the peaceful demonstrators with billy clubs, tear gas and bull whips, driving them back into Selma. The incident was dubbed "Bloody Sunday" by the national media, with each of the three networks interrupting telecasts to broadcast footage from the horrific incident. The march was considered the catalyst for pushing through the Voting Rights Act five months later.

MARCH 9: Ceremonial Action within 48 hours, demonstrations in support of the marchers, were held in 80 cities and thousands of religious and lay leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King, flew to Selma. He called for people across the country to join him. Hundreds responded to his call, shocked by what they had seen on television. However, to prevent another outbreak of violence, marchers attempted to gain a court order that would prohibit the police from interfering. Instead of issuing the court order, Federal District Court Judge Frank Minis Johnson issued a restraining order, preventing the march from taking place until he could hold additional hearings later in the week. On March 9, Dr. King led a group again to the Edmund Pettus Bridge where they knelt, prayed and to the consternation of some, returned

The Educational Programming Guide for For All the World To See © 2011, NEH on the Road., a Division of Mid-America Arts Alliance to Brown Chapel. That night, a Northern minister who was in Selma to march, was killed by white vigilantes.

MARCH 21-25 (Selma to Montgomery March): Under protection of a federalized National Guard, voting rights advocates left Selma on March 21, and stood 25,000 strong on March 25 before the state capitol in Montgomery. As a direct consequence of these events, the U.S. Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, guaranteeing every American 21 years old and over the right to register to vote.

AUGUST 10: Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, making it easier for Southern blacks to register to vote. Literacy tests, poll taxes and other such requirements that were used to restrict black voting were made illegal.

SEPTEMBER 24: President Lyndon Johnson issued Executive Order 11246 to enforce affirmative action for the first time because he believed asserting civil rights laws were not enough to remedy discrimination. It required government contractors to "take affirmative action" toward prospective minority employees in all aspects of hiring and employment.

1967 JUNE 12: In Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court ruled that prohibiting interracial marriage was unconstitutional. Sixteen states that still banned interracial marriage at the time were forced to revise their laws.

AUGUST 30: Senate confirmed President Lyndon Johnson's appointment of Thurgood Marshall as the first African American Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court after he served for two years as a Solicitor General of the United States.

1968 APRIL 4: Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., at age 39, was shot as he was standing on the balcony outside his hotel room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn. Escaped convict and committed racist James Earl Ray was convicted of the crime. The networks then broadcast President Johnson's statement in which he called for Americans to "reject the blind violence," yet cities were ignited from coast to coast.

APRIL 11: President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968, prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental and financing of housing.

Timeline courtesy The International Civil Rights Center and Museum, Greensboro, NC

Educational Resources for Glossary Teachers

Black Nationalism/Black Muslims – Black leaders emphasized separatism and identification with Africa. One of the most important expressions of the separatist impulse during the 1960s was the rise of the Black Muslims, which attracted 100,000 members. Founded in 1931, in the depths of the depression, the Nation of Islam drew its appeal from among the growing numbers of urban blacks living in poverty. The Black Muslims elevated racial separatism into a religious doctrine and declared that whites were doomed to destruction. The most controversial exponent of Black Nationalism was Malcolm X.

Digital History, Black Nationalism and Black Power http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?HHID=370

Boycott – A campaign of withdrawal of support from a company, government or institution which is committing an injustice, such as racial discrimination.

Boycott. Glossary of Nonviolence. The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. http://www.thekingcenter.org/history/glossary-of-nonviolence/

Brown v. Board of Education – Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 47 S. Ct. 686, 98 L. Ed. 873, was the most significant of a series of judicial decisions overturning segregation laws—laws that separate whites and blacks. Reversing its 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson , 163 U.S. 537, 16 S. Ct. 1138, 41 L. Ed. 256, which established the “separate-but-equal” doctrine that found racial segregation to be constitutional, the Supreme Court unanimously decided in Brown that laws separating children by race in different schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which provides that “[n]o state shall … deny to any person … the equal protection of the laws.” In making its decision, the Court declared that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” Moreover, the Court found that segregated schools promote in African American children a harmful and irreparable sense of inferiority that damages not only their lives but the welfare of U.S. society as a whole.

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The Free Dictionary by Farlex (Legal Dictionary). http://legal- dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Brown+v.+Board+of+Education

Civil Disobedience – The act of openly disobeying an unjust, immoral or unconstitutional law as a matter of conscience, and accepting the consequences, including submitting to imprisonment if necessary, to protest an injustice.

Civil Disobedience. Glossary of Nonviolence. The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. http://www.thekingcenter.org/history/glossary-of-nonviolence/

Civil Rights – “Civil rights” are the rights of individuals to be free from unfair or unequal treatment (discrimination) in a number of settings, when that negative treatment is based on the individual's race, gender, religion, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, age, or other protected characteristic.

Civil Rights. Civil Rights and Discrimination Glossary. FindLaw. http://public.findlaw.com/civil-rights/civil-rights- basics/civil-rights-glossary.html

Civil Rights Act of 1964 – A federal law that prohibits discrimination in a number of settings: Title I prohibits discrimination in voting; Title II: public accommodations; Title III: Public Facilities; Title IV: Public Education; Title VI: Federally-Assisted Programs; Title VII: Employment.

Civil Rights Act of 1964. Civil Rights and Discrimination Glossary. FindLaw. http://public.findlaw.com/civil- rights/civil-rights-basics/civil-rights-glossary.html

Civil Rights Movement – Historically, the term “Civil Rights Movement” has referred to efforts toward achieving true equality for African Americans in all facets of society, but today the term “civil rights movement” is also used to describe the advancement of equality for all people regardless of race, sex, age, disability, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, or other protected characteristic.

Civil Rights Movement. Civil Rights and Discrimination Glossary. FindLaw. http://public.findlaw.com/civil- rights/civil-rights-basics/civil-rights-glossary.html

Demonstrations – Gatherings and protest activities organized to build support for peace, justice or social reform.

Demonstrations. Glossary of Nonviolence. The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. http://www.thekingcenter.org/history/glossary-of-nonviolence/

Desegregation – The breaking down of imposed racial separation. Desegregation has always been a fundamental aim of the civil rights movement in United States and was given special impetus by the Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education that ruled segregated schools unconstitutional.

Desegregation. Civil Right Glossary. Civil Rights 101. http://www.civilrights.org/resources/civilrights101/glossary.html

Discrimination – Discrimination is unfair or unequal treatment of an individual (or group) based on certain legally-protected characteristics—including age, disability, ethnicity, gender, national origin, race, religion, sexual orientation. Federal and state laws prohibit discrimination against members of these protected groups in a number of settings, including education, employment, government services, housing, lending, public accommodations, transportation, and voting.

