1960's: Malala Yousafzai

As a young girl, Malala Yousafzai defied the Taliban in Pakistan and demanded that girls be allowed to receive an education. She was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman in 2012, but survived.

Watch the Malala story and also her interview 

On another note,

Check out these videos on the many different women who have met their dreams. Watch one of your choosing and then tell us who she is and what she accomplished.

Comment on the blog: Which woman did you find most interesting and why?

Women Around the World

“Women hold up half the sky,” reads an old Chinese saying. 




Indeed, women have traditionally been the world’s farmers, child bearers, and caretakers of young and old – the backbone of families and societies. Women play a central role in the effective development of families, communities, nations, and regions. 

Yet, despite their vast contributions to humanity, women continue to suffer from gender discrimination in much of the world. Being born female in most of the developing

world means a lifetime as a second-class citizen, denied most of the opportunities 

available to males in the areas of health, education, employment, and legal rights.

In many less developed countries, girls and women do much of the hard labor of running a household and a subsistence farm. In rural areas where homes lack indoor plumbing and electricity, it is not uncommon for them to spend hours each day gathering water and firewood and carrying these items long distances. Most of this work is unpaid, domestic labor that takes a toll on women’s bodies.

With little formal education and large families to tend, women are often not able to be employed outside of the home. 

Cultural traditions often dictate what jobs are appropriate for men and women. Where women are able to attain an education and learn job skills, they help their families and communities prosper.

credit: www.worldof7billion.org

First, watch this (3.34) short video, 

"What Are You Carrying?" in which the creator learns first hand how difficult a woman’s burden can be in the eastern Congo.

Then, watch (1.30) “Smart Girls,” and (3.40) "Global Voices."

Play this online game 

Here is the link for your worksheet,"A life of two schoolgirls." 

Comment on the blog: 
What surprised you or did you find sad or interesting in these videos?

1960's: Modern Women in Combat

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced recently that the Pentagon is lifting the ban on women in combat, overturning a 1994 rule that restricted women from infantry, armor, Special Forces, artillery and other combat roles. 

The decision comes after increasing pressure from service women and activists on the Pentagon to acknowledge the reality that many women in the military already face combat on the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan. More than 200,000 women have served in those two wars; as of last year, more than 800 of those had been wounded and more than 130 killed.

No law bars women from combat, but official military policy has long kept female service members away from the front lines by banning them from artillery, armor, infantry and other combat roles. 

Before 2001, American service women had largely been kept out of ground combat. Over more than a decade of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, however, many women have served courageously and skillfully under fire, a reality that female service members have long been pressing the military to acknowledge.

The decision to lift the ban will open up hundreds of thousands of jobs in previously all-male units to women. Defense officials cautioned that the opening of all combat positions will not be immediate, but will proceed through an assessment phase, during which each branch of the armed services will look at all currently non-integrated units and come up with a timetable for integration. The Pentagon is allowing three years, until January 2016, for the services to make final decisions.

credit: http://www.history.com/news/u-s-military-lifts-ban-on-women-in-combat

Watch these CBS News and also this ABC news videos on women in the military.

Complete the worksheet:

 "U.S. allows women to fight in wars ...26th January, 2013"

Comment: What is your personal opinion about this matter? SHOULD women be allowed to fight in combat??

1960's: Equal Pay

April 8 is "Equal Pay Day", a holiday marking the number of extra days into 2014 the average woman has to work to earn as much as her male counterpart did in 2013. 

Full-time, year-round workers, women are paid on average only 77 percent of what men are paid; for women of color, the gap is significantly wider. African American women on average earn only 64 cents and Latinas on average earn only 55 cents for every dollar earned by white men.

In 1963, when the Equal Pay Act was passed, full-time working women were paid 59 cents on average for every dollar paid to men. This means it took 45 years for the wage gap to close just 18 cents -- a rate of less than half a penny a year. This narrowing of the gap has slowed down since the turn of the century.

I'll be glad when we no longer have to observe Equal Pay Day, but until then, we need to educate ourselves about the wage gap between women and men.

To help end pay discrimination Obama is trying to get the Paycheck Fairness Act passed.

The Paycheck Fairness Act will help enforce equal pay for equal work for all Americans. The bill would update the Equal Pay Act of 1963, a law that has not been able to achieve its promise of closing the wage gap.

 The Paycheck Fairness Act would make critical changes to the law, including:

• requiring employers to demonstrate that different wages are based on factors other than gender;
• prohibiting retaliation against workers who ask about their employers’ wage practices or share with others their own wages;
• permitting reasonable comparisons between employees within clearly defined geographical areas to determine what a  fair wage actually is;
• strengthening penalties for equal pay violations;
• directing the Department of Labor to collect wage information from various employers.                   

