Crossroads: High School Curriculum
Unit XI: Leader of the Free World: 1945-1975

ROLE-PLAYING EXERCISE-Civil Rights Strategy Session

Lesson 4

DIRECTIONS: The class (possibly separated into groups representing different viewpoints) prepares for a discussion/debate on the future direction of efforts to destroy segregation. The goal is to reach a majority decision after fully considering the pros and cons of each course of action. The choice of approaches includes:

• relying on the federal government to enforce existing laws and the Brown decision;
• systematic legal challenges to Jim Crow regulations on a state-by-state basis;
• direct, public challenges through civil-disobedience campaigns -- including boycotts, sit-ins, and other forms of nonviolent disobedience;
• working with white Southern political leaders to soften the effects of segregation.

• determined (and maybe violent) resistance from the Ku Klux Klan and White Citizens' Councils;
• a change in the composition of the Supreme Court that might make further court action more difficult or impossible;
• state and local governments' defiance of federal court decisions or legislation;
• limited funds and resources available to civil-rights groups;
• potential loss of interest and waning of support from Northern white public, due to unrest and violence generated by civil-disobedience campaigns;
• potential evaporation of Northern liberal support in Congress for civil rights, in response to constituents' indifference to the civil-rights issue.

  Research and write a profile on each of the people listed, making sure to get information about the following important aspects of their careers:

  • their affiliation with a civil-rights organization (NAACP, SCLC, etc.);
  • their status and position within that organization;
  • their general belief system or ideology;
  • their views on the important issues and events of the period (the 1964 Civil Rights Act, riots in Watts and Detroit, school integration, first stirrings of affirmative action, federal anti-poverty programs, black nationalism, the Black Panther Party and the Nation of Islam, economic equality).

  When your profiles are finished, choose a moderator who presents the views of the participants on the topic. Produce an audio tape of a roundtable discussion among the eight participants listed. Each student responds to the moderator "in character." Try to write and think "in character" as much as you can, and be sure to give all participants a fair hearing.

  TOPIC OF DISCUSSION: What are the three most important priorities of the civil rights movement, and what is the best way to achieve them?

  PARTICIPANTS

  Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King

  Malcolm X

  Rep. Shirley Chisholm [first black woman in U.S. House of Representatives]

  A. Philip Randolph

  Rev. Elijah Muhammed, leader of the Nation of Islam

  Justice Thurgood Marshall [first black Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, former leader, NAACP Legal Defense Fund]

  Carl Stokes [black mayor of Cleveland, Ohio]

  Eldridge Cleaver and George Jackson, members of the Black Panther Party

  Prof. Angela Davis

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  With your teacher, devise a scoring rubric for the taped round-table discussion.

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