Discrimination. Civil Rights and Discrimination Glossary. FindLaw. http://public.findlaw.com/civil-rights/civil-rights- basics/civil-rights-glossary.html

Ghetto Comedy – Television sitcoms that emerged during the 1970s featuring all black casts and set in urban impoverished areas like Washington D.C., Watts, and Chicago. These shows offered mainstream viewers a humorous view of working class African American inner city life. While some of ghetto comedies attempted to make social commentary on race relations, many reverted to black stereotypes for comic effect.

Hate Crimes – A hate crime is an act of violence or threat of violence that is intended to injure and/or intimidate the victim(s) because of their race, ethnicity, national origin, religious, sexual orientation, or disability.

Discrimination. Civil Rights and Discrimination Glossary. FindLaw. http://public.findlaw.com/civil-rights/civil-rights- basics/civil-rights-glossary.html

Invisibility – The notion explored in Ralph Ellison’s book Invisible Man that African Americans are rendered voiceless and unseen in mainstream culture. His words advocate a freedom from invisibility and to be recognized as “a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids and I might even be said to possess as mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.”

Jim Crow – The name that was given to the de jure or legal segregation of blacks from whites before the civil rights movement. The name itself comes from a black minstrel caricature popularized in song during the 1830s. Thus, laws restricting African Americans to the back of a bus or creating separate restrooms, drinking fountains or eating facilities were known as “Jim Crow” laws.

Jim Crow. Civil Right Glossary. Civil Rights 101. http://www.civilrights.org/resources/civilrights101/glossary.html

Lynching – The term is derived from the "vigilante justice" practiced by Captain William Lynch and his neighbors in Pittsylvania County, Virginia, in the late 18th century. In the 19th century, lynching—usually associated with hanging but also including tar and feathering, burning and other methods of killing—became increasingly directed against African Americans. In the last 16 years of the 19th century, there were some 2,500 reported lynchings. The quest for federal laws against lynching was among the first crusades of the NAACP in the early decades of the 20th century.

Lynching. Civil Right Glossary. Civil Rights 101. http://www.civilrights.org/resources/civilrights101/glossary.html

“Mainstream” – Popular culture, visual media and their perspectives, produced by and for the majority. Publications represent the highest readership and largest audience. In this case, mainstream can also be equated with the trends and behaviors of the white middle class.

Mass March – A large number of people walk in a group to a place of symbolic significance to protest an injustice.

Mass March. Glossary of Nonviolence. The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. http://www.thekingcenter.org/history/glossary-of-nonviolence/

Media – The means of communication that reach large numbers of people, such as television, newspapers, radio, and the Internet.

Media. Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged. HarperCollins Publishers, 2003. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/media

The Educational Programming Guide for For All the World To See © 2011, NEH on the Road., a Division of Mid-America Arts Alliance Passive Resistance – Challenging an injustice by refusing to support or cooperate with an unjust law, action or policy. The term “passive” is misleading because passive resistance includes pro-active nonviolence, such as marches, boycotts and other forms of active protest.

Passive Resistance. Glossary of Nonviolence. The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. http://www.thekingcenter.org/history/glossary-of-nonviolence/

Picketing – A group of individuals walk with signs bearing protest messages in front of a site where an injustice has been committed.

Picketing. Glossary of Nonviolence. The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. http://www.thekingcenter.org/history/glossary-of-nonviolence/

Pictorial Magazines – A print publication containing many pictures; viewpoints are often expressed through visual material as well as text. Pictorial magazines had the ability to evoke life-like images within the mind.

Racial Nostalgia – An emotional longing for times when race relations were simplistic and clearly hierarchical, as during the enslavement of Africans in the American South. This term includes both public and private expressions of nostalgia.

Segregation – Separation or isolation of a race or class from the rest of the population. In the United States, segregation has taken two forms: de jure and de facto. De jure segregation is where a set of laws mandates separation, like those that prevailed in the South from the end of Reconstruction. De facto segregation prevailed in the North after Reconstruction and is enforced by cultural and economic patterns rather than by law, especially in housing.

Segregation. Civil Right Glossary. Civil Rights 101. http://www.civilrights.org/resources/civilrights101/glossary.html

Sit-ins – Tactic of nonviolence in which protesters sit down at the site of an injustice and refuse to move for a specified period of time or until goals are achieved. Examples include Flint (Mich.) sit-down strike of 1936-37 in which auto workers sat down on job for 44 days in protest for union recognition and the student sit-ins to desegregate lunch counters in Greensboro, NC in 1960.

Sit-ins. Glossary of Nonviolence. The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. http://www.thekingcenter.org/history/glossary-of-nonviolence/

Status Quo – The existing state of affairs, especially in regard to social and political issues. In exploring the evolution of media alongside civil rights, there was a general trend for the majority to maintain the status quo and resist change. This meant continuing to represent African Americans through a mainstream, white lens.

Strikes – Organized withholding of labor to correct injustice.

Strikes. Glossary of Nonviolence. The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. http://www.thekingcenter.org/history/glossary-of-nonviolence/

The hands-on activities listed here are intended for use on-site to engage visitors in a creative exploration of the exhibits primary themes. These activities can also be adapted for use in off-site programming for more specialized audiences. Either way, they are best suited for a pre-scheduled activity in a museum classroom or non-gallery location. While the activities are geared primarily for older children, they are appealing to many ages.

Activity One: In Our Lives, we are… Age Appropriateness: grades 4 and up Time Needed: 1 – 2 hours, with some pre-visit preparation

Introduction: For All The World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights explores the notion that at its worst, media can narrowly define us. At its best, media can motivate, inspire, and produce social change. This activity may require pre-registration so that you can adequately prepare participants. Registered participants are invited to bring in 5 -10 photos (or photocopied pictures) that they feel “help tell the story of who I am.” Required Materials: • Several copies of recent magazines that represent a wide array of backgrounds. This might include AARP publications; fashion magazines like Seventeen, Redbook, Glamour, Vogue; parenting magazines; travel and leisure magazines; sports magazines like ESPN and Sports Illustrated ; fitness magazines; pictorial and news magazines like TIME, Newsweek, People, Essence, Ebony; and business magazines like Black Enterprise, Forbes, Business Week , etc. • Optional: internet access and printer for participants to download and print online images • Scissors and glue sticks for each participant • Heavy card stock paper, 8 1/2 x 11” • If participants have brought in their own photographs, you may consider making photocopies of these before beginning the project.

