The Supreme Court and Civil Rights: A Guided Inquiry for Middle Level Learners

Abstract

In this manuscript, we discuss a two-week case study with seventh-grade students in a civics teacher’s class within the American South. Our case study utilized Wayne Journell’s scholarship on political thinking (Journell, 2017; Journell et al., 2015) to situate middle-level learners to examine the Supreme Court. The students investigated sources to grasp the particulars of the Shelby v. Holder Supreme Court case as well as its ripple effects on new state voting laws. They articulated takeaways from the project in their summative essays. We report on the findings from this research study to answer the following research question. In what ways, if any, did students articulate the impact of Shelby v. Holder case on Black Americans’ voting rights? This research question helps to shed some light on how the students communicate the impact the Supreme Court has in one of its rulings with issues of race on U.S. society.