James Meredith

Today was my third consecutive week facilitating Eyes on the Prize viewings with the entire 9th grade class. I had the idea of showing Eyes on the Prize as an educational exercise to help students better understand the historical context of the decades they are studying for the LENS OF THE LIVING grade wide year long project.

The first two weeks, students were relatively attentive. This week, students were restless, talking and growing weary of the film. We are currently at 1962, James Meredith.

I found that what helped was stopping the movie every few minutes at key points at "breaking it down" for the students, tying in key points and parallels to the present time.

This works, but it worries me that I have to do this.

The larger implication is that the subject matter itself is not riveting enough for the students to be interested on its own merit.

We were watching footage of the governor of Mississipi arguing with president Kennedy about how he would defend the state against Federal laws insisting Meredith be able to attend Ole Miss, along with all of the drama: Southern Whites in squirrel hunting season toting thousands of shotguns, Federal Marshals being called in, young southern white girls throwing bricks at national troops, reporters getting killed, smoke, violence.... and a Black man standing up against an entire state of hatred and bigotry. Yet this is not interesting until I tell you that is?

In the end , the students perked up and paid attention, but I could not only help but think that without a person like myself leading the group, how successful would this session have been? What is the larger implication of this? Is it a matter of changing the climate of the entire class? Higher pressure from parents? Higher pressure from advisors? Getting advisors to me more engaging with the students overall? Higher stakes assignments? More weight put on the grade for the questions turned in?

Or perhaps a more engaging approach.... after a few film segments are shown, getting the students out of 'RECEIVE' mode and into 'PARTICIPATE' mode somehow. Does this mean bringing in a guest next week? Having students do a role play? A short film re-enactment of the James Meredith experience that we could film and incorporate into the student projects?

Hmmm....we may be on to something here.

At any rate, for my own record, I'm posting the questions the students had to answer at the end of the session here so that I can refer to them later. These are due Monday.
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1. Who was James Meredith?

2. On what grounds did the governor of Mississippi deny James Meredith the right to register at ‘Ole Miss?

3. Describe the nature and outcome of the dialogues between President Kennedy and the governor of Mississippi regarding the integration of ‘Ole Miss.

4. Why was the south so intent on maintaining “states rights” throughout the 20th century?

5. Describe any similarities between what happened in Mississippi in 1962 and what happened with the Jena 6 in 2007.
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From last week: (these questions were written by advisors. ( McCloud and Bolton))

6.What was Dr. King’s strategy to fight segregation and racism?
7.Who was Reverend Dr. Ralph Abernathy?
8.How did the Black community organize transportation during the Montgomery Bus boycott?
9.What does “unconstitutional” mean and why was bus segregation unconstitutional?
10.What was the economic impact of Dr. King’s strategy to resist segregation?