Program Directions: 1. Ask participants their thoughts about the last section of the exhibit, entitled “In Our Lives We are Whole: Snapshots from Everyday Life: “ Ask them how they felt at the end of the exhibit. Did the conclusion offer a sense of optimism? 2. Contrast this section of the exhibit with other sections that focused on either negative or extremely narrow castings of an entire group of people. What do the photographs we keep at home, often considered that one item we would run back in to a burning house to retrieve, contribute to our lives and our identities? 3. In an era of media saturation, we continue to be bombarded with images that don’t give accurate representation of who we are at our most personal level. These images create expectations for both young and old, for people of all backgrounds – that we should strive, even as a complex and diverse group of people, to model our appearance, our finances, our politics, and our livelihoods after media subjects and representations.

4. In this activity, participants will have an opportunity to examine and graphically illustrate print media’s version of who they are or should be. The cover of this collage project represents exterior expectations placed on individuals by the media world; the inside pages display the true richness of the individual through the incorporation of personal photographs and/or statements. Symbolic images and graphic statements cutout from print media could also be added to the collage. 5. To begin, participants should locate an image from a magazine or online source that perpetuates an “ideal” standard or extremely narrow interpretation of an individual or social group similar to the participant’s own. Instruct the participant to study the image and note their initial emotional reaction. Is this image, this personification of your social group achievable? Is it accurate and representative? What kind of message is the visual image trying to communicate to the public? What does it communicate to you, the participant? 6. Next, instruct participants to fold the sides of length-wise paper inwards, creasing as the edges meet in the middle-- in essence, they are creating a “double door.” Participants will then paste the “ideal” images on the outside. They can also use words or phrases that represent expectations or negative messages. The interior of the folded paper will contain images (from the participants own collection), words and phrases that give life to the richness of the true individual. 7. Consider displaying these collages in an adjacent gallery with the participant’s permission.

Educational Resources for Educational Museum Activities Teachers

Activity Two: I AM

Age Appropriateness: grades 4 & up Time Needed: 1-2 hours

Introduction: From curator Maurice Berger: “The stark “I AM A MAN” poster was published shortly after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. It stands as a tribute to the slain leader, a poignant reminder of the continued urgency of the struggle he died for. The design paid homage to the placards carried by black sanitation workers in the strike that brought Dr. King to Memphis on the day of his murder in April 1968, an event immortalized in a now iconic photograph by Ernest C. Withers.”

This activity explores the messages that we express about ourselves and the character traits that enable change. Participants will recreate a history-based and personal version of the “I AM A MAN” placard with an accompanying creative piece.

Required Materials: • 2 pieces of heavy card stock paper for each participant • Pencils and markers • Stencils of block letters (optional) • Display mechanism

Program Directions: 1. Take program participants back through the exhibit to review section 3: “Let the World See What I’ve Seen”: Evidence and Persuasion. Target the Memphis sanitation workers photo by Ernest Withers. Begin a discussion about this photo by asking open-ended questions like: “What do you see in this photo?” “What do you see that makes you say that?” 2. Return participants to program room and inform them that they will be completing their own placard. Recount the history behind the original poster: In February of 1968, two African American Sanitation Workers in Memphis, Tennessee were crushed to death by the compactor mechanism on their trash truck. In a separate incident occurring the same day, 22 African American sewer workers were sent home without pay because of inclement weather while their white supervisors remained at work. About 2 weeks later, over 1,000 black sanitation workers in Memphis began to strike for better pay, safer working conditions, and union recognition. They created signs displaying the message “I Am a Man” in hopes that their humanity and dignity would be recognized. You can read actual articles printed in the Memphis Commercial Appeal during this tumultuous time here: http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/mlk/

3. Have students pick one of the Civil Rights activists or legends featured in the exhibit whom they admire. Examples might include: a Memphis sanitation worker, Emmett Till, Malcolm X, Jackie Robinson, Gordon Parks, etc. Then, have participants select one character trait that this individual exemplifies. Examples might include: brave, determined, loyal, patient, passionate, courageous, innocent, strong, etc. 4. On one side of the card stock paper, instruct participants to take 5-10 minutes to write about how this individual displayed this trait during the Civil Rights movement. Then on the opposite side, in the block letter style of the “I AM A MAN” placard, have participants write: “ (insert civil rights activist’s name) WAS (insert character trait) . Example: JACKIE ROBINSON WAS COURAGEOUS. 5. For the second half of this activity, ask participants to think of a time that they witnessed injustice, discrimination, or hatred. For younger participants, injustice defined is: acts or conditions that cause people to suffer hardship or loss undeservedly. A violation of a person's rights; the term can also refer to unfair treatment of another or others: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" (Martin Luther King, Jr.). Writing prompts could include: Did you ever witness bullying in school, on the bus, or in your neighborhood? Have you ever seen someone being mistreated? When you look around your school or community, what seems unfair to you? On the second piece of card stock paper, have each participant take 5-10 minutes to write about their personal experiences with injustice. 6. Next, ask participants what they can do to stop this kind of injustice from occurring again. Encourage them to look for examples in the behavior and actions of individuals from the civil rights movement. What trait would they need to possess or practice to combat injustice or unfairness? Once they have determined this trait, have them turn the second piece of card stock paper over. On the back side (opposite their personal stories) have each participant write (again in the block letter style of the “I AM A MAN” placard): “I WILL BE (insert character trait they will try to adopt to stop injustice) .” 7. The result should be two graphically similar placards that can be displayed next to each other for a powerful reminder of the work we are called to do as members of a community. Example: JACKIE ROBINSON WAS COURAGEOUS. I WILL BE STRONG or EMMETT TILL WAS INNOCENT. I WILL BE WATCHFUL. Participants can choose to NOT have their pieces displayed. 8. Follow-up questions: How does it feel to make a statement on paper, “for all the world to see,” instead of verbally? What is the difference?

Educational Resources for Educational Museum Activities Teachers Quick Craft: Mobile Messages Age Appropriateness: grades 4 & up

Time Needed: 1 hour

Introduction: From curator Maurice Berger: “ Civil rights activists often turned to portable images—buttons, decals, brochures, comic books, and other artifacts—to disseminate persuasive messages meant to incite action or enthusiasm for political causes. These objects represented a variety of political causes, and include the campaign materials of black politicians as well as the broadsides of civil rights organizations. Their need to attract attention and their disposable nature inspired adventurous, spirited, and creative use of graphic design.”

