Agenda 3/14/2012Objective: TSW understand the role of the media in advancing Civil Rights

Do Now: What is the role of the media in our government?

Contextualizing Activity

Discussion

Emmett TillEmmett Till was a 14 year old boy from Chicago who went down to the South to visit a family member for the summer.

He was brutally murdered for allegedly whistling at a white woman.

What the witnesses say happened?

On a mother’s love His mom was amazing. She had

to identify his body, and upon seeing what they had done to her son and realizing that the Southerners had tried to cover it up, she ordered them to have an open casket.

This moment became a watershed for Civil Rights because it was the first time the Northern media had exposed the violence of the South.

Her actions, which were unimaginably hard, sparked a lot of action among activists and the people outside the South.

From Death Springs Action

On the Role of the Media

“So I wanted to make it as real and as visible as I could possibly make it. I knew if they walked by that casket, if people opened the pages of Jet Magazine and the Chicago Defender, if other people could see it with their own eyes, then together we might find a way to express what we had seen. I was important to do that, I thought, to help people recognize the horrible problems we were facing in the South….The whole nation had to bear witness to this” Mamie Till-Mobley

Remembering

Agenda 3/15/2012Objective: TSW understand the role of the media in advancing Civil Rights

Do Now: Are there things you would die for? If yes, what? If no, why not?

Mini-Lecture & Discussion: Describe the images you’ve seen related to

civil rights? Who is in them? What is happening?

CORE & Freedom Summer

CGS video clips

What was Freedom Summer

1942- Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) started by pacifist Fellowship of

Reconciliation 1961 – Freedom Rides, mixed race

busloads of college students tried to integrate bus station terminals

Summer 1964- volunteers from all over the nation and different rights groups traveled to Mississippi Goal register African-American

voters and improve their civil rights. James Chaney, Andrew Goodman & Mickey

Schwerner from CORE were among them. “The Freedom Summer Killings”

Mississippi Burning Trailer (1988)

Freedom Summer Clip 1

Freedom Summer Clip 2

20th Anniversary

Legacy of CGSCold Cases