Week 7 — African American Experiences II: Civil Rights and Black Freedom Movements

Why this matters

A business student who may one day write a lending rule and an education major who will teach inside a school boundary both meet this week's quiet rules.

In plain language

This chapter follows the Black freedom movement from a 1954 Supreme Court decision about schools to a 1968 law about housing. You will read how ordinary people organized, through a bus boycott and a long push for new laws, and what those laws changed. You will also meet redlining (refusing loans to people because of the neighborhood they live in), and you will work a small, made-up lending table to see how one rating rule can sort families without anyone intending it. The chapter separates de jure segregation (separation a law requires) from de facto segregation (separation that exists in practice without such a law). It ends with Black Power (a strand of the movement that stressed self-determination and community pride) and the founding of Black studies, the field that helped start this course.

• Already covered: Week 6's slavery, Reconstruction, Plessy, and Jim Crow.
• This week: Brown, the boycott, the 1964 and 1965 laws, redlining, de facto segregation.
• How they connect: this week shows how people took apart the laws Week 6 read.
• Where we're going next: Week 8, the midterm review and oral history.

Focus

How did people win change in the law, and what did the new laws leave in place?

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

• [ ] explain what Brown held and why segregation did not end at once
• [ ] state what the 1964 and 1965 laws did
• [ ] work the lending table's rates, gap in percentage points, and ratio
• [ ] tell de jure from de facto segregation

To-do

Plan your week

1. Read Chapter 7 (about 35–45 minutes), then the lecture and slides.
2. Work the lecture tutorial (60–90 minutes).
3. Try the practice set (15–25 minutes).
4. Do the workshop (about 90 minutes), the discussion, and the assignment, then the quiz.

This week's checkpoint: explain why a gap of 80 percentage points is not a gap of 80 percent.

You've got this

Take it in order, and ask your instructor if a step snags.

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