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7th grade · Social Studies · Unit 7 of 10

Civil Rights

Movements that won equal rights

What your child practices

The civil rights movement in the United States and how individual rights have grown: Brown v. Board of Education, the Montgomery bus boycott, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, and movements for the rights of women, farm workers and others.

Arizona Academic Standards learning standard: 7.H3.3; 7.C4.1 · how individual rights and freedoms have evolved, and means of changing society to promote the common good

How we explain it

Children can open this short lesson before they practice.

  1. Brown v. Board (1954) ruled segregated schools unconstitutional. Rosa Parks’s arrest (1955) led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
  2. De jure segregation is by law; de facto segregation is by custom or housing patterns.
  3. Laws expanded rights: the Civil Rights Act (1964), the Voting Rights Act (1965), the Equal Pay Act (1963) and the ADA (1990).

Example: What did Rosa Parks’s arrest in 1955 lead to? She refused to give up her bus seat. Black residents stopped riding the buses for over a year. Answer: the Montgomery Bus Boycott

Civil Rights in Arizona

In the Arizona Academic Standards, this is unit 7 of 10 in 7th grade Social Studies, after The Cold War and before The World Since 1945.

Gradelings describes a child's practice on this unit as Beginning, Approaching, Meeting or Exceeding (Four practice steps). That reflects practice, not a report-card mark: the teacher decides the mark.

Source: Arizona Department of Education

Sample questions

A taste of this unit. In the app, questions change every time and get easier or harder to match your child.

  1. Question 1

    The Americans with Disabilities Act (1990)…

    • ended Social Security
    • created the draft
    • bans discrimination against people with disabilities
    • banned ramps

  2. Question 2

    In Miranda v. Arizona (1966), the Supreme Court ruled that…

    • police may question anyone without limits
    • police must tell suspects their rights before questioning them
    • states may ban lawyers
    • juries are not needed

  3. Question 3

    De facto segregation means separation…

    • by custom, housing patterns or practice rather than by law
    • required by written law
    • that never happened
    • only in the military

  4. Question 4

    Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) allowed…

    • segregation under the rule of "separate but equal"
    • women to vote
    • the end of the draft
    • integrated schools

  5. Question 5

    The Civil Rights Act of 1964…

    • created Social Security
    • banned discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin in jobs and public places
    • lowered the voting age to 18
    • ended the Vietnam War

  6. Question 6

    Why did progress on economic equality come more slowly than equality under the law?

    • no laws were passed
    • laws changed faster than gaps in wealth, jobs and housing
    • courts banned economic change
    • everyone already earned the same

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