April 16 - 20 - 2018 (Block Schedule)

AP US History

April 16 - 20 - 2018 (Block Schedule)

Because we will be on block schedule this week, you will have some combined lecture-text activities. This is the ONLY way that we can complete the material.

This week we will basically be moving through the 1950s and early 1960s starting with an overview of Civil Rights. There will be review activities most days (recap/bell work/ etc)

Over the next two weeks you will have several text-based homework assignments to complete covering domestic events while cover together in class events of the Civil Rights and Cold War era (particularly the Vietnam War.

Fifth Period will meet as normal (and there will be a day, maybe two with no in-class lunches)

This means that 5th Period will have a whole other lesson plan. I am not publishing a separate plan just for 5th so there are some days when your assignment will be completely different.

MONDAY(Period 3, 5) TUESDAY (Periods 4,5,6)

• Examine the origins of the Civil Rights struggle 1944 - 1950s

MaterialsFormat

Power point/Video?Lecture-discussionL.CCR.2-3

Student Skill Types

Chronological Reasoning (1, 2, 3)

Comp/Context (5)

Historical Evidence (6,7)

Introduction

• Eisenhower’s presidency is sometimes called the Affluent Society. And indeed the U.S. was almost economically unchallenged in the 1950s. The middle class was never larger than the mid-late 1950s and as a result those values and ideas became completely dominant, or so it would seem. The youth were starting to have other ideas and the reign of the middle class was being questioned by those who most benefitted by that affluence; the educated upper middle class. The Beat Generation writers like Jack Kerouac and Alan Ginsberg started a literary assault on these values just as Mark Twain had chastised the Victorians before. Of course, one of the most vexing issues for parents of the Greatest Generation (Those who fought the Depression and WWII) was the rise of rock –n-roll and youth culture. The 1950s beatniks were the origins of the 1960s Hippies.The development of the Civil Rights era of the 1950s and 1960s exists within this backdrop.
• As we have seen, the civil rights movement became a vocal byproduct of WWII. Here’s a quick review of what you should know from events late in the FDR years and throughout Truman.

a. The Double V Campaign (The campaign launched by the to call attention to both racism in Nazi Germany but also race issues in America

b. Tuskegee Airmen played a pivotal role in calling attention to the fighting abilities of black airmen and helping to erase preconceptions of race.

c. Executive Order 8802 and A. Philip Randolph (After a threat to organize a march on Washington to demonstrate against injustice in pay and hiring practices in wartime industries, FDR was forced into an executive order equalizing pay and hiring.)

d. CORE (Founded by James A. Farmer the Congress on Racial Equality pioneered non-violent protest methods in the 1940s such as the sit-down strike)

e. To Secure the Rights and Truman’s Executive Order 9981 (Following the news that WWII veterans had been attacked in Georgia by white thugs, Truman issued orders for an investigation on race issues. The result was compiled and called To Secure these Rights. He issued an executive order desegregating the military and Federal government. This was a major step in civil rights.

• To quickly sum up, the first wave of civil rights legislation in the 20th century was inspired by raising awareness and Presidential actions. The use of executive orders is important to understand. While the orders were the right of a President in dealing with issues impacting the Executive branch, they could do little in the name of Congressional legislation. Here similar to the antebellum period, southern states could often block Federal initiatives.

Eisenhower and the Civil Rights Years

• The best way to describe Ike’s feelings on civil rights was that he wished it would go away. He was far less interested in the topic but ironically it might be that lack of interest that saw his administration forced to make key decisions.
• On August 28, 1955, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African American youth who was on a summer vacation from his home on Chicago’s South Side, was kidnapped by two white men from his uncle's home in Mississippi. Four days later, Till's badly beaten body was recovered from the Tallahatchie River. A 75-pound cotton gin fan was attached with barbed wire to his neck.
• Till had allegedly entered a grocery store, bought some bubble gun, and whistled at a white woman who worked there. The woman's husband and his half-brother kidnapped and killed Till. As one put it: "I just decided it was time a few people got put on notice." An all-white jury acquitted the two men in an hour and seven minutes. One juror commented: "If we hadn't stopped to drink a pop, it wouldn't have taken that long.
• The Till case presented the President with an issue that was common in U.S. history but one that had been at least dormant for a while; state’s rights. The fact that murder cases were state matters inhibited justice in cases involving race. Federal laws as you well know were often blocked by “black codes” and “Jim Crow” laws all over the country. The 1950s forced this issue into the open.

Brown v. Board of Education Topeka Cases (1954)

Facts of the Case

Black children were denied admission to public schools attended by white children under laws requiring or permitting segregation according to the races. These laws were defended as part of the infamous Plessey v. Ferguson ruling in the 1890s where the doctrine of “separate but equal” had been established. The white and black schools approached equality in terms of buildings, curricula, qualifications, and teacher salaries.

Question

Does the segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race deprive the minority children of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment? NAACP attorneys argued the case and Thurgood Marshall, future Supreme Court Justice, became well known as a result of this case.

Conclusion

Decision: 9 votes for Brown, 0 vote(s) against
Legal provision:Equal Protection clause of the 14th amendment:The Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision did not abolish segregation in other public areas, such as restaurants and restrooms, nor did it require desegregation of public schools by a specific time. It did, however, declare the permissive or mandatory segregation that existed in 21 states unconstitutional. It was a giant step towards complete desegregation of public schools. Even partial desegregation of these schools, however, was still very far away, as would soon become apparent. Despite the equalization of the schools by "objective" factors, intangible issues foster and maintain inequality. Racial segregation in public education has a detrimental effect on minority children because it is interpreted as a sign of inferiority. The long-held doctrine that separate facilities were permissible provided they were equal was rejected. Separate but equal is inherently unequal in the context of public education. The unanimous opinion sounded the death-knell for all forms of state-maintained racial separation.

Little Rock Central

• It took only a short time for the implications of the Brown case to be felt. Three years after the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Educationdecision, which officially ended public-school segregation, a federal court ordered Little Rock to comply. On September 4, 1957, Governor Orval Faubus defied the court, calling in the Arkansas National Guard to prevent nine African American students--"The Little Rock Nine"--from entering the building. Ten days later in a meeting with President Eisenhower, Faubus agreed to use the National Guard to protect the African American teenagers, but on returning to Little Rock, he dismissed the troops, leaving the African American students exposed to an angry white mob. Within hours, the jeering, brick-throwing mob had beaten several reporters and smashed many of the school's windows and doors. By noon, local police were forced to evacuate the nine students.
• When Faubus did not restore order, President Eisenhower dispatched 101st Airborne Division paratroopers to Little Rock and put the Arkansas National Guard under federal command. By 3 a.m., soldiers surrounded the school, bayonets fixed. The Use of the 101st Airborne was perhaps significant as they are similar to Special Forces and perhaps a sign to any guardsmen who might try to interfere.
• Under federal protection, the "Little Rock Nine" finished out the school year. The following year, Faubus closed all the high schools, forcing the African American students to take correspondence courses or go to out-of-state schools. The school board reopened the schools in the fall of 1959, and despite more violence--for example, the bombing of one student's house--four of the nine students returned, this time protected by local police.
• The use of Federal power over state power was a sign of things to come in the realm of civil rights.

Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott

• On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a 42-year-old African American woman who worked as a seamstress, boarded this Montgomery City bus to go home from work. On this bus on that day, Rosa Parks initiated a new era in the American quest for freedom and equality.
• She sat near the middle of the bus, just behind the 10 seats reserved for whites. Soon all of the seats in the bus were filled. When a white man entered the bus, the driver (following the standard practice of segregation) insisted that all four blacks sitting just behind the white section give up their seats so that the man could sit there. Mrs. Parks, who was an active member of the local NAACP, quietly refused to give up her seat. Her action was spontaneous and not pre-meditated, although her previous civil rights involvement and strong sense of justice were obvious influences. Parks was arrested and convicted of violating the laws of segregation, an obvious “Jim Crow” law. Mrs. Parks appealed her conviction and thus formally challenged the legality of segregation.
• At the same time, local civil rights activists initiated a boycott of the Montgomery bus system. In cities across the South, segregated bus companies were daily reminders of the inequities of American society. Since African Americans made up about 75 percent of the riders in Montgomery, the boycott posed a serious economic threat to the company and a social threat to white rule in the city.
• A new civil rights group made its appearance.The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). As their leader, they chose a young Baptist minister who was new to Montgomery: Martin Luther King, Jr. Sparked by Mrs. Parks’ action, the boycott lasted 381 days, into December 1956 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the segregation law was unconstitutional and the Montgomery buses were integrated. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was the beginning of a revolutionary era of non-violent mass protests in support of civil rights in the United States.There had been a bus boycott in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1953, but black leaders compromised before making real gains. Joann Robinson, a black university professor and activist in Montgomery, had suggested the idea of a bus boycott months before the Parks arrest.

