Welcome to Our First Year Seminar!

This course is about freedom or, more specifically, how to be free.

Luckily, we don’t have to guess. Since 1789, we Americans have had a kind of instruction manual that tells us how to organize our political life to maximize freedom for all. And since 1791, we have had a Bill of Rights that spells out all the freedoms and protections we Americans should expect to enjoy.

This course is also about race relations or, more specifically, how the struggle for black civil rights can act as a metaphor or model for anyone yearning to be free. Using the story of race relations in America as an organizing narrative, this course is intended to shed light on the larger story of America in surprising ways. It might surprise you to learn, for instance, that every significant juncture in the evolution of Constitutional law in America was triggered directly or indirectly by events related to race. And it might surprise you to learn that it is not judges on the bench but people working outside the courts – from politicians in Washington to activists at the local level, from lobbyists and business groups to journalists and legal scholars – who are the main drivers of change in constitutional law. They are the non-judicial actors who shape and re-shape America’s ever-evolving constitutional culture.

Landmark cases such as Plessy v. Ferguson or Brown v. the Board of Education will serve as jumping off points to discuss more broadly how certain communicative features built into America’s constitutional democracy can facilitate national dialogues about issues such as racial segregation. What is the Supreme Court’s role in a national debate — as the initiator, final arbiter, or somewhere in between? How does Congress converse with the Court before and after an important decision? How do ordinary people talk back to the Court, especially when they disagree? And, importantly, how does the press help facilitate those various lines of dialogue?

Questions such as these should lead students to the Big Question this course asks them to ponder:

In what ways is America’s system as a constitutional democracy crucially dependent upon the First Amendment?

This course is intended to challenge you to think about the story of race in America through several academic lenses: history, politics, law, sociology. The emotion and drama of this history should show you that learning can be engaging, even exciting. You will be challenged to think critically and independently, to form your own views about the cases and controversies we study. You will be challenged to “think like a lawyer,” which is to say, be able to see both sides of any argument and debate from either perspective. Finally, you will be challenged to learn to present your views using the proper formats, norms and conventions of academic discourse and writing.

This is not a law course per se. I am not here to teach you to be lawyers. I am here to teach you to be Americans who know your heritage and understand what it means to be free in our system. The Constitution does not belong to the Supreme Court. It belongs to all of us living under its protections and debating its evolving meanings. The course is intended to usher you into America’s constitutional culture and show you what’s at stake.

As the old saying goes: “The cost of freedom is eternal vigilance.” Starting with this course, you will learn to be vigilant.

The Constitution and the Court

Thomas Jefferson

In Week 2, we will have mini-lecture lecture and discussion on this theme: The Constitution, the Court and the Founding Ideals. We will explore how America's constitutional system, starting in 1789, was engineered from the beginning to protect individual freedom.

WATCH: A short video about the Supreme Court at these links: PART 1 and PART 2.

WRITE: Your first POST about what you learned from the video. See the TAB at the top of the page labeled BLOG POST HOW-TO.

In preparation, please click on the links below and explore the material you find there as background.We will go into more detail about the Founding Era together in class.

READ this short overview about the creation of the U.S. Constitution provided the History Channel: Creation of the Constitution

BROWSE this entry on Wikipedia about the history of American constitutional law: Constitution of the United States

BROWSE this entry on Wikipedia about the history of the most powerful court on earth: Supreme Court of the United States

BROWSE this popular blog that keeps up with day-to-day news about the Supreme Court: SCOTUS.blog


Founding Era Timeline

Imagining the First Amendment

On Wednesday, Sept. 10, we will have lecture and discussion on this theme: The First Amendment and the Ground Rules of Freedom. We will explore the origins of the First Amendment, the Framers' intentions and current theories about the value of free expression.

In preparation, click on the links below and explore the material there as background. Of interest throughout the semester will be news updates posted to the First Amendment Center website, so you should visit the page from time to time to see articles that might interest you — possibly as fodder for posts on your blogs.

