Shades of History:
The Montgomery Bus Boycott/Beyond Black and White

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Background Activities (1 2 3)

In preparation for the quest, everyone should do the activities below in order to develop some shared background about life in the American South in the middle of the 20th Century.

Activity 1

A) Write down what you know about The Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955. What happened? Who was involved?

B) Compare stories among the members of your group. Where do they overlap? How are they different? What questions do you have?

Activity 2

A) Read the following background information about conditions in the American South in the 1950's.

• "Jim Crow" Laws from the National Park Service
• What Was Jim Crow? from the Jim Crow Museum at Ferris State University
• African Americans Tell about Life in the Jim Crow South from Duke University
• The Lynching of Emmett Till from The History of Jim Crow

B) Discuss how you might have felt if you were an African American living in the South under Jim Crow. How might you have felt as a white person in the same place at the same time? What do you think you would have done when you heard about what happened to Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi? What do you think the consequences might have been?

Activity 3

A) Watch the video segment "The Things We Choose to Remember" from video lecture Interpreting the Past with Harvard Professor Laurel Ulrich.

B) Explore The September 11th Digital Archive and America Under Attack to see (and hear) some of the things that people have chosen to remember about the 9-11 attacks. What can we learn about how history is made from this collection?

C) Discuss how "the things we choose to remember" about the past shape the present and the future. Share some examples of what you and others have chosen to remember as part of the "public memory" of a particular event. What artifacts of daily life help to secure the memory?

When you have finished these background activities, go on to the main WebQuest Task.

© 2004-2010 Marielle Palombo