History Unit Sampler 2009
US History: The 60’s: A Society Erupts
Summary:
Using documentary sources and role-playing based on provided background information, students investigate, as though they were a government commission, the race riots of 1968. Their purpose is to discover what happened, why did it happen, and what could be done to prevent it from happening again, as President Lyndon Johnson charged his own investigative commission. Some students play roles of participants in the events, others act as commission members. When the commission presents its report, all make comments for improvement. Finally, students study the aftermath to see if racial relations have improved any since 1968.
Stage 1: Identify Desired Results
Transfer Goals/Standards Addressed:
o Standard(s): Virginia SOL's 11.13
The student will evaluate federal civil rights and voting rights developments since the 1950's, in terms of the Brown v. Board of Education decision and its impact on education; civil rights demonstrations and related activity leading to desegregation of public accommodations, transportation, housing, and employment; reapportionment cases and voting rights legislation and their impact on political participation and representation; and affirmative action.
Understandings:
1. Race was and is a crucial element in American politics
2. Americans have a difficult time honestly reconciling their beliefs with the record on civil rights
Essential Questions:
· Do our stated American ideals cause progress or mask hypocrisy?
· What caused the race riots of the late 1960s?
· Can the racial divisions that have plagued American society be erased?
Knowledge and Skills:
o Knowledge of post-war civil rights events (Brown vs. Board, Selma)
o How anti-war and civil rights movement came together
Stage 2: Determine Acceptable Evidence
Performance Prompt: Kerner Essay
Essay question:
Did the Kerner Commission reveal or sidestep the issues of race relations?
Performance Task: Kerner Commission Role Play
Students role-play being members of LBJ's Kerner Commission to determine the causes of urban rioting in the 60's.
Quiz on the timeline of key events
Stage 3: Plan Learning Experiences and Instruction
1) After students have studied some information about the 1950s and early 1960s, they should understand that there was a strong consensus in the U.S. in the mid-1960s for social justice. At this point, students should read the background reading on the race riots in 1968. Ask the students what questions come to mind. They should be puzzled about how the nationwide consensus fell apart and violence broke out in the cities. They might be encouraged to wonder about relationships - to the Vietnam War, for example, or to more militant separatist African American groups. Eventually they should define the questions President Johnson defined for the Kerner Commission: what happened, why did it happen, and what can be done to prevent it from happening again?
(2) Divide the students into role-players (with role information sheets) and commission members. Send the commission members to the “archives” (your collection of documents on the history of racial relationships in the 20th century), and show the role-players the segments of “Eyes on the Prize” which deal with Elijah Mohammed, Malcolm X, the Black Power Movement, Martin Luther King’s northern strategy (and his assassination), Chicago and Detroit. This will help them visualize the environment in which their characters lived, and it will also help them understand the tension, which erupted at the time. They will then be better able to convey the emotional side of their role, which is so important for the commission to experience. The commission members need to be coached to develop questions on the basis of the documents they read - to test out hypotheses they might have, given what they learned about patterns of discrimination, racism, or any changes for the better in the first part of the century. Give them a list of the people who will come to “testify”(with their occupations or positions) so that they can prepare appropriate questions.
(3) Appoint a chairman and have the commission begin its hearings. It may take a few days to get through all ten “witnesses” but if the questioning is good and the witnesses are able to develop good answers on the spot, the exercise will be well worth the time.
(4) Allow the commission time to discuss their findings and to develop a report. Perhaps they could make an outline of the report for duplication, and then present the report orally. While they are doing this, the role-players could do some journal writing, beginning to develop their own ideas, based on all they have heard, about what caused the riots.
(5) Discuss the commission’s preliminary report. Be sure to have the commission identify the sources of their information for the benefit of the role-players, who did not look at the documents. The role-players should note that some historical perspective is helpful in analyzing this situation. Then have the students read the excerpts from an actual preliminary report, or some excerpts from the Kerner Commission report.
(6) Assign the students the paper on what happened and why. Have them exchange and comment on their papers, develop a rubric for excellence, and tell the students to revise and rewrite their papers.
Decisions at Midcentury – 20th Century History
Mark Williams U.S. History [Stages 1 and 2 only]
Students role-play world and national leaders involved in two of the most important decisions in the century: the Yalta Agreement, and the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan. After the role-play, students analyze the factors which were most important in making the decisions, as well as the near- and long-term implications.
This unit combines role-playing, films, modeling, the use of documents and the use of contextual understanding to help students to make historical and/or moral judgments about issues that are still controversial fifty years later. No doubt this unit will be used late in the year of a survey course, and much should be expected of students, both in terms of how well they use their imaginations and data analysis in the role-plays, and in terms of how carefully they justify their arguments in the final assessment.
Transfer Goal:
Better understand the past to better understand the present. Make informed and proactive decisions as a citizen.
Essential Questions
· Why do you think Roosevelt allow Stalin to “take over” Eastern Europe after World War II? Why did Truman drop the bomb? Were these the “best decisions” under the circumstances?
· What morally questionable actions have US Presidents engaged in and what can be done to prevent it?
