Argumentative Essay Research N: P: D:
Argumentative Essay Research Prompt – The struggle for civil rights is important to all of us.
We are taught to follow the Golden Rule and treat others as we wish to be treated. A democratic nation must promote and defend equality and equal opportunity for all people. To honor those who have sacrificed and struggled to protect the rights of us all, there is to be a statue erected in honor of a great Civil Rights leader in a park in Mableton. There are already memorials and tributes to the many well-known and deserving leaders of the Civil Rights Movement… Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, and others. There were many more who sacrificed and struggled for the cause of Civil Rights. Research one of the following people in preparation to write an argumentative paper. In this paper you will present your argument that the person you have chosen is deserving of a statue in his/her honor.
GUIDING QUESTIONS:
How did this civil rights leader contribute to a freer, more equal America?
Who was this civil rights leader?
*Provide basic biographical detail.
*Include key events/highlights of life.
How was this person a civil rights leader?
*leadership by example – personal sacrifice and courage?
How did this person demonstrate courage and personal sacrifice for the cause of civil rights?
*leadership as an organizer/planner of protests and action?
Why were people willing to follow this leader in the struggle for civil rights?
What change did this civil rights leader help to bring about?
*What civil rights changes did this leader help to win?
TOPICS
Ruby Bridges - the first black child to attend an all-white elementary school in the South
William Frantz Elementary -New Orleans, Louisiana
School desegregation
Civil Rights Movement
Elizabeth Eckford - one of the Little Rock Nine… first students to integrate Central High, Little Rock, Arkansas
Little Rock Nine
School desegregation
Civil rights movement
Jackie Robinson – first black major league baseball player
Desegregation of baseball
Branch Rickey
Brooklyn Dodgers
Ida B. Wells – “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement” – writer and speaker: anti-lynching, women’s suffrage, civil rights
Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad (1885, refused to give up her seat)
Jim Crow cars (on trains)
Lynching
Negro Fellowship League
Civil Rights Movement
John Lewis and James Zwerg – organizers/participants in the Freedom Rides that followed the Montgomery Bus Boycott and Boynton v. Virginia
Boynton v. Virginia (1960 Supreme Court decision declaring segregation in interstate transportation illegal)
Freedom Rides
Civil Rights Movement
Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner – The murders of these three civil rights activists in Mississippi spurred the signing
of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
James Earl Chaney
Andrew Goodman
Michael Schwerner
1964 Civil Rights Act
Voter Registration
The Greensboro Four - Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair, Jr., and David Richmond
Sit-in protest at a department store, led to sit-ins as an effective method of protest and catalyst for change.
Sit-in
Woolworths
Desegregation
Civil Rights Movement
Tommie Smith and John Carlos – Expelled from Olympics for raising Fist of Black Power after winning medals
1968 Summer Olympics, Mexico City
Black Power