A challenging fiction and poetry pairing that works great for an ELA background study on civil rights, this lesson features a pivotal passage from Susan Crandall's "Whistling Past the Graveyard" and two civil rights era poems (authors unknown). The lesson starts with a YouTube video from the movie "The Help," contains questions to encourage whole class discussion, guided questions for students to answer as they work through the passages, and a writing prompt. Guided questions include: predicting