Credit: https://www.aclu.org/womens-rights/equal-pay-equal-work-pass-paycheck-fairness-act

Watch this one minute video 
on the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Complete the worksheet:

 " Women in the Workforce" 

1960's: Modern Day Women

President Bill Clinton appointed Ruth Bader Ginsberg to the Supreme Court of the United States.  She was only the second woman to be named to the Supreme Court, following Sandra Day O'Connor, and was the first Jewish woman to serve.

Watch this 4 minute interview with Ruth Bader Ginsberg. 

Lilly Ledbetter was born in a house with no running water or electricity in the small town of Possum Trot, Alabama. She knew that she was destined for something more, and in 1979, with two young children at home and over the initial objections of her husband Charles, Lilly applied for her dream job at the Goodyear tire factory. Even though the only women she’d seen there were secretaries in the front offices where she’d submitted her application, she got the job—one of the first women hired at the management level.

Though she faced daily gender prejudice and sexual harassment, Lilly pressed onward, believing that eventually things would change. Until, nineteen years after her first day at Goodyear, Lilly received an anonymous note revealing that she was making thousands less per year than the men in her position.  Devastated, she filed a sex discrimination case against Goodyear, which she won—and then heartbreakingly lost on appeal. 

Over the next eight years, her case made it all the way to the Supreme Court, where she lost again: the court ruled that she should have filed suit within 180 days of her first unequal paycheck--despite the fact that she had no way of knowing that she was being paid unfairly all those years. In a dramatic moment, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg read her disagreement with the decision from the bench, urging Lilly to fight back.

And fight Lilly did, going all the way to the President. In January 2009, President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act  Today, she is a tireless advocate for change, traveling the country to urge women and minorities to claim their civil rights.
http://www.lillyledbetter.com/about.html

Watch this short video on Lily Ledbetter. 

Comment on the blog: 

Do you think it was fair that Lily was paid less than her male counterparts? Why do you think she WAS paid less? 

1960's: Women's Rights

Tens of thousands of women participated in the March on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963. But none of the female civil rights leaders marched in the procession with Dr. King, nor were any of them invited to speak to the enormous crowd.

Instead, these women were asked to march on an adjacent street with the wives of the male leaders and to stay in the background.

Background: 

On Election Day in 1920, millions of American women exercised their right to vote for the first time. It took activists and reformers nearly 100 years to win that right, and the campaign was not easy: Disagreements over strategy threatened to cripple the movement more than once. But on August 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was finally ratified, enfranchising all American women and declaring for the first time that they, like men, deserve all the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.

THE ABOLITIONISTS AND THE SUFFRAGISTS

The campaign for women’s suffrage began in earnest in the decades before the Civil War. During the 1820s and 30s, most states had extended the right to vote to all white men, regardless of how much money or property they had. 

In 1848, a group of abolitionist activists–mostly women, but some men–gathered in Seneca Falls, New York to discuss the problem of women’s rights.  Most of the delegates agreed: American women were independent individuals who deserved their own political identities. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” proclaimed the Declaration of Sentiments that the delegates produced, “that all men and women are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” What this meant, among other things, was that they believed women should have the right to vote.

The small role allowed female civil rights leaders in the activities of the 1960's Civil Rights Movement was the exact opposite of the central role these women played in planning the strategies, tactics and actions of the movement — including the march itself! 

In fact, many of the most iconic campaigns of the civil rights movement were coordinated by women, including nonviolent sit-ins at segregated lunch counters, forced integration of Central High School by the Little Rock Nine, and the voter registration drives of 1964's Freedom Summer.

The first wave of the women's feminist movement started in the 19th and early 20th century with leaders such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton fighting for legal rights for women such as the ability to vote and own property. The second wave of the women's movement, led by women such as Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, occurred in the 1960s and 70s and attempted to combat further social and political inequalities.

One of the least recognized stories of the Civil Rights Movement is the role of women. This is true despite the fact that women were responsible for many of the achievements of the Movement. They developed strategies, marched in demonstrations, attended mass meetings, registered voters, taught in freedom schools, wrote searing critiques of societal structures, organized boycotts, and risked their lives.

Watch this 3.50 minute video on the history of women's suffrage. 

This is a 5 minute video from Iron Jawed Angels (a modern movie made about Women's Suffrage) that depicts the Parade in Washington.

Look through this slideshow and read the text below each picture.  There are 11 photos. 

Tell us, on the Blog, something that you learned.

Here is the website link for your 
Women’s Suffrage Fact Sheet.

