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Table of Contents
OAH Magazine of History Copyright © |
From the Editor Human RightsPhillip GuertyThis issue of the OAH Magazine of History examines definitions of human rights from World War II through the civil rights movement. As a quick scan of recent newspaper headlines reveals, debates about human rights are ever present in the world today. Whether in viewing reports about genocide and the crisis of Darfur, or coverage of recent political opposition and rioting in Tibet, our students need to have a strong understanding of the key role of human rights in these events and what this means for the United States, both from a historical perspective and in the world today. This is as true domestically as well, where--especially during this campaign season--discussions emerge about such issues as the right of all people to have access to high quality medical care or to earn a fair wage.As Allida Black notes in her introduction, a firm grasp of the history of human rights is essential for understanding both American and world history. With this in mind, Black has compiled an excellent selection of articles and teaching strategies. Elizabeth Borgwardt explores Franklin D. Roosevelt's Four Freedoms, noting that the human rights ideas embedded in the Four Freedoms, as well as in the 1942 Declaration of the United Nations, "reshaped the concept of the national interest by injecting an explicitly moralistic calculus." Both Thomas Jackson and Michael Honey look at the civil rights movement. According to Jackson, the civil rights movement was broadened to include more than political and social rights but also to include basic economic rights. As Martin Luther King, Jr. argued in 1966, the struggle for human rights included "the right to live in a decent house," and the right to receive "an adequate income." Honey's article looks at the sanitation workers strike in Memphis in 1968. As Honey points out, the economic conditions in Memphis at the time, where sixty percent of the city's black families lived in poverty, made the strike an embodiment of a struggle over human rights. Andrea McEvoy Spero explores international dimensions of the African American freedom struggle. As Spero convincingly argues, the goals of the African American struggle extended beyond just civil rights to a global human rights movement that was linked to anticolonialism in Asia and Africa. Allida Black has also chosen several teaching strategies that will help teachers convey the complexities of the history of human rights. In "Eleanor Roosevelt and the Declaration of Human Rights," Black walks readers through a role playing activity that recreates the work of the United Nations Human Rights Commission in crafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Using primary source documents like the Atlantic Charter and the UDHR, Ivy Urdang offers a way to help students evaluate the relationship between FDR and ER's incorporation of human rights into the New Deal and the United Nations. Andrea Spero has students create an African American Freedom Struggle timeline and map, and Paul Benson discusses a recent human rights project at Chautauqua Lake Central School. This issue of the MOH also includes a letter written in 1887 by Frederick Douglass from the Gilder Lehrman Collection that provides teachers an excellent opportunity to initiate a discussion with their students about notions of civil rights and human rights both in the post-Civil War South and in U.S history in general. Steven Mintz points out in his introduction to the document, "the extension of civil rights and human rights requires not only a shift in laws, but an embrace of the ideal expressed in the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights." This issue of the MOH concludes with a special feature by Nikki Mandell on teaching students to think historically. Subscribers are also invited to visit the OAH Magazine of History online for a list of useful web links for teaching human rights. Thanks to all of the contributors for a wonderful issue! Lastly, I want to also thank all of the attendees at the OAH convention in New York who stopped by the New York City Public School exhibition and the OAH Magazine of History booth. As Nell Painter recently noted in her column in the OAH Newsletter, teaching young minds is the "overlapping nature of the work of all historians: whether we work in high schools, community colleges, colleges, or research institutions." Both the Public School exhibition at this year's conference and the OAH Magazine of History exemplify this common desire to educate. They also reveal the great things that can be accomplished when all historians, no matter where we teach, come together for a common goal.
—Phillip M. Guerty |
