You've read Sinclair's "I aimed at the heart and hit the stomach," and MLK's first paragraph from a jail cell. Sixty years apart, one through-line: forcing a broken system to change.
Three students can all be in USH-01 and investigate three completely different reform moments. Your angle is the piece you will actually argue.
Sinclair wanted labor reform; he got food-safety laws. Why did the public respond to the stomach, not the heart? What does that reveal about how reform works?
Compare Sinclair's exposure journalism and Beals' embodied protest — walking into the mob. What can each do that the other can't? Which lasted?
"The people who fix broken systems are almost never the ones it was built to serve." Evaluate — using all three texts + one example of your own.
Could a reasonable person disagree? If you can Google one answer in 30 seconds, it's too factual.
Specific enough to dig into in six weeks — one reform moment, not "all of Civil Rights."
Something you actually want to know. You'll still be living with it in Week 4.
Write your essential question, your inquiry angle and why it matters to you, your standard(s), and your demo mode. Parts 4–5 come next class.
Your plan has to be solid enough to build six weeks on. Bring it to me the moment Parts 1–5 are done.