Syllabus Reflections on the Civil Rights Movement

Home , Diane McWhorter, Eyes on the Prize, King in the Wilderness, Marion Barry, Medgar Evers, Taylor Branch

Syllabus

Reflections on the Civil Rights Movement

Spring 2021

Time & location: TBD

Course type: Lecture/video excerpts/discussion

Overview: A review of the Civil Rights Movement 1954-1968 (Brown vs. Board of Education to Martin Luther King’s assassination) with an update to the present day in the final session. Each session consists of video excerpts (usually from the award-winning PBS documentary “Eyes on the Prize”) followed by a discussion period. The goal of the class is to use this historical review of the Civil Rights Movement to provide a framework for personal reflection on race and its centrality in our country’s history.

Required Reading: • Juan Williams, Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965 (New York: Viking Penguin, Inc.), 1987, 2002 or 2013 edition (available at Politics & Prose or Amazon) • supplementary articles/excerpts will be provided in PDF format via email (Optional recommended books listed on page 3)

Schedule:

Week 1: Stirrings and Brown v. Board of Education: 1954 (and earlier) Black WWII veterans; Maryland as the first step on the road to Brown; 1939 Alexandria Library sit-in; DC’s Browne Junior High School parent protests; 1951 Moton High School student strike (Farmville, VA); 1953 DC integration Supreme Court ruling; 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling VIDEOS: Bryan Stevenson, Executive Director, Equal Justice Institute; “PBS Newshour” - 60 years after Brown v. Board REQUIRED READING: Eyes, Introduction and chapter 1; PDFs emailed: Unexampled Courage Introduction; An American Dilemma excerpt; Juan Williams’ Thurgood Marshall biography excerpt on teacher pay; 1939 Alexandria Library sit-in; DC’s Brown Junior High School; Washington Post article: “The case that ended segregation in DC even before Brown”

Week 2: “For the World to See”: 1955 Emmett Till; Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott; Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.; Southern Christian Leadership Conference formation VIDEO: “Eyes” documentary, episode 1 excerpt REQUIRED READING: Eyes book, chapters 2-3

Week 3: Students Lead: 1960-61 Lunch counter sit-ins (Greensboro, NC, and Nashville, TN); Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC; “Snick”); Freedom Rides VIDEO: “Eyes,” episode 3 excerpt; “American Experience: Who the Hell is Diane Nash?” REQUIRED READING: Eyes, chapter 5

Week 4: Marching - Violent and Peaceful: 1963 Birmingham, Alabama, Children’s Crusade; Gov. George Wallace and University of Alabama integration; President Kennedy’s civil rights address; Medgar Evers assassination; Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church bombing; March on Washington VIDEOS: “Eyes,” episode 4 excerpts; George Wallace; NBC’s “Meet the Press” excerpt, August 25, 1963; Julian Bond reminiscence; pre-MLK portion of the March on Washington REQUIRED READING: Eyes, chapter 6 through “The March on Washington”

Week 5: Mississippi – “Is This America?”: 1964 Freedom Summer; Mississippi martyrs James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner; Civil Rights Act; Fannie Lou Hamer VIDEO: “Eyes,” episode 5 excerpt REQUIRED READING: Eyes, chapter 7

Week 6: Selma, Bloody Sunday, and Voting Rights: 1965 Bloody Sunday and subsequent march to Montgomery; Voting Rights Act VIDEO: “Eyes,” episode 6 excerpt REQUIRED READING: Eyes, chapter 8; PDF emailed: Judge Frank Johnson

Week 7: Splintering: Black Power and “King in the Wilderness”: 1965-68 Malcolm X; summer riots; Stokely Carmichael and SNCC’s new direction; MLK’s broader campaign: going North, anti-Vietnam War, anti-poverty VIDEOS: “Eyes,” episode 7, 8 & 10 excerpts; “Still I Rise” excerpt; portions of Taylor Branch interview on “Democracy Now” REQUIRED READING: PDFs: SNCC-Black Power article; excerpt from The Auto- biography of Martin Luther King Jr. on the Chicago Campaign; excerpt from The King Years on the Riverside Church anti-Vietnam war speech

Week 8: The Year the Wheels Came off the Bus: 1968 Kerner Commission; MLK assassination; Fair Housing Act; Robert F. Kennedy assassination; Chief Justice Earl Warren retirement; Richard Nixon election VIDEOS: “Eyes,” episode 10 excerpt; RFK Indianapolis speech; “Abraham, Martin and John” audio REQUIRED READING: PDF: New York Times op-ed, “The Unmet Promise of Equality” (note: reading this week is relatively short—you may want to get a head start on heavier reading for week 10)

Week 9: Retrospective and Reflections on the Movement’s Legacy An opportunity to further discuss, synthesize, and reflect on all we’ve covered VIDEOS: “Eyes,” episode 14 excerpt; various reflections: participant, historian, and beneficiary REQUIRED READING: PDFs: excerpt from John Lewis’ memoir Walking with the Wind; excerpt from MLK’s last book Where Do We Go From Here

Week 10: The Present: Mass Incarceration, Black Lives Matter, and Reparations Race in today’s America: “ ‘America’ scrambled is ‘I am race’ ” (Julian Bond) VIDEOS: Michelle Alexander talk; Ta-Nehisi Coates congressional testimony; The Nation New York Police “reverse cam” video REQUIRED READING: PDFs: Excerpts of The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander; Washington Post Black Lives Matter op-ed; The Atlantic “Case for Reparations” article by Ta-Nehisi Coates (lengthy article; also accessible with many interactive features and links at: www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the- case-for-reparations/361631

Optional reading/bibliography: • Unexampled Courage, Richard Gergel, 2019 (impact of World War II black veterans on the budding Civil Rights Movement)

• Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and its Troubled Legacy, James T. Patterson, 2001 • • The King Years: Historic Moments in the Civil Rights Movement, Taylor Branch, 2013 (highly abridged version of the author’s acclaimed MLK trilogy : Parting the Waters, Pillar of Fire, and At Caanan’s Edge—nearly 3,000 pages in total) • • A Dream of Freedom: The Civil Rights Movement from 1954 to 1968, Diane McWhorter, 2004 (Scholastic Press book for youth is a remarkably insightful, concise overview of the Movement by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Carry Me Home on the Birmingham Campaign —a highly suitable alternative for “time-pressed readers) • • The Children, David Halberstam, 1998 (comprehensive historical account focusing on the myriad important Movement figures) • • The Shadows of Youth: The Remarkable Journey of the Civil Rights Generation, Andrew Lewis, 2009 (alternative to The Children; shorter account focusing mainly on SNCC leaders, including Marion Barry) • • Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement, John Lewis, 1998 (autobiography by the late Georgia congressman who was involved in many major CRM events) • • The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander, 2010

• Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson, 2014