Objective: Students will synthesize their prior knowledge of Southern-based Civil Rights movement with new knowledge about Seattle’s own struggle through their response to the Document Based Question: “Compare and/or contrast school segregation in the southern United States with school segregation in Seattle.”

Introduction for Teachers: The purpose of a DBQ is to help students think critically about primary source documents and become familiar with different ways to use historical evidence.  We believe that the Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project offers an excellent opportunity for students to engage their critical analysis, interpretation, and writing skills.  Additionally, the DBQ format offers an excellent opportunity to integrate Seattle Civil Rights history into the broader, southern-based discourse that dominates school curricula.  As such, we have created a DBQ using documents from our website and well-known Civil Rights documents in order to help students’ synthesize their prior knowledge of southern segregation with new learning about Seattle segregation. 

The objective of this lesson is to help students place Seattle’s Civil Rights Struggle in the context of the Civil Rights movement throughout the United States.  Though Washington did not have de jure segregation laws, de-facto segregation due to housing and employment discrimination led to separate and unequal schooling situations.  Racial discrimination was openly practiced until the late 1960s and in 1964 Seattle voters overwhelmingly defeated a Fair Housing measure which would have made it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race when renting or selling property. By linking Seattle’s 1966 school boycott with the southern struggle against Jim Crow education laws, students will understand the nature of Seattle’s unique and important civil right’s fight. 

This teacher’s guide offers scaffolding questions for use with the DBQ material.  We understand that some students may not be as practiced with the DBQ format and will need close guidance in order to produce the desired essay.  Students more familiar with DBQ’s can skip the scaffolding questions and move directly to the essay. In either, case, there is prior knowledge that would assist students greatly in developing a critical and nuanced approach to the DBQ.

Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project resources:

• Segregated Seattle page with Segregation Maps and Restrictive Covenant Database

• "The Seattle School Boycott of 1966," by Brooke Clark, with photos and documents

Prior Knowledge suggested:
Prior Knowledge #1: It would assist students tremendously to understand the difference between de jure and de facto segregation. De jure segregation is based on law; for example, many southern states had laws that relegated African Americans to separate schools and to separate sections on buses, trains, and movie theaters.  De facto segregation is based on practice; for example, many businesses would refuse to serve African Americans of their own accord, with no laws instructing them to do as such.

Prior Knowledge #2: Housing covenants are documents that home-buyers sign when purchasing a house.  They still exist, and can include such details as what color the homeowner can paint their house, the types of trees they can plant, and whether or not they can build decks.  These documents are legally binding and homeowners can be taken to court if they do not fulfill the tenets of the covenant.Racial restriction clauses were very common in housing covenants until 1948 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that they were no longer enforceable in courts of law. That decision, however, had little effect on housing opportunities.  Realtors and home-sellers continued to discriminate against people of color at the time of the Seattle schools boycott

Prior Knowledge #3: The PBS-sponsored website www.jimcrowhistory.org  has a list of Washington state’s segregation and anti-segregation laws enacted prior to the 1960s. Students need to understand that although Washington had a number of anti-discrimination laws on the books, these were hard to enforce. Even while the laws sounded good, minorities in Washington had to struggle against discrimination.

• Scaffolding Questions Worksheet (Optional)
• DBQ Worksheet

Products Produced:At the end of the lesson, students will have produced six short-answer questions (optional) and one five-paragraph, document-based essay.

Possible Angles for Students: These ideas are to act as guides for teachers to help struggling students.

• Use Brown v Board and two Seattle documents to explain how, despite no de jure segregation, it existed and was unconstitutional in Seattle. 

• Use Brown v Board, southern segregation, and Seattle housing covenants to contrast state-led vs neighborhood led segregation (or de facto vs de jure segregation). 

• Use southern segregation, housing covenants, and Seattle protest info to compare the end results despite differing beginnings. 

EALRS:

Civics 4: The student understands the rights and responsibilities of citizenship and the principles of democratic civic involvement.

        4.3: Explain how various stakeholders influence public policy

History 1.2 Understand events, trends, individuals, and movements shaping United States, world, and Washington State history

Social Studies Skill 3.1.4a Identify central issue; formulate appropriate questions; identify multiple perspectives; compare and contrast; validate data using multiple sources; determine relevant information; paraphrase problem

Other Questions:

The following are other questions we considered for the DBQ and are offered here for your flexibility.

• Compare the results of Jim Crow education laws in the South with restrictive housing covenants in Seattle.  
• Explain why citizens of Seattle thought it necessary to boycott Seattle Public Schools.
• How did the principle of “separate but equal” affect people in Seattle?
• How did the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v Board impact Seattle?