Day Two:
Procedure:
- Ask the whole class to discuss the student responses
to the reading and questions from the previous night’s
homework assignment.
- Explain that the students involved in the Greensboro
and Jackson sit-ins were following the nonviolent
direct-action strategy espoused by civil rights
leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Tell the class
that King defended this strategy in a letter he wrote
from a Birmingham, Alabama jail cell.
- Read aloud excerpts from a Letter from a Birmingham
Jail. Students should read along, and then write
answers to the questions that follow the excerpts.
- Discuss student responses to the questions.
- Use student answers to question #2 to generate a
class definition of nonviolent direct action.
Post this definition on the chalkboard.
Summary/Closure:
1. Display the picture of the 1963 Jackson, Mississippi
lunch-counter sit and ask students to verbally answer
the following questions:
- How does the picture illustrate nonviolent direct
action? Explain.
- How does the picture illustrate tension? Explain.
- Have the students pictured here achieved the immediate,
short-term goal of nonviolent direct action? Explain.
2. Ask students to complete the 1960s Lunch-Counter Sit-Ins:
Concluding Assignment (attached Word document) as homework.
3. Distribute Background of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/democrac/39.htm
Ask students: Based on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, would
you consider the nonviolent civil rights movement to have
been a success or a failure? Explain.
Application:
- Ask students to brainstorm a list of ways that nonviolent
direct action could be implemented to combat a problem
in today’s world, perhaps even in their own
community.
- Ask students where in today’s world they may
already be aware of people engaging in nonviolent
direct action (for example: the recent protest marches
and economic boycotts of immigrant activists).
- Ask students to consider whether the actions of
the protestors at the lunch counter left an enduring
legacy for the protest movement. Ask students if they
think protestors today would be willing to submit
themselves to the abuse dealt out to the students
in the 1960s.
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