White+Socks+Only+Reinforcing+Activity

Before the class begins you will be selecting a group of students that you will be singling out. For example: eye color, height, and for my specific example, blonde hair. Have a seating chart made up that segregates the group that you are singling out from rest of the class. Have the students take their new seats and start the lesson right away. Start by having the students create a timeline using their textbook about the events going on during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's. Discuss the timeline and the key events the students listed. Collect the timeline from blonde haired students only, tell everyone else they can have a little more time during class to work on their timeline if they are not finished. Now read //White Socks Only.// After reading the story ask students where they think this event would be placed on their timeline (there was a passage in the book saying it was at Cole County Courthouse in Mississippi). Make sure to call on a blonde haired student who does not have their timeline, and tell them their answer is wrong. Then allow someone else to appropriately answer the question. Next, inform the students that there will be a quiz over the timeline and that it will be open note/book for anyone that still has their timeline. Allow the students who do not have blonde hair to finish their timeline, once they finish they can discuss the timeline with their neighbor only if that neighbor does not have blonde hair. If you have blonde hair you only have one option and that is to, “sit there quietly and think about what you did wrong.” With about ten minutes left in class, explain to the students the small experiment you had just performed and that the blonde haired students truly did nothing wrong, but that they were being treated that way because they of their hair color. Connect this to the reading you just did and ask how the students felt about the seclusion going on in the classroom. Pick out key events on the timeline and discuss how this small demonstration was amplified many times with violence and numbers. Explain to the students the idea of racism and how it was going on in Mississippi at this time. Show the cause and effect nature of the timeline and how one event led to another, domino theory.

Additional Standards: People in Societies