1. Civil Rights Document Analysis

2. Document Analysis
INDEPENDENT: Complete a HIPP analysis of your assigned document
FIND YOUR GROUP: Share and compare your analysis, adding information as necessary
FIND YOUR MATCH: Share your analysis of the document you were assigned.

3. Find Your Match!
A Call for Unity + A Letter from a Birmingham Jail
I Have A Dream + God’s Judgement of White America

4. Key Period 8 SAQ
Describe and explain the point of view of the author of Sample A.
Describe and explain the point of view of the author of Sample B.
Provide one specific piece of historical evidence from the period that supports the point of view you identified in either a) or b).

5. Sample A
Sample B
We the undersigned clergymen… [previously] expressed understanding that honest convictions in racial matters could properly be pursued in the courts, but urged that decisions of those courts should in the meantime be peacefully obeyed. Since that time… responsible citizens have undertaken to work on various problems which cause racial friction and unrest. In Birmingham, recent public events have given indication that we all have opportunity for a new constructive and realistic approach to racial problems. However, we are now confronted by a series of demonstrations by some of our Negro citizens, directed and led in part by outsiders… We are convinced that these demonstrations are unwise and untimely. We agree rather with certain local Negro leadership which has called for honest and open negotiation of racial issues in our area. And we believe this… can best be accomplished by citizens of our own metropolitan area, white and Negro, meeting with their knowledge and experiences of the local situation… …we also point out that such actions as incite to hatred and violence, however technically peaceful those actions may be, have not contributed to the resolution of our local problems… We further strongly urge our own Negro community to withdraw support from these demonstrations, and to unite locally in working peacefully for a better Birmingham. When rights are consistently denied, a cause should be pressed in the courts and in negotiations among local leaders, and not in the streets. We appeal to both our white and Negro citizenry to observe the principles of law and order and common sense. --A Call for Unity, written by several white clergymen, 1963
My Dear Fellow Clergymen: ...I am in Birmingham because injustice is here… I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere… Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known… Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the latter consistently refused to engage in good faith negotiation… Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community… is forced to confront the issue… I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth… We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed… For years now I have heard the word "Wait!"… This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never."… Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers… when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see… your twenty million Negro brothers… [in] poverty in the midst of an affluent society…when you are humiliated… by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy”… --then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait… …there are two types of laws: just and unjust… One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws… One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judeo Christian heritage… --A Letter From A Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King Jr., 1963

6. Sample A
Sample B
…Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves… But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination… Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred… We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny… And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."… I have a dream that one day… right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers… And when this happens… we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! --I Have a Dream, Martin Luther King, Jr., 1963
…we [are] witnessing how the enslavement of millions of black people in this country is now bringing White America to her hour of judgment… The Crooked politicians in the government are working with the Negro civil rights leaders, but not to solve the race problem… only to further their own selfish interests… These [civil rights] "leaders" sell out our people for just a few crumbs of token recognition and token gains. These "leaders" are satisfied with token victories and token progress because they themselves are nothing but token leaders… These Uncle Tom leaders do not speak for the Negro majority; they don't speak for the black masses. They speak for the "black bourgeoisie," the brainwashed, white-minded, middle-class minority who are… seeking to lose their "black identity" by mixing, mingling, intermarrying, and integrating with the white man. …Revolutions are never peaceful, never loving, never non-violent. Nor are they ever compromising. Revolutions are destructive and bloody. Revolutionaries don't compromise with the enemy; they don't even negotiate… How can America atone for her crimes?... A desegregated theater or lunch counter won't solve our problems. Better jobs won't even solve our problems. An integrated cup of coffee isn't sufficient pay for four hundred years of slave labor, and a better job in the white man's factory or position in his business is, at best, only a temporary solution. The only lasting or permanent solution is complete separation on some land that we can call our own… If the government of White America truly repents of its sins against our people, and atones by giving us our true share, only then can America save herself! But if America waits for Almighty God himself to step in and force her into a just settlement, God will take this entire continent away from her; and she will cease to exist as a nation… White America, wake up and take heed, before it is too late! --God’s Judgement of White America, Malcolm X, 1963