Overview:

Students will examine primary source documents and photographs to explain the ways in which local events lead to cases being presented before the Supreme Court. The Court upholds laws that protect the rights of all people an ensure equal opportunity.

Materials:

• Rosa Parks arrest records (pdf)
• Montgomery Bus Boycott documents and photographs (pdf)
• Browder v Gayle Court Case document (pdf)
• Supreme Court decision documents and photograph (pdf)
• Document analysis worksheet (pdf)
• Photo analysis worksheet (pdf)
• Montgomery to the U.S. Supreme Court flow map (pdf)
• Poster or chart paper

Aim/Essential Question:

How do Supreme Court decisions affect the lives of people living in the United States?

Teachers will need to explain the importance of the basic principles of American democracy that unify us as a nation: our individual rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; responsibility for the common good; equality of opportunity and equal protection of the law; freedom of speech and religion; majority rule with protection for minority rights; and limitations on government, with power held by the people and delegated by them to their elected officials who are responsible to those who elected them to office.

The Supreme Court, which was established by the Constitution, is responsible for managing conflicts over the interpretations and applications of the law. For example, in 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in the landmark case of Brown v Board of Education that the doctrine of "separate but equal" had no place in public schools. Separate educational facilities for black and white students were deemed unequal and schools were required to desegregate. In December of 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger. She was arrested for violating a city law requiring racial segregation on public buses. Five days later, on the day of Rosa Park's trial, the Montgomery Improvement Association organized a boycott of the public buses. The Montgomery Bus Boycott, which lasted for 381 days, was a protest campaign intended to oppose the city's policy of racial segregation on its public transportation system. On February 1, 1956, the federal class action suit of Browder vs. Gayle was filed in the Alabama courts. The lawsuit claimed that the City of Montgomery, the State of Alabama, and the National City Bus Lines were operating city buses in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. On June 4, 1956, the federal district court ruled that Alabama's racial segregation laws for buses were unconstitutional. While the case was appealed to the United States Supreme Court, segregation remained intact and the boycott continued. On November 13, 1956, the United States Supreme Court decided to uphold the ruling of the lower court and legally ended racial segregation on Alabama's public buses.

Objective:

 Students will analyze primary source documents and photographs to sequence the events that led to the Supreme Court's decision in regard to racial segregation on Alabama's public buses.

Motivation:

• Ask your students to tell what they know about the United States Supreme Court.
• Explain that the United States Supreme Court is the highest judicial court in the United States. The court consists of one Chief Justice and eight Associate Justices. Their job is to determine whether laws are in agreement with the United States Constitution or the law of the land. If the justices determine that laws are not in agreement with the Constitution or are unconstitutional, the law can no longer be in effect.
• Ask students what topics or laws they feel the Supreme Court should make decisions about.

Procedure:

Day 1

1. Divide your class into six groups.
   
2. Explain that each group will be investigating an event in Montgomery, Alabama that lead to a US Supreme Court case that affected the lives of the citizens of Alabama.
   
3. Assign each group one event and provide the related primary source documents and/or photographs.
   • Groups 1 & 2: Rosa Parks Arrest
   • Groups 3 & 4: The Montgomery Bus Boycott
   • Groups 5 & 6: Browder v. Gayle Court Case
     
4. Review the questions on the document and photo analysis sheets.
   
5. Using the Document and/or Photo Analysis sheet, have students look at each primary source and determine key facts that help them understand each event.

Closure:

 Ask each group to identify and share two key facts they have found about the event they are investigating with the whole class. 

Day 2:

1. Have each group create a poster illustrating the event in Alabama using the information from the document and/or photo analysis worksheet and the primary sources.
   
2. Each poster should include the title of the event, date(s) of the event, and key facts regarding the event. The posters may include the primary sources.
   
3. Have each group orally rehearse their poster presentation. All students must participate in the oral presentation.
   
4. While each group presents their poster, students record information about the events on the Montgomery to the US Supreme Court sequence map.

Closure:

Using their sequence map, have students turn to their neighbor and share one fact about each event.

Day 3:

1. Inform students that the defendants from the City of Montgomery decided to appeal or ask different judges to reconsider the lower courts decision to desegregate the buses. The appeal went to the United States Supreme Court.
   
2. Have students predict which way the Supreme Court ruled. Did they uphold or keep the decision to desegregate the buses or did they say that segregation is allowed in the Constitution?
   
3. Divide students into groups of two or three.
   
4. Pass out the Supreme Court decision primary source documents and Document and/or Photo Analysis Worksheets.
   
5. Have each student in the group analyze a different primary source using the analysis worksheet.
   
6. Students share what they discover about the Supreme Court's decision from the primary source with their group.
   
7. Have students complete the last section of the Montgomery to the US Supreme Court sequence map.

Closure / Discussion Question:

Based on the primary sources we've investigated, how does the United States Supreme Court affect the lives of people living in the United States? Record your response on the bottom of the Montgomery to the Supreme Court sequence map.