All 8th graders will write a research paper this nine weeks. The topic will be some aspect
of Civil Rights. In the next two weeks we will be completing an extensive discussion on
this topic, students have the necessary background to do meaningful research. The
following is a list of possible topics. We do not want more than one person from each
class to research a given topic, so when deciding please keep several possibilities in
mind. In cases where more than one student from a class is interested in the same topic,
the final decision will be made by the teacher after talking to the students involved. By
next week you should be prepared to turn in a list of THREE topics you think you are
interested in. You may talk to me before that date. Do a little preliminary research if you
feel strongly about one of these topics.
The murder of Father Coyle in Birmingham prior to Civil Rights movement…what does
this tell about the city?
Harry Truman and the desegregation of the US military
The Voting Rights Act of 1965, the impact
The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the impact
John Fitzgerald Kennedy and racial policies
Formation of the NAACP/ their role in early civil rights legal cases
Segregation in Tuscaloosa(First African Baptist Church)
How Tuscaloosa complied with the order to “desegregate with all deliberate speed”
Formation of Southern Christian Leadership Conference and their role in running
workshops
Foundations of nonviolence as a technique of the movement
MLK’s rise to the leader of the movement
Formation of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
The Tuskegee Airmen
Conflict in Little Rock / Dwight Eisenhower versus Orval Faubus
The Southern Manifesto…what was it? Effect on movement?
Montgomery Bus boycott/role of churches, car pooling, white who helped like Virginia
Durr
Claudette Colvin and other plaintiffs in Browder v Gayle
Dr. Kenneth Clark, psychologist and the Brown case
Bull Connor as Commissioner for Public Safety
Letter from a Birmingham Jail…views of the clergy
MLK and the Nobel Peace Prize
Murder of Emmett Till
Segregation in sports
Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in baseball
Ruby Bridges
George Wallace at the University(Fosters Auditorium)
George Wallace in his later years
Role of White Citizens Councils (in Montgomery?)
March on Washington….how it was organized/what happened there/ what was the effect
Uses of music during the movement
Thurgood Marshall, especially his role in Brown v. Board of Ed
Freedom Riders/ bus bombing near Anniston
Augusta, Georgia and its impact on King
Selma March…Bloody Sunday
Martin Luther King’s assassination
Robert Kennedy and race relations
Watts riots
Caricatures of blacks…Aunt Jemima, Little Black Sambo, etc)
Stokely Carmichael
Marian Anderson as pioneer in race relations
Sit-ins as a technique/ Greensboro North Carolina
Diana Nash and the Nashville sit ins
Whites who helped in the movement(like Viola Liuzzo, Michael Swerner,etc)
Fred Shuttlesworth/ conflict with Bull Connor
Freedom Summer…voting rights in Mississippi
Murder of three civil rights workers in Freedom Summer(subject of Mississippi Burning)
James Meredith and University of Mississippi
Charles Hamilton Houston, the man who killed Jim Crow
Rise of the Black Panther political party
Malcolm X and his effect on Civil Rights
Passage of the 24th Amendment…why did it take so long to outlaw poll taxes?
Black power and what it means
Letter from the Birmingham jail…why did King write it?
The murder of Medgar Evers
The impact of the media in creating the “movement”…publicizing the events
Catholic nuns and the Selma march
Bombings in Birmingham leading to nickname “Bombingham”
James Bevill, AG Gaston and the Children’s March
Autherine Lucy and the University of Alabama
James Meredith and the University of Mississippi
Role of Black Churches in the Movement
MLK and the Memphis Sanitation Workers
Work of Southern Poverty Law center on civil rights “cold cases”