Chris Graham Research Project

I chose to research the 10th grade civil rights history curriculum. The entire curriculum is split up into three units. The first unit is dominated by the death of Emmit Till; a fourteen year old boy who was brutally murdered in 1955 by two white men after being accused of flirting with a married white woman in Mississippi. The second unit is about using non-violence as a tool of change. It focuses on the black struggle for voting rights by highlighting the march from Selma to Montgomery. The third unit is all about school desegregation in Boston, MA. I tried hard to remember that as 10^th graders, these students have already been taught about the “traditional black history icons” like Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King. Keeping with the three touched upon subjects of hate crimes, voting rights, and school desegregation in Boston, I would modify the curriculum to include current statistics. Doing so will allow students to place this “ancient history” into context and realize things like: hate crimes exist on a daily basis; despite having the right to vote, most blacks do not exercise that right; and that schools may be desegregated but the school demographics in Boston reflect the opposite picture. One thing that I think is missing from the curriculum is the presence of modern day pioneers for equality. The impact of people like Oprah and President Obama show students that the work hasn’t stopped and that assassination is not the fate of all great black leaders.