The 1960s: A Decade of Human Rights Struggles

The struggle for human rights is a struggle that individuals and groups have fought over time and throughout modern history. One of the earliest human rights movements was the abolitionist movement in the United States to end slavery. Remarkable individuals have led the struggle in the United States, Europe and South Africa. Each of these individuals made speeches and wrote newspaper articles in their campaign for human rights.

In this module, you will analyze and evaluate an author’s use of reasoning and evidence to support his or her claims in order to convince others to agree and to support the cause the author supports.

Module Objectives

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

• Analyze and evaluate an author’s use of reasoning and evidence to support his or her claims.
• Analyze and evaluate connections among evidence, inferences and claims in an argument.
• Identify and explain common logical fallacies (e.g., the appeal to pity, the personal attack, the appeal to common opinion, the false dilemma).
• Evaluate the credibility of an author’s argument by analyzing the manipulation of language, as well as the range, sufficiency, quality, relevance and validity of the claims.
• Evaluate the author’s acknowledgement of opposing views and the reasoning and evidence s/he uses to refute these views.