Historical Thinking Matters: Rosa Parks
Lesson plan with documents that challenges popular perception of Rosa Parks. Valuable for examples of students work and a "think aloud" video in which one student talks through his work
The Making of African American Identity: 1917-1968, National Humanities Center
A collection of primary resources-historical documents, literary texts,and works of art-thematically organized with notes and discussion questions from National Humanities Center from National Humanities Center
Is Civil Disobedience Ever Justified as a Method of Political Change?
Great debate series. Two short readings with comprehension and critical thinking questions. Letter from Birmingham Clergy to King compared against King's letter from a Birmingham Jail
Local Activists Call for a Bus Boycott in Montgomery
This leaflet, produced by Jo Ann Robinson and others in response to Rosa Parks' arrest on December 1, 1955, called for all African Americans to stay off city buses on Monday, December 5. Robinson was president of the Women's Political Council, an organization of African-American professional women who worked for greater political influence from the Black community. She was later arrested for her role in the boycott.
The Black Freedom Movement
The common approach to teaching the Civil Rights Movement glosses over competing views among activists, writing out of the history those who advocated self-defense and those who pushed for economic change. And it downplays the role of women in the struggle for social change. Examining the following primary sources documents will help you shed light on new interpretations of the black freedom movement.
School Desegretation - "What was the first day of School like?" - HSI: Historical Scene Investigation
Students listen to various oral history recordings of what it was like for many Kentuckians on the first day that their school was integrated. Using their analysis of the evidence, they then decide how they would describe the first days of school desegregation in Kentucky. In other words, how did people in Kentucky experience school desegregation?
This is a "doing history" lesson in which students are put into the role of the historian trying to make sense of the past.
The Civil Rights Movement as a Turning Point: A Document Based Question Activity - TeachRock
All of the materials and some good ideas of how students can analyze them and share what they find.
Teaching the Montgomery Bus Boycott — Civil Rights Teaching
Materials to teach beyond the taught narrative canon's single-minded focus on Rosa Parks to have students explore the broader, more complex social and legal efforts of Civil Rights Leaders and 50,000 people to integrate Montgomery City Buses
Montgomery bus boycott - Wikipedia
Simple lesson plan - have students look through this page and bullet list what they don't know, and what they were impressed by as they learned it (ie - leaders of the boycott had to purchase car insurance from Lloyds of London because Alabama insurance companies tried to break the boycott by denying car insurance policies to African-Americans, thereby ending the car pools that allowed them to boycott the buses)
In support of Clyde Sellers (Your view) - al.com
Want to have your students act like historians? Then have them investigate the claims of the nephew of the police commissioner of Montgomery during the boycott. In this 2013 he defends his uncle - have your students investigate and fact check his claims. Don't forget to tell them to find out what was left out of the article as well
Teach This: Regulating Protest at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics | Teaching Tolerance
Teachers can use the story of the protest at the 1968 Olympics and the 2020 Olympics statement banning protests this year
Competing Voices of the Civil Rights Movement | NEH-Edsitement
Lesson that exposes one of the neglected elements of the Civil Rights movement, the struggle within the movement itself. Is passive non-violent resistance the best approach? How about direct action? Legal Action? One of the best ways to get beyond the single-track MLK narrative is to immerse students in the many Civil Rights leaders in the movement
Part Two: Project C Strategy Committee Role Play | The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute
This lesson plan asks students to do something they are in no way prepared to do, but in attempting to do it, they might be exposed to the "behind the scenes" of the Civil Rights movement. They know of boycots, freedom rides and marches; they have no idea how intricate the planning was. Going through this lesson, or a variation of it will expose them to the fact that there was not just one "movement" but rather hundreds of organizations and thousands of people
Curricula – MS Civil Rights Project
Many links to lesson plan curricula, primary source libraries
Selma Online Curriculum
Series of Civil RIghts and Votings Rights lessons from Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. Interactive, media intensive presentation, teacher guide included
The Ford’s Theatre Approach to Oratory | Connecting to Text - YouTube
Want to do something different with your students? Something they have NEVER done before in history class? This is a Civil Rights unit lesson in which students perform two speeches together - the "Mountaintop" of Martin Luther King from April 3, 1968 and Robert Kennedy's speech delivered (off the top of his head) the very next day, April 4th 1968. This three minute video will get you started
(1963) George Wallace, “Segregation Now, Segregation Forever”
The word "freedom" appears in this speech 16 times. Teachers can have students do a quick "Ctrl+F" on this speech and read the context of the use of the word freedom in this speech to better understand the rhetoric of resistance to integration
Today I have stood, where once Jefferson Davis stood, and took an oath to my people. It is very appropriate then that from this Cradle of the Confederacy, this very Heart of the Great Anglo-Saxon Southland, that today we sound the drum for freedom as have our generations of forebears before us done, time and time again through history. Let us rise to the call of freedom- loving blood that is in us and send our answer to the tyranny that clanks its chains upon the South. In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny . . . and I say . . . segregation today . . . segregation tomorrow . . . segregation forever.
Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders 1967 (Kerner Commission)
There are many ways to use a 700+ page primary source document like this one - have students search the word "negro", (it appears over 400 times in the book), then ask them to pick just one or two of the instances and read the paragraph around it for context. Then have a discussion - What did they find? What did they learn? What do they want to know more about?
Whose Law?: State Sovereignty and the Integration of the University of Alabama | JFK Library
Civil Rights: Citizens' Letters on the Little Rock Crisis | Eisenhower Presidential Library
Instead of giving students just two or three primary source documents give them a set like this and have them analyze, and categorize them as historians would.
Viola Liuzzo Memorial Marker - Encyclopedia of Alabama
There are many, many forgotten names in the Civil Rights movement that never made it to the taught narrative canon. Teachers can just grab the picture of this monument marker and be given five minutes to learn more about Viola. A simple intro activity to a larger lesson, the process could yield in them a better understanding of the wide spectrum of individuals who were part of the movement
Two Versions of John Lewis' Speech | BillMoyers.com
Instead of doing the "I Have a Dream" speech again (AGAIN), teachers should split their classes and give each half a different version of this speech without telling them the back story - then haven the compare and contrast discussion before telling the about it