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APPENDIX C. Questions and Assignments
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APPENDIX C Questions and Assignments Questions for Consideration 1. Is it possible to view President Eisenhower’s and Governor Faubus’s responses to the Little Rock crisis in the context of their own political survival? Were their other forces that motivated their decisions? 2. How were desegregation efforts in the American South shaped by American foreign policy in the midst of the Cold War? 3. How did southern white moderates respond to the crisis? What did they risk in supporting integration? 4. How did the Little Rock crisis influence the implementation of Brown v. Board of Education throughout the 1950s and beyond? 5. Why and in what ways did segregationists equate civil rights with communism? 6. Do the documents in “Before the Crisis” offer clues as to why the desegregation effort was so controversial in Little Rock? 7. Why was Eisenhower initially so reluctant to take firm stand in the Little Rock crisis? 8. How have civil rights museums and historic sites, such as Central High School, become part of cultural tourism and economic development in the South? 9. Why did Governor Faubus receive so much support in Arkansas and throughout the nation during and after the crisis? 10. What did the Little Rock crisis reveal about the conflict between states’ rights and federal power? What other events in American history have hinged upon this conflict? 2LEWIS_pages_111-246.qxd 7/20/07 10:59 AM Page 207 11. How are the desegregation efforts of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s viewed today? 12. What do the commemorative events over the past half-century reveal about how Little Rock has been remembered? Classroom and Research Activities The assignments included this section are intended to span a week-long unit focused on the Little Rock crisis. The activities are based on fiftyor seventy-five-minute class sessions, but could be easily modified. ACTIVITY 1: In Their Own Words The goal of this activity is to examine individual responses to desegregation by individuals who were not specifically connected to the Little Rock crisis and compare those responses to reactions from individuals directly involved in the crisis. STEP 1: In the first class session, students will review the following five quotations and answer the following four questions. Some of the students I’d known since I was ten years old, who were white, were afraid to speak to me in school. It’s true there were only about 50 students who were actively harassing us. But some of those other students, it was my feeling, were cooperating in that violence through their silence. —ELIZABETH ECKFORD, one of the Little Rock Nine You can’t teach mutual respect and liking between black and white at the end of a bayonet. —WILLIAM LOEB, Manchester Union Leader (NH), September 25, 1957 Orval Faubus was the hero to the mob; the nine courageous black children he failed to keep out of Central High were heroes to the world. —HARRY ASHMORE, editor of the Arkansas Gazette 208 Questions and Assignments 2LEWIS_pages_111-246.qxd 7/20/07 10:59 AM Page 208 [54.173.221.132] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 09:39 GMT) We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other “tangible” factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does. . . . We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of “separate but equal” has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. —Brown v. Board of Education, 344 U.S. 141 I have always felt, and still firmly believe, that if the school authorities in Little Rock had handled the affair quietly, the intense conflict over integration at Central High would never have developed. If the school authorities had said, “This is our own local problem. We’ll handle it the best we can based on our local conditions. This does not concern any other school. Just us.” If they had said that and the media had followed that lead, there would have been no Central High School Crisis as we now know it. —ORVAL FAUBUS, 1991 Questions for Consideration: 1. How does the speaker or author frame the...