Upon successful completion of the course, students will:
•	Gain an understanding of the historical and cultural 
conditions that related to the emergence or inhibition of Black 
civil rights discourses of the 1950s and 1960s. 
•	Become familiar with key speeches and other significant 
rhetorical acts that comprised the civil rights movement of the 
1950s and 1960s.
•	Develop an understanding of the rhetorical situation 
and be able to assess and appreciate rhetorical artifacts based 
on the constraints and opportunities offered by the speaker, 
audience, and occasion. Students will also develop a critical 
vocabulary to aid them in analyzing rhetorical artifacts.
•	Analyze how a person’s identity traits, such as race, 
religion, ethnicity, gender, and/or class, not only influence 
that 
person’s perspectives, attitudes, and beliefs, but also his or 
her ability to craft and accept persuasive messages. 
•	Examine the news media’s both historical and 
contemporary role in shaping popular attitudes and beliefs 
about race and civil rights. 
•	Investigate how contemporary artifacts designed to 
commemorate civil rights, such as museums, documentaries 
historical markers, and books, serve contemporary social, 
political, and cultural functions.

This course is organized chronologically to include major 
events in the civil rights movement from 1954-1965:
a.	What is rhetoric?
b.	Why there had to be a civil rights movement
c.	Early motivations: 1954-58
   i.	Emmett Till
   ii.	Montgomery Bus Boycotts
   iii.	Brown vs. Board of Education and the Little Rock Nine
d.	Organizing and pushing boundaries: 1960-1961
   i.	Nashville Sit-ins
   ii.	Freedom Rides
e.	Marching forward: 1963-1964
   i.	Project C – Birmingham
   ii.	1963 March on Washington
   iii.	16th Street Bombing
   iv.	Voting in Mississippi
   v.	Mississippi Freedom Summer
f.	On the bridge: 1965
   i.	Selma, AL

“Academic honesty is – defined broadly and simply – the 
performance of all academic work without cheating, lying, 
stealing, or receiving assistance from any other person or 
using any source of information not appropriately authorized or 
attributed” (From the Preamble to “A Culture of Honesty”). The 
University, the Department of Communication Studies, and I 
personally take academic honesty very seriously. Every student 
at the University of Georgia should be familiar with the 
booklet, “A Culture of Honesty: Policies and Procedures on 
Academic Dishonesty.” If you are not, please obtain one of 
these booklets and read it carefully. This document has a 
thorough presentation of four types of academic dishonesty, 
including plagiarism, unauthorized assistance, lying/tampering, 
and theft, as well as the procedures that are in place to 
adjudicate alleged incidents of academic dishonesty. The 
policies and procedures described in “A Culture of Honesty” 
will be strictly followed. University Mandated Statement 
Concerning the University Honor Code & Academic Honesty All 
academic work must meet the standards contained in “A Culture 
of Honesty.” Students are responsible for informing themselves 
about those standards before performing any academic work. More 
detailed information about academic honesty can be found at
http://www.uga.edu/ovpi/honesty/acadhon.htm.