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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The Unknown Origins of the March on Washington: Civil Rights Politics and the Black Working Class
Labor and Land Josh Davidson Labor and Land Josh Davidson

The Unknown Origins of the March on Washington: Civil Rights Politics and the Black Working Class

Reading by William P. Jones
“The very decade which has witnessed the decline of legal Jim Crow has also seen the rise of de facto segregation in our most fundamental socioeconomic institutions,” veteran civil rights activist Bayard Rustin wrote in 1965. The March on Washington addressed the economic crisis facing working-class African Americans more effectively than any other mobilization since the Second World War.

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What We Want
Black Power Josh Davidson Black Power Josh Davidson

What We Want

Primary Document By Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael)
Separatism−the determination of a particular group of people to resist assimilating to the majority culture−has a long history in the United States. This excerpt from the “What We Want” speech offers a rationale for the notion of an independent Black community.

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Southern Tenant Farmworkers: Black and White Unite?
Labor and Land Josh Davidson Labor and Land Josh Davidson

Southern Tenant Farmworkers: Black and White Unite?

Lesson By Bill Bigelow
This lesson examines efforts by Black and white workers to overcome the deep divisions and suspicions of racial antagonism in 1934 Arkansas. Students are faced with a “What would you do?” assignment that helps them understand many of the difficulties in achieving some degree of racial unity. At the same time, they realize the importance of confronting and overcoming racist attitudes.

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