FIU AMH2042 paper 3

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!