READ the entries up to 1791 on this timeline provided by the First Amendment Center to get a sense of what was going on in the world at the time: First Amendment Timeline

READ this brief overview provided by the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School: First Amendment Overview

READ this brief overview provided by the First Amendment Center: First Amendment Overview

READ this brief overview provided by the U.S. Court System about what is and is not covered by the First Amendment: Free Speech Overview

BROWSE the First Amendment Center's website for current issues: First Amendment Center


First Amendment Visualizations

 

1: The Colonial Era (De Facto Slavery)

1. Go to the Smithsonian Institution's slideshow about the history of slavery. Use the right hand arrow to click through Introduction overview. Feel free to move on to other sections of that site, but we will be talking this week only about the period from 1619-1789.


2) Take a look at the Wikipedia entry about Slavery in America. Here's how it begins:

Slavery in the United States was the legal institution of chattel slavery that existed in the United States of America in the 18th and 19th centuries. Slavery had been practiced in British North America from early colonial days, and was recognized in the Thirteen Colonies at the time of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. When the United States was founded, even though some free persons of color were present, the status of slave was largely coincident with being of African descent, creating a system and legacy in which race played an influential role. After the Revolutionary War, abolitionist laws and sentiment gradually spread in the Northern states, while the rapid expansion of the cotton industry from 1800 led to the Southern states strongly identifying with slavery, and attempting to extend it into the new Western territories. The United States was polarized by slavery into slave and free states along the Mason-Dixon Line, which separated Maryland (slave) and Pennsylvania (free).

Although the international slave trade was prohibited from 1808, internal slave-trading continued, and the slave population would eventually peak at four million before abolition.



CHECK OUT this Brief History of Slavery

Case 1: State v. Mann

Here is what happened, as summarized by the jrank.org, the online legal encyclopedia:

"North Carolina had fewer slaves than most other states in the future Confederacy. But in the two decades leading up to the Civil War, that state's Supreme Court produced one of the most notorious pro-slavery opinions in American history.

"In 1829, Elizabeth Jones, who owned a slave named Lydia, hired her out for a year to John Mann of Chowan County. Lydia was unhappy with the arrangement, and at one point Mann decided to punish her, possibly by whipping her. But Lydia escaped during the punishment, and began to run away. Mann shouted to her, ordering her to stop, but Lydia continued to run. Mann then shot and wounded her. Such, at least, was Mann's story.

"The circumstances were so odd, however, that a local grand jury took the unusual step of indicting Mann for assault and battery against a slave. During the trial, the judge told the jury that if it believed that the punishment Mann inflicted was "cruel and unwarrantable, and disproportionate to the offense committed by the slave that, in the law the Defendant was guilty," particularly since he was not even her owner. This is obviously exactly what the jury thought, for it found Mann guilty. Mann then appealed to the Supreme Court of North Carolina."

Can you guess what happened next?

READ the complete entry by jrank.org: State v. Mann: 1829 — In Defense of Slavery

READ the Wikipedia overview of the case and explore the sources provided under "External Links": State v. Mann Overview

GO TO this Web page created by George Mason University history department and skim the primary source material at the links to experience both pro-slavery arguments and anti-slavery arguments: Exploring U.S. History

Moot Court

Team Erica and Team Nido prepare for legal battle.
Photo: Ms. Gallagher

 

2: The Founding Era (De Jure Slavery)

Before the ratification of the U.S. Constitution of 1789, federal law was silent on the issue of slavery. It was a fact of life and, as a legal matter, completely in the hands of the states. It became a matter of law at the federal level only after the Constitution did not ban it, as many Northerners had hoped, and in fact included instructions on how the issue should be handled going forward.

History teacher Steve Mount, on his educational website usconstitution.net, provides this description of the situation at that crucial moment:

"By the time of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, slavery in the United States was a grim reality. In the census of 1790, there were slaves counted in nearly every state, with only Massachusetts and the "districts" of Vermont and Maine, being the only exceptions. In the entire country of 3.8 million people, 700,000 of them, or 18 percent, were slaves. In South Carolina, 43 percent of the population was slave. In Maryland 32 percent, and in North Carolina 26 percent. Virginia, with the largest slave population of almost 300,000, had 39 percent of its population made up of slaves.

