Twice Towards Justice: Lesson 2

NAME: Mrs. Kerry-Ann Gaines

​Date: January 22, 2024
Subject: English Language Arts
Topic: Teen As A Change Agent
Essential Question: What motivated Claudette Colvin?

TWICE TOWARDS JUSTICE: CHAPTER ONE

​AGENDA

Agenda

Welcome (5 min.)

• Activate Prior Knowledge

Launch (10 min.)

Learn (55 min.)

• Examine Jim Crow Laws (10 min.)

• Explore Social and Legal Aspects of Jim Crow Laws (30 min.)

• Pose Research Questions (15 min.)

Land (4 min.)

• Answer the Content Framing Question

Wrap (1 min.)

• Assign Homework

Style and Conventions Deep Dive (15 min.)

• Experiment with Verbals

​

Learning Goals

• Express an understanding of the legal and social rules that governed life under Jim Crow. (RI.8.1)

• Draw a diagram that represents the legal and social rules that governed riding the bus in Jim Crow era Montgomery.

• Apply understanding of research questions to generate a question about Claudette Colvin. (RI.8.1, W.8.7)

• Pose a question using evidence from Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice.

•  STYLE AND CONVENTIONS DEEP DIVE

• Sort verbals by functions. (L.8.1.a)

• Sort verbals on Handout 2A by functions.

STANDARDS

Reading: RI.8.1, RI.8.4

• Writing: W.8.7, W.8.10

• Language: L.8.4.c, L.8.1.a 

Open Ended

List at least one social norm from Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice.

​LAUNCH

Turn & Talk

Share your responses for the welcome activity.

• The author writes that black and white people were “forbidden” (4) to marry one another, play on the same team, and use the same swimming pool.

• The first four rows of the city buses were reserved for white passengers only.

• Bus drivers could make black passengers give up their seats if a white passenger needed one.

• Claudette Colvin says that black people were not allowed to touch white people.

• Black and white people couldn’t eat or play together.

• Black and white people did not attend the same churches and couldn’t even play in the same parks!

Expected Responses

“How are the social norms of Jim Crow distinct from other social norms you have studied?”

Turn & Talk (2 minutes)

EXPECTED RESPONSES

• We discussed social norms related to gender, but these are based on race.

• Unlike social norms about gender, these social norms are actually inscribed into law.

• Gender social norms disempowered women, but these social norms about race also seek to separate two groups of people entirely.

READ THE FOCUSING QUESTION

• What motivated Claudette Colvin?

“Why might it be important to understand Jim Crow in our study of Claudette Colvin?”

EXPECTED RESPONSE

• The cruelty and unfairness of Jim Crow could provide important motivators to Claudette Colvin.

• We have to fully understand the problems that people were facing before we can understand the ways people tried to solve them.

• We need to know the social norms and laws of the time to understand people’s, especially Claudette Colvin’s, desire to change them.

CONTENT FRAMING QUESTION: LESSON 2

• Organize: What’s happening in chapter 1?

Learn

Examine Jim Crow Laws

WHOLE GROUP

Read the text box on page 4, “Who Was Jim Crow?”

Multiple Choice

How does a character from a minstrel show represent “the whole system” of laws and rules that governed life during segregation?

• • The Jim Crow character represents ridicule and mockery of African Americans by white Americans.

• • The song “Jump Jim Crow” is supposed to have been stolen from a black singer by a white one. The character in the minstrel show represents how the system of laws came out of a time when white Americans thought that they could control, mock, and take things away from black Americans.

• • The purpose of the Jim Crow character was to belittle and dehumanize black Americans; Jim Crow laws and customs treated black Americans with the same disdain, and so the character’s name captures the feelings many white Americans felt toward black Americans, which became validated and perpetuated by the law.

• All of the above

Multiple Choice

“How does gaining a deeper understanding of where this term came from develop your understanding of what the system of Jim Crow was like?”

• • At first, I thought these laws were used to divide the races, but now I see that they were also meant to mock and ridicule black Americans. Jim Crow wasn’t just about keeping people separate; it was about laughing at black Americans’ suffering. Jim Crow was even worse than I thought.

• • I’m surprised that the term Jim Crow came from a form of entertainment. That seems to imply that white Americans thought very little of black Americans as human beings.

• • The fact that the song was stolen from a black artist by a white one captures the essence of the laws and customs: black Americans were repeatedly exploited by white Americans.

• All of the above

Open Ended

Think-Pair-Share, state an understanding of Jim Crow in your own words.

Learn

Explore Social and Legal Aspects of Jim Crow Laws

WHOLE GROUP

Reread chapter 1 from Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice and annotate for facts about life during Jim Crow.

Open Ended

Share one annotation with your classmates.

Expected Response

• Phillip Hoose writes, “Jim Crow’s job was not only to separate the races but to keep blacks poor” (4).

• Hoose says that Jim Crow controlled black people’s lives from “womb to tomb” (3).

• In the Jim Crow south, there were “laws, signs, partitions, arrows, ordinances, unequal opportunities, rules, insults, threats, and customs—often backed up by violence” (4).

