When President Eisenhower authorized troops under federal authority to desegregate Little Rock Central High School in 1957, he became the first president since Reconstruction to use federal forces to help enforce equal rights for African Americans. Using the example of Executive Order 10730, students will explore how executive orders can be used to enforce the law and examine how Eisenhower justified his actions.

In response to the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, the NAACP selected nine African American students to attempt to integrate the all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. After the students were prevented from attending the school by the governor and mobs of segregationists, President Eisenhower ordered the 101st Airborne to escort the students into campus. But what was school like for students once they arrived? In this lesson, students examine five documents to learn about the experiences of one student, Minnijean Brown, in desegregating Central High School.

The National Humanities center presents reading guides with primary source materials for the study of The Making of African American Identity, Volume 2: 1865-1917. Primary source materials include paintings, sculpture, narratives, autobiographies, short stories, essays, songs, letters, poems, photographs, interviews, and more. Sources are divided into the topics: Freedom, Identity, Institutions, Politics, and Forward.

In this lesson, students will watch a video about Dr. King that emphasizes his commitment to nonviolence. They will then examine and analyze a 1956 flyer and a 1966 photograph that illustrate King’s approach to maintaining nonviolence. The lesson culminates with a comparison to other leaders who have been consistently nonviolent in spite of great personal risk.

Enhance your classroom experience on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Day with these teacher-tested lessons from the nationally recognized We the People: The Citizen & the Constitution curriculum. These materials will help inform your students about the national struggle for civil rights and equal protection under the law.

Melba Patillo Beals was one of nine black students who desegregated Little Rock's Central High School in 1957. In this interview, recorded for Eyes on the Prize, Beals describes her tumultuous experience.

Sylvia Mendez recalls the conditions that led Mexican Americans to sue for desegregation in the 1940s in this segment from Mendez vs. Westminster: Para Todos los Ninos/For All the Children, from KOCE-TV.

This assessment gauges students’ ability to contextualize two historical documents and place them in the correct chronological order. Document A is a passage from a press conference held by the Chicano Moratorium Committee in 1970. Document B is an interview with a Mexican American farmworker in 1941. This assessment draws on students' knowledge about Mexican American rights in a way that goes beyond the simple recall of facts and dates. In this assessment, students must show that they have a broad understanding of how Mexican American rights changed over time and demonstrate the ability to use knowledge about the past to place the two documents in context.

In this assessment, students who correctly contextualize the documents will see that Document B, which describes segregation between whites and Mexican Americans, was likely written before Document A, a press conference held by the Chicano Moratorium Committee.

During the 1960s, Milwaukee’s African-American community waged protests, organized boycotts, and fought legislative battles against segregation and discriminatory practices in schools, housing, and social clubs. This exhibits provides highlights from the March on Milwaukee Civil Rights History Project (https://uwm.edu/marchonmilwaukee/), a digital collection that features primary sources including photographs, unedited news film footage, text documents, and oral history interviews from the Milwaukee Area Research Center at the UW-Milwaukee Libraries as well as a detailed timeline and bibliography.

This lesson is designed for middle school students to get an understanding of how things have
changed (or not) over time as it pertains to strengths, perseverance and oppression related to
African Americans over time. The time period is from then (whenever then is depicted in the
films) and present day African American culture.

This video segment, adapted from NOVA, shows the racial violence sparked when the African American chemist Percy Julian and his family moved into an exclusive Chicago suburb in 1950.

This DBQuest has students explore and analyze primary source documents about the Nashville Sit-Ins of 1960. These primary documents will give students basic understanding of segregation and some of the non-violent actions taken during the Civil Right Movement during the 1960s..

Instructor Notes: Teachers can assign this content to their students in iCivics account and then Clicking the Assign button on this activity. Teachers will then have the option to add a Class into iCivics OR Sync a roster from Google Classroom. This will allow teachers to see student's responses. There are also Downloadable Resources available to support this learning activity.

In 1967, riots triggered by episodes of police brutality and harassment of African Americans erupted in over 150 U.S. cities. President Johnson asked Congress to investigate, and the result was the Kerner Commission report, which stated: “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white, separate and unequal.” The report highlighted shortages of jobs, inadequate education, discrimination, and harsh police tactics. In this lesson students will look at the report’s findings, and how ignoring them had an impact that continues today.

Content Advisory:
This video includes footage of police violence.

In this transcript of an interview for Eyes on the Prize, the Reverend C. T. Vivian remembers his leadership role in the Civil Rights Movement and the risks civil rights activists took in challenging segregation.

Despite the fact that they were written in the late 19th century, morality laws were still on the books in the United States in 1965. In Connecticut, one such law prohibited the discussion, prescription and distribution of contraception. After years of trying to get the courts to scrub this law from the books, medical providers had to find a way to get the question before the highest court in the land. It wouldn’t be easy, but in the end the case would transform our notion of privacy and the role of the Supreme Court when it comes to public law.

Renee Cramer of Drake University and Elizabeth Lane of Louisiana State are our guides.

In this video segment, recorded for Eyes on the Prize, activist Robert Moses talks about the Mississippi voting rights campaign.

In this video segment, produced for the Levine Museum of the New South, Joseph De Laine Jr. and Ophelia De Laine Gona describe conditions in segregated South Carolina schools.

This website is interactive, allowing students to work through 7 different "chapters" that detail the events leading up to, during and impact of the March on Selma. It includes primary source video clips, photographs, quotations, and clips from the movie, "Selma". Students can do one, or multiple of the chapters, or the site could be used as a jigsaw with different groups. Includes teacher's guide.

This segment from American Experience: Simple Justice explores the dynamics and arguments among the Supreme Court justices who ruled in Brown v. Board of Education.

This section is intended to supplement the curricula, textbooks, and materials you currently use for lessons on the civil rights struggle. The teacher-developed resources in the section will enhance the classroom experience for both you and your students.
Explore the variety of teaching strategies and guidelines, lesson plans and document-based questions (DBQs), and information about museum objects and other primary sources. You might get started by showing the video, in which Smithsonian curators examine a photograph of civil rights leader Medgar Evers. You can then help the students examine other historic photographs.