Keep the Dream Alive! Facing Race by Sharing the Legacy of the Civil Rights Movement
Facing Race Idea Challenge
Keep the Dream Alive! Facing Race by Sharing the Legacy of the Civil Rights Movement
Southside Family Charter School deliberately engages students in discussions and activities about race and racism in America by teaching racism as a pervasive system of oppression. A large part of our middle school curriculum involves studying Civil Rights History and reaching out to others through an interactive slideshow about our triennial Civil Rights History Trip called Keep the Dream Alive! The slideshow is an interactive presentation by students. It provides a comprehensive and detailed look into the trip, the civil rights movement, and the students’ experiences. Ultimately, the Civil Rights Trip and resulting slideshow is part of Southside Family Charter School’s larger mission of promoting racial healing across generations.
Our idea for facing race is to present the Keep the Dream Alive! presentation to multiple audiences with the intention of starting conversations that explore race and racism in American across generations. We believe that learning about and sharing the past is a way for us all to find solutions for today and the future.
About You
About You
First Name
Southside Family Charter School
Last Name
Southside Family Charter School
City
Minneapolis
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Your Idea
Title or name of your idea
Keep the Dream Alive! Facing Race by Sharing the Legacy of the Civil Rights Movement
Describe your idea
Southside Family Charter School deliberately engages students in discussions and activities about race and racism in America by teaching racism as a pervasive system of oppression. A large part of our middle school curriculum involves studying Civil Rights History and reaching out to others through an interactive slideshow about our triennial Civil Rights History Trip called Keep the Dream Alive! The slideshow is an interactive presentation by students. It provides a comprehensive and detailed look into the trip, the civil rights movement, and the students’ experiences. Ultimately, the Civil Rights Trip and resulting slideshow is part of Southside Family Charter School’s larger mission of promoting racial healing across generations.
Our idea for facing race is to present the Keep the Dream Alive! presentation to multiple audiences with the intention of starting conversations that explore race and racism in American across generations. We believe that learning about and sharing the past is a way for us all to find solutions for today and the future.
Website URL
Innovation
How does your idea help reduce racism in an innovative way? An innovation may be a completely new approach, an expansion of a proven one or a new twist on existing solutions
Our idea is innovative because it connects diverse audiences and draws upon extensive research about the Civil Rights Movement that can be directly applied to confronting racism today. During the week of March 17th – 29th, 2011 Southside Family Charter School students embarked on the 7th triennial Civil Rights Trip to travel, learn, and experience the lessons, history, and consequences of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. Students traveled from Minneapolis, Minnesota to various cities and states throughout the Deep South. The focus of the trip is the role of young people and courageous citizen leaders, many of whom did not make news stories or history books. By exploring the role these “regular” folks played in creating massive legal and social change, students take away deep lessons on the power that we all have to make a difference, particularly in the fight against racism. Students in sixth through eighth grade, who are part of the Student Association for the Advancement of Children as People (SAACP), participated in the trip as students and ambassadors in connecting multiple generations of the civil rights movement.
The trip was preceded by intensive classroom curriculum centered on the Civil Rights Movement. Students studied history, events, people, places, and ideology that sparked the civil rights movement and then continued the movement to present day. Students had the opportunity to study and learn about activists in the classroom and then have the unique privilege to meet many of the activists from the Movement still living and working on issues of social change today. The lessons our students have learned from Civil Rights leaders are a starting point for deep and constructive conversations about race in America.
Impact
Tell us how racism is affecting your community. Community may be defined broadly
A large part of Southside Family Charter School's mission is to educate ourselves and others about how racism affects the community as a pervasive, systemic means of oppression. We study history in order to understand how racism has and continues to enforce economic, educational, civil rights, and other disparities. We strive to become a community that understands and responds to racism in our community and broader society. We feel that now is a critical time to have deep discussions about racism as a sense of complacency about race creeps into public discourse after the election of African-American President Barack Obama, and as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Rides.
How does your idea bring people together to address racism in your community?
Our vision is to present the slideshow to as many audiences as possible within a year, and to inspire other groups to replicate the lessons, experiences, and curriculum of the Civil Rights Trip. Moreover, as we connect with new audiences, we will build relationships with other groups and organizations committed to confronting racism. Keep the Dream Alive! has been presented at elementary and high schools, colleges, conferences, and community events. A grant would provide us with the means to reach out to and engage these and other groups for the slideshow. It is our hope that a multi-age, multi-race group of students describing Civil Rights History would not only spark discussion but become a model for the type of society we hope to build; one that can move forward by acknowledging the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement.
Sustainability
How will you use $2,500 to fully implement your idea?
A grant of $2,500 would allow us to sustain our current outreach efforts for Keep the Dream Alive! as well as expand the number of audiences we present to. It typically costs about $200 per presentation, including staff time and transportation costs, and current gaps in education funding make financing extracurricular activities like the slideshow a challenge. This grant would allow us to maintain, grow and share with the community this critical piece of our program.
What do you hope others might learn from your idea?
The impact of sharing Keep the Dream Alive! has been and will continue to be substantial. Audiences who have experienced the slideshow come away not only with new knowledge about history and civil rights, but inspiration to action, both from the material presented and the energy of the students. The message that “regular” folks can make substantial change is inherent in the slideshow and the mission of Southside Family Charter School. Conversations about race and racism that result ripple into the larger community and allow honest and sometimes difficult conversations about race and racism to happen productively and respectfully. Broadly, we hope that Keep the Dream Alive! will help teach others about history, how to explore difficult issues like racism, and that it is the action and will of "regular" people committed to ending racism that help change the world for the better.
| 103 weeks ago Erin Wisness updated this Competition Entry. | |
| 103 weeks ago Erin Wisness updated this Competition Entry. | |
| 103 weeks ago Erin Wisness submitted this idea. |
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