History of the United States II / Unit 12 USH2 1676 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Where the Legal Arc Begins
The idea
The anchor begins its account of the civil rights movement with Brown v. Board of Education in nineteen fifty-four; this course begins the legal arc here, because the anchor's own record shows the work under way before and during the war. By nineteen thirty-eight Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP was known as Mr. Civil Rights, and in nineteen forty he formally organised the NAACP's Legal Defense and Education Fund to take on cases against a racist justice system.
In practice
Marshall's victory the same year in Chambers v. Florida, ruling that confessions extracted by violence and torture could not be used in court, and his case in nineteen forty-three for Black parents protesting school segregation in Hillburn, New York, both as the anchor records.
Where people slip
The course teaches the struggle as two arcs. The legal arc opens here and runs through the court victories of unit thirteen, aimed at the separate-but-equal rule of Plessy v. Ferguson in unit five. The mass arc of boycotts and marches opens in unit thirteen. Randolph's threat, Double V and CORE show that neither arc began in nineteen fifty-four.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Builds on
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