"In the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, there is no mention of slavery. The states were represented in Congress by state, with each state picking its own representatives, so population, which became critical in the future House of Representatives, was not relevant. Also, because fugitive slaves, and the abolition movement, were almost unheard of as late as the 1780s, there is no mention of this issue in the Articles. The closest thing to be found is the Fugitive Clause in Article 4, but even that is more geared toward convicts.

"There was no great movement in America to abolish slavery in the 1780's, when the Constitutional Convention met. To be sure, there were opponents of slavery, on a philosophical level, but the abolition movement did not appear until the 1830's, when the American Anti-Slavery Society was founded with William Lloyd Garrison writing the organization's nascent statement of principles. Prior to the Convention in 1787, many "Founding Fathers" expressed opinions that condemned slavery.

"John Jay, great supporter of the Constitution after its creation and an author of The Federalist wrote in 1786, "It is much to be wished that slavery may be abolished. The honour of the States, as well as justice and humanity, in my opinion, loudly call upon them to emancipate these unhappy people. To contend for our own liberty, and to deny that blessing to others, involves an inconsistency not to be excused."

(snip)

"Slavery is seen in the Constitution in a few key places. The first is in the Enumeration Clause, where representatives are apportioned. Each state is given a number of representatives based on its population - in that population, slaves, called "other persons," are counted as three-fifths of a whole person. This compromise was hard-fought, with Northerners wishing that slaves, legally property, be uncounted, much as mules and horses are uncounted. Southerners, however, well aware of the high proportion of slaves to the total population in their states, wanted them counted as whole persons despite their legal status. The three-fifths number was a ratio used by the Congress in contemporary legislation and was agreed upon with little debate.

"In Article 1, Section 9, Congress is limited, expressly, from prohibiting the "Importation" of slaves, before 1808. The slave trade was a bone of contention for many, with some who supported slavery abhorring the slave trade. The 1808 date, a compromise of 20 years, allowed the slave trade to continue, but placed a date-certain on its survival. Congress eventually passed a law outlawing the slave trade that became effective on January 1, 1808.

"The Fugitive Slave Clause is the last mention. In it, a problem that slave states had with extradition of escaped slaves was resolved. The laws of one state, the clause says, cannot excuse a person from "Service or Labour" in another state. The clause expressly requires that the state in which an escapee is found deliver the slave to the state he escaped from 'on Claim of the Party.' "

RESEARCH EXERCISE

We'll use key developments from this era to begin discussing and practicing academically sound research skills that will serve you in this class and through the rest of your career at HPU and possibly beyond. That means moving away from using mere Google searches and Wikipedia entries. 

However, not wanting to throw out the baby with the bathwater, we can acknowledge that both Google and Wikipedia are helpful tools and valuable resources when doing academic research when they are used in limited and judicious way. For example, NEVER CITE WIKIPEDIA in an academic paper or class assignment.

Instead, you should feel free to use a Wikipedia article as a starting point or launching pad for research. It can be useful in two distinct ways: 1) to quickly introduce you to a topic and spark ideas for further investigation, and 2) to provide references and links to source material to deepen your knowledge and provide more appropriate material for citations.

Another aspect of academic research that we must begin to address and practice is the writing process itself. To begin with, you must take seriously the first Cardinal Rule of academic writing: STOP CUTTING AND PASTING. It's plagiarism, and it will ruin your academic career and perhaps your hoped-for career beyond HPU. You should be aware that many of your professors will use TurnItIn for many, if not most, written assignments. You will get caught.

That said, plagiarism is easy to avoid if  you do two things: learn to paraphrase (i.e., put it in your own words), and learn to cite sources properly. We'll be working on both of those skills throughout the semester, and we'll start with the exercise below.

Instructions: 

1) Working in teams, click on the four links below. They will take you to a Web page and three Wikipedia entries. 

2) Use paraphrasing, not quoting, to create a concise summary of the article. This could be as short as one or two paragraphs. (In academic writing, a paragraph is at least three sentences. A durable paragraph structure would look like this: Topic Sentence. Point 1. Point 2. Point 3.)

