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LESSON PLAN

 

Freedom on the Menu: The Greensboro Sit-Ins

by Carole Boston Weatherford

Illustrated by Jerome Lagarrigue
Dial Books for Young Readers, 2005

 

Grade Levels: 3-5

 

Objectives

Students will explore how segregation affected everyday life and ways to respond to injustice and discrimination. This will lead into discussion of civil disobedience, non-violent demonstrations and the power of the written word.

Necessary Materials:

Paper, pencils, crayons

 

Resources

 

Freedom on the Menu: The Greensboro Sit-Ins by Carole B. Weatherford

Merry-Go-Round” by Langston Hughes http://www.favoritepoem.org/poems/hughes/merry.html

“Martin’s Letter” from Remember the Bridge: Poems of a People by Carole B. Weatherford

 

Instructions

  1. Define segregation and Jim Crow laws. Jim Crow laws legalized racial separation or segregation and prohibited social intermingling among blacks and whites. In many cities and states, segregation was the law from the late nineteenth century until the 1960s.

  2. From the website “Martin Luther King, Jr., NHS Jim Crow Laws,” <www.nps.gov/malu/documents/jim_crow_laws.htm> cite several laws that affected children: separate rooms or sections of restaurants and libraries, separate schools, theaters, lunch counters and public parks, and separate ticket offices and entrances to circuses and other shows. One North Carolina law stated, “Books shall not be interchangeable between the white and colored schools, but shall continue to be used by the race first using them.”

  3. Using an LCD projector or transparencies and an overhead projector, show a few images from the website “Photographs of Signs Enforcing Discrimination” <http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/085_disc.html>.

  4. Read aloud the poems “Merry-Go-Round” and “Martin’s Letter” (a reference to King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” – see excerpt below -- which explained why blacks would continue to protest injustices, rather than simply wait for change to come).

        “[W]hen you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as

        you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public

        amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears

        welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored

        children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little

        mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an

        unconscious bitterness toward white people; . . . then you will understand why

        we find it difficult to wait.”

  1. Read aloud Freedom on the Menu: The Greensboro Sit-Ins.

  2. Read aloud these questions for class discussion.

    1. How did Connie feel about the whites-only lunch counter?

    2. Why wouldn’t Aunt Gertie use the colored-only drinking fountain?

    3. How did (different characters) feel about the sit-ins?

    4. Why did Connie want her sister to carry the flag?

    5. Should Sister have joined the sit-ins and risked arrest?

  3. Activities:

    1. Write a slogan and create a sign that a protester could have carried on the picket line during the sit-ins.

    2. Ask students to imagine that they are Sister or Brother. Write a letter to Connie. Tell why you joined the sit-ins, what it was like at the lunch counter and on the picket line, why you risked arrest, and why you must continue to protest.

    3. Ask students to imagine that they are Connie, the store manager or a waitress. From that character’s point of view, write a sit-in diary.

    4. Mama told Connie, “Some rules need to be broken.” Write a speech or a letter to the editor arguing that a particular rule is unfair.

    5. Explain to students that Freedom on the Menu is historical fiction. The characters of Connie and her family are fictional. So is the lady who registers to vote. But the rest of the story is true; the events really occurred. Read aloud the author’s note at the end of the book. As a class, retell the story using only the factual portions. Then, ask students to imagine they are journalists or reporters. Write a newspaper article or a radio or television script about the sit-ins.

    6. Explain process analysis writing. Have students write their own sundae recipes. Each sundae should contain from five to ten ingredients. Compile the recipes in a sundae cookbook. The cookbook may be sold as a fundraiser for a school project or a local cause (perhaps even the classroom library). Take orders and then publish only enough cookbooks to meet the demand.

Other Resources

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”

    Text and audio at King Center website

Greensboro Sit-Ins: Launch of a Civil Rights Movement

    Timeline, photos, newspaper stories, and audio clips of eyewitnesses

February One: The Story of the Greensboro Four

    Film documentary about the sit-ins