50th Anniversary of Selma
March 20, 2015
“If not us, then who? If not now, then when? ...Will someone else's children have to risk their lives instead of us risking ours?” Freedom Rider John Lewis, May 1961
Resources to share with your students
New this month in the Library is a video kit from Teaching Tolerance, A Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center. It will be available for teachers to check out.
Teaching Tolerance - Teacher's resources, online videos, and lesson plans for many issues.
On John Lewis - He had come to Selma, Alabama, this young man, on what seemed to him to be a necessary path. As the Chairman of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) this 25 year-old student of religion and philosophy had already endured beatings, arrest, insult, and ridicule beyond what most people endure in a lifetime.
At age 19 he had helped organize the first lunch counter sit-in, in 1961 he was involved in the Freedom Rides to exercise the right—confirmed in a Supreme Court Decision (Boynton v. Virginia of 1960), that affirmed the illegality of racial segregation in public transportation, and in 1963 he had spoken at the March on Washington.
Even at this young age he had handled the brutality and violence with the same response that he would later give throughout his life: with prayer, nonviolence, and words of reconciliation and hope.
John Lewis after beating
Prayers at Selma
Laura Bush, Michelle Obama, President Barak Obama, Freedom Rider John Lewis, President George W. Bush.
Honoring John Lewis
Student Resources in Context
http://infotrac.galegroup.com/itweb/j057904042?db=SUIC
video, audio, works cited
World Book
http://worldbookonline.com/wb/products?ed=all&gr=Welcome+Cedar+Hill+Ind+School+District%21
User Name: coleman1
Password: aviators
Timelines feature is excellent