• I annotated that Jim Crow prevented “blacks and whites from learning together, playing or eating meals together, working or riding buses together...throwing a ball back and forth in the same park” (4).

• I annotated that blacks and whites were “forbidden to play sports on the same team, marry one another, or swim together in the same pool” (4).

• In Montgomery, “the first four rows of seats, which held ten passengers were reserved for white passengers only” (5).

• Apparently, black passengers had to “surrender their seats in the middle and rear of the bus to newly boarding white passengers” (7).

Open Ended

How did Jim Crow affect life in Montgomery?

Expected Response

• Jim Crow was a legal system that affected what black Americans could legally do. It made certain activities, like marrying a white person (4) illegal for black Americans. However, it also made the legal system biased against black Americans—for example, Ms. Worthy is charged with “disorderly conduct” (9) even though the bus driver attacked her!

• Jim Crow affected schools and education, it kept black and white students out of the same schools (4).

• Jim Crow affected the economic life of many black Americans. Many black citizens of Montgomery lived in poverty, since “the average black worker made about half as much money as the average white” (4).

• Jim Crow was a social system that affected people’s social lives and relationships. Jim Crow kept black Americans separate from white Americans, and prevented them from doing most basic activities together, things like “learning together, playing or eating meals together” (4).

• Jim Crow created the conditions for “violence” (4) against black Americans, because the system legalized “insults, threats, and customs” (4) that promoted fear and ignorance about the black community.

Multiple Choice

What does the phrase “womb to tomb” (3) express about the effect of Jim Crow on the lives of black Americans in central Alabama during the 1940s and 1950s?

• It expresses the limited and isolated impact of Jim Crow on the lives of black Americans
• It expresses the temporary and insignificant impact of Jim Crow on the lives of black Americans
• It expresses the positive and beneficial impact of Jim Crow on the lives of black Americans
• It expresses the pervasive and enduring impact of Jim Crow on the lives of black Americans from birth to death.

• The phrase “womb to tomb” (3) shows that Jim Crow controlled every aspect of black American’s lives, from their birth to their death, and everything in between.

Multiple Choice

Why is Jim Crow like a “web” (4)?

• Because it provides shade and protection like a tree
• Because it entangles and traps people like a spider's web
• Because it flows and moves like a river
• Because it is strong and sturdy like a mountain

• Jim Crow was like a “web” (4) because it was carefully constructed to trap black people and keep them oppressed.

• Jim Crow made it difficult to distinguish a law from a social custom; these laws and customs were all tangled together.

Read from “But everything about riding a bus was humiliating” to “an English professor at Alabama State College at the time” (5–7), annotating for rules of the city buses.

whereas customs or norms can be enforced by one or more people through social pressure or even violence. Breaking a law can result in arrest or jail time, but breaking a custom or norm doesn’t have a specific consequence.

Students complete the chart, using evidence from pages 5–7.

Have students draw a three-column chart in their Response Journals, and label the columns: “Rules of the bus,” “How was the rule enforced?” and “Was it law or social norm?”

NB: Laws are supported by the legal system of a country,

Poll

“Why is the bus so important to understanding Jim Crow?”

• • The bus demonstrates how the laws and socially enforced “traditions” (5) merged to oppress black citizens.

• • The norms and laws for the bus were so senseless that they especially bothered black citizens and became a place of resistance to Jim Crow.

• • The bus was the site of violence against black people by white people; Jim Crow made white people feel justified in hurting, or even murdering black people, like in the case of “Hilliard Brooks” (9).

• • The norms and laws of the bus captured the frustrating, absurd, and even violent situations that arose from Jim Crow.

• • Most black citizens had to ride the bus, so they were forced to endure the cruel Jim Crow rules.

Research

Learn

Pose Research Questions

WHOLE GROUP

Display the Craft Question:

• Experiment: How does asking research questions work?

Explain that before students begin developing their own research questions, they will quickly examine Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice as a model of a large-scale research project. 

Multiple Select

“How can text features help you understand this book as a research project?”

• • These text features show the amount and variety of sources Phillip Hoose used to research Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice.

• • The text features show that Phillip Hoose examined this question from a variety of perspectives, and used many sources to inform his observations.

• • The text features show how much research is necessary to write a book about just one person, let alone a whole movement or time period!

• • How did a young woman like Claudette Colvin manage to create change?

Multiple Select

“What research questions do you think Hoose might have asked himself in writing this book?”

• • How did a young woman like Claudette Colvin manage to create change?

• • How did Jim Crow affect life in the south during the 1950s?

• • These text features show the amount and variety of sources Phillip Hoose used to research Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice.

• • Who was Claudette Colvin, and what was she like? What effect did Claudette Colvin have on the Civil Rights movement?

Open Ended

Compose a research question about Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice.

Open Ended

Land

Answer the Content Framing Question

Organize: What’s happening in chapter 1?

Wrap

Assign Homework

Students read chapter 2 of Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice.