AMH 2042-RVD Paper 3 Assignment Sheet Required Length:
1200-1500 words Early Draft Deadline: Wednesday, November 23 at 11:59 PM Final
Draft Deadline: Saturday, December 3 at 11:59 PM
In December 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery,
Alabama for refusing to give up her seat on a local bus to a white man, as she
was required to do by law. Parks’ act of protest touched off a boycott, lasting
more than a year, of Montgomery’s bus system by African Americans. However, the
boycott grew in significance to be about much more than public transportation
in one Southern city. In challenging the color line on Montgomery’s buses,
boycotters challenged segregation in public accommodations throughout the Jim
Crow South. The Montgomery bus boycott was also the first major grassroots
protest action of the Civil Rights Movement, and produced two of the movement’s
biggest icons: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks.
While many Americans—as well as people around the world—know
about King and Parks, few understand the story of the Montgomery bus boycott in
all of its complexity. In your final paper for this course, you will use your
knowledge, along with a set of primary sources, to investigate the circumstances
surrounding the bus boycott and the people who organized it. In your essay,
you’ll make a historical argument that answers the question:
Why did the boycott of Montgomery’s buses succeed?
Your paper should make an argument, using the primary
sources at Historical Thinking Matters as evidence, about the Montgomery bus
boycott and reasons for its success. Based on what these documents say about
the grassroots struggle against Jim Crow in the South?
?Getting Started:
• Navigate to Historical Thinking Matters’ Rosa Parks
(http://goo.gl/wBO3lj). This is where you will access the materials required to
complete this assignment. • Watch the introductory video. • Re-read Chapter 24
in Give Me Liberty! for context on the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s. You
may also want to re-watch the first installment of Eyes on the Prize
(vimeo.com/11870714). I also encourage you to Awele Makeba’s
lecture/performance “The Women Who Made the Montgomery Movement,” a historical
secondary source which can also provide additional context. • Read the
historical primary sources for the Warm-Up Exercise (goo.gl/PKVwcA). Use these
to complete the Paper 3 Warm-Up Exercise, which is posted to Blackboard as a
Word file. Post your response in the “Paper 3 Warm-Up Exercise” discussion
forum by 11:59 PM on Saturday, November 12. As with Paper 2, your final score
will be based on the satisfactory completion of Skills Practice Assignments,
including this Warm-Up Exercise. You must post your Warm-Up Exercise response
in the discussion forum in order to receive credit.
I will distribute specific guidelines for the format and
structure of the paper, as well as more information about grading criteria, in
the coming weeks. In the meantime, you may refer to the grading rubric for
Paper 2 to get a general sense of the grading criteria for this paper.
As you work on this assignment, I encourage you to make
appointments with a History Writing Tutor to help improve your paper. Tutors
are available at MMC Monday-Friday 9am-5pm; they can also meet with you online.
For more information, see http://history.fiu.edu/tutoring/. If you show
evidence of meeting with the History Writing Tutors to discuss your paper, you
can earn a 48-hour deadline extension on this assignment. Be sure to make your appointment
well in advance of the deadline, and bring a full draft of your paper with you!
