Critiquing the Traditional Narrative:
Additional Lessons and Teaching Reflections
LESSON
Teaching About Nonviolence and Self-Defense
By Julian Hipkins III
In the article and the video clip used in this lesson, Charles Cobb Jr. talks about the role that self-defense and nonviolence played in the movement. The Civil Rights Movement is often taught as people who engaged in nonviolence as a way of life. Cobb explains that for many, nonviolence was a tactic rather than a way of life. People in communities across the south were prepared to use lethal force when necessary to protect themselves.
LESSON
The Rebellious Lives of Mrs. Rosa Parks
By Bill Bigelow
In this mixer lesson, students learn about Rosa Parks’ many decades of activism by taking on roles from various times in her life. In this way, students learn about her radicalism before, during, and long after the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
TEACHING REFLECTION
Reinventing My Teaching About the Civil Rights Movement
By Alana D. Murray
Murray describes how she rethought her teaching about the Civil Rights movement to align pedagogically with Ella Baker's ideals, relying on the critical role of colleagues and traditional local leadership in creating and sustaining change.