Conclusion

The 1950s represented the beginnings of the era for civil rights. For the most part the protests were non-violent and because of the use of TV many white began to support civil rights ideas. The civil rights groups had focused most of their attention on issues of social and economic segregation. As the 1950s winded down the new focus was upon voting rights (not to imply that the war on segregation was over). Congress did pass two pieces of civil rights legislation. The Civil Rights Act, 1957: Eisenhower signed this bill to establish a permanent commission on civil rights with investigative powers but it did not guarantee a ballot for blacks (meaning protection of the right won in 1866 and 1920). It was the first civil-rights bill to be enacted after Reconstruction which was supported by most non-southern whites.The Civil Rights Act, 1960: Eisenhower passed this bill to appease strong southern resistance and only slightly strengthened the first measures provisions. Neither act was able to empower federal officials to register the right to vote for African-Americans and was not effective.It is unlikely that you will see these as often as the 1964 and 1968 acts which we will discuss later.

Homework

You can work on the weekend stuff.

WEDNESDAY (Period 3, 5) THURSDAY (Periods 4,5,6)

• Discuss key events foreign civil rights issues of the JFK Administration 1960-1963
• There will be a few bell work questions to follow today's lesson

MaterialsStrategy/Format

PPT and video clip?Lecture-discussion L.CCR.1

Student Skill Types

Chronological Reasoning (1, 2, 3)

Comp/Context (5)

Historical Evidence (6,7)

Introduction and Instructions

• JFK won one of the closest elections in U.S. History (see map). There were allegations of cheating just like in 2000 and 2016. The allegations involved Cook County Illinois (This is what the first season of the TV show Scandal is loosely based upon these events)
• In 1960 one of the most important and closest elections in U.S. History occurred. It pitted political veteran and Vice President Richard Nixon against Democrat John F. Kennedy who, like Barak Obama had not yet completed a full term in the U.S. Senate. Nixon had some political liabilities. Nixon's rapid rise in American politics nearly came to a crashing halt after a sensational headline appeared in the New York Post stating, "Secret Rich Men's Trust Fund Keeps Nixon in Style Far Beyond His Salary." The headline appeared just a few days after Eisenhower had chosen him as his running mate. Amid the shock and outrage that followed, many Republicans urged Eisenhower to dump Nixon from the ticket before it was too late.
• Nixon, however, in a brilliant political maneuver, took his case directly to the American people via the new medium of television. During a nationwide broadcast, with his wife Pat sitting stoically nearby, Nixon offered an apologetic explanation of his finances, including the now-famous lines regarding his wife's "respectable Republican cloth coat." Additionally, he told of a little dog named Checkers that was given as a present to his young daughters. "I want to say right now that regardless of what they say, we're going to keep it. The Checker’s Speech saved his career but people still had doubts. In light ofthe Watergate Scandal 20 years later, perhaps they were correct to worry.
• JFK also understood TV and in the 3 televised debates, a first in history, viewers all believed that the young, tanned Massachusetts war hero was the winner. However, many who heard the debate on the radio believed JFK was bested by the more experienced Nixon. During the debate and the general campaign Kennedy accused the Republicans of allowing a “missile gap” to develop as the Soviets had developed more ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles). JFK also promised middle class tax cuts to stimulate the economy that seemed to be lagging in the late 1950s in some sectors.
• The Election of 1960 was very telling. Nixon won far more states but as you know, this matters little if you cannot poll the major states. But even here the race was tight. JFK won in New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois where there were fierce allegations of fraud. Nixon took California (his home state) and Ohio. In the end, JFK with only 2 tenths of a percent of the popular vote but a clear majority in the electoral count.

