Connecting Struggles for Liberation
Driving Question: How were local fights against injustice connected to global trends in decolonization?
The fight for justice didn’t stop with independence. See how civil rights and anti-apartheid movements challenged racism, inequality, and oppression while drawing strength from global connections.
Learning Objectives:
- Use close-reading skills to analyze how liberation movements were connected to decolonization.
- Create arguments using historical evidence to support claims and communicate conclusions through informal writing.
Vocab Terms:
These song lyrics will help you consider the causes of the Civil Rights movement in the United States and to begin thinking about its global connections.
After they watch the video and read the article, have students complete the Soundtrack for Liberation activity. Remind them of the concert honoring Nelson Mandela in 1990, and that music has often been a powerful tool of disenfranchised groups.
Note: Your students might have trouble coming up with song titles, so feel free to help them brainstorm. Here are a few ideas from us, if you want to look cool in front of your students:
- Sam Cooke – A Change Is Gonna Come
- Nina Simone – Mississippi Goddam
- Billie Holiday – Strange Fruit
- Bob Marley and The Wailers – Get Up, Stand Up
- Víctor Jara – El Derecho de Vivir en Paz
- The Dubliners – The Foggy Dew
- Childish Gambino – This Is America
- Woody Guthrie – This Land is Your Land
- Aretha Franklin – Respect
- H.E.R. – I Can’t Breathe
- Bella Ciao – Traditional Italian partisan song
Looking for a complement to these Apartheid materials? NPR’s Throughline has a great audio resource: “The Mandela Effect.” Read about it in the Community.
Use this article and video to examine how struggles for racial justice in the United States and South Africa were part of larger global movements for freedom.
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Guiding Questions
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Guiding Questions
Use this informal writing opportunity to reflect on how local and global struggles for justice were connected and what those connections reveal about the world today.
From land reform to resistance against authoritarian rule, Cold War influences, decolonization, and the fight for democracy all came together in Latin America.
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Guiding Questions
