Read: in The Democratic Idea,

#31, Plessy v. Ferguson, 163. U.S. 537 (1896) (Justice Brown, majority opinion; Justice Harlan, in Dissent) pp. 151-160
#32, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954)  (Chief Justice Earl Warren) pp. 161-162
 

Today's class will revolve around analyzing two decisions of the supreme court considering whether compulsory segregation of the races was constitutional.  As you read these documents note, first of all, that two authors participate in writing the opinion of the court in Plessy v. Ferguson.  The Supreme Court operates by majority rule, winner take all.  However, any judge on the court has a right to publish his/her disagreement with the decision or the reasoning of the majority.  You will need to keep the majority opinion and reasons (pp. 151-155) distinct from those of the minority (pp. 155-160).  The majority opinion becomes law of the land.  However, in some cases history proves the minority to have reasoned more correctly, and the court has been known to reverse itself and change its mind.  The decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was unanimous, so you'll not have a dissent to worry about.  Do you notice any echoes of the earlier Plessy case in this one?
 

Download from the Internet, and Read:

Public Statement by Eight Alabama Clergymen (April 12, 1963) at http://www.du.edu/~airvine/teaching/mlk/public_statement.html
Letter from a Birmingham Jail (Martin Luther King, Jr.), at http://almaz.com/nobel/peace/MLK-jail.html

The bulk of our discussion of these documents will happen next Tuesday, but I want you to read these two documents well ahead of time.  The reversal of the Supreme Court position on the constitutionality of segregation did not change American racial attitudes and behavior overnight.  For many years indeed, very little changed.  It would require a "second Reconstruction" in the form of action by the courts, the executive branch of Government, and the national and state legislatures as well to start the wheels of change moving.  But before government would act it had to be energized, and the energy came from a highly visible and active Civil Rights community.

The Civil Rights organizations adopted a strategy of non-violent resistance articulated by the young clergyman Martin Luther King, Jr.  King, in turn, drew upon the ideas elaborated by Henry David Thoreau in his essay on Civil Disobedience which we read last week.  Thoreau was too much of a lone wolf to ever think of transforming a private moral stance into a "movement,".  But King was quick to grasp the usefulness of the tactics.  A public statement by local clergymen urging local blacks to refuse to support public protest gave King an opportunity to present a reasoned defense of his theories in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail.  Reading these two documents will prepare you for the principal event of  this class, a viewing of one of the segments from the documentary series entitled Eyes on the Prize, entitled No Easy Walk.  The video lasts about one hour.  We'll start to discuss it during this period and continue the discussion on Tuesday.
 

Looking Ahead:  I hope to have all your outstanding work back to you on Tuesday, April 30.  I apologize for taking so long to finish them:  My only excuse is that there are a lot of you writing and only one of me reading, and the audiologist has taken some rather significant chunks of my life over the past couple of weeks.  Thanks for your understanding.

A Word or two about the Final Exam:

The Form of the final will be very similar to the form of the midterm.  There will be three things I shall ask you to do for me.

1.  Identify some excerpts from the documents:  Only documents from the second half of the course will be included, so you won't have to return to to the material covered on the first examination for this.  I will give you the quotes and you can work on these identifications at home.

2.   I will ask you to write on Three of these quotes during the period of our final examination.  Blue Books will be provided.  You can "rehearse" your answers at home before the examination, but you may not use notes or your texts.  You may use a dictionary if you wish.

3.   I will ask you to write a short essay (3-5 pp.) on a topic I will distribute a week in advance.  The paper is due at the final examination.

The exam is scheduled  for Friday, May 17 from 2-4pm in CAS 162