Throughout our EDSE 558, EDSE 729, and HIST 700T classes, we have spent a great deal of time focusing on the marginalization of minorities in the United States over time. What I came to find was that, throughout the education system that I grew up in, the story of African Americans pops up most notably during lessons on slavery and then the Civil Rights Movement. In graduate school however, we have studied more and more stories about the past that I never knew existed. For example, in our EDSE 729 class, I learned that here in Columbia there was a woman by the name of Sarah Mae Flemming that attempted to sit in the whites only section of a city bus long before Rosa Parks. Learning stories about the past such as this, help us make more sense of who we are today and why those stories are important still today. As a future teacher, I want to make sure that I use stories like that which are absent from textbooks and state standards to give more people a chance to relate to the history around them rather than just relying on the stories in their textbook.
Teaching in Columbia, SC, we have a great deal of resources all around us related to the Civil Rights Era during the Jim Crow South. I think that this is a great tool to use as far as illustrating time, continuity, and change to our students. Yes, stories like Sarah Mae Flemming and Rosa Parks happened over 50 years ago. However, just recently, in the summer of 2015, the Confederate Flag was taken down from the State House grounds which affected the lives of African American citizens of South Carolina. Being in Columbia, students can get a real representation of the Jim Crow south by taking a deeper look into the Sarah Mae Flemming case. The artifact that I present here is one that could be used as a role play activity in the classroom after students have done further research on the bus driver, Flemming, and the court findings around the case. In the activity, students would be put in the three "hot seats" in front of the class and have to play out the ideas of those involved in the case through their answers to the questions that their classmates around the room ask them.
Teaching in Columbia, SC, we have a great deal of resources all around us related to the Civil Rights Era during the Jim Crow South. I think that this is a great tool to use as far as illustrating time, continuity, and change to our students. Yes, stories like Sarah Mae Flemming and Rosa Parks happened over 50 years ago. However, just recently, in the summer of 2015, the Confederate Flag was taken down from the State House grounds which affected the lives of African American citizens of South Carolina. Being in Columbia, students can get a real representation of the Jim Crow south by taking a deeper look into the Sarah Mae Flemming case. The artifact that I present here is one that could be used as a role play activity in the classroom after students have done further research on the bus driver, Flemming, and the court findings around the case. In the activity, students would be put in the three "hot seats" in front of the class and have to play out the ideas of those involved in the case through their answers to the questions that their classmates around the room ask them.