Overview
Students learn
about nonviolent resistance movements that have taken place around the world
and, using video segments from the PBS program Women, War & Peace: “Pray the Devil
Back to Hell” explore how women’s nonviolent protests helped bring about
the end of a bloody civil war in Liberia in 2003. In the Introductory Activity,
students learn about nonviolent resistance, conduct research about nonviolent
protest leaders in different countries and time periods, discuss the goals and
impact of their actions, and place them on a timeline. In Learning Activity 1,
students learn about actions that Leymah Gbowee and the women of Liberia took
to protest the civil war in their country. In Learning Activity 2, students
explore different methods of nonviolent action and read and discuss the letter
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote from jail in Birmingham, Alabama, as well as
the statement from Alabama clergymen which prompted him to write the
letter. In the Culminating Activity,
students examine nonviolent protest movements throughout history and discuss
the goals and impact of those efforts. The lesson concludes with students
writing and discussing reflection essays about the use of nonviolent resistance,
citing examples studied in this lesson.
Objectives
Students will be able to:
- Define “nonviolent resistance” and “civil disobedience;”
- Discuss who Leymah Gbowee is and what her role was in ending Liberia’s Civil War in 2003;
- Describe nonviolent actions the women of Liberia took to protest the war;
- Name at least three leaders of nonviolent protests around the world and discuss the goals and impact of their actions;
- Describe the role women have played in nonviolent protest movements in at least three countries;
- Explain the points raised by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in his letter from the Birmingham jail and apply them to Leymah Gbowee’s situation;
- Discuss at least one major nonviolent resistance movement in the United States or another country, the nonviolent actions its leaders took, and the impact of the movement;
- Discuss how nonviolent strategies have been used to achieve various goals in different regions of the world, citing at least three specific examples.
Grade Level:
9-12
Suggested Time
(3-4) 45-minute class periods
Media Resources
War and the Rise of Women's Resistance in Liberia Video
Peaceful Protests in Liberia Video
Steps Toward Peace Video
Achieving Peace Video
In Pursuit of Democracy Video
Materials
For each student:
Web Sites
For use in student research during the Introductory Activity:International Civil Rights Center and Museum
Top Ten Nonviolent Protests
Bringing down Serbia’s dictator, 10 years later: A Conversation with Srdja Popovic
All Nobel Peace Prizes
Freedom Hero: Inez Milholland Boissevain
For use in Learning Activity 2:
198 Methods of Nonviolent Action
Albert Einstein Institution
Peace Magazine: The Methods of Nonviolent Action
Martin Luther King’s Letter from the Birmingham Jail
Public Statement by Eight Alabama Clergymen
For use in student research during the Culminating Activity:
International Center for Nonviolent Conflict
Light in Montana: How One Town Said No to Hate
The Orange Alternative: Revolution of Dwarves
Optional Resources:
Nonviolence: An Introduction
The Class of Nonviolence: Lesson Six
Martin Luther King Jr.’s 6 Facts about Non-Violent Resistance
The Lesson
Part I: Introductory Activity
- Ask
students to think about different ways people have voiced objections to war
and/or unfair laws and policies. (Protests,
marches, hunger strikes, writings, etc.)
- Explain
that today’s lesson will highlight efforts of nonviolent resistance that have
taken place throughout history, with special focus on efforts by women in
Liberia in 2003 to bring about an end to civil war in that country.
- Ask
students to define the terms “nonviolent resistance”/ “nonviolent action” and
“civil disobedience.” (“Nonviolent
resistance” or “nonviolent action” involves using symbolic protests, civil
disobedience and other non-violent acts in order to achieve specific goals.
“Civil disobedience” involves the refusal to obey certain laws or requirements
of a government and is considered to be a form of nonviolent resistance.)
- Ask students to list examples of nonviolent protests with which they are familiar. (Mohandas Ghandi’s Salt March, Martin
Luther King’s civil rights efforts, Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, etc.)
- Divide students into groups of 2-3 students each. Assign each group one of the following people/groups:
- Alva
Myrdal
- Bertha
von Suttner
- Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan
- Cesar Chavez
- Emily Greene Balch
- Henry David Thoreau
- Inez Milholland Boissevain
- Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair, Jr. (Jibreel Khazan) and David Richmond
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
- Rosa Parks
- Srdja Popovic
- Tommie Smith, John Carlos and Peter Norman
- Ask
students to research the role each person or group played in nonviolent
resistance using the websites suggested at the beginning of this lesson, as
well as other resources, as needed. Ask students to find out the following
about the individuals:
- At least one major nonviolent action/event with which they were associated.
- The
goal(s) of their nonviolent protest(s).