During this activity, participants will create a graphic message on a button, bumper sticker, poster, or leaflet representing a cause they are passionate about.

Materials (for each participant): • Button maker. To purchase, see: http://www.hobbylinc.com/htm/nsi/nsi33109.htm?source=froogle • Blank bumper stickers. To purchase see: http://www.amazon.com/Glossy-White- Sheets-Bumper-Sticker/dp/B0043FWG7S • Scratch paper • 8 ½ x 11” paper (for brochure) • 11 x 17” card stock paper (for poster) • Markers, colored pencils, etc. • Stamps and stamp pads, stencils (optional)

Instructions: 1. Invite your visitors to revisit the section of the exhibit that focuses on portable messages (Section 3), specifically those objects that were made specifically for the March on Washington. Ask participants, “What stands out about these objects? Why were they used? Why were they effective?” Ask if anyone has something similar to these at home that they have saved as souvenir from participation in a social or political movement. Why did they keep the object? What does it mean to him/her? 2. Ask each participant to think about a cause that is important to them. Ask stimulating questions like, “When you look at the world around you, what are you passionate about changing?” or “If you could change one thing about our community, what would it be?” Prior to designing their message, direct participants to create a word web. In a word web, they begin with placing a word or two describing their chosen cause in the middle of the paper. Outlying words circulate around the center words as new ideas, concepts, and descriptors emerge. It is similar to a flow-of-consciousness exercise.

3. On an additional piece of paper or on the back side of the word web paper, ask participants to begin sketching symbols that represent their word web concept. 4. Have participants choose a design format to convey their message. They can choose from a button, bumper sticker, poster, or leaflet. 5. Follow-up questions: “Where would you display your mobile message?” “How would you promote it?” “Who would you hope sees your mobile message?” and “How has social media changed our ability to get the message out?”

These lesson plans are designed for teachers who are interested in taking their students to see For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights. In advance of the exhibition’s arrival at your museum, send program announcements to local schools inviting them to set up a tour. Provide teachers with these lesson plans as well as introductory readings, glossary, or other pertinent information that is included in this programming guide. You may also distribute copies of the For All the World to See outreach video to teachers.

Pre-Visit Lesson #1: Representations in Media For standards in your state see: http://www.educationworld.com/standards/state/toc/index.shtml#math

Grades: 5-12 Time Required: 1-2 class periods

National Curriculum Standards (McREL): • Visual Arts, Standard 1: Understands and applies media, techniques, and processes related to the visual arts

• Visual Arts, Standard 3: Knows a range of subject matter, symbols, and potential ideas in the visual arts

• Civics, Standard 11: Understands the role of diversity in American life and the importance of shared values, political beliefs, and civic beliefs in an increasingly diverse American society

• Civics, Standard 14: Understands issues concerning the disparities between ideals and reality in American political and social life

• History, United States, Standard 29: Understands the struggle for racial and gender equality and for the extension of civil liberties

• History, United States, Standard 31: Understands economic, social, and cultural developments in the contemporary United States

• Language Arts, Standard 5: Uses the general skills and strategies of the reading process

• Language Arts, Standard 9: Uses viewing skills and strategies to understand and interpret visual media

Objectives: • Students will gain an understanding of how the strategic use of visual media can help propel a social movement. • Students will gain an understanding of the varying types of visual imagery used during the Civil Rights movement • Students will gain an understanding of the visual elements of a historic photograph as well as develop photograph analysis skills. • Students will gain fluency in using and managing technology-based information sharing resources

Materials: • Computer and internet access • Copies of “Analyzing Historical Photographs” for each student (attached)

Student Instruction: 1. Inform your students that your class will be visiting an exhibit at your local museum called For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights . Ask your students if they can predict the subject matter of the exhibit. 2. Have a discussion about the differences between the written word and the visual image in their ability to communicate, inform, and even persuade. Follow this discussion with the following quote by Walter Cronkite: “I don’t think that simply words could have aroused the emotions of the American people as much as seeing pictures of the confrontation…that consciousness could have never have come to the American people without pictures.” 3. Ask your students what qualities photographs have that make them sometimes more powerful than words. Inform them that in the For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights exhibit, many of the images they will encounter are deemed powerful in the transformation of the civil rights movement because they represent one of the following: a. Positive images of African American success and achievement b. The promise of integration c. Documentation of the Civil Rights activism (sit-ins, marches, boycotts) d. Violence and aggression e. Black solidarity and anti-establishmentarianism 4. Inform your students that in a few minutes they will be viewing a seven minute video that shows images from the Civil Rights movement. The video captures photographs that fall into all of the categories above and possibly more. While the video does come with sound (music), please mute it so that students can view the photos in silence. The video can be found here: http://www.neok12.com/php/watch.php?v=zX740e5d78506742784d7c7f&t=Civil -Rights-Movement 5. Following the video, take another moment of silence. Then ask students how they felt as they were viewing the images. This should underscore the fact that images are powerful vehicles of emotional content. 6. Next, instruct each student to pick one type of image from the Civil Rights era (it can be one from the video if they wish) to investigate in further detail. The Library of Congress website has photo documentation of the Civil Rights movement ( http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/084_civil.html), as does the Civil Rights Movement Veterans website at http://www.crmvet.org/index.htm. The image they select should fall into one of the following five categories: positive images of African American success and achievement, black solidarity and anti-establishmentarianism, racial violence and aggression , promise of integration, documentation civil rights activism. 7. After students have selected an image to analyze, ask them the question: “Can a photograph tell the whole story?” According to Dr. Maurice Berger, the curator

for For All the World To See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights (and author of the book by the same name): “No image could act alone, of course. No image, could, by itself, change the world, for every visual representation is dependent on context: the words, circumstances, distribution, and beliefs that endow pictures with greater levels of meaning and influence.” 8. Next, instruct each student that they will be learning the more complete story behind the image by giving it some historical context. Distribute a copy of the “Analyzing Historical Photographs” worksheet for each student to complete (attached). This worksheet is suitable for all categories of photographs. 9. Extension: As a follow- up to your visit to For All the World To See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights turn your student’s attention to a video that was produced by the Ad Council following the 9/11 attacks. The PSA, entitled “I am an American,” can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDzEz6-v4Wc 10. Have an open discussion comparing and contrasting the visual media from the civil rights movement to the visual media used in the PSA. Ask you students, “Have we progressed as a society? Are we more tolerant than we were in the 1950s and 1960s?”

Analyzing Historical Photographs

1. What category does the image you selected represent? Why did you choose it?

2. Describe the setting of the photograph.

3. Who is featured in the photograph?

If the photograph contains a specific individual who was actively or historically involved in the Civil Rights movement, can you identify the person? Who is it?