3) Now, exam the links and references included in the article. Pick the one you think leads to the most useful and credible material. Briefly describe in a sentence or two why the one you chose added most to your knowledge and why a reader would consider it an academically sound source.

4) Use the guide here — APA Style Quick Guide — to start practicing the style guide that is used for most academic writing at HPU. Don't worry. It doesn't have to be perfect. This is practice.

5) After you're done, send your team's findings to the class e-mail: fys1000smith@gmail.com.

Here are the links:

The Underground Railroad

 

The Missouri Compromise

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

Bleeding Kansas

Nat Turner Uprising

 

Mutiny on the Amistad 

 

John Brown's Raid 

 

Founding of The Liberator 

 

Publication of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" 

 

Kansas Nebraska Act 

 

American Anti-Slavery Society 

 

Election of 1860 

Good Luck!

Case 2: Dred Scott v. Sandford

Dred Scott petitioned for freedom under
the 13th and 14th Amendments

"Wrong the day it was decided." "The Court's great self-inflicted wound." That's how legal scholars have described the Supreme Court's decision in the long-reviled case of Dred Scott v. Sandford of 1857. Abraham Lincoln famously responded to the case by delivering one his most famous addresses, the House Divided Speech, in which he summed up on June 16, 1858: “A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free."

 Here is a link to a very thorough Wikipedia entry that includes many helpful references to source materials:

 Dred Scott on Wikipedia

Here is a link to the majority decision, 7 to 2, as written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney:

Complete Decision of the Court

EXERCISE

Micro goals: Rather than conduct a moot court, we will use this famous case to continue exploring and practicing academically sound research techniques. This in-class unit will emphasize using primary sources and using APA citation style. See the quick guide below:

APA Quick Citation Guide 

Macro goals: This exercise also is intended to help you as you make the transition from a high school mindset to a frame of mind that better suits being part of a university academic community. It should advance your thinking in two key ways:

1) Outside of science or math courses, you must let go of the notion that there is only one right answer. Questions in most academic situations have no single answer, only competing arguments. Each team's answers in this exercise should be different because each team's discussion and debate will be different. Discussion and debate go to the heart of what it means to be part of an academic community.

2) Every credible academic argument must be supported by evidence. You must continue to move away from emotion-based opinions and toward fact-based arguments. We build the evidence for our arguments through reading and research. That often means pointing to primary sources for evidential support. That's what this exercise asks you to do. But remember: Two people can point to the same primary source to support two very different — and sometimes diametrically opposed — arguments. (Remember when we used the Bible both to support and to condemn slavery?)


Instructions:

1) Working in teams, use the Dred Scott hand-out packet to answer a series of questions about the case and controversy. Answer the small questions first, then compose an answer to the Big Question. (It needn't be long. Two or three meaty paragraphs should do.)

2) Use the complete court decision above to do keyword searches that might help you answer the questions. Some possible search terms: citizen, authority, enumerated, compromise. These searches might help you answer the small questions and help inform your answer to the Big Question.

3) Use the APA style guide above to help you create a Sources Used list as the last page of your assignment. (Do the best you can without stressing out. This part is just for practice. Experiment with using the shortcut that David Dryden showed us — looking up a source using "Virtual Reference" and cutting and pasting the APA style listing.)

4) Get together with your team at least once more before class on Oct. 6 to finalize your team's written  assignment. Print it out to bring to class. Don't forget to format it in Times New Roman, 12 points, double-spaced.

Have fun with it!

ROAD TO CIVIL WAR

Watch these two short videos that provide historical context to help explain why war broke out in 1861:

Causes of the War, Pt. 1

Causes of the War, Pt. 2

3: The Reconstruction Era (De Facto Segregation)

 The Fourteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution reads:

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the JURISDICTION thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the PRIVILEGES OR IMMUNITIES of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without DUE PROCESS OF LAW ; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the EQUAL PROTECTION of the laws.

