Lesson 3.10: Social Movements and Equal Protection
Enduring Understanding:
The Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause as well as other constitutional provisions have often been used to support the advancement of equality.
Learning Objectives:
Explain how constitutional provisions have supported and motivated social movements.
Essential Knowledge:
Civil rights protect individuals from discrimination based on characteristics such as race, national origin, religion, and sex; these rights are guaranteed to all citizens under the due process and equal protection clauses of the U.S. Constitution, as well as acts of Congress.
The leadership and events associated with civil, women’s, and LGBT rights are evidence of how the equal protection clause can support and motivate social movements, as represented by:
- Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” and the civil rights movement of the 1960s
- The National Organization for Women and the women’s rights movement
- The pro-life (anti-abortion) movement
Debrief: Letter from Birmingham Jail ACT Reading
Activity #1: Civil Rights Break Up
In each of your groups, you will be presenting on one of the topics from Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. In order to do this, we will create a poster with the following information: Who was involved, What happened or what is it, Why it happened, When and Where it happened. Then we will present to the class. Here are the topics we will look at:
- Civil Rights Act of 1964
- Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. The Board of Education
- LGBTQ Issues
- Voting including the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 19th, 24th, and 26th Amendments
- Korematsu v. The United States
Then we will Present!
