Teach young historians about the historical legacy of Rosa Parks with a multi-faceted lesson plan. Pupils follow stations and use journals to explore prominent events, analyze primary resource documents, and engage in interesting...

The murder of Emmett Till, the Selma to Montgomery march, and the desegregation of Boston schools are the focus of three units that ask class members to investigate why these events were so key in the struggle for civil rights. Groups...

The film American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs introduces viewers to the differing philosophies of and strategies employed by 1960s civil rights leaders such as Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. and the debate over...

The Academy Award-winning documentary A Time for Justice launches a unit that examines America's civil rights movement. Class members examine key events and participants in the movement and consider how the civil rights movement changed...

Can any good come from acts of evil? The 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, and the eventual outcomes of the tragedy, are the focus of a lesson that asks groups to examine primary source documents...

Information, inferences, and innuendos. Text and subtext. Class members examine telegrams exchanged between President John F. Kennedy and Alabama Governor George Wallace, studying both what is stated and what is implied by the diction...

A three-lesson unit study uses short, illustrated biographies of Ruby Bridges, George Washington, and Amelia Earhart to introduce kindergartners to the characteristics of this genre.

When Ruby Bridges entered an all-white school in New Orleans in 1960, she also entered history. Scholars consider what the experience must have been like for the young girl using two books that document her experience as well as a double...

More than an iconic image, the picture of young people sitting at a lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., to protest segregation and Jim Crow laws also sparked a new phase of the civil rights movement. Video clips, including activists,...

A whole-class discussion about segregation leads scholars' into the topic of Rosa Parks and the Civil Rights Movement. Small groups work collaboratively to respond to an informational text. A themed-word search is completed independently. 

Young African American men at the start of World War II faced a dilemma: they could fight the racism of the Nazis but only by enlisting in a racist Army. Scholars consider this situation as they study the life of a man who in 1941 was...

During his first few games as the first black player in Major League Baseball, Jackie Robinson proved that he could withstand the wily curveball of Johnny Sain as well as the racial epithets shouted from opposing teams' dugouts. A short...

Can sports and popular culture change public opinion? That's the essential question asked by a lesson plan that looks at the role Jackie Robinson's appearance at City Island Ballpark in Daytona Beach, Florida played in the desegregation...

Baseball great Jackie Robinson fought for social justice. His efforts to push for equal access are detailed in an episode from from the Ken Burns: The Jackie Robinson Collection. After viewing the clip, class members engage in a series...

What happens when change you imagined, the change you were promised, is slow in coming or doesn't happen at all? What do you do with the frustration and disenchantment? Class members watch two clips from the Ken Burns: Jackie Robinson...

Your class members may know that Jackie Robinson was the first African American man to play Major League Baseball, but they may not be aware of his efforts to achieve social justice. A clip from Ken Burns: The Jackie Robinson Collection...

Class members listen to a passage on Rosa Parks, examine images of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and respond to questions based on the text. They then craft a free-verse poem that recounts her achievements and reveals why she is considered...

A two-part activity features Civil Rights hero, Ruby Bridges. Part one focuses on the heroic actions of Ruby Bridges then challenges scholars to complete a Venn diagram in order to compare themselves to her. Part two begins with a...

Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were contemporaries. Both were gifted orators, both were preachers, both were leaders during the Civil Rights era, both were assassinated. But the two had very different views on violence and...

The articles and images in the June 1964 edition of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference Newsletter detail the events in St. Augustine that were instrumental in the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The stirring images and...

As part of a civil rights unit, class members investigate events in St. Augustine, Florida during 1963 and 1964. After reading the report of the Florida Legislative Investigative Committee, an article by Peter Guinta's article about Dr....

A timeline can be a powerful learning tool because it reveals a pattern in events. While few would consider St. Augustine, Florida a hotbed of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, a selection of background information and a timeline of...