Question/Problem 3: What was it like to live under segregation?

Objectives

Description of lesson/activity

Resources

1. explain the tenets of Plessy v. Ferguson and the Jim Crow laws that separated the races in the South in the 1890s.

2. appreciate the feelings on both sides engendered by the separation.

1. The teacher should create cooperative learning groups (three students preferable) for the following lesson. Groups should then be given these directions:

• As a group of Supreme Beings your task is to create a series of laws to separate Supreme Beings from Lesser Beings.

• You must legislate how you will deal with keeping Supreme Beings separated and pure while at the same time making these Lesser Beings useful to you. Your written laws should include a preamble which explains why it is desirable (the rationale) to make such laws.

2. The teacher should encourage students to keep this in the abstract creative mode. They should not model this after specific Jim Crow laws of the late 1800s.

3. Following this activity, the teacher should facilitate a debriefing period during which each group has an opportunity to share their laws. Discuss what similarities and differences can be noted among sets of laws. Discuss how students would fee l if they were Supreme Beings? Lesser Beings?

4. Using copies of the accompanying summary of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and descriptions of actual Jim Crow laws, students should compare their laws to these examples of post- Reconstruction legislation.

• How are they similar?
• How are they different?
• What would be people's (whites, African Americans) reactions to both the laws written in class and those actually in force in the 1890s?

1. Summary of Plessy v. Ferguson

2. Examples of Jim Crow Laws