Gov 16 Civil Rights

No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate they can be taught to love. For love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite. Nelson Mandela

Civil Rights Movies

Civil Rights ppt

Standards

Strand: Civics and Government

Content Standard III: Students understand the ideals, rights, and responsibilities of citizenship and understand the content and history of the founding documents of the United States with particular emphasis on the United States and New Mexico constitutions and how governments function at local, state, tribal, and national levels. Students will:

9-12 Benchmark 3-A: compare and analyze the structure, power and purpose of government at the local, state, tribal and national levels as set forth in their respective constitutions or governance documents:

Analyze the development of voting and civil rights for all groups in the United States following reconstruction, to include:

a. intent and impact of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the constitution;

b. segregation as enforced by Jim Crow laws following reconstruction;

c. key court cases (e.g., Plessy v. Ferguson, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Roe v. Wade);

d. roles and methods of civil rights advocates (e.g., Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, Russell Means, César Chávez);

e. the passage and effect of the voting rights legislation on minorities (e.g., 19th amendment, role of Arizona supreme court decision on Native Americans,their disenfranchisement under Arizona constitution and subsequent changes made in other state constitutions regarding Native American voting rights -such as New Mexico, 1962, 1964 Civil Rights Act, Voting Act of 1965, 24th Amendment);

f. impact and reaction to the efforts to pass the Equal Rights Amendment,

g. rise of black power, brown power, American Indian movement, united farm workers;

WICOR: Writing, Inquiry, Collaboration, Organization and Reading

Conceptions of Equality

The DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

THE CONSTITUTION

The Supreme Court

The Struggle for racial equality

The Dred Scott Decision, 1857

The Reconstruction Amendments

Plessy V. Ferguson (1896)

Brown V. Board of Education of Topeka, 1954

The Civil Rights act of 1964

The Struggle for African American voting rights

Methods of Disenfranchising African American Voters

Eliminating the poll tax

The voting rights act of 1965

Racial Gerrymandering

Women's Struggles for civil rights

Original status of the women

The Seneca Falls Convention. 1848

The rights for suffrage

The equal rights amendment

Milestone in the Modern Women's Rights movement

Affirmative Action

Background

Recent Affirmative action cases

Summary

Section 3 Equal Protection of the Law

The equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment means that state and local governments cannot draw unreasonable distinctions among different groups. The Supreme Court has developed three basic guidelines for considering whether a law or an action violates the equal protection clause. The rational basis test asks if the law is related to an acceptable government goal, such as safety. The Court analyzes a law to determine if it has a "suspect classification" based on race or national origin. The Court also closely scrutinizes a law dealing with fundamental rights. Laws that classify people unreasonably are said to discriminate. The Court, however, tests laws on their "intent to discriminate," not on whether they do discriminate.

Discrimination was a way of life after the Civil War. State and local Jim Crow laws in mostly Southern states required racial segregation. In 1896 the Supreme Court ruled that Jim Crow laws were constitutional in the case Plessy v. Ferguson. Plessy's "separate but equal" doctrine was overturned in 1954 in the case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. This decision marked the beginning of the long struggle to desegregate public schools. The civil rights movement that emerged after the Brown decision led to new civil rights laws that barred discrimination and ensured the right to vote.

South Carolina Session

Here are a few of King's pearls of wisdom to help remind you of the power of a vision.

1. "Faith is taking the first step even when you can't see the whole staircase."
2. "There comes a time when silence is betrayal."
3. "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
4. "In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
5. "Only in the darkness can you see the stars."
6. "If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward."
7. "Darkness cannot drive out darkness: Only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: Only love can do that."
8. "Let no man pull you so low as to hate him."
9. "That old law about 'an eye for an eye' leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing."
10. "There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must take it because his conscience tells him it is right."
11. "Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
12. "Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."
13. "Intelligence plus character--that is the goal of true education."
14. "We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience."
15. "A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus."
16. "I have decided to stick to love ... Hate is too great a burden to bear."
17. "Everybody can be great ... because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love."
18. "A man who won't die for something is not fit to live."
19. "No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they'd die for."
20. "Forgiveness is not an occasional act; it is a constant attitude."
21. "Those who are not looking for happiness are the most likely to find it, because those who are searching forget that the surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others."
22. "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
23. We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.
24. "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."
25. "We must accept finite disappointment but never lose infinite hope."
26. "I have a dream that one day little black boys and girls will be holding hands with little white boys and girls."
27. "We must live together as brothers or perish together as fools."
28. "Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge, which is power; religion gives man wisdom, which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals."
29. "People fail to get along because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don't know each other; they don't know each other because they have not communicated with each other."
30. "We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies."
31. "No person has the right to rain on your dreams."