Summer Assignment 2016-2017 IB 20Th Century Topics Mr. Brown and Ms

Summer Assignment 2016-2017 IB 20th Century Topics Mr. Brown and Ms. Dean [email protected] [email protected] Purpose of assignment: Students will read chapters 1-13 (209 pages) of Devil in the Grove, a Pulitzer Prize winning account of a seminal case in the post-WWII Civil Rights Movement, in order to have a better understanding of the social, economic, and legal inequities that African-Americans faced in the South during the era of Jim Crow. The book will be used as a jumping off point for our examination of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States as part of our first unit on Rights and Protest. Limited copies are available through the Arlington Public Library, or it can be purchased used from Amazon.com for as little as $5.00. Estimated time of completion: This entirely depends on the student’s reading capabilities. All total you are responsible for approximately 200 pages of text over the summer, though we recommend that you finish the entire book if you are able to do so. No more than 6 hours should be spent on the assignment. Due date and method of assessment: Students will have the first week of school in September to finish the remainder of the book if they are not done already. There will be an in-class seminar on the book during the second week of school. Instructions for Assignment: Read the book and answer the provided questions before the in-class seminar. Recommended Books and Movies: Whether you are an overachiever and you want a jump on what we will be studying next year, or you are just looking for some good beach reads or movies, here are a few titles to try out: Long Walk to Freedom (2013 film based on Nelson Mandela’s life) Mississippi Burning (1988 film about KKK murders in 1964) Why We Can’t Wait by Martin Luther King, Jr. (a classic on the events & ideas of the civil rights movement) Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane (autobiography of life under apartheid) The Stalin Epigram by Robert Littell (fictional, but based on the experience of a famous dissident poet) Mao Zedong: A Life by Jonathan Spence (brief biography) The Cold War: A New History by John Lewis Gaddis (very readable overview of the Cold War) Iron Curtain by Anne Applebaum (recent work on the creation of satellite states in post-war Eastern Europe) If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to email us. Enjoy your summer! IB Topics Summer Assignment, 2016 Devil in the Grove Questions When appropriate, be sure to cite page numbers for reference. Before beginning the book, it would be helpful to familiarize yourself with Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896), Jim Crow Laws, and the trial of the Scottsboro Boys (1931). 1. What are three scenes or events that caused you to react emotionally as you read the book. Be prepared to discuss why. 2. Identify and evaluate the various strategies for social change depicted in the book. (For example, the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund) Which of these methods seemed to be the most effective? 3. What does the book’s portrait of Willis McCall tell us about this period? At times he defends law and order in the face of vigilante violence (as when we first meet him in chapter 5) and at others he becomes a vigilante himself (as we see in chapter 15). What sense can be made of the balance of order and fear in an age of white supremacy by considering this man who was elected Sheriff seven consecutive times? 4. The book focuses tightly on this one case, but occasionally the lens widens. There’s the portrait of black Harlem centered on 409 Edgecombe Ave (25-29). There’s the way Florida’s economy depended on citrus labor (76-81) and the “work or fight” laws, as well as the way the state’s demography and economy were changing (343-4). There’s the local politics of the bolita lottery game (78-79, 114). There are several examples of brutal “lynch mob justice” described at various points. Which of these asides – or others – helped you understand the Groveland case better? Which did you find useful for thinking about mid-20th Century American history? 5. Gilbert King makes Thurgood Marshall the hero of his book, which is unsurprising given his larger significance to 20th Century American history, not to mention what a colorful character he appears to have been. What do you think about this as a history-telling strategy? What do we gain and lose by dwelling on Marshall’s idiosyncrasies and peccadillos? 6. What was the purpose of the NAACP on both local and national levels? How was this organization affected by the context of the Cold War? 7. The author describes Florida as “South of the South” and devotes a large part of the book to describing the forces of laws and justice in Jim Crow South. Identify 3-5 ways that Jim Crow laws affected the pursuit of the truth in the Groveland case. 8. Evaluate the role of the following on both the burgeoning civil rights movement in the United States and the Groveland case specifically: World War II, the press, the Ku Klux Klan, the FBI. 9. Fifteen years after the Groveland case, Marshall gave a speech with the line, “There is very little truth to the old refrain that one cannot legislate equality.” But the NAACP certainly didn’t have a resounding victory in this case. Was this just the best that could be hoped for on Martin Luther King’s famed “long arc of the moral universe”? Though four people were killed, Marshall still viewed the case as a victory—why? Do you agree? What were the successes and failures of this case? 10. Which characters changed and to what extent? After reading this book, and thinking about current events related to civil rights, what do you see as effective ways to create equality, legislative or otherwise? .

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