Write about the contributions this person made to the Civil Rights movement.

If the photograph contains a crowd of people or more generalized subject matter, what practice or idea does it represents?

4. What do you notice about the background of the photograph? The foreground?

5. How does knowing about a photo’s time period and location help you to figure out what is going on?

6. How can you learn about history from a photograph?

7. What lessons from these photographs can be applied to your life today?

Educational Resources for Lesson Plans Teachers

Post-Visit Lesson #1: The ME in MEdia For standards in your state see: http://www.educationworld.com/standards/state/toc/index.shtml#math

Grades: 5-12 Time Required: Two class periods, with one homework assignment in between

National Curriculum Standards (McREL): • Life Skills, Standard 1: Contributes to the overall effort of a group

• Life Skills, Standard 4: Displays effective interpersonal communication skills

• Visual Arts, Standard 3: Knows a range of subject matter, symbols, and potential ideas in the visual arts

• Arts & Communication, Standard 1: Understands the principles, processes, and products associated with arts and communication media

• History, Standard 29: Understands the struggle for racial and gender equality and for the extension of civil liberties

Objectives: • Students will gain an understanding of the differing media forms present during the Civil Rights movement and today • Students will gain an understanding of how media influenced opinions during the Civil Rights movement and today. • Students will gain an understanding of the messages communicated by the media to their target audiences.

Materials: • Copies of handout “The ME in MEdia” (attached) • Media access (internet, print, TV, film)

Student Instruction: 1. Remind your students of their recent visit to the local museum to see the exhibit called For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights. Ask your students what the exhibit was about, using the title as reference. 2. While students may have a working knowledge of the historical period of United States history known as the Civil Rights movement, they may struggle more with the concept of visual culture. First ask them to roughly define the time frame for the modern Civil Rights movement in the United States (post WW2 – early 1970s). Then, define visual culture on the board as follows: the total range of visual images

characteristic of a group of people with shared traditions, transmitted and reinforced by members of the group. Ask your students to give examples of the range of visual images that social groups living during the civil rights movement may have witnessed (examples include: photography, film, TV, newspapers, magazines, books, art, objects, etc.). 3. Follow the discussion on what constituted the visual imagery of the time period with questioning about the social groups consuming and represented in the imagery. Ask students “Were all social groups represented in visual form during this time?” “Were people of all ethnicities equally represented in visual imagery?” This should lead directly to the point that the African American position in visual media mirrored their status in the mainstream culture: marginalized, oppressed, yet poised to overcome. In fact, African Americans were either portrayed negatively in the media, or erased from it completely. Follow this statement with another question, “When you recall your visit to the exhibit, what images or artifacts stand out in your memory? Why did these make an impression on you?” 4. Bring the discussion into contemporary society and media by asking students “Do you think all social groups (this includes gender, sexual orientation, religious, and ethnic groups) are represented equally in the visual media of today?” 5. Cite information from a 2001 study by Children Now: • The 8 o’clock “family hour” is the least racially diverse hour on television. Only one in eight (13%) of the programs broadcast during this hour have mixed opening credits casts. By contrast, two thirds (67%) of programs during the ten o’clock hour, when the least children are watching, have mixed opening credits cast. • African Americans account for the majority of non-white prime time characters, comprising 17%, followed by Asian Pacific Americans (3%), Latinos (2%) and Native Americans (0.2%). In addition, the study found that most on-screen racial number of diverse programs decreases significantly when focusing on a show’s main characters only. • Latino representation on prime time decreased from 3% of total characters last year to 2% this year. Asian Pacific American characters increased from 2% to 3%. By contrast, Latinos and Asian Pacific Americans make up 12% and 3.6% respectively of the national population, according to the 2000 U.S. Census 6. How do your students feel about this representation (or misrepresentation) in the media? Has this changed as our outlets for media and entertainment have become more internet- based? 7. Inform your students that several scholars have studied this phenomenon and ways to combat it. For example, social activist bell hooks examined the powerful forces and motives behind race representations in Hoop Dreams, the OJ Simpson case, Madonna, Spike Lee, and Gangsta rap. She noted, “The issue is not freeing ourselves from representations. It’s really about being enlightened witnesses when we watch representations.” 8. Ask students what they think bell hooks means when she calls on people to be “enlightened witnesses.” Inform your students that they will have an opportunity to be “enlightened witnesses” as they watch representations in their own media worlds.

9. Divide students into four groups, each group representing a different form of media that they will in turn “witness” and document. • Group one: movies/film • Group two: TV • Group three: the internet, including outlets like YouTube and social media forums (Facebook, twitter, blogs, etc.) • Group four: print media, including magazines and newspapers. 10. Media assignments are in group format, but work will occur individually. Distribute a copy of the attached observation sheet, “The ME in MEdia” to each student. Give them at least 2-3 days to complete it in order to accumulate a large sample. 11. Review students’ observations in class. Ask questions like: • Have we progressed as a society in our representations of social groups in the media since the modern civil rights movement? • What do you think about media outlets that cater to specific social groups? Is this ok? • What specific media outlets should consider and respect the range of diversity in America as they produce and distribute images? • Will this exercise change the way you view and respond to images in your media world? • If you could take a photograph of the social or ethnic group you most readily identify with, what would it look like?

The ME in MEdia

What form of media are you analyzing? Describe the media:

Additional media description: Photography/images: Relationship between words and images:

Colors: Computer graphics:

Vocabulary used in the media: Other:

What is the message of the media?

How does the design support this message?

What grabs your attention?

Is there an intended audience? Who is it? What audience group, if any, is left out?

