Page 1 - Lesson Plan Outline Grade 7
Lesson Plan Outline for Teachers
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A snapshot of the 1960’s Civil Rights Movement in Albany, New York
Time Requirement- 180 minutes (four 45 minute blocks)
Introduction to the Curriculum
By Mary Paley
In creating this Internet tribute to my father’s working life, I stumbled upon the local history of Albany’s Civil Rights Movement. My own professional experience as a 7th grade public school teacher had taught me that my minority students were only vaguely aware of key events in the nation’s Civil Rights Movement. They’d heard about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, but not much else. They were likewise unacquainted with the deeds of local heroes who’d moved mountains right in their own backyard. Yet compelling portraits from my father’s photography collection captured their fervor and suggested a wealth of stories. Dad’s images inspired me to learn more about these daring community organizers.
Fighting in the early 1960s, civil rights attorney, Peter Pryor, won (and lost!) landmark cases that integrated public accommodations, challenged Albany’s grand jury system, and exposed routine occurrences of police brutality.
Olivia Rorie, the matriarch of Albany’s neighborhood movement, championed the poor and excluded. Her golden tongue won playgrounds and community centers for kids in Albany’s South End. Because of Rorie, rent-gouging slum lords received a multiple black eye that embarrassed them into fixing their deteriorating real estate.
In 1968, George Corley Wallace visited Albany while stumping for the presidency. But the segregationist candidate discovered that Albany, New York, wasn’t as much like Albany, Georgia as he’d hoped it would be. A crowd of more than 3,000 engaged in a lively protest that kicked on his characteristic ranting and got him talking too fast.
The first curriculum to appear at www.bobpaley.com is linked to a display titled “Olivia Rorie: A Mother to All”. It is rich in oral history from her family and friends. Mary Farnan Dugan, an ELA colleague and my mentor, designed the sequence of lessons provided here. With forty-five years of combined experience in urban education, we judged that minority students preparing for the NYS ELA assessments should receive some listening practice that privileged a range of discourse.
The informal tasks supply descriptive segments with anecdotes that are readily accessible to students. The formal task features Bishop Howard Hubbard’s biography of Rorie. This timed task is a final practice that should follow scaffolding provided by the informal tasks.
The Power Point presentation was created by Philip Livingston’s media specialist, Jennifer Curry, with the help of Special Education instructor, Brian Scannell. Our students used English notebooks to create their individual timelines.
Curry’s presentation quickly acquainted students with key events in America’s Civil Rights Movement. She also taught them how to examine the foreground and background of each black and white photo. Students were then better able to “read” each historical document to draw conclusions from these key events.
Visit www.bobpaley.com for future updates and additions.