Teaching the Civil Rights Movement

We’ve published part ten of our digital textbook for North Carolina history, on postwar North Carolina. It includes 40 pages of primary sources and readings on the Civil Rights Movement and its impact, in addition to chapters on the Vietnam War, the Cold War, postwar life, changes in North Carolina politics since 1960, and other social movements and changes of the 1960s and 1970s. And as with previous modules, the national perspective is built in, so these resources will work just as well in your U.S. history course.

Did you say forty pages?

With so much to choose from on the Civil Rights Movement, where do you begin? Here’s the outline and some highlights:

• Chapter 3, The struggle for civil rights, 1946–1959, covers early protests and strikes, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and the desgregation of the military.
• Chapter 4 covers school desegregation from the 1950s through the 1970s and its impact on students, teachers, and parents.
• Chapter 5, Achieving civil rights, 1960–1965, covers sit-ins, the March on Washington, the Selma-to-Montgomery March, and federal civil and voting rights legislation.
• Additional resources are scattered in later chapters.

Some North Carolina highlights

Here are some pages and topics that will be of particular interest to teachers in North Carolina:

• The Lumbees Face the Klan: In January 1958, the Ku Klux Klan burned crosses on the front lawns of two Indian families in Robeson County, North Carolina. In response, as many as a thousand Lumbees violently broke up a Klan meeting, and the Klan never again met publicly in Robeson County.
• The Greensboro Sit-ins: Contemporary newspaper coverage of the Greensboro sit-ins from the day they began — fifty years ago this Monday, February 1, 1960. Includes historical background and links to more resources on the Web.
• The school desegregation chapter includes oral histories with several North Carolinians about their experiences with various phases of that movement.
• In 1969, Howard Lee became the first African American mayor elected in a predominantly white southern town since Reconstruction.

Civil rights in context

And don’t forget that the struggle for civil rights began long before the 1950s! To teach the Civil Rights Movement in context, you can refer back to earlier sections of our digital textbook:

• Read accounts of African Americans’ efforts to get an education for their children during Reconstruction, through higher education, and through the efforts of reformers like Charlotte Hawkins Brown.
• Until 1900, a few African Americans like George Henry White served North Carolina in Congress.
• Durham’s Black Wall Street was known nationally for its successful black-owned businesses.
• African American soldiers, sailors, and veterans fought for freedom and equal opportunity in the Civil War, Spanish-American War, World War I, and World War II.

Finally, if you have a bit of time, you can browse all pages of the digital textbook on African American history.