The Civil Rights Movement

Bessie Coleman. William Powell. Willa Brown. Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. While these names may not be familiar to many Americans, they are African American pioneers in aviation history. Class members have an opportunity to research the...

The Civil War made slavery illegal, but all ex-slaves were not totally free. Scholars visit eight different classroom stations to uncover life during the Reconstruction Era in America. Groups discover items such as Black Codes, 13th,...

What's missing from most studies of the American Revolutionary War is information about the role African Americans played in the conflict. To correct this oversight, middle schoolers research groups like the Black Loyalists and  Black...

America was founded by dreamers, and the American dream still resonates in our country today. Track the American dream from its Puritan beginnings to its optimistic descendants with a instructional activity that focuses on speeches by...

When Aki Kurose was 16 years old, her family was forced to relocate from their home in Seattle with other Japanese Americans. The government feared that despite their loyalty to the United States, they were operating on behalf of the...

Many young people today know Muhammad Ali as the aging boxer who lit the torch at the 1996 Olympics. Introduce young historians to Ali the boxer, the Civil Rights activist, the war protestor, and the humanitarian with a powerful lesson...

When Ida B. Wells was kicked off the whites-only ladies railway car, it ignited a ferocious warrior for civil rights. Wells and others worked to preserve the hard-won freedoms of Reconstruction, which were tenuous at best during...

The Civil Rights Act of 1866, which granted citizenship to all males in the U.S., resulted in the first African Americans to be elected to Congress. Class members research 11 of these men, the challenges they faced, and craft...

Once Americans won the Revolutionary War, their quest to gain land did not end. An interesting activity focuses on Americans' expansion into the frontier following the war and how it conflicted with Native Americans living in the area....

Imagine a war being fought to free slaves, with slaves on the front line. Scholars use primary documents, videos, and research in the second installment of a three-part series to guide their analysis of the first African-Americans on the...