The people involved in the civil-rights movement--on both sides--were often impressive, determined, colorful, or frightening. Consider a sampling: James Meredith; Charlayne Hunter Gault; Bull Connor; Medgar Evers; Laurie Pritchett; Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman; Jim Clark; George Wallace; Burke Marshall; Fannie Lou Hamer; Robert Moses; James Reeb; James Farmer; Hosea Williams. . . . Many were just plain folks. Others were middle-level bureaucrats. Some acted alone. Others were leaders. Individuals do make a difference. Ask students to do some research in contemporary news accounts and some of the books noted below. Who were some of these people? What did they do? What happened to them? See Harvard Sitkoff, The Struggle for Black Equality, 1954-1980 (1981); Milton Viorst, Fire in the Streets: America in the 1960s (1979); and titles in the "Pursuit of Equality" section of the chapter bibliography. See also Minds Stayed on Freedom: The Civil Rights Struggle in the Rural South, an Oral History (1991) by the Youth of the Rural Organizing and Cultural Center; Fred Powledge, Free at Last? The Civil Rights Movement and the People Who Made It (1990); and Lea E. Williams, Servants of the People: The 1960s Legacy of African American Leadership (1998).

The civil-rights movement stimulated the growth of protest groups among African-Americans and other minorities. Ask students to identify the goals and achievements of one or more of these organizations. An incomplete list includes the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the American Indian Movement (AIM), the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA), and La Raza Unida. See, in addition to titles already cited, Benjamin Márquez, LULAC: The Evolution of a Mexican American Political Organization (1993); David G. Gutiérrez, Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity (1995); Christine Marín, A Spokesman for the Mexican American Movement (1977); Juan Gómez-Quiñones, Mexican Students for La Raza: The Chicano Student Movement in Southern California (1978); and Stephen Cornell, The Return of the Native: American Indian Political Resurgence (1988).

As these organizations protested discrimination based on race or ethnicity, so women's organizations protested discrimination based on sex. Some students may wish to know more about the goals and activities of the National Organization for Women (NOW). Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (1964), served as an impetus for the organization. See also William H. Chafe, The American Woman: Her Changing Social, Economic and Political Roles, 1920-1970 (1972), and Anne Koedt, Ellen Levine, and Anita Rapone, editors, Radical Feminism (1973). Leila Rupp and Verta Taylor, editors, Survival in the Doldrums: The American Women's Rights Movement, 1945 to the 1960s (1987), is one of the American Problem Studies Series. Students will focus more effectively if their investigations into contemporary news reports as well as subsequent writings lead to a brief but formally prepared written piece dealing with leaders, organizations, goals, and activities.

The text makes quite clear that there was rising disapproval of the Warren court. But what do students think about the actual decisions that the Court handed down? Consider some decisions from among Baker v. Carr, Engel v. Vitale, Gideon v. Wainwright, Wesberry v. Sanders, Miranda v. Arizona, Loving v. Virginia, and Green v. New Kent. Divide the class into study groups and ask different students to read the majority opinion and, where there is one, the minority. Ask them to take a stance in support of the Court's decision or in opposition to it. Set up a discussion regarding several of these cases, taking care to make sure that opposing views are adequately represented. Invite members of the class to join in after the principals have finished their arguments. Legal casebooks will provide the cases in sufficient detail. See, for example, Robert F. Cushman and Susan P. Koniak, Cases in Constitutional Law(eighth edition; 1994). For a dramatic account of the Gideon case, see Anthony Lewis, Gideon's Trumpet (1964).

The Tonkin Gulf Resolution had only two dissenters in the entire Congress, senators Wayne Morse of Oregon and Ernest Gruening of Alaska. Why did they vote the way that they did? What happened to them subsequently? Use contemporary journalism and John Galloway, The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (1970).