Nonviolence as a Tool for Change Lesson 1

This lesson is part of the following unit:
Nonviolence as a Tool for Change: The March for Voting Rights

Students begin this lesson by completing the Voting Profile Anticipation Guide in Step One that asks them to reveal their thoughts about voting. Throughout this unit, they will return to this anticipation guide, reflecting on how their ideas have strengthened or changed as a result of learning about the history of voting rights in the South in the 1950s and 1960s. This lesson focuses students' attention on primary source documents that juxtapose the promise of the Fifteenth Amendment with the reality for black citizens living in the South. In so doing, this material reveals how citizens do not always enjoy civil rights just because they are promised them in the Constitution; rather, through the behavior of individuals and groups, theoretical rights are translated into lived experiences. As this lesson raises students' awareness of the history of voting rights in America, it also can help students consider the difference between having the legal right to vote and the real opportunity to vote, as well as broader questions about the just (and unjust) application of laws.