This is Only a Test: Black Voter Disenfranchisement, the Selma Marches, and the VRA

Lesson Content and Pacing (55 min)

1. Welcome (5 min)

   1. • Reading Quiz on previous night's reading: Walking with the Wind by John Lewis

      • Previous Exit Ticket Review

2. Student Bio: Amelia Boynton Robinson (5 min)

3. Black Voter Disenfranchisement Background (5 min)

   1. • Map of black voter registration by state

        • What do you notice? (looking for differences in registration, where black registration is especially low)

        • Okay,  you might be confused: Isn’t Discrimination is illegal? (Hello, Mr. Morrison, the Civil Rights Act). Yet, in many places very few black Americans can vote and this isn’t changing. How can this be? [this hasn’t been explicitly covered in any of the materials yet but students should be able to at least intuit some an answer – many may know specifics as this is a well-trodden part of American history.  

        • Violence, intimidation, yes – and – in many places – state and local governments used literacy tests to keep black citizens disenfranchised. We’re going to take one today.

4. Literacy Test (12 min)

• Have 2 student volunteers read passages in part A: one student reads the easy white version the other the more difficult black version): Everyone else notes when they mispronounce anything or stumble.

• Everyone takes test parts B & C

• Hand out candy to the students who ‘passed’ – this is arbitrary and has nothing to do with the score but make it look like it is part of some process (consult computer for a few moments). Perhaps give to students who’s first names start with a vowel.

  • • Think Paid Share: Okay, what did you guys think of that test? Was it fair? Why?  [There will be some confusion about the scoring, likely consensus that it was hard]

    • Explain: The scores actually were irrelevant or close to irrelevant. There was no published passing score. The tests were reviewed by a panel who passed or failed the applicant on their own discretion.

    • So the literacy tests were tailor made for abuse: Today I failed everyone whose first name started with a vowel. Back then they failed black applicants. As for the scores – most people never got a score – they were just told if they passed or failed.

5.  Reading Discussion (10 min)  [will not get to all of these questions]

• All right – let’s turn to the reading – to Bloody Sunday. You now understand what the civil rights movement was protesting against in Selma. Now let’s turn to how.

  • Was the violence part of the plan? Lewis says they expected to be “roughed up a little bit” at most (p. 337).

  • What do we know about the Civil Rights Movement strategy for seeking confrontation?  Does this fit?

  • The Civil Rights Movement had encountered violence before. How was this different?

  • Was King right to turn back on Tuesday? Lewis defends him, and Forman called it “trickery” (pp. 346–49).

  • Lewis is writing decades after the event. MLK had become a national hero and Lewis was a politician. Does that change things for you?

6.  Voting Rights Act (8 min)

• Transition: Okay, so we understand why people are protesting and we understand what happened to them when they did. What was the impact?

• LBJ Speech: https://www.whitehousehistory.org/videos/preview-president-johnsons-march-15-1965-voting-rights-speech-to-congress (first 3 min -- or just the first one if short on time)

• Design and Impact of Voting Rights Act

  • August 6, 1965, the Voting Rights Act was signed into law

  • Okay, so if you’re LBJ and Congress and you want to fix the literacy test, what do you do? [You don’t fix it – you abolish it] 

  • Any county that had a literacy test and under 50% voter registration as of 1964 was:

    • No longer allowed to have literacy tests

    • Within days of passage federal examiners were registering voters in counties in Mississippi and Alabama registering voters

  • Map: Impact on black voter regisration by state

  • What do you notice? [big changes in the deep South, not in Tennessee]

Exit Ticket (12 min)                               

• 3 Min: Students pair up and use T-chart to briefly outline argument for both sides of the exit ticket question.

• 9 Min: Students respond to prompt: What did more to win Black Southerners the vote: the people who marched in Selma, or the federal government that passed and enforced the Voting Rights Act? Take a position and support it with evidence from at least two sources (Lewis’s account, the literacy test, the registration maps, or President Johnson’s speech). Then explain why someone might disagree, and respond.

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