I designed this interactive timeline to
compliment my lesson on Folk Music during the Civil Rights Movement. My lesson
is intended for high school levels 10th or 11th in the
urban setting. This lesson would be something I would implement in a Music
History class, although if my school offered an American Folk and Pop History
class this lesson would work even better. I would most likely use this type of learning source towards the end of the folk music unit. At this point students should be able to recognize, with the help of the timeline, political influences on folk music. My timeline outlines the major events
of the civil rights movement as well as release dates for well-known folk songs and dates in which performing groups that became central to
the movement formed.
The process of creating this interactive timeline is to
encourage students to make connections between folk music and the political
events, which were happening at the time of composition. For example: students
may see that Bob Dylan’s “Times They Are A-Changin,’” was written after Martin
Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech and not even a year before the
singing of the Civil Rights Act. I designed the photos within my timeline to
read like a story. Each picture was chosen because it said something that the
others did not.
For example, within the stack of photos under the debut of Pete
Seeger’s, “We Shall Overcome,” which became something like the anthem of the
civil rights movement, I selected 8 photos. A set of photos that I found the
most interesting consisted of one photo, in which Pete Seeger is singing, “We
Shall Overcome,” while holding hands in a crisscross fashion with a group of
African Americans. The second photo is of Martin Luther King Jr. holding hands
with other African Americans in the same manner. Both of these photos are
included to show how the gesture became symbolic of the united front that “We
Shall Overcome” has also been symbolic of.
I chose to start my timeline with the ratification of the 13th,
14th, and 15th Amendments. The abolition of slavery
allowed for the formation of the first group of performers that is under
discussion, The Fisk Jubilee Singers. Although this group sings songs that are
mot representative of spirituals, as opposed to folk music, I include them in
my lesson because they were the first African American singing group to travel
and show the country what they were capable of. The timeline ends with the
signing of the Civil Rights Act, but if I were to continue this lesson I would
connect folk music and it’s message/purpose to current events such as the
“Black Lives Matter” Movement. Students could also find popular songs that
reflect those events or equality in general as there are many songs today that
advocate gender equality as well as equal rights for the LGBTQ community.
