Season 3: The Civil Rights Movement
Season 3 focuses on the Black freedom struggle — or the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. In each episode we explore a different topic, walking you through historical concepts, raising questions for discussion, suggesting useful source material and offering practical classroom exercises. Teaching the civil rights movement accurately and effectively requires deconstructing the myths and misconceptions around it. (This season originally aired in 2021.)
Please note that podcast episodes are currently being updated to highlight essential ideas from each episode along with teaching recommendations and additional resources. All podcast episodes and transcripts are still available.
Episode 1: Reframing the Movement
Understanding the Civil Rights Movement requires deconstructing the myths and misconceptions around it. Most people are familiar with a very specific version of the movement that exaggerates government support and denies the existence and persistence of racism outside the South. Julian Bond called this the “master narrative.” In this episode, historian Nishani Frazier helps us unravel the “master narrative,” and social studies teacher Adam Sanchez shares valuable insights and explains how to separate fact from fiction in civil rights teaching.
Episode 2: Beyond the "Master Narrative"
Students don’t enter our classrooms as blank slates. When it comes to the Civil Rights Movement, we often have to help our students unlearn what they think they know while we’re teaching them what actually happened. The people were more complex, the strategies more complicated and the stakes more dangerous than we like to remember. In this episode, historian Nishani Frazier and social studies teacher Adam Sanchez demonstrate the value of teaching the movement from the grassroots up.
Episode 3: A Playlist for the Movement
Music chronicles the history of the civil rights struggle: The events, tactics and emotions of the movement are documented in songs of the era. From The Freedom Singers to Sam Cooke, historian Charles L. Hughes explains how your students can use music for both historical insight and evidence in the classroom.
Episode 4: Jim Crow, Lynching and White Supremacy
Jim Crow was more than signs and separation. It was a system of terror and violence created to control the labor and regulate the behavior of Black people. In this episode, historian Stephen Berrey unpacks the mechanics of racial oppression, the actions white people took—in and beyond the South—to maintain white supremacy, and the everyday ways Black people fought back. And the directors of the film An Outrage join ELA-teacher Ahmariah Jackson to discuss teaching the racial terror of lynching.
Episode 5: Nonviolence and Self-Defense
Armed resistance and nonviolent direct action co-existed throughout the civil rights era. In this episode, three historians confront some comfortable assumptions about nonviolence and self-defense. Wesley Hogan examines the evolution, value and limitations of nonviolence in the movement. Christopher Strain offers a three-part strategy for rethinking this false dichotomy in the classroom. And Akinyele Umoja offers insights about armed resistance from his research in Mississippi.
Episode 6: The Jim Crow North
The Civil Rights Movement was never strictly a Southern phenomenon. To better understand the Jim Crow North, we explore discrimination and Black protest in places like Milwaukee, Omaha, Cleveland and New York. To examine the Black Freedom Movement beyond the South, we examine the Black-led fights to gain access to decent housing, secure quality education and end police brutality in these cities.
Episode 7: Teaching the Movement’s Most Iconic Figure
You cannot teach the Civil Rights Movement without talking about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But it’s critical that students deconstruct the mythology surrounding the movement’s most iconic figure to learn about the man, not just the hero. The real Dr. King held beliefs that evolved over time. A complex man, he was part of a much larger movement—one that shaped him as much as he shaped it.
Episode 8: Connecting Slavery With the Civil Rights Movement
To fully understand the United States today, we have to comprehend the central role that slavery played in our nation’s past. That legacy is also the foundation for understanding the Civil Rights Movement and its place within the history of the Black freedom struggle. This episode is a special look back at our first season. It explores and expands on the 10 Key Concepts that ground Learning for Justice’s K-12 frameworks for teaching the hard history of American slavery.