Skills
· Ability to analyze primary and secondary source material
· Ability to understand events as dependent upon no single cause
· Historical thinking skills (primary source interpretation and analysis, analysis of cause and effect, recreation of character - empathy, written argument)
Selected background readings to develop individual roles
Teachers should make a collection of documents by some of the following people in order to give students their thoughts on the dropping of the bomb. All of them were influential, some more than others.
· Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson
· General H.H. Arnold, Commander of the Army Air Force
· General George C. Marshall
· Admiral William D. Leahy, Naval Advisor and Truman’s representative to the Joint Chiefs of Staff
· Joseph C. Grew, Acting Secretary of State
· James F. Byrnes, Truman’s special representative on the Interim Committee
· Ralph Bard, Undersecretary of the Navy
· A.H. Compton, scientist, and advisor to the Interim Committee
· J. Robert Oppenheimer, scientist and Director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, advisor to the Interim Committee
· Leslie R. Groves, Brigadier General of the Army Corps of Engineers
STAGE 2
Role plays (see Stage 3) & Essays and quizzes
(1) After students have studied World War II, both the campaigns and the impact on the home front, assign students to read the short Introduction to the Yalta Conference and divide the class into thirds, assigning each third to be a “negotiating team” for one of the great powers. Do not have them read anything in their texts about the outcome of the Yalta conference yet.
(2) Allow the students to prepare their positions in their groups, and to think up supporting arguments, based on what they already know about the experiences of these leaders during the war (e.g. the students should recall that Stalin once had a non-aggression pact with Hitler, and that the Soviet Union lost 6 million people as a result of the war - the Stalin group would use this to justify their need for a friendly government in Poland, to prevent such a tragedy from ever occurring again). The teacher will need to do some coaching here, for even at this point in the year students need to be reminded to use historical data to support their arguments and recreate the past!
(3) Assemble the students in a circle, sitting with their groups. The Roosevelt group should serve as “chairman” and announce the various agenda items. However, the agenda should not be tightly controlled, and the teacher should encourage various teams to try to address other issues if the group seems to be reaching an impasse, or if the conference is not addressing the item their team thinks is most important. We want students to begin to see that the different issues on the agenda were eventually all inter-related and that the parties involved could not agree on any of them until they began to make agreements on many or all at once. (e.g.If you do this, I’ll do that.) Thus the conference may go on at some length, in order for students to appreciate the complexity of the negotiations.
(4) After an agreement has been hammered out (or after the students have tried to create one for some time), show the segment of “When Lions Roared” which recreates the Yalta conference, and have them read the Yalta Agreement itself . Summarize together the main points of the agreement, and discuss how each side had to make concessions to get what it wanted. Who got the better of the conference? The film suggests that the success of the agreement would hinge on the relationship of trust among the three principles: Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill. Tell students to write journal entries which address the question of whether or not Roosevelt “gave away” Eastern Europe, as many critics have suggested over the years. (And if so, then why?) Also, they should think about what role Churchill played in this conference, and whether or not he made much of a difference.
(5) Assign a short background reading, perhaps from your text, which discusses the end of the war in Europe and the final campaigns of the Pacific theatre, bringing student into the summer of 1945. The New York Times article, “Operation Tokyo” is also useful. Roosevelt is dead, Truman is president, and he has just learned of the work of the Manhatten Project. At Potsdam, Truman would jolt the Russians by revealing that the Atom Bomb had been tested and worked with devastating results, but then he had to decide if he would actually use it.
(6) Assign the roles of Truman’s advisers to students - the teacher could be Truman, or a student could play the president too. Each role has a short reading, but students should not read the excerpts from Truman’s memoirs until after the role-play. Students without roles will be “analysts,” who will observe a “Truman cabinet meeting” and try to determine what factors were most influential in Truman’s decision to use the Atom bomb against Japan. The advisors should present their positions (giving their names), and argue them as forcefully as possible. The person playing Truman should present the points of the Truman reading when all are finished (or all could read the selection after the debate), but during the debate should encourage the participants to present their views fully and clearly.
(7) After the cabinet meeting, the analysts should discuss what factors they think were most influential in Truman’s decision. Discussion following the analysis of the decision should draw on understanding of the Yalta conference and its aftermath, and center on the problem of trust and suspicion in international relations. Any of the horror films depicting the bombing of Hiroshima, or the graphic description in John Hersey’s novel, should elicit some strong views on the morality of the use of the bomb, and there are plenty of readings available arguing its necessity, all to evoke an intense debate on the subject. Students could also be assigned to read from the text about the beginnings of the Cold War in the late 1940s, the Korean War, and McCarthyism, all of which can be considered important effects of the two decisions together. They should also consider the controversies around the effectiveness of the United Nations as they think about whether these decisions were the best which could have been made under the circumstances. One might argue that it is unfair to judge Truman or Roosevelt, when much of what we now know about the impact of their decisions was not known to them. On the other hand, the teacher should point out, if the students don’t, that most of the readings we have from those involved in the decision to drop the bomb were written well after the bomb was dropped - defending their positions as though nothing had happened to make them change their minds.
(8) After the students have had time to process many of these issues in their journals, assign them to write the paper, either on the factors most influential in the decisions, or on whether the decisions were the best that could have been made. Have them exchange and comment on each other’s papers and then revise and resubmit them.