- Where and when they lived.
- The impact of their actions (on others and on themselves).
- Other additional information about their actions.
- Create
a timeline in your classroom and ask students to put the following information
on the timeline:
- The name(s) of the individual(s).
- The name of one major event for which their
selected individual or group is known.
- The year the event took place.
- Optional:
A photograph of the
individual(s) and/or the featured event.
Possible events and dates
to include:
- Henry David Thoreau: Wrote “Civil
Disobedience," also known as “Resistance to Civil Government” (1849).
- Bertha von Suttner: Author of Lay Down Your Arms (1889); Formed the Austrian Peace Society (1891).
- Inez Hilholland Boissevain: Suffrage Parade (March 3, 1913).
- Emily Greene Balch: Co-founder and honorary president of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (founded in 1915 as the “Women’s Committee for Permanent Peace”). Secretary of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (1919-22; 1934-35).
- Mohandas Karamchand Ghandi: Non-cooperation movement, British India (September 1920- February 1922); Salt March (March 12-April 5, 1930).
- Alva Myrdal: Represented Sweden at Geneva disarmament conference (1962); Promoted disarmament as a member of Swedish Parliament (beginning in 1962) and as a member of the Swedish Cabinet (beginning in 1967).
- Rosa Parks: Refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama (December 1, 1955); Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-1956).
- Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair, Jr. (Jibreel Khazan) and David Richmond: Known as the Greensboro Four, they conducted a sit-in at the Woolworth’s counter in Greensboro, NC (February 1, 1960). Sit-ins by the Greensboro Four and others continued in Greensboro through July 25, 1960.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.: Montgomery Bus Boycott (December, 1955-December, 1956); Project C/Protests in Birmingham,
Alabama (April, 1963); March on Washington (August 28, 1963).
- Cesar Chavez: Strike and march by California grape pickers (March, 1966); 25-day spiritual fast (1968); Boycott to protest use of pesticides on grapes (1980s).
- Tommie Smith, John Carlos and Peter Norman: Mexico City Olympic Games Black Power Salute (1968).
- Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan: Co-founded the Northern Ireland Peace Movement (1976), also known as the Community
of Peace People.
- Srdja Popovic: One of the leaders of Otpor, the nonviolent protest movement that helped end the dictatorship of
Slobodan Milosovic in Serbia (2000)
- Ask
each group to present its information to the class. Ask students to discuss the
roles each of the featured people played in furthering their causes and the
risks they took.
Part II: Learning Activity 1
- Explain
that you will now be showing a video from the PBS program Women,
War & Peace: “Pray the Devil Back to Hell” a program which
documents the role women played in bringing about an end to war in Liberia. Explain that the video introduces Leymah Gbowee and describes actions she took to mobilize women in Liberia to speak out against the war.
- As
students view the video, ask them to write down some of the actions that Leymah
Gbowee took to mobilize the women of Liberia.
- Play War and the Rise of Women's Resistance in Liberia. After showing the
video, ask students to discuss steps that Gbowee and others took to
mobilize
the women of Liberia. (She reached out
to
women in churches. Muslim women, inspired by Gbowee’s example, reached
out to
women in Mosques. They encouraged men to lay down their weapons and
talked to
religious leaders in churches and mosques to pressure the men to stop
fighting.)
- Explain
that the next video highlights actions Leymah Gbowee and her
supporters took
to protest the war and advocate for peace. As they watch the next
video, ask
students to write down three actions the women took to protest the war
and
advocate for peace.
- Play Peaceful Protests in Liberia. After showing the video, ask students to
discuss steps Leymah Gbowee and her supports took to protest the war and
advocate for peace. (They decided to
conduct a public protest. They dressed in white and sat at the fish
market
every day. It was the first time that Liberian Muslim and Christian
women
joined together. They created a banner that said “The women of Liberia
want
peace now.” They created signs protesting the war and advocating peace
and had
over 2,500 women join the protest. They sang “We want peace, no more
war.” They
conducted a sex strike by denying sex to their men.)
- On a
white board, easel pad, etc. write the title “Nonviolent Actions
Conducted by
the Women of Liberia” and, based on what has been featured in the first
two
videos, ask students to list the nonviolent actions the Liberian women
conducted. (Note: Students will be
adding
more items to this list in Step 11 of this Learning Activity.)
- Ask
students why the women selected the fish market as the site for their
protest.
(It was a visible spot where Charles
Taylor would see them.)
- Discuss
some of the obstacles they faced while conducting their protest. (Bad weather conditions; potential danger to
themselves; the president did not support their cause.)
- Introduce
the next video by letting students know it highlights additional
actions
the women of Liberia took to achieve peace. As students view the
video, ask
them to write down the actions that the women took.