According to the Gale Encyclopedia of American Law:

"The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, has generated more lawsuits than any other provision of the U.S. Constitution. Section 1 of the amendment has been the centerpiece of most of this litigation. It makes “All persons born or naturalized in the United States” citizens of the United States and citizens of the state in which they reside. This section also prohibits state governments from denying persons within their jurisdiction the privileges or immunities of U.S. citizenship, and guarantees to every such person due process and equal protection of the laws. ...

"The Fourteenth Amendment was drafted to alleviate several concerns harbored by many U.S. citizens prior to its ratification. The most obvious concern related to the status of the recently freed slaves. Five years before hostilities commenced in the Civil War, the Supreme Court declared that people of African descent living in the United States were not “citizens” of the United States, but merely members of a “subordinate and inferior class of human beings” deserving no constitutional protection whatsoever (see DRED SCOTT V. SANDFORD). The Fourteenth Amendment vitiated the Supreme Court’s holding in Dred Scott by making all blacks “born or naturalized in the United States” full-fledged citizens entitled to the same constitutional rights provided for every other U.S. citizen."

Freed slaves sit amidst the ruins of Charleston, S.C.

READ the rest of the entry (it'snot long): Foureenth Amendment on Gale

READ this entry about Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation provided by History.net: America's Second Declaration of Independence

READ this brief overview of the Civil War provided by CivilWar.org: Civil War Overview

BROWSE this timeline of the Civil War provided by HistoryPlace.com: Timeline of Events

WATCH this short excerpt from "Reconstruction: The Second Civil War": Movie Excerpt

SKIM this Wikipedia overview about the Fourteenth Amendment: 14th Amendment Overview

CHECK OUT this really neat page by the History Channel featuring micro-documentaries, just two or three minutes apiece, on various topics relating to the Civil War (highly recommended): History Channel micro-docs

Case 3: Plessy v. Ferguson

Homer A. Plessy

The debate over slavery exploded into all-out civil war in 1861. Over the next four gruesome years, more than 600,000 lives would be lost before the North won the argument decisively over the South. To reify that victory into the concrete language of the law, anti-slavery leaders in Washington drafted the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, aka the Reconstruction Amendments, and the states ratified them, they hoped, to put a final period on the end of the sentence.

But that was hardly the last word.

READ this brief entry from the History Channel about so-called "Black Codes" to understand the context in which the Supreme Court heard arguments in Plessy v. Ferguson: Black Codes

READ about the background of the case and the Supreme Court's ruling in this Wikipedia entry: Plessy overview article

BLOG ABOUT the moot court showdown between Team Lincoln and Team Jefferson for your weekly entry.

4: Jim Crow Era (De Jure Segregation)

Black and white soldiers working side by side in WWII
set an important non-judicial precedent. How is that so?

In your writing for Essay 1, you talked about national dialogues and national debates. You saw that how people talk about social issues or political points of contention often entails  speech, literally, such as Frederick Douglass' public appearances in which he denounced slavery. But you also saw that social activists and political actors can "speak" through their actions as well — Congress adopting the Fugitive Slave Act, John Brown staging a revolt, the states ratifying the 14th Amendment, and so on.

Now, think about those events and others we've discussed so far through the lens of two theoretical frameworks: popular constitutionalism and non-judicial precedents. How can you discuss such events in ways that demonstrate those theories in action? How can you borrow terms and concepts from the theories to make the case that events such as these support — or deny — the robustness of these theories? Do the theories help describe these events? Do the theories help predict follow-on events?

Events on the Road to Brown

Two famous Supreme Court cases marked the beginning and end of the Jim Crow Era: Plessy v. Ferguson gave legal cover to "separate but equal" and ushered in de jure segregation, and Brown v. the Board overturned Plessy and outlawed "separate but equal."

In between those two judicial pronouncements, non-judicial actors on both sides of the debate did their best to make their voices heard in the national dialogue surrounding the struggle for black civil rights. Think about the following develops and how you could cast them as creating non-judicial precedents that might have affected the evolution of the debate:

"The Birth of a Nation"

Ku Klux Klan

African-Americans in WWII

Executive Order 9981

Case 4: Brown v. the Board of Education

The Supreme Court's decision in Brown reflected evolving
norms, customs and traditions, but not without resistance.

