Unit 12 9-12: Desired Results
Big Ideas
- The evolution of Civil Rights legislation must explore the traditions, history, and coalitions that made up the American political parties.
- Civil rights laws and voting rights laws were passed during Reconstruction and then stifled at nearly every turn by a coalition of ardent segregationists and their allies.
Enduring Understandings
- Denying Blacks the right to vote in the South allowed segregationists to maintain power in the South and helped the Democratic Party to hold power nationally from the 1930s into the 1960s.
- The Great Migration of Blacks into northern cities gave African Americans access to electoral power through the traditional urban Democratic political machines.
Essential Questions
- Why was leaving enforcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 at the state level also leaving the Act ineffective?
- What moved more and more segregationists to support civil rights for Black Americans by 1960?
- How did the upcoming election of 1960 influence the votes and behaviors of future candidates during the 1957 debate?
Objectives
Students will be to:
- Articulate how and why Adam Clayton Powell threatens his fellow northern Democrats into compliance with the civil rights movement’s agenda.
- Determine why Lyndon Johnson was able to make a 180o change in his support for civil rights between 1957 and 1964.
Key Terms and Definitions
Bloc – a group of nations, parties, or persons united for common action.
Filibuster – a political procedure in which one or more legislative body members prolong debate on proposed legislation to delay or entirely prevent a decision.
Integration – bringing people of different racial or ethnic groups into unrestricted and equal association, as in society or an organization; desegregation.
Interstate – involving, existing between, or connecting two or more states.
Jury Nullification – when the jury in a criminal trial gives a verdict of not guilty even though they think a defendant has broken the law. The jury’s reasons may include the belief that the law itself is unjust, that the prosecutor has misapplied the law in the defendant’s case, that the punishment for breaking the law is too harsh, or general frustrations with the criminal justice system.
Lynching – an extrajudicial killing by a group. It is most often used to characterize informal public executions by a mob to punish an alleged transgressor, punish a convicted transgressor, or intimidate people.
Poll Tax – a fixed sum tax on every liable individual without reference to income or resources. They were used in the United States as a major source of government funding for the colonies and later states. Poll taxes became a tool of disenfranchisement in the South following the end of Reconstruction. This persisted until court action following the ratification of the 24th Amendment in 1964 ended the practice.
Segregation (racial) – the separation of people into racial or other ethnic groups in daily life. It can involve the spatial separation of the races and the mandatory use of different institutions, such as schools and hospitals, by people of different races.
Stonewall – to engage in delaying tactics; stall