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Topic:
When people talk about being proud to be an American, they often mention our freedoms. Many of those freedoms came through sacrifice on the part of people who struggled for them from the Boston Tea Party to Abolitionism to Women’s Suffrage to the Civil Rights Movement. Activism is an essential and absolutely necessary part of our history. Democracy needs an active citizenry to survive.
Take a look at the Nonviolent Activism led by one of the activists on the list below. Then construct a fictitious conversation between this activist and Martin Luther King about tactics. What is acceptable to do in the name of civil disobedience? When is it OK to disobey the law in a democracy? When King did so in the 1950’s and early 1960’s, many people complained that his protests were too disruptive to society. They called King many things including a communist. They blamed King for the violence that happened elsewhere. King responded to these criticisms by saying things like:
“One has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”
“We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”
“And I contend that the cry of ‘black power’ is, at bottom, a reaction to the reluctance of white power to make the kind of changes necessary to make justice a reality for the Negro,” King said. “I think that we’ve got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard.”
What would your activist say? Make sure your conversation is well documented. Not just an opinion. Find as many actual quotes by your activist as possible to support your fabricated conversation.
List of Activists and Groups
Women’s Suffrage
A great place to start is to look at video clips on YouTube from the movie Iron Jawed Angels.
Alice Paul
Lucy Burns
Inez Milholland
Rose Winslow
Carrie Chapman Catt
Hawaii Democratic Revolution of 1954
Red Power movement
Adam Norwall
Richard Oakes
African-American Civil Rights Movement
Ida B. Wells
E. B. Du Bois
The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) Freedom Riders
Black Power Movement
Huey Newton
Bobby Seale
Malcolm X
Chicano Civil Rights Movement
Cesar Chavez
Teresa Cordova
USA Committee for Non-Violent Action
U.S. labor movement i.e.the Congress of Industrial Organizations sitdown strikes from 1935-1937 in auto plants or the UFW grape and lettuce boycotts.
Opponents of the Vietnam War
Ron Kovic
Richard Flacks
Students for a Democratic Society
Vivian Rothstein
Abe Peck
Ross Canton
Vietnam Veterans Against the War
i.e. draft card burnings, draft file destruction, demonstrations (i.e. 500,000 in 1969 in Washington, D.C.), sit-ins, blocking induction centers, draft and tax resistance, and the 1971 May Day traffic blocking in Washington, D.C.
Requirements:
Your paper will be a minimum of 2000 words long (not including your bibliography). Not all of it will be conversation. About 1/3 of the paper should be the fictitious conversation you construct between your activist and Martin Luther King. Yes, you can write this in the form of a script i.e. for a movie. About 1/3 of the paper should be the the supporting evidence in terms of quotes from sources you have researched to show that your fictitious conversation could have happened. The final 1/3 of the paper should be your answer/analysis of the main questions:
What is acceptable to do in the name of civil disobedience?
When is it OK to disobey the law in a democracy?
Once your paper is complete you will post it in CANVAS. It works best if you go in through the Grade book. (Please cite all sources in the text with the title and page number of the article, book, website etc. in parentheses.)
Purpose:
The purpose of this assignment is to have you practice the work of a historian. That means identifying a historical question, searching for original sources (that is, sources produced at the time) that help to answer the question, reading secondary materials (that is, things written after the fact by a historian or other) and putting your information in its broader context, and then writing a persuasive argument convincing me of your conclusions and your answer to the original question.
This paper deals with the question above during the period of United States history covered by the class. Papers should not address questions about other countries, nor should they stray into a later time period.
Sources
Papers should make use of a minimum of four secondary and four primary sources. The more primary sources the better.
Do not use current popular press magazine articles for secondary sources.
Do not use encyclopedia articles, Wikipedia, History.com, A&E.com, dictionary entrees etc. as one of your minimum sources
Care must be taken with web sources. Make sure you can determine the origin of a source,
Make sure it is from a trustworthy web page.
Proofread for spelling and grammar errors. Spell checking by computer does not catch all spelling errors so proofread as well.
Citations:
Using secondary or primary source without a proper citation is plagiarism
Papers must be footnoted using the Chicago Manual of Style. or Turabian. Do Not Use MLA.
Papers should also include a bibliography
Evaluation
The components which will be taken into consideration in the grade are:
Strength of argument
Whether the argument is made in a compelling and convincing way in the paper
Adequacy and use of sources including proper documentation
Writing, grammar and ability to express yourself
Organization and overall presentation
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