Episode 9: The Real Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott
Everyone thinks they know the story, but the real history of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott is even better. This episode details the events that set the stage for Ms. Parks’ civil disobedience. You’ll meet the leaders and organizations who transformed a moment of activism into a 13-month campaign. And you’ll learn about the community that held fast in the face of legal and political attacks, economic coercion, intimidation and violence.
Episode 10: Making a Scene: The Movement in Literature and Film
From the hard work of organizing to the reality of everyday life under Jim Crow, films and literature can bring historical context to life for students. In this episode, we recommend several “must use” films, books, poems and plays for teaching the Civil Rights Movement. We also discuss strategies for incorporating these works across the curricula and for turning even problematic texts into grist for meaningful critical discussions.
Episode 11: Young, Gifted and Black: Teaching Freedom Summer to K-5 Students
Teaching civil rights history to young learners creates both opportunities and challenges. The 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer Project and the subsequent Freedom Schools offer important lessons for helping elementary students to understand the Civil Rights Movement. In this episode, we explore community-based strategies and activities for bringing the Black freedom struggle into your classroom.
Episode 12: Listen, Look and Learn: Using Primary Sources to Teach the Freedom Struggle
Oral histories, historic sites, archives and museums expand students’ understanding of the past. They fill in gaps in our textbooks—complementing what’s included and capturing what’s not. This episode highlights online oral history collections including the Civil Rights History Project. It offers recommendations for students conducting their own oral histories. And it explores resources from the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.
Episode 13: Community Organizing, Youth Leadership and SNCC
In this episode, we talk with movement veteran Courtland Cox about lessons from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and his own development as a young organizer of the Emmett Till generation. We join Karlyn Forner and John B. Gartrell to tour the resources available through SNCC Digital Gateway. And we hear from student organizer Kaia Woodford about the lessons from the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements that inform her activism today.
Episode 14: Malcolm X Beyond the Mythology
Historian Clarence Lang joins us for a conversation about Malcolm X. We discuss his commitment to Black pride and self-determination and his rejection of the white gaze and the myth of American exceptionalism. Learn how teaching about the life and works of Malcolm X can illuminate the universe of possibilities of the Civil Rights Movement—and the diversity of ideology, strategy and political thought within the Black freedom struggle.
Episode 15: The Black Panther Party and the Transition to Black Power
The history of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense can help us understand the transition from civil rights to Black Power and contemporary issues like mass incarceration. From the Ten-Point Platform to survival programs, historian Robyn C. Spencer outlines key aspects of the party’s revolutionary ideology, grassroots activism and community service. And historian Jakobi Williams joins to share valuable classroom insights.
Episode 16: Walking in Their Shoes: Using #BlackLivesMatter to Teach the Civil Rights Movement
The Civil Rights Movement offers critical context for understanding the systemic police violence, voter suppression efforts, ‘law and order’ rhetoric and criminalization of activism we see today. It also helps us understand the strategies activists use to fight these injustices. Historians Shannon King and Nishani Frazier explain how they use 21st-century Black activism to teach the movement’s history—and how they use the movement to help students better understand the contemporary Black freedom struggle.
Episode 17: Baseball, Civil Rights and the Anderson Monarchs Barnstorming Tour
In 2015, Coach Steve Bandura loaded the Anderson Monarchs, a Little League baseball team from Philadelphia, onto a 1947 Flxible Clipper Bus for a barnstorming tour back in time. Bandura and the players recount lessons learned while visiting historic civil rights sites, meeting veteran activists and playing baseball along the way. And historian Derrick E. White, co-host of The Black Athlete podcast, explores the intersection of sports and civil rights history.
Checking In: Listener Feedback and Discussing the U.S. Capitol Attack
If you're finding this podcast useful, please support us by taking our 10 question Listener Survey. And stay tuned! More episodes are on the way. In the meantime, if you're looking for ways to talk with students about the relationship between the hard history of white supremacy and the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Learning for Justice resources can help you lead student-responsive, historically grounded discussions about the recent violence.
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