1960's Desegregation Kennedy

On June 11,1963 George Wallace, the Governor of Alabama tried to block two African American students from entering the University of Alabama. 

President John F. Kennedy called in the National Guard and the governor stepped aside. The president informed the country of the event in a speech on radio and television during which he explained why it was so important for all Americans to be treated fairly and have equal rights and privileges. 

He announced that he would be introducing a law that would end segregation in public places, require schools to become desegregated, and protect people’s right to vote.

When the President addressed the country it was seriously divided. Many Americans still supported segregation and were reluctant to acknowledge racial injustice. However, months of escalating conflict that included massive demonstrations, police repression, and even deaths of activists and other citizens, compelled Kennedy to take a clear stand on the issue. In this landmark speech on civil rights, Kennedy presented the case for why racial discrimination had no place in American law. He also announced his plans to introduce a civil rights bill to Congress.

The speech is historically significant for several reasons. It was Kennedy’s strongest public statement to the country (and the rest of the world) on civil rights. Also, historians consider it a ground-breaking speech because Kennedy framed racial injustice as a moral or ethical issue. 

He challenged Americans to ask themselves, how do we want to be treated? What is the right way to behave towards others in a country founded on equality? Finally, the speech was a call to action; Kennedy challenged individuals to act, to treat each other with respect in their daily lives.

credit given to: http://civilrights.jfklibrary.org/

Here is part of Kennedy's speech (5.43). 

Tell us one thing Kennedy said in this video, in your own words, and do not repeat what someone else has said.  

1960's: Civil Rights Timeline

Civil Rights Movement Timeline

January 31^st, 1865

• The Thirteenth Amendment is passed and slavery is officially abolished from the United States.

April 15^th, 1865

• President Abraham Lincoln, the president who abolished slavery, is assassinated.

July 28^th, 1868

• The Fourteenth Amendment is passed giving black citizens in America full citizenship.

March 30^th, 1870

• The right to vote is granted to all American males (other than Native Americans),regardless of race, color or previous condition of servitude (so even men who had previously been slaves could now vote).

March 1^st, 1875

• Civil Rights Act is passed giving all black citizens the right to equal treatment in public and on any public transportation.

November 26^th, 1883

• US Supreme Court declares the Civil Rights Act to be unconstitutional because laws covered by the Civil Rights Act should be left up to individual states, not the federal government. Individual states now again allowed to discriminate in any way they want against black citizens.

June 3^rd, 1946

• US Supreme Court bans segregation of black and white people on public transit.

December 1^st, 1955

• Rosa Parks is arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, AL. Martin Luther King Jr. leads a boycott of Montgomery buses that lasts over a year.

September 24^th, 1957

• Nine black students integrate with white students at Central High School in Little Rock, AR. President Dwight Eisenhower sends the paratroopers in to ward off any violence.

      February 1st, 1960

• Four black students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College begin a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter.

    May 4th, 1961

• Over the spring and summer, student volunteers begin taking bus trips through the South to test out new laws that prohibit segregation in interstate travel facilities, which includes bus and railway stations. Several of the groups of "freedom riders," as they are called, are attacked by angry mobs along the way. 

August 28^th, 1963

• More than 250,000 civil rights demonstrators march on Washington, DC, where Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his "I Have A Dream" speech.

Martin Luther King Jr. delivering his I Have A Dream speech

1964

• Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wins the Nobel Peace Prize.

Aug. 10, 1965

Congress passes the Voting Rights Act of 1965, making it easier for Southern blacks to register to vote. Literacy tests, poll taxes, and other such requirements that were used to restrict black voting are made illegal.

April 4^th, 1968

• Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, TN, where had gone to give a speech to striking garbage workers.

Watch this 3 minute video. 

Complete the Timeline Matching worksheet. 

1960's: Children's Crusade

Fifty three years ago, Charles Avery left his high school in Jefferson County, Alabama, to lead about 800 of his fellow students on a 10-mile walk to Birmingham City. They were stopped by the sheriff’s department, arrested, and jailed. “I was put in the paddy wagon with Dick Gregory and his writer,” says Avery, who was 18 at the time and president of his senior class. “I would never forget that day.”

In 1963 Birmingham was known as one of the most racist cities in the South. Martin Luther King Jr. had described it as a “symbol of hard-core resistance to integration.” Activists had nicknamed it Bombingham, because of the frequency of violent attacks against those fighting the system of segregation.

It was the Rev. James Bevel, a leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and adviser to King, who came up with the idea of a protest group made up of children. In May 1963 they launched the Children’s Crusade and began a march on Birmingham. By the time Avery made it to the city May 7, more than 3,000 black young people were marching on the city.

It was King’s words that inspired 16-year-old Raymond Goolsby to participate in the march.

