This lesson focuses on questions of justice and the role youth have played in social and political movements. By reading a combination of primary and secondary sources, students will learn how the Little Rock Nine came to play their important role. These teenagers’ participation in school integration stemmed not from the prodding of the parents or activists, but from within themselves.
Heather A. O'Connell is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University, and a recent graduate from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Her work contributes to understandings of race and racial inequalities in the United States by examining differences across places. This spatial lens has led to a focus on processes connected to racial composition, history, region, and migration.
The start of the school year is an important time to remember that names have meaning—whether they belong to monuments, mountains or to your own students.
When Idaho Rep. Brent Crane characterized Rosa Parks as a champion of states’ rights in a recent debate, it was a troubling sign of what happens when a nation doesn’t work hard to remember its history.
David W. Blight is Class of 1954 Professor of American History and director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition at Yale University. He is the author of Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, forthcoming from Simon and Schuster. Learn more about his work here.
Students conduct interviews and record personal experiences focused on a specific theme. They synthesize and present the information as a drawing, poster, paragraph or bulletin board.
Building Your Knowledge Learn more about Native Americans. First, encourage students to take a short quiz to see what they already know (or don’t know) about Native American Influences in U.S. History and Culture. Oral