FYS 102: Civil Rights Memory
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Assignments

Paper 1

The federal court system was a pivotal battleground during the school desegregation fight. It is 1954, and the Supreme Court has decided to review the Brown case. Their decision will impact the entire legal structure of segregation.

Write a fifteen hundred word friend of the court brief that gives your position on the issue. For this assignment, a specific voice will be assigned to you, so you could be (1) a white school board member, (2) a NAACP attorney, (3) a white businessman who supports integration, (4) a black school teacher who opposes integration, (5) a European exchange student, or (6) a mom. Your brief must make a clear, succinct, and even-tempered argument.

Paper 2

Melba Patillo put herself and her family in danger by integrating Central High School. The threats and violence were difficult for a young woman to endure, so she is beginning to question herself. Write her a fifteen hundred word letter telling her whether you think she should carry on. Is it worth the risk?

For this letter, you will write from the perspective of (1) a childhood friend, (2) a white student, (3) a concerned relative, or (4) a stranger. A good letter will give her understandable, tangible, convincing reasons for continuing or ending her involvement.

Paper 3

In The Shame of the Nation, Jonathan Kozol argues that American schools have become systematically resegregated and that funding inequality and high-stakes testing create a cycle of educational failure.

You are a member of the Bibb County school board, and you fear that Kozol's analysis may accurately describe Macon schools, so you study the problem. As an elected official, what, if anything, could you or should you do to change the situation? Present your plan in a fifteen hundred word report to the school board. A good plan will be practical, will have measureable results, and will be politically savvy.

Annotated Bibliography

Find, synopsize, and document five scholarly sources on the Civil Rights Movement. The sources should include one article from a reference text, two essays from different academic journals, and two chapters or essays from different scholarly books.

Document the sources in MLA format and write a one hundred word synopsis of each source.

Group Project

Collaborate with your group to produce an exhibit for the online museum on civil rights memory. Your exhibit will focus specifically on the desegregation of Bibb County schools. To produce the exhibit, you must find and interpret research drawn from original sources, such as interviews, newspapers, archives, or photographs.

The exhibit should be a substantial product, roughly five thousand words of text plus illustrations and references. All members of the group must contribute to the exhibit, and everyone will write a reflection essay that explains how you contributed to the project and what you learned from the process. The exhibit will be loaded onto the museum website.