- Play Steps Toward Peace. After
showing the video, ask students to describe actions the women took to
further
their quest for peace. (They wrote a
position statement to convince the Liberian government to engage in
peace
talks. The women decided they didn’t want to be seen as politicians and
did not
want to discuss politics or the practices of the government. They,
instead,
decided to focus, specifically, on peace. They presented their statement
to parliament
and decided to sit outside until they heard from President Charles
Taylor.
April 23, 2003 they met with Charles Taylor and handed their statement
to the
pro-tem of the senate- a woman- to give to Taylor. They sent women to
Ghana to
mobilize refugee women living there. In Ghana, they sat outside, holding
signs
and singing. They talked to delegates behind the scenes at the peace
talks to
get them to think about possible compromises they could make. They went
from
delegate to delegate to try to influence them. They continued to protest
at the
fish market every day, fasted and prayed.)
- Add
the women’s actions to the list you and your students created of
“Nonviolent
Actions Conducted by the Women of Liberia.”
- Explain that the peace talks in Liberia
were originally only supposed to last two weeks, but they ended up going
on for
more than six weeks. Ask students to describe additional steps the women
could
take to get the different sides to come to an agreement and sign the
peace
agreement.
- Explain that the next video shows what
actions the women took to get the men to focus on the peace talks and
arrive at
a compromise. As students watch the video, ask them to write down the
actions
the women took.
- Play Achieving Peace. After
showing the video, discuss actions the women took to get the men to
focus on
the peace talks and arrive at a compromise. (They
increased their presence in Ghana and sat by the doors inside the
building with
looped arms, blocking the peace talk delegates from exiting. They wore
white
tee shirts. When the security guards told Leymah Gbowee she was
obstructing
justice, she removed her hair tie and started removing clothing. Gbowee
met
with General Abubakar, the Ghanaian Ambassador and others. They asked
her to
release her women and she refused. She then agreed to let the women go,
but
gave the men two weeks to come to an agreement. She told them, if
needed, she
would return to protest again in two weeks with more women. After the
sit-in,
the mood of the peace talk became more serious and the delegates signed a
peace
agreement two weeks later. They returned to Liberia after the agreement
was
signed.)
- Ask
students how people reacted to their sit-in. Ask: What were the actions
of the
security guards? General Abubakar? The delegates? (The security guards first accused Gbowee of
obstructing justice, but
then told her she should move some women over to the windows to stop
delegates
from escaping. Joe Wylie, one of the warlords from LURD (the opposition
party)
tried to break through the group of women. General Abubakar, the
mediator,
defended the women and told the man to go back into the room where the
peace
talks were taking place. The General told him that if he were a real man
he
wouldn’t be killing his people. He told the men not to leave the hall
until Abubakar
negotiated with the women.)
- Add the steps from Achieving Peace to the list of actions that the women of Liberia took.
- Review
and lead a discussion about all of the nonviolent actions the women took
in
their efforts to protest the war. For each method of resistance
demonstrated by
the women, discuss the following:
- The
impact of that action.
- The
challenges and potential dangers faced by the women.
- Ask students the following:
- What
would you have chosen to do similarly or differently if you had been in
charge
of the movement?
- If
you were in charge of a similar type of nonviolent protest movement
today and
had access to the latest state of the art technologies (social media
tools,
cell phones, iPads, etc.), what are some additional actions you could
take to
promote your cause? (Facebook posts, tweets, blogs, etc.)
Part III: Learning Activity 2
- Distribute the 198 Methods of Nonviolent
Action list from the Albert Einstein Institution. Divide students into groups
of 2-3 students each. Ask each group to check off each of the actions that Leymah
Gbowee and the women of Liberia used in their quest for peace.
- Discuss how each of the actions helped
further the women’s cause.
- Distribute the Public Statement by Eight
Alabama Clergymen and Martin Luther King’s Letter from the Birmingham
Jail.
Ask students to read the letter from the Eight Alabama Clergymen and
then to
read Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s response. Ask students to identify
the main
points made in each document. As students read King’s letter, ask them
to find
out what he says are the basic steps to a nonviolent movement, as well
as what
his views are on following rules.
- After students have read each letter, ask
them to describe the main points made by the clergymen in writing their
letter
and the main points raised by Martin Luther King, Jr. in his response.
- Ask students to discuss what King lists
as the four basic steps to a nonviolent campaign. (Collection of facts to determine whether
injustices exist; negotiation;
self purification and direct action.) Discuss how these steps
apply to the
actions taken by Leymah Gbowee and the women of Liberia.