“Rev. Martin Luther King stood right beside me,” remembers Goolsby, 66. “He said, ‘I think it’s a mighty fine thing for children, what you’re doing because when you march, you’re really standing up; because a man can’t ride your back unless it is bent.’ And, boy, I mean he talked so eloquent and fast, after he finished his motivational speech, I was ready.”

On May 2, 1963, Goolsby joined thousands of students who left their classrooms and gathered at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. It was there where they spilled out in groups of 50 to march downtown. “My group was the first of 50 to march,” says Goolsby. “Our job was to decoy the police. We got arrested about a block and a half from 16th Street.”

The next day, the police, led by infamous commissioner of public safety Bull Connor, brought out fire hoses and attack dogs and turned them on the children. It was a scene that caused headlines across the nation and around the world.

“Pictures of the bravery and determination of the Birmingham children as they faced the brutal fire hoses and vicious police dogs were splashed on the front pages of newspapers all across America and helped turn the tide of public opinion in support of the civil-rights movement’s fight for justice,” says Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund.

Jessie Shepherd, then 16, was soaked when she was loaded up in a paddy wagon. “I was told not to participate,” says Shepherd, now a retired clinical diet technician. “But I was tired of the injustice.”

“I couldn’t understand why there had to be a colored fountain and a white fountain,” says Shepherd. “Why couldn’t I drink out the fountain that other little kids drank out of? As I got older, I understood that’s just the way it was, because my skin was black, and we were treated differently because of that.”

So she marched.

Soon the city’s jails were so overcrowded that students were sent to the local fair ground. They slept on cots and sang freedom songs while waiting for movement leaders to raise money for their bail.

“I didn’t anticipate the outcome being so drastic,” says Shepherd.

Gwen Gamble had just been released from jail and didn’t want to go back. Shortly before the crusade, the teenager had been arrested for participating in a lunch-counter sit-in and jailed for five days. “We were put in with people who had actually broken the law. It was scary. They weren’t nice,” says Gamble, who was 15.

She and her two sisters were trained by the movement to be recruiters for the Children’s Crusade. On the first day of the march, they went to several schools and gave students the cue to leave. They then made their way to 16th Street Baptist.

“We left the church with our picket signs and our walking shoes,” says Gamble. “Some of us even had on our rain coats because we knew that we were going to be hosed down by the water hoses.”

Under intense public pressure, Birmingham negotiated a truce with King, and on May 10, Connor was removed from his position. The Children’s Crusade had worked.

Take out a piece of paper and a pencil.  Watch this 10 minute video and take notes. 

You can take notes in the form of an outline or whatever works for you. You will turn in your notes as homework.

1960's: Freedom Songs

Today's blog may take a little longer than normal so make sure you have about 15-20 minutes to sit at the computer.

Freedom songs were a way of life during the Civil Rights Movement. The songs contained many meanings for all participants. Songs could embody sadness, happiness, joy, or determination among many other feelings. Freedom songs served as mechanism for unity among the black community during the movement. 

The songs also served as a means of communication among the participants when words just were not enough. The song “We Shall Overcome” quickly became the face of the movement. 

Music of the civil rights era was crucial to the productivity of the movement. Music communicated unspeakable feelings and the desire for radical change across the nation. Music strengthened the movement, adding variety to freedom progression strategies. Music was highly successful in that the songs were direct and repetitive, getting the message across clearly and efficiently. 

Melodies were simple with repeating choruses, which allowed easy involvement within both black and white communities furthering the spread of the songs message. There was often more singing than talking during protests and demonstrations, showing how powerful the songs really were. 

Participants felt a connectedness with one another and their movement through the songs. Freedom songs were often used politically to grab the attention of the nation to address the severity of segregation. 

Songs were often derived from the Christian background, usually from hymns. Hymns were slightly altered to incorporate wording reflective upon civil rights protests, and current situations as they were brought out of the churches and into the streets. 

Although most freedom songs derived from hymns, it was important to include songs from other genres. To accommodate those who were not as religious, rock and roll songs could be altered to become freedom songs, which allowed for a broader amount of activists to partake in the singing.

View this website and take the interactive journey. Be patient, turn on your sound, and listen to the narrative. 

Also, listen to either the story of the Leslie, Jones or Davenport family. You choose. 

Here is an optional 4 minute music video, The song is called Glory and the  scenes from Selma. As you watch and listen, think about how song is a powerful way to express emotions during this time in history. 

Lastly, Read this webpage and listen to all five songs to decide which song YOU think defined the times best.

Comment on the blog: 

Tell us which song and why do you feel like it gave words and feelings to the Civil Rights movement.