Lesson Plan Fourteenth Amendment

Equal Protection of the Laws

Sharon Koch and Marie Xiong

Cabarrus County Schools

 

Overview

In this activity, students will compare the requirements in Section 1 of the 14th Amendment with the laws included in the Jim Crow Laws of North Carolina passed in 1865.

North Carolina Standard Course of Study (7th Grade)

9.04 Describe how different governments in Africa, Asia, and Australia select leaders and establish laws in comparison to the United States and analyze the strengths and weaknesses of each.

10.03 Describe rights and responsibilities of citizens in selected contemporary societies in Africa, Asia, and Australia, comparing them to each other and to the United States.

13.01 Identify historical movements such as colonization, revolution, emerging democracies, migration, and immigration that link North Carolina and the United States to selected societies of Africa, Asia, and Australia, and evaluate their influence on local, state, regional, national, and international communities.

Daily Objectives

  • The student will compare the requirements in Section 1 of the 14th Amendment with the laws included in the Jim Crow laws of North Carolina passed in 1865.
  • The student will be able to compare and be able to list some of the restrictions placed on black citizens in North Carolina and with those of South Africa.
  • The student will review vocabulary words: apartheid, discrimination, Jim Crow, deprive, protest and segregation.

Suggested Time for Activities

Two 55 minute class periods

Materials Needed

Lesson Plan

Pre-Activities

Prior to the lesson, students should be briefly introduced to vocabulary words associated with lesson.

Vocabulary Words: apartheid, discrimination, Jim Crow, deprive, protest and segregation.

Activities

SIOP Warm Up Activity
 Walk around survey: ask three classmates for their definitions of the vocabulary words, compiling the best definition to place on the word wall.



Lesson
Students can record their information on a foldable of your choice, on a matrix or just in their notebooks. Click on materials needed to get templates of how to fold a foldable or an already created matrix for this lesson.


1. Focus
Read aloud the 14th Amendment. Have students paraphrase what the amendment means. Discuss with students what rights and protection they have under the Constitution.


2. Jig Saw
Have students form small groups. Assign sections in the Jim Crow Laws of North Carolina to each group. Have the groups evaluate and decide which parts of their Jim Crow laws seemed to violate Section 1 of the 14th Amendment. Finally, each group should report its conclusions to the rest of the class.


3. Independent Reading Student Activity
Student will read the interview with Charlotte citizen, Robert Albright and write down any 14th Amendment issues they read. Discuss student comments.


4. Audio Activity
Students will listen to a two minute audio clip of an interview with Charlotte citizen, Elizabeth Randolph and continue identifying violations of the 14th Amendment. Discuss what information do you gain about this event by hearing it that would not be conveyed by a written transcript?


5.Visual Activity
Have students look and interpret some political cartons from the Charlotte Observer and local protest pictures. Compare them to what we know about apartheid in South Africa. See An Introduction to Political Cartoons by PBS for help on how to analyze political cartoons with students.

Assessment

1. Wrap Up: Read the document “Anti-discrimination Ordinance.” Exit pass writing: paraphrase what this document states and answer the following question: "What impact would these laws have had on the black community?"

2. Interrupt students’ writing to read the letters from citizens of Charlotte about the ordinance. Continue writing for another minute, before collecting the exit pass

3. Follow Up Activities

  • Have students create a matrix to compare discrimination laws in North Carolina and South Africa.

  • Have students develop their own cartoon as a response to the ones you have chosen or do what they have learned from this lesson. Students may draw their own characters or find the images from the newspaper, magazine or the
    Internet that they can use as a guide. Have them write an explanation of their cartoon following the second analysis guide for Creating a Political Cartoon provided by PBS and present the findings to the class.

Additional Resources

 

The History of Apartheid- Brief summary of apartheid and a 1978 chart showing the economic discrepancies between white and black South Africans.


Historical Images of Apartheid in South Africa- Brief summary and photographs of apartheid in South Africa.

 

National Archives and Records Administration- The National Archives are the keeper of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. It also holds in trust for the public the records of ordinary citizens—for example, military records of the brave men and women who have fought for our country, naturalization records of the immigrants whose dreams have shaped our nation, and even the canceled check from the purchase of Alaska.


PBS Lesson Plan: Analyzing Elections/Political Cartoons- Students will identify symbols, caricature, and the message, opinion or point of view of political cartoons.
Students will examine how political cartoons convey information differently than an editorial.


UNC Charlotte New South Voices- Full transcript of Robert Albright and Elizabeth S. Randolph (full audio clip available).


United States House of Representatives- Official homepage of the U.S. House of Representative with educational resources such as The Constitution and other documents.

 

 

Bibliography