Norms, customs and traditions play an important role in shaping the path of constitutional law. As those factors in society change over time, the Supreme Court's decisions chart those changes through ever-evolving interpretations of constitutional meaning. That's how the Court could progress from decisions such as Dred Scott, declaring African-Americans un-citizens, and Plessy, declaring "separate but equal" OK, to its unanimous decision in Brown, overturning Plessy and demanding the de-segregation of schools.

Reflecting our class discussion, a key factor to consider was the personnel on the Court in 1954. Let's face it: They were a bunch of old white guys, some of them from the South. Consider what a challenge it was for Chief Justice Earl Warren to get all nine to sign on to a unanimous decision. Here is an interesting paragraph about that from the Wikipedia entry:

"Conference notes and draft decisions illustrate the division of opinions before the decision was issued.^[18] Justices Douglas, Black, Burton, and Minton were predisposed to overturn Plessy.^[18] Fred M. Vinson noted that Congress had not issued desegregation legislation; Stanley F. Reed discussed incomplete cultural assimilation and states' rights and was inclined to the view that segregation worked to the benefit of the African-American community; Tom C. Clark wrote that "we had led the states on to think segregation is OK and we should let them work it out."^[18] Felix Frankfurter and Robert H. Jackson disapproved of segregation, but were also opposed to judicial activism and expressed concerns about the proposed decision's enforceability.^[18] Chief Justice Vinson had been a key stumbling block. After Vinson died in September 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Earl Warren as Chief Justice.^[18] Warren had supported the integration of Mexican-American students in California school systems following Mendez v. Westminster.^[19] In his reading of the unanimous decision, Justice Warren noted the adverse psychological effects that segregated schools had on African American children.^"



BROWSE the full entry here: Brown v. the Board


Dialogic Constitutional Interpretation

The Supreme Court "speaks" when it issues a decision, but it also "listens." So say constitutional scholars (including this one) when trying to explain how the law changes over time. A key mechanism for talking to the Court in ways that precede decision and talking back to the Court in response to decisions is by creating non-judicial precedents — that is, taking actions that communicate what various actors consider to be accepted norms, traditions and customs that should inform constitutional law.

Consider these four Wikipedia entries as actions by non-judicial actors that could have created non-judicial precedents before, to talk to, and after, to talk back, the Court's decision in Brown:

Starting the United Negro College Fund

Airing, then canceling, "Amos 'n' Andy"

Thurgood Marshall leading the NAACP

Launching "Massive Resistance"

As always, be thinking about how these and other developments might play into your final Big Question Essay — and how they might play into the Theory of Dialogic Constitutional Interpretation, which we'll discuss more in coming classes.

5: Civil Rights Era, Pt. 1 (De-Segregation)

Police in Birmingham, Ala., sic attack dogs on a protester.

Fifty-eight years after its change-halting decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court finally "heard" what the nation was saying about social change and responded with its change-affirming decision in Brown v. the Board of Education. The unanimous decision announced the broad principal that "separate but equal" was not acceptable under the Equal Protection Clause of  Fourteenth Amendment and that schools should be the first institutions in America to be completely desegregated. Thus began the 10-year stretch that we will call the Desegregation Era.

However, angry white Southerners had a very different era in mind: the Era of Massive Resistance. It was their way of responding to the decision in Brown and "talking back" to the Court through both words and deeds. They were in effect trying to create "non-judicial precedents," to borrow Michael Gerhardt's phrase, as a way of sending a signal about their strongly held belief that African-Americans should remain not only separate in society but also unequal.

Consider these people and events:

Massive Resistance

Stand in the Schoolhouse Door

"Bull" Connor

16th Street Baptist Church

Case 5: Civil Rights Act of 1964

MLK was a master at harnessing the power of freedom of speech.

(OK, it's not really a case, but I couldn't think of another way to keep the post titles parallel.)

 Despite their efforts to beat back the civil rights movement — including bombings and murders — angry Southerners could not stop the tide of social change sweeping America. A crucial reason was the First Amendment.

