Session 1 · TRACE: Relationships
381 days of walking
- 10 minMeet Claudette Colvin, aged 15, who refused to give up her bus seat in Montgomery in March 1955, nine months before Rosa Parks did the same.
- 20 minWeb of people: in groups, map who took part in the Montgomery bus boycott: Rosa Parks and the NAACP, Jo Ann Robinson and the Women's Political Council who printed leaflets overnight, a young minister called Martin Luther King Jr, church carpool drivers, domestic workers who walked miles each day.
- 15 minBoycott maths: if about 40,000 riders stopped paying a 10-cent fare twice a day, how much fare money would the bus company miss in a week? In 381 days? What does that tell you about the power of ordinary people acting together?
- 5 minKārearea asks one question: 'Who in your web took the biggest risk, and how could you check?'
Session 2 · TRACE: Relationships
Standing shoulder to shoulder in Aotearoa
- 10 minWhy did young Pacific people in Ponsonby name themselves the Polynesian Panthers in 1971? Look at how ideas travelled from the USA to Aotearoa.
- 20 minJigsaw read: one group reads about the Panthers' homework centres, legal aid and food co-op; one about Ngā Tamatoa at Waitangi; one about the 1972 te reo petition. Each group teaches the others.
- 15 minRelationship map: draw lines between the groups (the Panthers, Ngā Tamatoa, churches, unions, CARE, the Te Reo Māori Society). On the Dawn Raids and the 1975 Land March, who stood together?
- 5 minAdd one new question to the inquiry wall.
Getting started
Use the people cards with a photo and two facts each, and a web template with the boycott or the Panthers in the middle.
Stretch
Compare the NAACP (lawyers and courts), the SCLC (churches and marches) and SNCC (students and sit-ins). Why might a movement need all three?
Checkpoint
Each group can explain how at least four different kinds of people helped one campaign succeed.
Activities for this week
- Boycott maths: How much power do ordinary people have when they act together?
Useful this week
- Montgomery Bus Boycott ↗ Who organised the boycott and how a whole community kept it going for 381 days.
- Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) ↗ How students formed their own organisation after the sit-ins.
- The Polynesian Panthers and the Dawn Raids ↗ Who the Panthers were, what they did for their community and how they worked with Ngā Tamatoa.