Weekly Online Lesson Online Lesson Archives Grade Level: 7-12 Subject: History/Civics

Equality Before the Law

The story of America's struggle to ensure equality before the law for all citizens is a story as old as America itself. It begins with immigrants to a new land seeking religious freedom, only to see later generations turn to slavery as a means of capitalizing on economic opportunity. Conflict in ideology over slavery came to a head in 1861 as the Confederacy declared its independence from the Union and brought civil war to the nation. In its aftermath, the union was preserved, and slavery had been abolished; nevertheless, the struggle for equality continued into the next century.

It is a struggle that continues today.

This week's online lesson takes you to two sites dedicated to the story of America's struggle for equality and civil rights for all citizens.

Civil Rights: A Status Report

This site, originating "from the desk of Kevin D. Hollaway,"   is an excellent overview of Black American history in general and America's Civil Rights movement in particular. 

The home page of Civil Rights: A Status Report is no longer online, but many of the pages of the site are still available. Go to the Table of Contents and choose any of the 66 topics.

You can study them in any order, but it's nice to just read them chronologically in the order they are listed. These events are all interrelated, with the conclusion of one chapter in history often leading to the next. If, on the other hand, you are interested in a specific topic, you can quickly find it.

You will find that text isn't always grammatically perfect—Kevin's degree is in Chemical Engineering, not English—but it's written with passion and conviction.  His facts are well-documented, and occasional photographs add quite a bit to the text.

Some of the historical topics you can read about include:

• The Invention that brings Life to the slave industry
• A People Divided
• The role of Blacks during the Civil War
• The Klan is Born
• The Black Wall Street
• The Ruling—Brown vs. The Board of Education
• The March on Washington
• The Legacy of Malcolm X
• The Detroit Riot
• Moving Up and Reverse Discrimination

Below the historical Table of Contents are links to opinion articles written by Holloway expressing his views on Black history and the civil rights movement. As you read, keep in mind the important distinction between opinion and fact; you are reading one man's opinion, and you may not necessarily agree with his position. Use these opinion papers as a springboard for discussions with parents, friends, and classmates.

National Civil Rights Museum

The National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee, houses a comprehensive view of the civil rights movement in exhibit form. The goal of the museum "is to inspire people to learn the lessons of the civil rights movement and its impact on human rights movements worldwide."

If you can't visit the museum in person, you can visit the permanent exhibit online. Browse to Voices of Struggle and read the page. Next, click the links on the right visit every page of the exhibit. Each step takes visitors through a timeline of the civil rights struggle as it relates to African-Americans. After presenting a historical overview of slavery, emancipation, and dark years of reconstruction and segregation, the tour focuses on the seminal events of the 1950s and 1960s. Exhibits include: Montgomery Bus Boycott; Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka; Little Rock; The March on Washington; Student Sit-Ins; Freedom Rides; Chicago Freedom Movement; March from Selma to Montgomery; Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.; and The Struggle Continues.

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