JFK and the Cold War

The Berlin Crisis of 1961

• When JFK first assumed the Presidency, he had to deal with a tragic escalation of Cold War tensions that he had inherited from Eisenhower. An international diplomatic crisis erupted in May 1960 the USSR shot down an American U-2 spy plane in Soviet air space and captured its pilot, Francis Gary Powers Confronted with the evidence of his nation’s espionage, President Dwight D. Eisenhower was forced to admit to the Soviets that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had been flying spy missions over the USSR for several years. The Soviets convicted Powers on espionage charges and sentenced him to 10 years in prison. However, after serving less than two years, he was released in exchange for a captured Soviet agent in the first-ever U.S.-USSR “spy swap.” The U-2 spy plane incident raised tensions between the U.S. and the Soviets during the Cold War (1945-91), the largely political clash between the two superpowers and their allies that emerged following World War II.
• In early 1960 JFK meet with Soviet Premiere Khrushchev in Geneva early in his Presidency and it did not go well. We now know that that JFK was in terrible pain from a back problem and was on meds that kept him pretty messed up. The Soviet leader got the impression that he was a weak leader. This may have stimulated the Soviet decision to press the western powers on the issue of Berlin.
• During the 1950s a steady outflow of refugees from the Soviet occupation zone to the West consisted primarily of young people of working age. By 1950 some 1.6 million had migrated to the western zones. Between 1950 and 1961, the refugee flow continued at a rate of 100,000 to 200,000 annually. Workers were attracted by the economic opportunities open to them in West Germany, and in the early 1950s, they and their families formed the majority of emigrants. By the late 1950s, a growing proportion of those leaving were professional people and students whose skills were sorely needed for internal development. In 1959 about 144,000 persons fled; in 1960, the figure rose to 199,000; and in the first seven months of 1961, about 207,000 left the country.
• In November 1958, Soviet Premier Khrushchev issued an ultimatum giving the Western powers six months to agree to withdraw from Berlin and make it a free, demilitarized city. At the end of that period, Khrushchev declared, the Soviet Union would turn over to East Germany complete control of all lines of communication with West Berlin; the western powers then would have access to West Berlin only by permission of the East German government. The United States, Great Britain, and France replied to this ultimatum by firmly asserting their determination to remain in West Berlin and to maintain their legal right of free access to that city.
• In 1959 the Soviet Union withdrew its deadline and instead met with the Western powers in a Big Four foreign ministers' conference. Although the three-month-long sessions failed to reach any important agreements, they did open the door to further negotiations and led to Premier Khrushchev's visit to the United States in September of 1959. At the end of this visit, Khrushchev and President Eisenhower stated jointly that the most important issue in the world was general disarmament and that the problem of Berlin and "all outstanding international questions should be settled, not by the applicationof force, but by peaceful means through negotiations."
• The communist Eastern German government pushed the Soviets to act. During the spring and early summer, the East German regime procured and stockpiled building materials for the erection of the Berlin Wall. Although this extensive activity was widely known, few outside the small circle of Soviet and East German planners believed that East Germany would be sealed off. Approximately 32,000 combat and engineer troops were used in building the Wall. Once their efforts were completed, the Border Police assumed the functions of manning and improving the barrier. The Soviet Army was present to discourage interference by the West and presumably to assist in the event of large-scale riots.
• As the confrontation over Berlin escalated, on 25 July President Kennedy requested an increase in the Army's total authorized strength from 875,000 to approximately 1 million men, along with increase of 29,000 and 63,000 men in the active duty strength of the Navy and the Air Force. Additionally, he ordered that draft calls be doubled, and asked the Congress for authority to order to active duty certain ready reserve units and individual reservists. He also requested new funds to identify and mark space in existing structures that could be used for fall-out shelters in case of attack, to stockthose shelters with food, water, first-aid kits and other minimum essentials for survival, and to improve air-raid warning and fallout detection systems.
• In the end however, JFK’s reaction did not stop the Berlin Wall from going up. Kennedy went to Berlin and made his famous speech (Eich bin ein Berliner). Though intending this final phrase to mean "I am a Berliner," in one of the memorably humorous footnotes to Cold War history, Kennedy's words would be more accurately translated as "I am a donut" since a "Berliner" is a popular German pastry. The U.S. did pledge once again to defend West Berlin and the West Germany as millions more in aid were allocated.

The Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis