This Resource includes films covering topics such as historical events, social justice, documentaries,slave narratives, materials on PBS Learning Media for all grades, which includes free curatedstandards-aligned videos, interactives and lesson plans and contains grade level topics of interest.This Resource also contains the Smithsonian NAAHC "Civil Rights History Project." There are alsovarious audiovisual resources on Wisconsin African American History and "Women of theMovement."   

This lesson is geared towards middle school students; the time period covered is Black America
during the 20th century with the design of understanding who these famous African American
people were and what they might have to say about the state of Black Americans in Wisconsin
based on their lived experiences.

This resource is a list of audio books, videos and lesson plans that support students’ development of an accurate, integrative, and comprehensive knowledge of our nation’s history with a focus on the critical role African Americans played and continue to play in our country’s development. 

This resource features suggested books for 5th grade that support students’ development of an accurate, integrative, and comprehensive knowledge of our nation’s history with a focus on the critical role African Americans played and continue to play in our country’s development. 

This resource features transformative learning strategies for 5th grade that support students’ development of an accurate, integrative, and comprehensive knowledge of our nation’s history with a focus on the critical role African Americans played and continue to play in our country’s development. 

The Voting Rights Act of 1965--called "the most successful civil rights law in the nation's history" by Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights--was enacted in order to force Southern states and localities to allow all citizens of voting age to vote in public elections. Although the 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, guaranteed citizens the right to vote regardless of race, discriminatory requirements, such as literacy tests, disenfranchised many African Americans in the South. In 1965, following the murder of a voting rights activist by an Alabama sheriff's deputy and the subsequent attack by state troopers on a massive protest march in Selma, President Lyndon B. Johnson pressed Congress to pass a voting rights bill with "teeth". The Act, signed into law on August 6, applied to states or counties where fewer than half of the citizens of voting age were registered in 1964--Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Virginia, and numerous counties in North Carolina. For these areas, the law banned literacy tests, appointed Federal examiners to oversee election procedures, and, according to the Act's controversial Section 5, required approval by the U.S. Attorney General of future changes to election laws. In the following letter to a 1969 Senate subcommittee hearing on extending the Act, New Jersey Senator Harrison A. Williams, Jr., provided statistics to show the law's effect. The position described in the letter was Attorney General John Mitchell's proposal to replace Section 5 with an oversight mechanism more amenable to the white South. Ultimately, on June 22, 1970, President Richard M. Nixon signed into law a bill that extended the Act's provisions--including Section 5--for five additional years, and in addition, lowered the voting age throughout the country to 18.

Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) uses historic places in National Parks and in the National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places to enliven history, social studies, geography, civics, and other subjects. TwHP has created a variety of products and activities that help teachers bring historic places into the classroom.

Here you’ll find place-based educational resources relating to African American history and culture; including lesson plans and "Curiosity Kits" that are a series of articles that students can read individually or in a small group, in order to spark historical thinking.

The National Humanities center presents reading guides with primary source materials for the study of the British Atlantic Colonies 1690-1763: Becoming American. Primary source materials include letters, pamphlets, journals, newspapers, maps, paintings, poems, and more. Resources are divided into the topics: Growth, Peoples, Economies, Ideas, and American.

This lesson is geared towards middle school students. Civic engagement with African American
Wisconsinites as classroom speakers is the focus.

The summer of 1919 saw over 20 race riots break out across the United States. Chicago was the site of particularly high violence. In this lesson, students deliberate the origins of the Chicago race riots by exploring five documents (both primary and secondary) that reflect different social, cultural, and economic causes.

Making Evidence-Based Claims ELA/Literacy Units empower students with a critical reading and writing skill at the heart of the Common Core: making evidence-based claims about complex texts. These units are part of the Developing Core Proficiencies Program. This unit develops students' abilities to make evidence-based claims through activities based on a close reading of the Nobel Peace Prize Speeches of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and President Barack Obama.

Making Evidence-Based Claims ELA/Literacy Units empower students with a critical reading and writing skill at the heart of the Common Core: making evidence-based claims about complex texts. These units are part of the Developing Core Proficiencies Program. This unit develops students€' abilities to make evidence-based claims through activities based on a close reading of the first chapter of W.E.B. Du Bois€' The Souls of Black Folk.

Reframing American History is a resource guide for kindergarten through twelfth grade teachers, curriculum specialists and administrators.  The attached resources support the development of an accurate, integrative, and comprehensive social studies and history curriculum model that focuses on the critical role African Americans played in our country’s development with a focus on three goals.Reframing American History is a resource guide for kindergarten through twelfth grade teachers, curriculum specialists and administrators.  The attached resources support the development of an accurate, integrative, and comprehensive social studies and history curriculum model that focuses on the critical role African Americans played in our country’s development with a focus on three goals. Goal 1 focuses on easy access to a diverse group of vetted resources in support of a social studies curriculum for grades K through 12 that is inclusive and developmentally appropriate; one that highlights the experiences and contributions of African Americans since they are integral to the origins and development of the United States as well as Wisconsin. Goal 2 ensures that Wisconsin teachers (those in training as well as those currently teaching in the classroom) will have essential historical knowledge of African Americans, their history, and experiences as they relate to our country’s development. Evidenced-based instructional methods and materials will be made available to teachers to support their ability to foster their students’ learning in a positive and nurturing manner.  Goal 3 focuses on ensuring that all Wisconsin public school students graduate with the essential knowledge and skills that will prepare them to work and live in our racially and culturally diverse world. Fortified with this knowledge, they will be able to create an equitable and just society. 

The National Humanities center presents this collection of essays by leading scholars on the topic 'Divining America: Religion in American History'. The Essays explore religion in America in the 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. The essays consider Native American religion, African American Christianity, the American Jewish experience, Mormonism, Catholicism, and Islam. They explore religious movements such as the Great Awakenings, the missionary movement, abolitionism, and fundamentalism. Topics like deism, pluralism, church and state separation, Manifest Destiny, and the Christian Right are also examined.

This is another free digital course for students to use through EVERFI. Once assigned by the teacher, students can work through the modules at their own pace, or only be assigned some of them. It is a follow-up to the 306: Digital African American History Curriculum, and focuses on more modern day issues:

1. Introduction- Counter Storytelling, Black History Before Slavery, Definition of Systemic Racism
2. Untold Stories- Juneteenth, Affirmative Action, LA Riots, Ferguson Protests, Million Man March, 2020 March on Washington, Black Lives Matter Movement
3. Black Business Titans-Golden Age of Black Business, Influential Black Business people, O.W.Gurley, Black Wall Street, Tulsa Race Massacre
4. Black Contributions to Medicine- Racial Inequities in Healthcare, Black Medical Trailblazers, Historical & Modern Racial Discrimination of Black People in Medical Practice

EVERFI is a free online learning platform that provides free digital mini-courses to K-12 teachers. You will need to create an account, but then all access is free! This course can be assigned to students to work on individually, and will score assessments. It divides African American History into 4 periods, followed by a summative capstone essay:

1. Slavery Period: Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, Phyllis Wheatley, Underground Railroad
2. Emancipation & Reconstruction Period: Frederick Douglass, Hiram Revels
3. Jim Crow Period: Tuskegee Institute, W.E.B. Du Bois, Harlem Renaissance
4. Civil Rights Period & Beyond: Brown v. Board of Education, Montgomery Bus Boycott, Freedom Rides,
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Mae Jemison
5. Capstone Essay

The National Humanities center presents this collection of essays by leading scholars on the topic ŇFreedomŐs Story: Teaching African American Literature and HistoryÓ. Topics include the affect of slavery on families, slave resistance, how to read slave narratives, Frederick Douglass, reconstruction, segregation, pigmentocracy, protest poetry, jazz, the Harlem Renaissance, the Civil Rights Movement, and more.

The National Humanities center presents reading guides with primary source materials for the study of America in 1870 - 1912: The Gilded and the Gritty. Primary source materials include poems, paintings, essays, stories, articles, speeches, court cases, cartoons, and more. Resources are divided into the topics: Memory, Progress, People, Power, and Empire.

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History houses primary source documents and quality lesson plans. This link connects teachers to 31 pre-made lesson plans aimed at 9-12 grade students in relation to African American HIstory and the use of primary sources. You will need to create an account, but all resources are free.

In this video from ThinkTV Dayton, learn about Harriet Beecher Stowe and the basis of her famous book, Uncle Tom's Cabin, that documented racial injustice before the Civil War.