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LESSON PLAN: Selma, 1965

Video Segment

Eyes on the Prize, Volume 167, Chapters 1, 2 and 3


Table of Contents

Summary
Questions for Discussion
Activities
Keywords
Profiles
Organizations
Maps
Graphs
Primary Documents


Summary

In January 1965, SCLC and SNCC set aside their differences over philosophy and strategy to launch a combined voter registration effort in the Selma, Alabama, area. More than half the county's residents were Black, but only one percent of Blacks were registered to vote.

After Sheriff Jim Clark arrested a highly respected community leader, local teachers and other groups marched in protest. But the Selma campaign escalated further after violence broke out during a nighttime march in Marion, a neighboring town. Jimmy Lee Jackson, a young Black man trying to prevent his mother from being hurt by a police officer, was killed by a state trooper. In response to Jackson's death, SCLC proposed a symbolic march from Selma to Montgomery, the state capital.

Governor George Wallace banned the march, but six hundred people gathered to participate just the same. In what was later called "Bloody Sunday," state troopers, under orders from the governor to stop the marchers, beat and tear-gassed the demonstrators as they marched over the bridge out of Selma. The beatings made national news. Eight days after the Bloody Sunday incident, the president called upon Congress to enact a comprehensive voting rights bill.

Judge Frank Johnson declared that a march from Selma to Montgomery would constitute a legal form of expression, and President Johnson federalized the Alabama National Guard to protect the 25,000 marchers who then made the journey. Note: There is one instance of the use of profanity in this story, between frames 26520 and 26540. Teachers may choose to briefly mute the monitor at this point.


Questions for Discussion

  1. What caused the tension between SCLC and SNCC? What were the bases of their differences?
  2. Why did SNCC invite Malcolm X to speak in Selma? What was significant about his visit?
  3. Coretta Scott King remarked that coming back to Montgomery at the end of the Selma-to-Montgomery march had special meaning for her. In that city, ten years earlier, her husband had led the Montgomery Improvement Association and the dramatic bus boycott. Focusing only on these two events, the bus boycott and the Selma-to- Montgomery march, explain how the civil rights movement had grown.


Activities

Have the students draw up a curriculum for a model freedom school in MissHave the class read the interview of Selma's Sheyann Webb, who was eight years old in 1965. After reading her description of the violence-ridden first march out of Selma, students should write descriptions of the march from the point of view of Sheyann, Sheriff Jim Clark, John Lewis, a member of Selma's white community, a member of Selma's African American community. Have the students read their descriptions in round-robin fashion.

Set up a debate between students taking the roles of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. The issue is: What is the best strategy for empowering the African American community? Could the ideas raised in this debate apply to nonŠ African American communities who seek empowerment?


Keywords


Online Profiles


Organization Descriptions


Maps

  • United States. In 1950 the population of the United States was 134,941,622 White and 15,042,692 Black.
  • Alabama Capital: Montgomery. Population in 1950: 2,079,591 White, 979,617 Black. Principal Goods and Crops: iron, steel and saw mill materials; cotton, peanuts and soybeans.


Graphs


Primary Documents


Bibliography

See Eyes on the Prize Bibliography

 

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