Central to Martin Luther King's strategy for the movement was his keen insight into the First Amendment as the key mechanism for participation in self-government. All social movements rely on four of the six clauses of the First Amendment: freedom of speech and press, freedom of assembly and freedom to petition the government for the redress of grievances. Exercising those rights is the prime force that drives social change.

"Silence is betrayal," King once said. On the eve of his assassination, in the inspiring Mountaintop Speech, he thundered before a cheering crowd, "I read somewhere that the greatness of America was the right to protest for rights."

Consider how the people and events below sent a message to those who would thwart the movement. Think about the signals they sent to the nation and the world:

Montgomery Bus Boycott

Lunch Counter Sit-Ins

Freedom Riders

March on Washington

Keeping in mind those events as "expressive action," think how they helped lead to this:

Civil Rights Act of 1964

Civil Rights Era, Pt. 2 (Integration)

Students from the North came down to support the movement.

Angry Southerners responded with violence, including murder.

The Sixties. The phrase is freighted with complex meaning for those who lived through that decade. It is impossible to convey the full sense of the world-changing, revolutionary change that swept the nation during that decade.

Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia:

 "The Sixties," as they are known in both scholarship and popular culture, is a term used by historians, journalists, and other objective academics to describe the counterculture and revolution in social norms about clothing, music, drugs, dress, sexuality, formalities, and schooling. Conservatives denounce the decade as one of irresponsible excess, flamboyance, and decay of social order. The decade was also labeled the Swinging Sixties because of the fall or relaxation of social taboos, especially relating to racism and sexism that occurred during this time.
The 1960s became synonymous with the new, radical, and subversive events and trends of the period. Commentator Christopher Booker described this era as a classical Jungian nightmare cycle, where a rigid culture, unable to contain the demands for greater individual freedom, broke free of the social constraints of the previous age through extreme deviation from the norm.

There is much, much more there to explore, including lists of significant people and events and year-by-year timelines. Feel free to explore the Wikipedia entry on The Sixties for possible items for your essay. There is also a handy timeline here: timeline

Here is a sampling of events:

War on Poverty

Freedom Summer

Freedom Riders

Selma to Montgomery 

Bloody Sunday 

Voting Rights Act of 1965 

24th Amendment 

Civil Rights Murders

Watts Riots

Assassination of MLK

Case 6: Swann v. Board (Affirmative Action)

White Bostonians attack a black man during one of many incidents.

Consider two terms to describe the same thing: "desegregated  busing" versus "forced busing."  

Angry white people — and not just in the South — used the second term to protest affirmative efforts to make the promise of Brown v. the Board a reality in school districts across the nation. The national debate was heated, ugly and sometimes violent, especially in Boston.

Here is an excerpt from the Wikipedia entry about desegregation busing:

"The momentum (to desegregate schools) continued with two additional Supreme Court decisions aimed at implementation. In 1968, the Warren Court in Green v. County School Board rejected a freedom of choice plan. The Court ordered the county to desegregate immediately and eliminate racial discrimination 'root and branch.' Then in 1971, the Burger Court in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education ruled that the school district must achieve racial balance even if it meant redrawing school boundaries and the use of busing as a legal tool. The impact of Green and Swann served to end all remnants of de jure segregation in the South. However, the consequence of the Swann decision ushered in new forms of resistance in subsequent decades. The decision failed to address de facto segregation.

"Evidence of such de facto segregation motivated early proponents of plans to engage in conscious 'integration' of public schools, by busing schoolchildren to schools other than their neighborhood schools, with an objective to equalize racial imbalances. Proponents of such plans argued that with the schools integrated, minority students would have equal access to equipment, facilities and resources that the cities' white students had, thus giving all students in the city equal educational opportunities."

Several people, white and black, died in clashes in Boston.

A sampling of events surrounding Swann:

Desegregation, or Forced, Busing

Boston busing violence

Assassination of MLK

Assassination of RFK 

Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg 

Aides to MLK point in the direction of the gun shots that killed him.