Do it’s important to be disobedient if you would like justice? How would your college students reply?
How a lot do your college students know concerning the civil rights motion? Take a look at their data with this 13-question quiz The Occasions printed in 2019 in honor of Dr. King’s ninetieth birthday. Then think about: What did working to advance racial and social justice seem like within the Nineteen Fifties and 60s? What does it seem like now?
In a 2015 Occasions Journal article, “Educating Martin Luther King Jr. within the Age of Freddie Grey,” Syreeta McFadden writes about discussing “Letter From Birmingham Jail” together with her college students at a neighborhood faculty in Manhattan:
… We returned to King’s letter, during which he attracts a distinction between simply and unjust legal guidelines. They didn’t find out about this King, I discovered, the one who fought the regulation. Of their view, the civil rights motion was embodied in King the Christlike chief, who stands for peace, love and brotherhood.
I instructed the scholars that King went to jail rather a lot for peace, love and brotherhood.
We talked about Baltimore, the place the police had simply killed Freddie Grey and road protests have been swelling to an rebellion. My college students have been skeptical of headlines and commentary that known as for nonviolent protest. One of many college students famous that the police have been violent, too, and so they have been putting individuals in mortal hazard simply to guard some buildings from being broken.
“A constructing will not be extra invaluable than an individual,” she stated. Many of the others nodded in settlement. Extra started to talk. The rote dialogue was changing into impassioned, cacophonous:
“However there’s a distinction between rioting and peaceable protest. …”
“Are we saying property is extra invaluable than a human being?”
“That’s like saying to protest is illegal. …”
“What does ‘peaceable’ even imply?”
Examine the remainder of the dialogue that day, and take into consideration the implications in your personal classroom. How does educating about Dr. King and the civil rights motion look completely different at the moment, after actions like #takeaknee and #MeToo, and protests, such because the Ladies’s March in Washington, D.C., and the Black Lives Matter motion?
