question archive Short Responses The Civil Rights Movement touched on many different aspects of American life: politics, religion, economics, culture, and the law, to name just a few
Short Responses The Civil Rights Movement touched on many different aspects of American life: politics, religion, economics, culture, and the law, to name just a few
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Short Responses
The Civil Rights Movement touched on many different aspects of American life: politics, religion, economics, culture, and the law, to name just a few. In this learning block, we're going to ask you to develop an informed point of view about one aspect of the Civil Rights Movement.
You've already had some experience in developing a thesis statement for your writing plan. In this learning block, we're going to take that process one step further, showing you how to refine your thesis into a sharper, more strongly worded statement that expresses a clear point of view.
The first step: develop a research question about the Civil Rights Movement, based on the material contained in this learning block. You should use a specific historical lens that you feel is relevant to this issue. Historical lenses can include such perspectives as political, social, religious, military, and economic history. Be sure to respond to each question in 1-2 complete sentences, using proper grammar.
Short Responses – Question 1
In the space below, specify which historical lens you'd like to use for this exercise.
The concept of historical contingency* is all about causes, course, and consequences. The questions below are designed to get you thinking about the causes, course, and consequences of the Voting Rights Act. Be sure to respond to each question in 2-3 complete sentences, using proper grammar.
Name three specific consequences caused by the passage of the Voting Rights Act.
Pildes: Blame the Voting Rights Act
The following excerpt, from a scholarly article on the impact of the Voting Rights Act, or VRA, focuses on the effect that the VRA had in ending the long-time Democratic Party dominance of Southern politics. It is excerpted from "Why the Center Does Not Hold: The Causes of Hyperpolarized Democracy in America," by prominent political scientist Richard Pildes. Click on the title of the article to read, download, and print a copy of the text. These readings are provided by the Shapiro Library. This reading is required. You will have to log into Shapiro Library with your SNHU credentials.
The 1965 VRA, and related changes in the era in constitutional doctrine and law, began the process of unraveling this system. The VRA began what might be considered the "purification" or "maturation" of the American political system. Put another way, the VRA initiated the rise of a genuine political system in the South, which meant the destruction of the one-party monopoly and the emergence, eventually, of a more normal system of competitive two-party politics. Just as the peculiar structure of the one-party South had projected itself onto the shape of national political parties, so too this dramatic transformation of Southern politics in turn reshaped the essential structure of the national political parties. As the VRA and related measures broke down the barriers to electoral participation in the South—literacy tests, poll taxes, manipulative registration practices, and durational residency requirement—a massive infusion of new voters, mostly black but white as well, entered and reconfigured Southern politics.
These voters were, on average, much more liberal than the median voting white Southerner had been before 1965. No longer could conservative, one-party political monopoly be maintained. Over the next generation, these new voters ripped asunder the old Democratic Party of the South, eventually fragmenting it into two parties: a highly conservative Republican Party, into which many of these formerly Democratic Southern voters fled, and a new, moderate-to-liberal Democratic Party that was more in line ideologically with the rest of the Democratic Party nationwide. There was, of course, a self-reinforcing feedback dynamic to this whole process as well; as the Democratic Party became more liberal in the South, more conservatives fled; as more conservatives fled, the Democratic Party became even more liberal. At the national level, the progressive strands on racial issues that had existed in the Republican Party diminished, to be replaced by a more conservative stance on racial issues, while the Democratic Party at the national level became the party of racial liberalism.
Kennedy: Don't Blame the VRA
The following excerpt, from a scholarly rebuttal to Pildes's analysis of the effects of the Voting Rights Act, argues that today's political polarization is caused in large part by the divisive nature of the issues being debated. It is excerpted from "What Pildes Missed: The Framers, the True Impact of the Voting Rights Act, and the Far Right", by prominent political scientist David M. Kennedy. Click on the title of the article to read, download, and print a copy of the text. These readings are provided by the Shapiro Library. This reading is required. You will have to log into Shapiro Library with your SNHU credentials.
Professor Pildes has perhaps focused too much on institutional factors and too swiftly cast out of the discussion the substantive content of American politics today. For example, I referred earlier to the Civil War. One would have a heavy burden of proof to carry if one wished to explain that systemic breakdown of the usual political process without mentioning slavery.
Similarly, we cannot fully grasp the divisiveness of our own political moment without acknowledging the salience of issues that are by their very nature polarizing. These issues elude the capacity of a political system designed to reconcile differences and have many of the properties that slavery had in the nineteenth century. They include abortion and gay marriage, to take the two most conspicuous examples, though one might easily add issues of war and peace. These matters are all highly emotionally charged and ideologically grounded. They simply do not lend themselves to the kind of compromising that is the stuff of "normal" politics. They might be called Solomonic issues, where the interests at stake are indivisible and the only solutions acceptable to stakeholders are unitary, not comprehensive.
Additionally, polarization affects different political camps differently. What we have today might be characterized as "asymmetric polarization." The conservative right is much more demographically and culturally homogenous and much less inclined to compromise on value-laden social issues than the much more heterogeneous Democratic Party.
Finally, among the factors that underwrote the halcyon days of harmony and bipartisanship in the post-war era was a phenomenally well-performing economy. It is no accident that the substantial fulfillment of the civil rights agenda, after a century of postponement, took place in that context of shared affluence, raising expectations all around, and great national self-confidence. Conversely, much of the acrimony that crept into our political culture after the 1960s has reflected the much more constrained economic circumstances of that later period.
You've just read two historical analyses of the effects of the Voting Rights Act by two highly respected scholars. Both looked at the issue through the lens of political history, yet they came to very different conclusions. when you're considering the validity of someone's historical analysis, it's important to think about the types of evidence that he or she used. The next two questions will ask you about the types of evidence that each of the scholars in this "debate" relied on. Be sure to respond to each question in 2-3 complete sentences, using proper grammar.
Module 5 Short Responses – Question 9
One of these scholars relied heavily on evidence about the substance of today's political debate. Which scholar was that? What sort of evidence did he use?
Module 5 Short Responses – Question 10
One of these scholars relied heavily on evidence about the political process. Which scholar was that? What sort of evidence did he use?
"The Fight Was Instilled in Us": High School Activism and the Civil Rights Movement in Charleston
The S.H. Kress & Co. building in Charleston, SC. (Click button for citation)
"I remember people standing and staring at us like we were trouble makers and were trying to upset Charleston," Harvey Gantt, a graduate of Burke High School in Charleston, recalled of the student led sit-in on April 1, 1960. "We at least got the attention of the community. We were feeling young and gifted and ready to tear down a broken social system. We felt like we were pioneers that day," Gantt said. Gantt was one of twenty-four Burke High School students who marched to S.H. Kress & Co., a segregated five-and-dime store on King Street in downtown Charleston. The students occupied nearly one-half of the lunch-counter seats, humming, singing freedom songs, and reciting prayers. The students maintained their composure as the manager of the store asked them to leave, white patrons cleared the premises, and bystanders circulated rumors of a bomb threat. Police arrested the students, charged them with trespassing, and put them in jail. By examining the effort to desegregate public facilities through the lens of the first sit-in in Charleston, this article will illustrate how a small, committed group of local high school students and teachers played an integral, though overlooked, role in the civil rights movement.
Read the introduction above and answer the following questions. Be sure to respond to each question in 2-3 complete sentences, using proper grammar. When the response requires a direct quote from the introduction, you can copy and paste it into your answer.
Module 5 Short Responses – Question 11
1. What is the topic of this essay? Does the author make it clear in the introduction?
2. What is the author's thesis?
3. What kind of sources and evidence do you think the author will use to support his thesis?