Educational Resources for Lesson Plans Teachers

Pre-Visit Lesson #2: Approaches to Social Change For standards in your state see: http://www.educationworld.com/standards/state/toc/index.shtml#math

Grade level: 9-12 Time Required: 1-2 class periods

National Curriculum Standards (McREL): • Life Skills, Standard 1: Contributes to the overall effort of a group

• Life Skills, Standard 4: Displays effective interpersonal communication skills

• Arts & Communication, Standards 4 & 5: Understands ways in which the human experience is transmitted and reflected in the arts and communication AND Knows a range of arts and communication works from various historical and cultural periods

• Technology, Standard 6: Understands the nature and uses of different forms of technology

• Civics, Standard 28: Understands how participation in civic and political life can help citizens attain individual and public goals

• History, Standard 29: Understands the struggle for racial and gender equality and for the extension of civil liberties

Objectives: • Students will gain an understanding of how visual culture and social movements intersect. • Students will gain an understanding of three approaches to social change • Students will utilize technology and information sharing systems to express views and accumulate sources

Materials: • Internet access • Library access (optional)

2. After approximately 5 minutes of discussion about the exhibit’s potential subject matter, create a Venn diagram. The two intersecting circles presented are as follows: Visual Culture and Civil Rights . Examples for Visual Culture might include: photography, art, TV, film/movies, visual, surroundings, media, press, documentation, symbolism, etc . Examples for Civil Rights might include: race, prejudice, race relations, equality, equal rights, segregation, lynching, prejudice, hate, tolerance, non-violence, sit-ins, movement, 1960s, boycott, violence, integration, power, Black Panther, etc. 3. Begin a discussion with the following question: “How are the Civil Rights movement and visual culture related?” Eventually, you should arrive at a deeper level of discussion with questions like, “How does visual culture and media advance or impede social change?” 4. Inform students that in order to mobilize the Civil Rights movement, leaders strategically utilized the media, from pictorial magazines to the network news. They were keenly aware of the power of a picture to represent the truth, to persuade the public, and call people to action. They knew that some of the most powerful and convincing images of all were also at times the most graphic. While visiting For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights, you will view several graphic and emotional images and artifacts. 5. Announce that in preparation for their visit to For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights, students will complete an assignment wherein they collectively examine three historical approaches to social change: conventional politics, violence, and non-violence. For additional teacher background information, you can read Brian Martin’s article “Paths to social change: conventional politics, violence and nonviolence” here: http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/06eolss.html or refer to Charles Harper’s book Exploring Social Change: America and the World (5th Edition.) 6. This assignment will be achieved in group format, through the creation of a classroom wiki. You can create a free wiki (with password protection) especially designed for K-12 teachers here: http://www.wikispaces.com/content/for/teachers 7. Divide you students into 4 groups, assigning each group a separate responsibility in the building of a wiki. • Group one: Summary for Conventional Politics. This group will create a summary, along with sources, related to using conventional politics as a means of social change. It should include both advantages and disadvantages as well as previous use in United States history. • Group two: Summary for Violence. This group will create a summary, along with sources, related to using violence as a means of social change. It should include both advantages and disadvantages as well as previous use in United States history. • Group three : Summary for Non-Violence. This group will create a summary, along with sources, related to using non-violence as a means of social change. It should include both advantages and disadvantages as well as previous use in United States history. • Group four: Discussion leaders. These students will create a separate tab on the wiki and facilitate discussion around each approach to social

change. Specific, directed questions should be asked as opposed to an open-ended call for commentary. Discussion leaders should be ready to include visual culture and the media as questions for discussion. • As the teacher, you will serve as the site monitor for content. It is advisable to state expectations and consequences for wiki content upfront.

Educational Resources for Lesson Plans Teachers

Post-Visit Lesson #2: Approaches to Social Change For standards in your state see: http://www.educationworld.com/standards/state/toc/index.shtml#math

Grade Level: 9-12 Time Required: 1 class period

National Curriculum Standards (McREL): • Civics, Standard 28: Understands how participation in civic and political life can help citizens attain individual and public goals

• History, Standard 29: Understands the struggle for racial and gender equality and for the extension of civil liberties

• Technology, Standard 3: Understands the relationships among science, technology, society, and the individual.

• Visual Arts, Standards 1 & 4: Understands and applies media, techniques, and processes related to the visual arts AND Understands the visual arts in relation to history and cultures

Objectives: • Students will gain an understanding of the connection between visual media and social change • Students will gain an understanding of the ways in which technology impacts society • Students will gain an understanding of a contemporary political and/or social conflict and how visual media and technology influenced their outcome

Materials: • Internet access • Poster board, glue, markers, scissors (option 1) • Multi-media software (option 2)

Teacher Background (Taken from PBS Newshour “Social Media and Non-Violent Protest”): The events in Cairo, Egypt and other Middle East cities in early 2011 have reset the political paradigm for the region and created new challenges for the United States. It’s no secret that most countries in the Middle East are run by autocratic dictators that allow free expression only when it praises them, free assembly only when it supports them, and free elections only when they pick the candidates. But young, tech-savvy activist, employing nonviolent tactics are beginning to change that.

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The Educational Programming Guide for For All the World To See © 2011, NEH on the Road., a Division of Mid-America Arts Alliance Dissent and protest are not new to t he region. F or decades t he Israeli -Palesti nian co nf lict has kept the pot of discontent boiling in the Middle East, often times targeting the United States as the villain. But protests in Egypt and Tunisia have citizens demanding an end to the dictatorial regimes and instituting democratic governments. Opposition groups forming at a grass-roots level are employing resistance methods that go back decades to the U.S. civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s. They are forming coalitions with like-minded groups at all levels of society—professional, labor, and government workers. They counsel nonviolence to their members and temper the anger with reminders to keep their “eye on the prize” and not let the brutal methods of the pro-government forces divert or discourage their cause. And they have employed the “new media” – Facebook, Twitter, and blogging—to present their case, communicate with like-minded groups, and encourage questioning and discussion that has not been seen in this region for decades.

Political analysts debate the extent to which the new media played a role in the toppling of the regimes of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. The massive public protests that ended these regimes were not just spontaneous reactions to recent oppression, but rather the release of long standing grievances with the government over poor economic conditions, corruption, and the suppression of freedoms. Each of these revolutions was ignited by the deaths of young men facing oppression and the brutality of the state when they dared complain of the abuse.

What seems to make these revolutions different from ones the past is how social media has accelerated the organizational capabilities and operations of the opposition movements. By using social media, opposition groups are better than the government at forming and carrying out strategy, instilling discipline within their ranks, and adapting to quickly changing events. It seems that it wasn’t social media that toppled the regimes but that social media served as a tool in that process; a process that also employed traditional methods of dissent served up on mass media (primarily television) to citizens of Egypt and Tunisia as well as the world.

Student Instruction: 1. Remind your students of their recent visit to the local museum to see the exhibit For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights. Begin a discussion about how the visual images of the Civil Rights Movement helped propel the movement forward. Ask for examples from the exhibit that specifically documented the movement (March on Washington video, Breakthrough in Birmingham video, Emmett Till photographs, LIFE magazine cover of Joe Bass, JR., etc.). 2. Next, inquire with your students whether or not an image’s ability to persuade and galvanize a public response is due to the image alone. Ask what other factors may be involved. Explain that in order for an image to make a difference, it had to be published. (In today’s terms, this is equivalent to uploaded, posted, and/or shared.) And the timing had to be right – the public had to be ready and eager to see the world around them in new ways. Just as important are the words, circumstances, distribution, and beliefs that endow a picture “with greater levels of meaning and influence.”

