Do you have to be disobedient if you want justice? How would your students answer?
How much do your students know about the civil rights movement? Test their knowledge with this 13-question quiz The Times published in 2019 in honor of Dr. King’s 90th birthday. Then consider: What did working to advance racial and social justice look like in the 1950s and 60s? What does it look like now?
In a 2015 Times Magazine article, “Teaching Martin Luther King Jr. in the Age of Freddie Gray,” Syreeta McFadden writes about discussing “Letter From Birmingham Jail” with her students at a community college in Manhattan:
… We returned to King’s letter, in which he draws a distinction between just and unjust laws. They didn’t know about this King, I found, the one who fought the law. In their view, the civil rights movement was embodied in King the Christlike leader, who stands for peace, love and brotherhood.
I told the students that King went to jail a lot for peace, love and brotherhood.
We talked about Baltimore, where the police had just killed Freddie Gray and street protests were swelling to an uprising. My students were skeptical of headlines and commentary that called for nonviolent protest. One of the students noted that the police were violent, too, and they were placing people in mortal danger just to protect some buildings from being damaged.
“A building is not more valuable than a person,” she said. Most of the others nodded in agreement. More began to speak. The rote discussion was becoming impassioned, cacophonous:
“But there’s a difference between rioting and peaceful protest. …”
“Are we saying property is more valuable than a human being?”
“That’s like saying to protest is unlawful. …”
“What does ‘peaceful’ even mean?”
Read about the rest of the discussion that day, and think about the implications for your own classroom. How does teaching about Dr. King and the civil rights movement look different today, after movements like #takeaknee and #MeToo, and protests, such as the Women’s March in Washington, D.C., and the Black Lives Matter movement?