ABOUT
Putting the Movement Back Into Civil Rights Teaching
This website, a project of Teaching for Change, provides lessons, handouts, news, and resources for teaching about the role of everyday people in the Civil Rights Movement. On the site, you can find handouts and more information about many of the lessons in our book, Putting the Movement Back Into Civil Rights Teaching.
The Civil Rights Movement is celebrated in our national narrative as a people’s struggle for social justice. However, the powerful stories of everyday people organizing and working together for social change are lost in the teaching of a few major heroes and dates. The effect is disempowering for our current and future generations that hope to make the world a better place. Students learn to believe the way that change happens is by following the next “big leader,” instead of an accurate history that emphasizes immense contributions from all people working together to make a difference.
The Putting the Movement Back Into Civil Rights Teaching book and this companion website offer a collection of lessons, essays, articles, primary documents, and poetry to help educators move beyond a "heroes and holidays" approach to teaching about the Civil Rights Movement in K–12 classrooms. The focus is on the themes of women, youth, organizing, culture, institutional racism, and the interconnectedness of social movements. The resources are organized in eight sections: Critiquing the Traditional Narrative, Framing the Movement, Desegregation of Public Spaces, Voting Rights, Black Power, Labor and Land, Transnational Solidarity, and Student Engagement.
Published in 2024 by Teaching for Change, Putting the Movement Back Into Civil Rights Teaching is a teaching resource book that emphasizes the power of people through a diversity of stories, perspectives, essays, photographs, graphics, interviews, and interactive and interdisciplinary lessons. The book includes sections on education, labor, citizenship, culture, and reflections on teaching about the Civil Rights Movement. The rationale and purpose of the book are outlined in the Introduction. The first edition was co-published with PRRAC with a foreword by Congressman John Lewis.
Putting the Movement Back Into Civil Rights Teaching is used in school districts and with community groups across the country.
The first edition of the book on the shelves at the National Museum of African American History & Culture (NMAAHC).
In a collaborative effort to bring this history to the classroom, Teaching for Change is an active partner in the Freedom Movement Educational Initiative. Other collaborators are the SNCC Legacy Project, Civil Rights Movement Veterans (CRMvet.org), Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies, Mississippi NAACP/One Voice, and the Veterans of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement. The goal of this collaboration is:
To develop, promote, and disseminate educational curricula that will preserve and share the history of the struggle for human rights from the point of the view of the people who made the history. This will be done through the lens of the Black Freedom Struggle, which provides a model for how to achieve social change in a democracy — a model that is relevant to the issues faced by people around the world today.
The key sources of history for the collaborative projects are the SNCC Digital Gateway and CRMvet.org. The most recent projects were a 2017 Mississippi teacher institute at Tougaloo College, a 2018 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Teacher Institute at Duke University, and a 2021 NEH Teacher Institute.
In addition, Teaching for Change partners with Rethinking Schools on the Zinn Education Project. The Zinn Education Project provides access to free downloadable lessons on the people's history of the United States from the pre-colonial era to today. These include many lessons and additional resources on the long history of the Civil Rights Movement and related struggles.
ENDORSEMENTS
The updated and revised Putting the Movement Back Into Civil Rights Teaching is a veritable tour de force.
Capturing the challenges and struggles of the people who propelled the movement to success, it provides a bird's eye view of best practices in teaching about one of the most important movements in world history.
From well known figures like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr., to lesser known personalities like Barbara Johns and Edna Griffin, it demonstrates conclusively that movement building required not only bravery and courage, but a deep commitment to developing the skills that would better the lives of all peoples, not just one or two races or ethnicities.
Its mythbusting quizzes, role play exercises, and well thought out writing assignments make it a must for those educators seeking to give their students the tools they need to become active citizens who work to expand the meaning of “liberty and justice for all.” This new version of an old standard will go far in serving not just the school districts, teachers and students who utilize it, but the millions of Americans and other citizens of the world who value truth as a well-worn path to perfecting our precious democracy.
— Curtis Austin, associate professor, Arizona State University
Endorsements for the first edition.
“Breathtaking in its array of interdisciplinary lessons, readings, photographs, primary source documents, and interviews, this fertile resource helps students move beyond the “heroes approach” toward a more critical analysis of the civil rights movement.”
—Social Studies School Service
“Everyone should learn the story of the Civil Rights Movement. The struggle is depicted here vividly and profoundly by a distinguished roster of authors. Their accounts and analysis should inspire teachers as well as students. This book is as academically rigorous as it is innovative—it is an excellent resource.”
—Frank H. Wu
Professor, Howard University Law School and
Author of Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White
“This strong and moving book helps introduce, inform, and illuminate for a new generation the powerful lessons of the civil rights movement for our work today. It will help teachers ‘serve as midwives’ for a more just and caring society.”
—Linda Darling-Hammond
Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education
Stanford University
“Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching gets to the roots of the Movement. It takes the reader beyond the famous leaders, displaying the depth of history, drawing international connections and showing how the pieces of the Movement actually fit together.”
—Bill Fletcher Jr.
President, TransAfrica Forum
“Civil rights teaching should lift up extraordinary leaders whose personal courage and sacrifice transformed our nation and our history. But it should also recognize the thousands of other acts of resistance and civil disobedience—by neighbors, grandmothers, youth, and everyday heroes—that created an unstoppable tidal wave of ethical conscience and human progress. Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching is a unique collection of urgent voices who remind us that true and lasting movements for social, economic, and racial justice begin with you and me.”
—Wendy D. Puriefoy
President, Public Education Network
“Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching helps teachers and students understand the complexities of the change process in society, making the study of history immediately relevant. In this teaching guide, the Civil Rights Movement claims its rightful place as the inspiration for broader movements for democratic change. This book might just help re-inspire a whole new generation of teachers and students to a life of activism and movement building, not to mention help teachers impart a real understanding of history.”
—Mark Simon
Director, MCEA (NEA)
Johns Hopkins University Center For Teacher Leadership
“This is a wonderful resource and will appeal to teachers who want their students to understand that they themselves can play a role in re-making the world.”
—Nancy Murray
Director, Bill of Rights Education Project
ACLU of Massachusetts
“This is a much-needed resource for classrooms, and I think it does succeed in putting the Movement back into civil rights teaching!”
—Enid Lee
Co-editor, Beyond Heroes and Holidays
“It seems to me that the primary strength of this project is its breadth. The book covers a wide range of topics and concerns, including a variety of historical events, several Movement participants, and an array of pedagogical tools and strategies. The combination of lesson plans, historical information, and theoretical analysis makes this a compelling volume. I anticipate that it will be a valuable aid to teachers both in their teaching and in their own understanding of the Movement.”
—Stephen Ward
Assistant Professor, Afro-American and African Studies
University of Michigan
“Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching is one of the only curricula to connect the Civil Rights Movement to the struggles of Native Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and women. It’s an incredible tool not just for teaching history, but also for teaching students to take up the legacy these movements helped to create.”
—Ariana Quinones
Deputy Vice President for Education
National Council of La Raza