ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 11, 1996 TAG: 9602090030
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MATT CHITTUM
When Beth Poff teaches about the civil-rights movement in her Recent Events in United States History course at Cave Spring High School, her mission is to put a face on the struggle.
Many textbooks treat the civil-rights movement as a series of Supreme Court decisions and congressional bills, and not as a fight in the service of which many people died.
Poff, 26, confronts the human violence of the movement head on.
Using a packet from the Southern Poverty Law Center as her basis, Poff assigns each student two names from the list of 40 people known to have died in the cause of civil rights. The students are responsible for learning about who the people are; how, when, where and why they died; who killed them; and what degree of justice was rendered in the end. Then they present oral reports on them.
``I think if you put names and faces together and say this person died like this,'' Poff said, ``that's better than just saying a whole lot of people died.''
The students can't help but be moved by the story of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy beaten and shot to death for allegedly whistling at a white woman in Money, Miss.
And when they see pictures of the sobbing children of Viola Luizzo, a white woman who was shot to death while driving civil-rights activists from Montgomery to Selma, Ala., it really gets to them.
``Once they understand why the person was killed,'' Poff said, ``they can see how it was senseless.''
She also sends the students home to ask their parents what they remember from the era, so they can report back to the class.
The civil-rights unit comprises three weeks out of a semester-long elective course for seniors, which Poff developed with fellow teachers Erica Smith, Peter Lustig and Tom Landon. The teachers decided to put the course together because they never seemed to get to more recent historical events - like civil rights, the Vietnam War and environmental issues - into a regular 11th-grade U.S. History course. They just ran out of time.
So far, it's been a success. Poff has taught the class both semesters it's been available. She's had nearly 100 students in it so far.
According to David Wymer, Roanoke County Schools social-studies supervisor, plans are in place to replicate the course in other county high schools next year.
LENGTH: Medium: 51 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Beth Poff color CINDY PINKSTON STAFFby CNB