Unit 13 6-8: Desired Results

Big Ideas

• The study and understanding of the past can affect the future.
• Demands for Justice have long been a precept of Western Civilization and continue to this day.
• Tenacious resistance to oppression can lead to relief.

Enduring Understandings

• The oppression of Blacks, especially in the South, was overthrown through demands that society live up to its Judeo-Christian ideals.
• Nonviolent resistance to oppression has been successful.
• Throughout history, moral extremists have often met resistance to the more moderate call for change.

Essential Questions

• Why did Birmingham clergymen ask protesting Blacks to rely on the courts and negotiations?
• Why did Reverand King, Jr. give the local clerics a history lesson in Christian, Western, and American thought?
• Why was Martin Luther King, Jr. disgusted with the local clergy’s calls for moderation?

Objectives

Students will be able to:

• identify the local clerics’ objections to Reverend King’s demonstrations.
• connect Reverend King’s response to the clergymen’s objections.
• judge whether King was correct to use Christian, Western, and American models of moral extremism to explain his position to the clergymen.
• select a contemporary man or woman as a model of Reverand King’s moral extremism.

Key Terms and Definitions

• Clergymen – an ordained Christian minister
• Forbearance – a refraining from enforcing something (such as a debt, right, or obligation) that is due.
• Sanction – a threatened penalty for disobeying a law or rule: