Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra features stories can help students identify and interpret key issues in current events. This activity anticipates one class period, but the follow-up essay might be assigned as homework, or in another period.

Warm Up: Use initiating questions to introduce the topic and find out how much your students know.

Main Activity: Have students read NewsHour Extra's feature story and answer the questions on the reading comprehension handout.

Discussion: Use discussion questions to encourage students to think about how the issues outlined in the story affect their lives and express and debate different opinions.

Follow-up: Students can write an 500-word editorial on the topic expressing their views and send it to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org] for possible publication.

Evaluation: Students are graded on their answers to reading comprehension questions and/or their editorial.

Story: Fifty Years: Brown v. Board of Education, 05/12/04
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/jan-june04/brown_5-12.htm

Initiating Questions:

1. How racially diverse is your school?

2. Do you go to a neighborhood school or do you have to travel by bus or car to your school? Why?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. When did the Supreme Court rule on Brown v. Board of Education? What did they rule? What was the result of their ruling?

On May 17, 1954, nine Supreme Court justices ruled the "separate but equal" way of life was a violation of the U.S. Constitution. Their decision forced schools to desegregate forever changing public education.

2. Explain two other acts that Brown v. Board of Education impacted.

But the Brown case also played a role in changing America. It laid the foundation for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, an act that made racial discrimination in public places illegal, and required employers to change their hiring practices.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965, which nullified voting requirements designed to keep African Americans away from the polls, followed and was perhaps the most important civil rights legislation passed by Congress.

3. What situation prompted Linda Brown's father to get involved in the Brown case?

In 1950, third-grader Linda Brown and her little sister, Terry Lynn, walked more than a mile to a bus stop in Topeka, Kan. There, a bus picked them up and took them to an all-black school. An all-white school was seven blocks away from their home, but the girls' father was told he could not enroll them there.

4. When did desegregation really begin to take effect? Why? What percentage of black students attended mostly white schools at the peak of desegregation?

Although the Brown decision called for desegregation "with all deliberate speed," it would take further rulings and more than a decade to truly take effect. In 1971, a North Carolina court case -- Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education -- cleared the way for forced busing plans, which allowed school districts to bus children from different neighborhoods, and classrooms started to become less monochromatic.

As a result of the North Carolina case and others, the number of black students attending mostly white schools in the South rose from 2 percent in the mid-1960s to nearly 45 percent in the late 1980s, the high point of desegregation.

5. What is the debate going on now in terms of school desegregation?

Fifty years after the federal government stepped in to desegregate schools, the issue has evolved into a debate decided in individual towns, where local communities and states get to decide for themselves what's more important: integrated or neighborhood schools. Even the NAACP is split, with vocal opinions in both camps.

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. Look at the debate going on now regarding school desegregation. Which are more important, integrated schools or neighborhood schools? Explain the pros and cons of each choice. Are there other possible solutions? Explain.

2. How integrated is your school? Find out some statistics on the racial diversity in your school. Why is it this way? Does your school have programs to encourage diversity? Why or why not?

3. What are the benefits of living in a diverse culture? What can we learn from people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds? What would you lose if you had to go to a school with only people of your race? Explain your answer.

Write a 300-500 word essay on any of these topics providing clear examples. Send your completed editorial to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org]. Exceptional essays might be published on our Web site.