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The Educational Programming Guide for For All the World To See © 2011, NEH on the Road., a Division of Mid-America Arts Alliance 3. Now imagine what would have happened if the young activists fighting for equal rights in the 1950s and 1960s would have had access to today’s technology. Ask students how the movement may have differed. 4. Explain that the success of the Civil Rights movement was dependent on getting the right images to the right people at the right time, all of which merged with the development and use of the right technology (in this case, the camera). Inquire about recent social movements in other countries that have been fought by communicating messages with visual imagery, just like the Civil Rights movement. Technology has also been a major factor in recent movements’ successes and/or failures. 5. Inform your students that you will be applying some of the lessons learned from their For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights exhibit experience to recent social and political movements. They are to choose one recent social and/or political revolution to research, paying specific attention to how visual communication intersected with technology. 6. Since the focus of this exhibit is on the power of the visual image, students will create either a 1.) poster project or 2) multi-media presentation relying predominantly (but not entirely) on images to communicate the following components related to modern day revolutions: • Title: choose a contemporary revolution to research and give it a title. • Map: include a map of the region and specific locations involved in the revolution. Identify the area’s natural resources, population statistics, neighboring countries, and past political government system. • Timeline: include a timeline of events leading up to the revolution. • Turning Point: identify the turning point of the revolution. This could be represented by a particular person, group, event or form of media. • U.S. parallels: Compare and contrast global events that led to social revolution to the Civil Rights movement in United States history. • Summation: In your opinion, did this revolution lead to positive change for the people of the country? 7. Students will present their projects to the rest of the class. 8. For more background information on recent social revolutions, you can refer your students to: • “Egyptian Revolution 2011: A Complete Guide to the Unrest” ( Huffington Post ): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/30/egypt-revolution- 2011_n_816026.html “Egypt’s Revolution by Social Media” (Wall Street Journal): http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870378680457613798025 2177072.html • “The Cyberactivists who Helped Topple a Dictator” (Newsweek, 2011 Tunisian Revolution): http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/01/15/tunisia-protests-the- facebook-revolution.html • “The Middle East in Revolt” (TIME magazine ): http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/0,28757,2045328,00.html

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The Educational Programming Guide for For All the World To See © 2011, NEH on the Road., a Division of Mid-America Arts Alliance • “Social Media Alone Do Not I nstigate Revolutions” (PBS): http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2011/02/social-media-alone-do-not- instigate-revolutions034.html • “Spreading Revolution” (The New York Times ): http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/world/middleeast/2011-spreading- revolutions.html#intro

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Educational Resources for Lesson Plans Teachers

Pre-Visit Character Education: Understanding Stereotypes

Grades: 5-12 Time required: one class period

Materials: • Chalk board or dry erase board • Chalk/markers • Stereotyping, Prejudice and Discrimination In Focus worksheet (optional)

Student Instruction: 1. Begin a discussion about stereotyping by asking your students the following question, “What is a stereotype?” Create a word web on the board as students offer their definitions. 2. Explain that stereotypes are when people use labels or categories to describe a group of people, and often times these descriptions are based on exterior qualities, like the way a person looks, acts, or talks. While this is a natural human inclination to characterize people as we seek to understand them, it has the potential to be harmful. Ask students how defining a group of people by exterior qualities can potentially be harmful. The class should arrive at a conclusion that broadly defining a group of people can force a person to make assumptions about every person that may or may not belong to that group. Making assumptions about people can then affect our behavior and attitudes toward that person. Negative assumptions can also lead to injustice and mistreatment. Ask students if they can name a few historical examples of stereotypes leading to injustice. 3. Next, begin listing groups of people on the board that would be familiar to your students (at this point, omitting racial groups). Include the following groups: teachers, athletes, women, men, teenagers, and celebrities. Ask them to list descriptive characteristics about each group or ways that they have heard this group of people described. Follow the group description list with the questions: - How does it make you feel when you read these adjectives? - What do you notice about this list? - How have you seen these stereotypes portrayed? 4. Begin a discussion about how people from different racial and ethnic groups can also be stereotyped. You will then conduct the same activity as above, but students will do this privately on individual sheets of paper. Ask them to write down five different racial or ethnic groups on their paper (examples can include but certainly are not limited to: African Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, people of Middle Eastern decent, and European (or Caucasian) Americans.) They should take 2-3 minutes listing adjectives for each group. 5. Follow the activity with the same questions as above, with one addition: - How does it make you feel when you read these adjectives?

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- What do you notice about this list? - How have you seen these stereotypes portrayed? - How can these stereotypes lead to mistreatment of the person or injustice for an entire group of people? 6. Next, inform your students that they will be visiting an exhibit at their local museum called For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights . Some of the first object and images that they will see represent negative, harmful stereotypes (thoughts, assumptions or statements) of African Americans. In fact, the objects and images in the exhibit go beyond stereotypes and can also be classified as prejudice. Ask them to clarify the difference between stereotype, which is an oversimplified statement or assumption, and a prejudice. Prejudice is an affective (feeling) state – where attitudes and opinions are actively formed about stereotypes. Prejudice can then lead to discrimination , which is the action (behavior) or treatment that follows a prejudice. 7. During their visit to the exhibit, ask students to record at least two examples of images, objects, quotes, or video that they observe that demonstrate stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination. Students can use the worksheet that follows to complete this activity.

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For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights Stereotyping, Prejudice and Discrimination In Focus

St ereotyping: an Example from exhibit Example from exhibit oversimplification of (image, quote, objects, (image, quote, objects, thoughts, assumptions or video): video): statements about a group of persons.

Example: Diane is a girl so she is probably .

Prejudice: attitudes and Example from exhibit Example from exhibit opinions formed about (image, quote, objects, (image, quote, objects, members of a group (based video): video): on stereotypes.)

Example: “I can’t stand athletes because they are all so .”

Discrimination: behavior, Example from exhibit Example from exhibit action, or treatment that is (image, quote, objects, (image, quote, objects, the result of prejudice. video): video):

Example: “I will not employ any people of color in my company.”

