Voting Rights
Explores the historical fight for African American voting rights, partially won with the 1965 Voting Rights Act and gutted in 2013 by the U.S. Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder.
Introduction
Voting means more than casting ballots; voting means securing political and economic power, civil rights, prison reform, juvenile justice, international human rights and more. But the United States has a long history of limiting the right to vote of women and people of color through property ownership, taxes, registration and residency laws, and tests. The readings and lessons here will empower students to think critically about recent events and continue the fight to ensure voting rights for all Americans.
Lessons
Readings
Films, Books, and Other Resources
Lessons and Resources
Topics and Authors
- Reading
- Lesson
- Mississippi
- Desegregation
- Education
- SNCC
- Alabama
- Deborah Menkart
- Martin Luther King Jr.
- Voting Rights
- Black Power
- Labor
- Ella Baker
- Teaching Reflection
- Montgomery Bus Boycott
- SCLC
- Emilye Crosby
- Poetry
- Julian Bond
- Selma
- Jenice L. View
- MFDP
- Black Panther Party
- Primary Document
- Transportation
- Teaching Idea
- Rosa Parks
- Land
- Brown v. Board of Education
- Malcolm X
- Bob Moses
- Fannie Lou Hamer
- Stokely Carmichael
- Julian Hipkins III
- Vietnam War
- John Lewis
- Voting Rights Act
- Timeline
- Sit-Ins
- March on Washington
- Judy Richardson
- Amzie Moore
- Alana D. Murray
- Maggie Nolan Donovan
- Colia Liddell Lafayette Clark
- Nonviolence
- Film
- Medgar Evers
- Emmett Till
- Ursula Wolfe-Rocca
- John Hulett
- Self-Defense
- Quiz
- Bill Bigelow
- Freedom Summer
- NAACP
- Tennessee
- Allison Acosta
- Art
- Claudette Colvin
- Prisons
- SNCC Digital Gateway
- Black Lives Matter
- Amelia Boynton
- Sheyann Webb
- Herbert Lee
- Adam Sanchez
- KKK
- Clyde Kennard
- FBI
- Patty Bode
- Charles Payne
- Linda Christensen
- Stephanie Schmidt
- CORE
- Highlander
- Introduction
- E.W. Steptoe
- Georgia
- Nicolás Guillén
- James Loewen
- Arkansas
- Louis Allen
- Redlining
- Annie Devine
- New York
- SCOTUS
- North Carolina
- Kentucky
- Elementary
- Eyes on the Prize
- Allyson Criner Brown
- A. Philip Randolph
- Chris Seeger
- Coretta Scott King
- James Meredith
- Hasan Jeffries
- Charles E. Cobb Jr.
- Bayard Rustin
- Police