- Discuss what King says about following
rules. (“One has not only a legal but a
moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral
responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” “We should never forget that
everything
Adolf Hitler did in Germany was ‘legal’ and everything the Hungarian
freedom
fighters did in Hungary was ‘illegal.' It was ‘illegal’ to aid and
comfort a
Jew in Hitler’s Germany.”)
- Compare King’s sentiments about rules to
Leymah Gbowee’s reaction to the security guards when they told her she
was
“obstructing justice.”
- Optional:
This optional activity
involves watching and discussing the segment In Pursuit of Democracy, which
describes efforts the women in Liberia conducted after the war ended.
- Let
students know that the women of Liberia continued to work together after
the
war. As students watch the video, ask them to identify the objectives
of the
women and to describe the actions they took to achieve those goals.
- Play
In Pursuit of Democracy. After showing the video, ask students
to describe the objectives of the women after the war. (To build peace and promote democracy.)
- Ask
students to discuss the steps the women took to achieve those goals. (They decided to forgive the combatants and
not blame them for actions they committed during the war. The women
worked with
and got to know some of the children who fought in the war and realized
that
these soldiers were also victims of the war. The women believed there
would not
be true peace in Liberia until there was a democratically-elected
president.
They decided to work on the election, by campaigning for Ellen Johnson
Sirleaf,
who won the 2005 presidential election and was sworn in as President of
Liberia
on January 16, 2006. They also wore clothing that said “Peace Forever.”
After
working together for 2 ½ years, the women officially ended their mass
action
campaign, with the promise of regrouping if the situation in Liberia got
worse.)
Part IV: Culminating Activity
- Ask each student to select a nonviolent
protest movement to research. Here are some possibilities:
- The
Fisher Body Plant Sit-down strike, Flint, Michigan (December 30,
1936-February
11, 1937)
- Madres
of the Plaza de Mayo (also known as “The Mothers of the Disappeared”)
Demonstrations, Buenos Aires, Argentina (beginning in 1977)
- March
1st Movement; Samil Movement, Korea (March 1, 1919)
- Monday
Demonstrations, East Germany (1989-90)
- Non-cooperation
movement, British India (September 1920- February 1922)
- Nonviolent
protests by women, children and men in
the Palestinian village of Budrus in the West Bank (2003)
- Nonviolent
protests by women in Ivory Coast (2011)
- Orange
Alternative Movement, Poland (1980s)
- Peace
Torch Marathon (August 27, 1967- October 21, 1967)
- People
Power Revolution, the Philippines (1986)
- Reaction
to menorah hate crime, Billings, MT (December 2, 1993)
- Singing
Revolution, The Baltic States (1987-90)
- Tiananmen
Square Protests (April 15- June 4, 1989)
- Trinidad
and Tobago nonviolent protests (1834)
- Velvet
Revolution, Czechoslovakia (1989)
For additional options, students can
search the “Nonviolent Conflict Summaries” in the “Movements and Campaigns”
section on the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict’s website.
- Distribute the Nonviolent Resistance Student Organizer. Ask students to explore the following about their
selected
movements and to record their findings on their student organizers:
- The name of the movement and date(s)
the movement occurred.
- Names of the principal
leaders/organizers of the movement.
- Details about the participants,
including the approximate number of people involved in the movement.
- Details about the movement,
including how it started, the goals of the movement and the nonviolent
methods used to achieve those goals.
- The impact of the movement (on the
participants and others).
- After students have completed the
organizers, ask them to present their findings to the class.
- Ask students to compare and contrast the
methods used in the movement which they just studied to the methods used
in the
other examples of nonviolent protest highlighted throughout the lesson.
- Ask students to reflect upon the impact
of nonviolent resistance movements and to discuss the pros and cons of
different
types of nonviolent actions. Ask students to discuss the risks taken and
challenges faced by the protesters in the different situations they
examined.
Discuss the use of the following in the nonviolent protests studied
during this
lesson and the reasons for using them:
- Symbolic
Colors
- Slogans
- Humor
- Music
- Sit-ins/sit-downs
- Symbols
- Marches
and public demonstrations
- Strikes/
Boycotts
- Fasts
- Lead a discussion about the role women
have played in nonviolent protests around the world, citing specific
examples from
Argentina, Ivory Coast, Liberia, the West Bank (Budrus), Northern
Ireland, and
the United States.
- Ask each student to write a reflection
essay about the use of nonviolent methods to achieve a goal, citing at
least
three different cases studied in this lesson. Ask students to include
reflections about the risks and sacrifices taken by the participants of
nonviolent protests. Discuss the impact of their actions on their own
lives and
the lives of others in their communities and beyond.
- Ask students to share their reflections
with the class.
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