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

Featured

Voting Rights History Quiz

Quiz by Teaching for Change
We’ve all seen the iconic image of President Lyndon Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But what do we know of the history that led to the signing of the legislation? This quiz can challenge assumptions, deepen understanding, and inspire further learning about the voting rights struggle.

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.

Murder Mystery: Shining a Light on the Story That the Newspapers Left Out

Lesson by Allyson Criner Brown, Deborah Menkart, and Jenice L. View
The murder of Mississippi voting rights activist Herbert Lee, and subsequent murder of witness Louis Allen, were key events in the history of the modern Civil Rights Movement. However, they were barely mentioned in the local press at the time and the story is missing from textbooks and public memory today.

Exploring the History of Freedom Schools

Lesson by Deborah Menkart and Jenice L. View
This lesson uses primary documents to introduce the history and philosophy of Freedom Schools. The lesson is inquiry-based, hands-on, and engages students in critical reflection. Therefore, students learn about Freedom Schools not only from the readings, but they also experience the pedagogy.

What Would You Do? Students Grapple with Risks Faced by Voting Rights Activists

Lesson by Cristina Tosto
Students come to understand the level of bravery displayed by local activists and ordinary people in Mississippi when they simply completed a voter registration form by imagining themselves in the role of someone who lived during the modern Civil Rights Movement. The names of the activists are revealed after they’ve considered what they might do in the role they’ve been given.

Who Gets to Vote? Teaching About the Struggle for Voting Rights in the United States

Lesson by Ursula Wolfe-Rocca
Unit with three lessons on voting rights, including the history of the struggle against voter suppression in the United States.

Stepping into Selma: Voting Rights History and Legacy Today

Lesson by Deborah Menkart
This lesson invites students to step into the long history of the freedom struggle in Selma, introducing them to people, turning points, and issues.

Meet Medgar Evers: Introduction to the Southern Freedom Movement

Lesson by Deborah Menkart and Jenice L. View
Medgar Wiley Evers was one of Mississippi’s most impassioned activists, orators, and visionaries for equality and against brutality. This is an interactive lesson to introduce students to his work and inspire them to learn more.

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?

History Detectives: Voting Rights in Mississippi, 1964

Lesson by Deborah Menkart and Jenice L. View
This lesson introduced students to the history, strategies, and challenges facing by people in Mississippi in their struggle for voting rights in the early 1960s.

Sharecroppers Challenge U.S. Apartheid

Lesson by Sara Evers, Julian Hipkins III, Deborah Menkart, and Jenice L. View
This lesson explores one of the most important events in the fight for true democracy in the U.S., when a coalition of grassroots activists challenged the Mississippi political system, the federal government, and the national Democratic Party to abide by the U.S. Constitution.

Freedom Song: Tactics for Transformation

Lesson by Alana Murray
Freedom Song is by far one of the best films for secondary students about the Civil Rights Movement. Aimed primarily at secondary students, this lesson seeks to provide students with the critical viewing skills needed to analyze the complex interplay between oppression and resistance in the Civil Rights Movement.

Teaching With Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, & Insisted on Equality for All

Lesson by Ursula Wolfe-Rocca
Students engage in an interactive activity with short excerpts from Martha Jones’ book to learn about the leading role of Black women in the fight for voting rights throughout U.S. history.

Readings

Featured

Murder of Reverend George W. Lee

Reading by Zinn Education Project
Rev. George Washington Lee, one of the first African Americans registered to vote in Humphreys County, Mississippi since Reconstruction, used his pulpit and his printing press to urge others to vote. He was murdered on May 7, 1955.

Ten Things You Should Know About Selma Before You See the Film

Reading by Emilye Crosby
Key points in the history of the Selma voting rights struggle to keep in mind as you view the popular film about the Selma-to-Montgomery March.

Brief Outline of the History of SNCC

Reading by Jenice L. View
SNCC is credited with many of the most innovative and effective fronts of the Civil Rights Movement. Here is a brief outline of SNCC's history.

“Is This America?” 50 Years Ago Sharecroppers Challenged Mississippi Apartheid, LBJ, and the Nation

Reading by Julian Hipkins III and Deborah Menkart
The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party arrived at the 1965 Democratic Party Convention in Atlantic City on a bus with more than 60 sharecroppers, farmers, housewives, teachers, maids, deacons, ministers, factory workers, and small-business owners. Students can learn from the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party about how to take on the Goliaths in politics.

Literacy and Liberation

Reading by Septima P. Clark
The role of freedom schools and the Highlander Center in breaking down barriers and building leadership in the African American community.

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.

Sheyann Webb: A Story for First Grade

Reading by Maggie Donovan
First-grade teacher and SNCC veteran Maggie Donovan wrote this story about Sheyann Webb to introduce her students to the role of young people (like themselves) in the Civil Rights Movement.

Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act

Reading by Emilye Crosby
This text explains how the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act addressed distinct forms of racial discrimination. It 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.

Civil Rights Movement Tactics

Reading by Emilye Crosby
This text explores how the Civil Rights Movement utilized a range of tactics to address different problems. It 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.

Dallas County Voters League

Reading by Holly Jansen
An excerpt from Jansen’s Florida State University dissertation, “From Selma To Montgomery: Remembering Alabama’s Civil Rights Movement Through Museums.

Vernon F. Dahmer: Civil Rights Martyr and American Hero

Reading by Joyce Ladner
These remarks were prepared by sociologist and SNCC veteran Joyce Ladner for a commemoration of Vernon Dahmer on January 8, 2016, hosted by the Clarion Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi.

Mississippi Freedom Schools: A Project from the Past Suggests a Lesson for the Future

Reading by David Levine
The heart of the Freedom School endeavor, the source of its vivid and creative energy, was the insistence of its planners and teachers that learning could (and should) be shaped to serve a liberation struggle.

Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO) Political Context

Reading by Emilye Crosby
Political context for the formation of the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO). This text is provided as background information for “A Documents-Based Lesson on the Voting Rights Act.”

Mississippi at Atlantic City

Reading by Charles M. Sherrod
In 1964, a year after Birmingham’s fire hoses were unleashed on Black children and a year before the March from Selma to Montgomery, SNCC decided to upgrade their protracted work in Mississippi.

U.S. Flag An Act of Defiance for Voting Rights Activists

Resource by Matt Herron
The simple act of a small child carrying an American flag represented defiance of Mississippi law and custom.

The 1965 Mississippi Congressional Challenge

Reading
On January 4, 1965, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) challenged the seating of representatives from Mississippi at the convening of the 89th Congress.

Colia Liddell Lafayette Clark

Reading
Colia L. Clark, a committed Pan Africanist, has spent a lifetime in activist work in the areas of civil rights, human rights, womens rights, workers rights and rights for the homeless and youth.

The Selma Voting Rights Struggle: 15 Key Points from Bottom-Up History and Why It Matters Today

Reading by Emilye Crosby
Today, issues of racial equity and voting rights are front and center in the lives of young people. There is much they can learn from an accurate telling of the Selma (Dallas County) voting rights campaign and the larger Civil Rights Movement.

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.

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.

Freedom Fighter: The Life and Legacy of Ms. Dorie Ladner

Interview by Maestra Productions
Dorie Ladner was a passionate civil rights activist and leader in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) from Hattiesburg, Mississippi. This interview about her life was conducted in 2017 by Maestra Productions in collaboration with Bowie State University Department of Fine and Performing Arts and Teaching for Change.