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Telling only one story of civil rights marginalizes the voices we ignore. It also prevent us from doing exactly what the story of civil rights is supposed to teach us to do―fight for justice in our own communities as those before us did.

Every now and again, a student will say something that leaves me speechless and desperate for the correct response. I can feel in my bones that the moment is about to become pivotal. One of these moments came while we were reading Katherine Paterson’s novel The Great Gilly Hopkins, in which the main character deals with her racism. We were in the process of analyzing her character, her motivations and her racist attitudes, and I could tell that my sixth-graders didn’t really understand the theme of racism, so I needed to step away from the novel for a moment and put the history in context for them.

“So, there aren’t any girls in the book?” Find out how an English teacher answered this student question—and fit the male-centered Lord of the Flies into a classroom focused on voices traditionally left in the margins.

This excerpt accompanies the Teaching Tolerance lesson "Pauli Murray: Fighting Jane and Jim Crow."

Using activist memoirs can help students understand how people effected change in the past—and how young people can effect change now.