Montgomery Bus Boycott Mythbuster Quiz
Desegregation Allison Acosta Desegregation Allison Acosta

Montgomery Bus Boycott Mythbuster Quiz

Quiz by Teaching for Change
Students are often taught the simplistic narrative that Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in Montgomery, the buses were desegregated, and the Civil Rights Movement was launched. This quiz helps surface and challenge many of the myths about the boycott.

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Selma in Pictures: Socratic Seminar
Voting Rights Josh Davidson Voting Rights Josh Davidson

Selma in Pictures: Socratic Seminar

Lesson by Lynda Tredway
In a media driven age, visual images often provide access to important events and political struggles that may be more immediately accessible to students than written texts. This lesson includes two sets of images from the Selma voting rights struggle that promote critical thinking by SNCC photographer Matt Herron. The steps include observation (reading the text), forming a hypothesis, and dialogue—much like an inquiry model of teaching.

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How the Black Panther Party Was Organized
Black Power Josh Davidson Black Power Josh Davidson

How the Black Panther Party Was Organized

Primary Document by John Hulett
Excerpts from a speech about how the Lowndes County Freedom Organization was organized and why they chose a black panther as their symbol. The speech was given in Los Angeles on May 22, 1966 at a meeting sponsored by a group of anti-Vietnam War committees.

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Voting Rights Act: Beyond the Headlines
Voting Rights Josh Davidson Voting Rights Josh Davidson

Voting Rights Act: Beyond the Headlines

Reading by Emilye Crosby and Judy Richardson
Key points missing from most textbooks about the Voting Rights Act. Many textbooks approach the history of this important legislation through a top-down lens that gives most of the credit to President Lyndon Johnson, along with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but the VRA came into being through intensive organizing and activism spearheaded by the Black community.

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Teaching the Montgomery Bus Boycott
Desegregation Josh Davidson Desegregation Josh Davidson

Teaching the Montgomery Bus Boycott

Reading by Teaching for Change
Students learn that Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in Montgomery, the buses were desegregated, and the Civil Rights Movement was launched. The disconnect between Parks’ arrest and the 381-day boycott creates the illusion that it was a spontaneous response to her civil disobedience. This, however, discounts the strategic brilliance and courage of the African American community in Montgomery.

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A Documents-Based Lesson on the Voting Rights Act
Voting Rights Josh Davidson Voting Rights Josh Davidson

A Documents-Based Lesson on the Voting Rights Act

Lesson by Emilye Crosby
This lesson uses a case study of Lowndes County, Alabama and three SNCC-related documents from the early 1960s—just before and after the Voting Rights Act—to explore the impact of the Voting Rights Act (and 1964 Civil Rights Act) on every day southern Black citizens: What did the legislation mean to them? Did they achieve their goals? 

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Key Dates in Voting Rights History
Voting Rights Josh Davidson Voting Rights Josh Davidson

Key Dates in Voting Rights History

Timeline by Emilye Crosby
This timeline of key dates in the struggle for voting rights is provided as background information for “A Documents-Based Lesson on the Voting Rights Act: A Case Study of SNCC’s work in Lowndes County and the Emergence of Black Power” by Emilye Crosby.

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Bloody Selma
Voting Rights Josh Davidson Voting Rights Josh Davidson

Bloody Selma

Reading by Prathia Hall
This essay about organizing in Selma is excerpted, with permission, from Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC.

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The Alabama Project
Voting Rights Josh Davidson Voting Rights Josh Davidson

The Alabama Project

Reading by CRMVet.org
In September 1963, when four young girls were killed in the Birmingham bombing of the 16th Street Baptist church, Diane Nash Bevel and her husband James Bevel drew up a "Proposal For Action in Montgomery" — a plan for a massive direct action assault on denial of voting rights.

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