Understanding the Local Context of the Civil Rights Movement:Using Service Learning to Develop an Oral History of Our Community

Abstract

76 No.2 Understanding the Local Context of the Civil (lights MovementiUsing Service Learning to Develop an Oral History of Our Community By Robert Weldon Simmons III Growing up in Detroit as the son of a mother who attended Speiman College in Atlanta, I was keenly aware of the significance of the Civil Rights Movement and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the lives of African Americans. What's more, I was also aware of the links that the Civil Rights Movement had to Detroit. Noting the conversations that my mother had when describing life at Speiman during the late 1960s and my uncles discussing their experience watching Detroit burn during the 1967 social uprising (or riot, as some have suggested) on 12th and Claremont (walking distance from our family home), I knew that the local context of the Civil Rights Movement and the impact of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 were often overshadowed by the bigger issues presented in various history textbooks in schools. Accordingly, I have worked with pre-service teachers and co-taught with teachers in middle and high schools to understand how service learning can be utilized to create oral history projects that focus on local communities. All discussions with students regarding the local context of the Civil Rights Movement and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 begin with reading from Voices of Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1950s Through the 1980s.1 As my teacher education students read the text, they are amazed at the complexity of the Civil Rights Movement and the story behind the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Middle and high school students seem surprised to find that the struggle for freedom and justice wasn't just a "southern thing with people fighting against the Confederate flag," as suggested by one high school student. Exposure to readings that focus attention on the Civil Rights Movement in cities like Detroit, Chicago, Boston, or Gary, Indiana, as well as how the local community was impacted by the Civil 14 I BLACK HISTORY BULLETIN Vol. 76, No. 2 Rights Act of 1964, leaves students' eyes wide and their mouths open in amazement. As one student said to me in Detroit, "I didn't know we got down like that in the D." To him I said, "We sure did and still do." For students in grades 6-12 who don't find their cities located in the text, they routinely wonder, "What was happening here during that same time period?" Accordingly, I use this type of student curiosity as an opening to educate these students not only about the Civil Rights Movement, but about the work that was done during that era in their own cities. While I was studying the impact of service learning in urban schools in a school in the Midwest, I listened to "You Must Learn" by Boogie Down Productions with a group of African American students in a high school classroom.2 As the music played and the students nodded their heads and took notes on the historical names they recognized, I realized how little they knew about the personal narratives generated by everyday African Americans associated with the Civil Rights Movement. I tossed out a name of a local legend in the Civil Rights Movement and asked them to explain who this person was. Silence fell over the room. Certainly they knew of Rosa Parks sitting on the bus and Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech, but they had little knowledge of their local community's participation in the Civil Rights Movement. As my co-teaching partner and I pondered our next series of lessons, we decided to co-construct them with our students. When we initially approached our students about developing a series of lessons focusing on the local context during the Civil Rights Movement, the students were confused. One student said, "Y'all think we know something about teaching?" My response was, "Perhaps you do, but you for sure know something about learning. Now tell me what you want to learn about as it relates to your local community and the Civil Rights Movement...