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Educational Resources for Lesson Plans Teachers

Post-Visit Character Education: Facing Stereotypes

Grades: 5-12 Time required: one class period

Special Note: The following exercise may elicit some intense emotions. It is advised that you split your class into smaller groups to conduct this activity. You might also try splitting up males and females. Require that what happens during this activity remain confidential. You can also ask the group to come up with their own group rules/agreements that will govern the potentially controversial discussion. Good examples of these kinds of rules are as follows: • Respect other people • Everyone’s opinions are valuable • Take turns sharing ideas • Do not share what occurs during this time with others outside of the group

Materials: • Pen/marker • Mailing label/sticker, one for each participant

Student Instruction: 1. Ask your students to recall their experience visiting For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights. Begin by asking them to recapitulate the “story” told in the exhibition. What did they observe about stereotypes? In what part of the exhibit did they witness prejudice? And in what part did they see the harmful effects of discrimination? How did they feel? You may wish to review their worksheets at this point. 2. Ask your students: “Even though the modern civil rights movement brought about equal rights under the law for African American citizens, did it put an end to discrimination?” Explore the idea that discrimination still exists, and ask students for examples. (Some examples you might cite: The unemployment rate for young African American men is over twice the rate for young white, Hispanic and Asian men; African American men are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system. The percentage of young African American men in prison is nearly three times that of Hispanic men and nearly seven times that of white men. Nearly 4 out of 10 young African American men lack health insurance. Source: Kaiser Family Foundation) 3. Wonder aloud if discrimination exists in your school. While racial discrimination might be the most obvious form, suggest that discrimination also exists in the way that members of certain social groups (or cliques) are judged and treated. Create a listing of the social groups at your school that are often characterized in oversimplified ways (stereotypes). This list might include, but is not limited to:

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jocks, brains, nerds, emos, popular kids, goths, gays and lesbians, loners, clowns/comedians, etc. 4. Next, go through the list and write one social group on each mailing label/sticker. You may have to duplicate group names depending on the number of students. Without the student seeing the label you have randomly chosen, place the mailing sticker on their back. Each student should have one placed on their back. 5. Not knowing how they have been labeled, students will then proceed to interact with the labeled student based on the stereotypes and prejudices generally assigned to that group within your school. Since everyone is wearing a label, everyone will receive unique treatment. Other students are to treat the labeled student, perhaps in an exaggerated way, the way a member from that social group is typically treated in your school. From this interaction, the label-wearer is to guess their social group assignment. 6. Hold a debriefing of this experience. Debriefing (or processing) is just as important (or more) than the active portion of the lesson. Ask: • “What was it like to be treated based on a label or in this case, membership in a certain group?” • “How did it feel?” • “What was it like treating someone else based on an oversimplified statement of who they are?” • “Do you see this kind of behavior in our school?” • “How does it make you feel when you see it happen in reality?” • “What can you do when you see someone being treated unfairly?” 7. Finally, have each student take 15 – 20 minutes to quietly write a journal entry about their own experiences with stereotyping, prejudice, or discrimination. If they have not experienced this type of treatment, they can write about a time they observed someone else being treated unfairly. 8. In conclusion, inform your students that prejudice and stereotyping are LEARNED, and the good news is that they can therefore be UNLEARNED. The best way to combat stereotyping and prejudice is direct contact with the individual or group so that you can get to know them beyond categories. Instead of categorizing groups of people, we must work to get to know their unique qualities as individuals. 9. Extension: The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Initiative “Mix It Up at Lunch” is a great way to put this activity into school-wide action. This campaign to teach tolerance is based on the finding that “students have identified the cafeteria as the place where divisions are most clearly drawn. So on one day – October 18 this school year – we ask students to move out of their comfort zones and connect with someone new over lunch.” You can find out more here: http://www.tolerance.org/mix-it-up/get-started For even greater impact , have students explore the parallels and divergences between our ability to “Mix It Up at Lunch” in the 21 st century and the Sit-Ins of the Civil Rights era. What has changed? Find out about those who bravely sat at lunch counters with African Americans in solidarity.

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Educational Resources for Lesson Plans Teachers

Additional pdf lesson plans included on this CD are from the University of Maryland/Baltimore County, Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture, the originating institution behind For All the World To See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights.

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Educational Resources for Gallery Guides & Handouts Teachers

For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights exhibit also comes with two handouts available for visiting children, families, and students. The Family Gallery Guide is designed to help parents guide their younger companions through some of the more difficult and sensitive content of the exhibit. You will receive 200 hard copies of this guide as well as a PDF to print out should you need more copies. The Family Gallery Guide further explains and extends the exhibit content through activities that can be completed in the gallery and at home. It offers a list of websites, books, and other resources that allow the user to explore topics in greater depth.

Please contact Mary Susan Albrecht, Education Coordinator, if you have any questions about the content of these materials.

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Mid‐America Arts Alliance 2018 Baltimore Avenue, Kansas City, MO 64108 (800) 473.EUSA (3872) www.eusa.org

Programming Guide Evaluation Form

The purpose of the programming guide is to help your institute coordinate educational programs in conjunction with your exhibition and make it accessible, interesting, and relevant to a wide range of your constituents. In order to help us serve you, please take a few moments to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of this guide. We would also appreciate copies of any educational material you developed with this exhibition.

Please return a completed copy to Mid‐America Arts Alliance, Attention: Mary Susan Albrecht, 2018 Baltimore Avenue, Kansas City, MO 64108, by fax (816) 421‐3918 or by email to [email protected]. A downloadable version of this form is also available at www.EUSA.org/pgevaluation . Please contact Mary Susan Albrecht at (816) 421‐1388 x210 for additional questions or comments.

Institution Name: Exhibition Title: Exhibition Dat es:

Please rate the usefulness of the following sections of the programming guide by circling the appropriate number from 1 to 5 or NA, with 1 being the least helpful and 5 being the most helpful.

Not Useful Somewhat Useful Very Useful No Comment/ Not Applicable Overv iew Ex hibiti on Descri ption 1 2 3 4 5 NA Ed ucati on al Mater ials C hec klist 1 2 3 4 5 NA Ex hibits USA C on tact In formati on 1 2 3 4 5 NA

Reference Materials Te xt Pa nels 1 2 3 4 5 NA Na rrati ve/O bjec t La bels 1 2 3 4 5 NA Bi bli og rap hy 1 2 3 4 5 NA Audio/video 1 2 3 4 5 NA Web sites 1 2 3 4 5 NA

Programming Resources Spea ker Resou rces 1 2 3 4 5 NA List of S pea kers 1 2 3 4 5 NA Commun ity E vent Plan ning 1 2 3 4 5 NA Program Suggesti on s 1 2 3 4 5 NA Ed ucati on al Muse um Acti vit ies 1 2 3 4 5 NA

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