Lesson Plan 4: Elementary School
Plessy v. Ferguson
by Elizabeth Berlin Taylor
Introduction
People who commit crimes are often thought to be “bad” people
or people who are engaged in deleterious behavior. This lesson looks
at two separate crimes in order to insert a complexity into the decision
to break a law. The first crime that students will examine is that of
Homer Plessy who violated Louisiana’s Separate Car Act and whose
appeal of his arrest to the Supreme Court resulted in the codification
of the Separate but Equal laws that were enacted in many US states.
The second crime that students will examine is the decision by Arkansas
Governor Orval Faubus to refuse to abide by the Supreme Court’s
ruling in Brown v Board of Education to integrate Little Rock
High School in 1957. Students will then choose one of the crimes and
draw out the events of each in a four-frame comic strip.
Background
Plessy v Ferguson (1896): In 1890, Louisiana passed the Separate
Railcar Act. This act stated that black and white patrons must sit in
separate sections on intrastate railroads. Homer Plessy, in a pre-meditated
act of defiance, boarded a train in New Orleans and announced that he
was neither white nor inclined to move to a section for African Americans.
For this he was arrested and convicted of violating the Act. He appealed
his conviction all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States
in which it was found that as long as the accommodations were equal,
states could legally enforce segregation. This decision stood until
a unanimous Supreme Court overturned it in 1954 in the Brown v Board
ruling.
Little Rock, Arkansas (1957): In 1954, the Supreme Court of the United
States decided unanimously that local laws mandating segregated schools
were unconstitutional. In Chief Justice Earl Warren’s words, “in
the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’
has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”
A second ruling in 1955 announced that the integration of America’s
public schools should take place “with all deliberate speed.”
Thus, the Little Rock school board created a program to phase in integration
beginning in 1957 with Central High School. Facing re-election and running
against ardent segregationists, then Governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus
used the Arkansas National Guard to deny the nine African American students
(dubbed the Little Rock Nine) entrance into Central High School, though
it had been mandated by Brown and by a federal judge. In response to
his intransigence, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent in the 101st
Airborne and used federal power to force Little Rock to integrate Central
High School. In the end, Faubus was not punished and went on to win
reelection.
Materials
• Political cartoon showing a black man being required to move
from his seat near a white woman on a train car: http://us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/weblect/lec02/plessy2.jpg
• Secondary source cartoon of the events of Plessy. http://www2.maxwell.syr.edu/plegal/scales/plessyvis/html
• Document: Supreme Court upholding the Louisiana court’s
decision: http://americanhistory.si.edu/Brown/history/1-segregated/images/plessyvferguson-lg.jpg
• Image of an African American woman drinking from a water fountain
labeled “colored only”: http://faculty.umf.maine.edu/~walters/web%20104/30s%20parks%20segregation.jpg
• Secondary source explanation of Plessy v. Ferguson: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_plessy.html
• Images of Little Rock integration 1957: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/story/03_schools.html#gallery
http://www.hist.umn.edu/~bywelke/littlerock.htm
http://www.ardemgaz.com/prev/central/counts.html
• Timeline of events of the Little Rock integration struggle.
http://www.nps.gov/chsc/historyculture/timeline.htm
• Chart paper
• Worksheet with four
boxes in which students can draw their comic strip.
• Essay question worksheet
Essential Questions
Is it ever just to break the law? How did Homer Plessy and Orval Faubus
break the law? What are some of the differences in what each did and
in their punishments?
Objectives
Students will be able to analyze political cartoons
Students will be able to identify and explain the issues of Plessy
v Ferguson and of the integration of Little Rock’s Central
High School
Students will be able to analyze the complex issues behind breaking
laws
Motivation
Show students the political cartoon depicting a black passenger being
forced to leave a railcar with a white woman. In their notebooks, have
them answer the questions:
1. What is happening in this political cartoon?
2. Who is breaking the law?
The teacher will call on students to share what they have written and
will elicit from students what the cartoon shows and that it is the
African American man that is breaking the law. Inform students that
we are going to explore how it became law that blacks and whites had
to sit separately on the train and why people broke that law.
Procedure
After the motivation, students will read the explanation of the Plessy
case at the PBS website, http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_plessy.html.
It can be printed and duplicated, or, if students are accessing it via
the internet, they can choose to watch the very short video clip that
is on the page that adds some information to the printed text. Ask students
to take brief notes with a partner as they read.
Students will share their notes with the class and the teacher will
record them on chart paper and hang the paper on the wall so that all
students have a common understanding of the case.
Students will view a secondary source cartoon at http://www2.maxwell.syr.edu/plegal/scales/plessyvis.html
that will serve to reinforce the content that they extracted from their
reading.
Students will view a picture of an African American woman drinking
from a water fountain labeled “colored only,” at http://faculty.umf.maine.edu/~walters/web%20104/30s%20parks%20segregation.jpg.
The teacher will make clear to the class that this was legal because
of the Plessy case in which the Supreme Court decided that as long as
accommodations were equal, that they could be segregated on the basis
of race.
Students will engage in a class discussion in which the teacher will
ask
• Should all laws be followed?
• Do people have the right to choose what laws they will follow?
Why or why not?
• Should Homer Plessy be considered a criminal? Should he be considered
a hero?
• Does Plessy’s planning to break the law make his crime
more or less heinous? Why?
The teacher will inform students that they are going to look at another
case in which a person planned to break a law: the case of Orval Faubus
resisting the legally mandated integration of Central High School in
Little Rock, Arkansas.
Briefly explain that in 1954, in a case called Brown v Board of
Education, the Supreme Court struck down the “Separate but
Equal” decision that had been in effect since the Plessy v
Ferguson ruling in 1896. Read students the quotation from Chief
Justice Earl Warren: “in the field of public education, the doctrine
of "separate but equal" has no place. Separate educational
facilities are inherently unequal.” Thus, all school districts
in the United States would have to be integrated and have students of
different races attend school together.
Pass out sets of images of the events in Little Rock (see links above)
to students in their reading pairs. Ask students to write down what
they think happened in Little Rock based on the pictures they have.
After ten minutes, have the pairs share their hypotheses with the class.
Write down the correct analyses on another sheet of chart paper and
post it.
Have pairs analyze the timeline at http://www.nps.gov/chsc/historyculture/timeline.htm
and add three new facts to the story they created from the Little Rock
images. Again, have the pairs share their stories and add the new facts
onto the chart paper.
Students will engage in a class discussion in which the teacher will
ask:
• Who is breaking the law?
• Why do you think that Orval Faubus is breaking the law against
segregation in schools? How did that affect whites and blacks in Little
Rock?
• What should his punishment be?
• How does this crime compare to that of Homer Plessy?
Students in their pairs will choose one of the “crimes”
and will draw a four-frame comic strip that depicts its important events.
Closure
Students will read the quotation from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in
his “Letter from the Birmingham Jail.” Explain that it was
written by King in response to criticism of his work to end segregation
in Birmingham, Alabama by white clergymen in 1963. Ask students to put
this quotation in their own words. Ask students if they agree with Dr.
King that some laws that are just must be followed, but that those laws
that are unjust should not.
You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break
laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently
urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation
in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical
for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: "How can you
advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies
in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would
be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal
but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a
moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St.
Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."
Now, what is the difference between the two? …A just law is a
man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An
unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. …Thus
it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court,
for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation
ordinances, for they are morally wrong.
Extension
Students will write a short essay on a topic of their choice:
• Are all crimes equal? Why or why not?
• If laws are unfair, should we break them?
• Are there crimes for which we should not be punished? If so,
what are they and why not?
• Evaluate the quotation of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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