Massive Resistance through Political Cartoons

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This website features 4th graders analyzing two political cartoons from the Richmond Times-Dispatch about Virginia's reaction to the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. This standards-based lesson guides students in exploring the Virginia state policy of massive resistance to school desegregation. This video provides examples of two promising practices:

  • Modeling careful analysis of a primary source while practicing historical thinking with young students;
  • Using scaffolding and concrete instructional strategies to guide students in shaping meaning out of multiple primary sources.
The Lesson in Action

Video of the lesson shows the teacher modeling primary source analysis with the first cartoon and students working in pairs to interpret a second on their own. Both cartoons—one published in 1954 and the other in 1958—are drawn by Fred O. Siebel. They use similar imagery and symbolism, helping students analyze the second cartoon and compare the two. Through effective scaffolding and modeling of historical thinking skills, the teacher engages students in thinking about complex historical questions of equality, fairness, and the power of federal and state governments. The lesson concludes with a class discussion of each group's findings and what their analysis means in relation to Virginia and public school desegregation.

Through effective scaffolding and modeling of historical thinking skills, the teacher engages students in thinking about complex historical questions of equality, fairness, and the power of federal and state governments.

This lesson comes at the end of a unit on civil rights, segregation, desegregation, and massive resistance in Virginia. Students at this point have an understanding of segregation, Jim Crow laws, and the individuals Thurgood Marshal and former Virginia Governor Harry F. Bird, Sr. The teacher uses primary sources in this lesson to assess and review students' understandings of school desegregation and Byrd's Massive Resistance response to the Supreme Court order to integrate schools. At the same time, she engages students in thinking about historical questions of fairness, equality, and reactions to change. You can find a comprehensive lesson plan, complete with primary sources, background information, and classroom worksheets, on the website.

Land of (Unequal) Opportunity

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While many are familiar with the 1957 Little Rock High School integration crisis, far fewer students of U.S. civil rights history may be aware of the longer history of that struggle in Arkansas. This website includes more than 460 documents and images, including cartoons, court decisions, photographs, newspaper articles, letters, and essays related to that history. For example, an essay on the meaning of relocation written by a high school student at Arkansas's Jerome Relocation Center in 1943 brings a more personal perspective to the story of internment, as the student describes the ways in which members of her community have struggled between the "fighting spirit" and the "giving up spirit." Users new to civil rights history in Arkansas may want to begin with the extensive timeline that describes events from the arrival of slaves in Arkansas in the 1720s to a 2006 State Supreme Court ruling that struck down a ban on gays serving as foster parents. The website also includes 10 lesson plans geared for middle school students that make use of the website's resources—such as a speech given by Governor Oral Fabus in 1958. An extensive bibliography of secondary sources related to many aspects of civil rights, including African American, gay and lesbian, and women's issues, Japanese relocation, religious intolerance, political rights, and anti-civil liberties groups and issues, is also available.

Wisconsin Historical Society: Freedom's Journal

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Freedom's Journal, published weekly in New York City between 1827 and 1829, was the first African American owned and operated newspaper in the U.S. This website presents digitized copies of all 102 issues of Freedom's Journal, available for download in PDF format. In the pages of this newspaper, visitors will find regional, national, and international news, anti-slavery and anti-lynching editorials, and biographies of prominent African Americans, as well as items of interest to New York's African American community, such as obituaries, births, and marriages. The website also provides several links to additional resources on the black press, including a brief biography of Freedom's Journal and a piece by one of the newspaper's subscription agents: David Walker's 1829 Appeal, which called for slaves to revolt against their masters, and is "arguably the most radical of all anti-slavery documents."

The Whole World Was Watching: An Oral History of 1968

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This site contains transcripts, audio recordings, and edited stories from interviews, conducted in the spring of 1998 by sophomores at South Kingstown High School, with 31 Rhode Islanders about their recollections of the year 1968. These narratives, including references to the Vietnam War, Civil Rights movement, and the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, as well as personal memories, are a living history of one of the most tumultuous years in United States history. The project includes a glossary, timeline, and bibliography of reference, as well as notes from the project coordinators about oral history in the classroom.

The Crisis of the Union

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This archive contains material related to "the causes, conduct, and consequences of the U.S. Civil War." The collection contains more than 220 books, broadsides, cartoons, pamphlets, and other printed material from 1830 to 1880. The entire archive can be browsed by author, date of publication, title, or subject. Abstracts of the titles are available. Using a built-in viewer, each document can be viewed in its original format (or downloaded in PDF form), and visitors can zoom in or out.

Visitors may browse issues of William Lloyd Garrison's The Liberator, peruse the 1852 Proceedings of the Democratic National Convention, or view dozens of Thomas Nast cartoons. Finally, visitors can also search the entire archive by keyword, subject, graphic element, or date. Visitors looking for comprehensive Civil War, Abolition, or Reconstruction sites will find more complete collections elsewhere; but this site's convenience, as well as its collection of early-19th-century tracts, make this a valuable resource.

Civil Rights Oral History Interviews: Spokane, Washington

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Produced as a part of a series of articles on black history titled "Through Spokane's Eyes: Moments in Black History," this site is a civil rights oral history project organized around the memories of men and women from Spokane, WA. Visitors can listen to of eight oral history interviews. They include an account by Jerrelene Williamson who compares the civil rights movement in Spokane to events in Alabama. Like most of the interviews, Williamson's dialogue is approximately 10 minutes in length. Emelda and Manuel Brown discuss their experiences with racial prejudice within the context of raising a family in Spokane in the 1960s. Their interview (32 minutes) is the second longest within the collection. Like many others within the project, Clarence Freeman shares his remembrances of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. Sam Minnix and Verda Lofton describe the local civil rights demonstrations, and Flip Schulke recounts his experiences as a photographer in the south during the 1960s. His interview includes a discussion of James Meredith's admission into the University of Mississippi and at 45 minutes, is the longest. Alvin Pitmon talks about the desegregation of Arkansas schools and Nancy Nelson sings two civil rights spirituals, "My Lord, What a Morning" and "Let Us Break Bread Together."

A search engine allows users to search interviews by keyword and across database topics. This site will be of great interest to those interested in the history of civil rights in the United States.

Lift Every Voice: Music in American Life

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An exhibit of music and documents that "commemorates and celebrates a variety of songs that were a part of everyday American life through the centuries." Includes 18 audio excerpts lasting approximately one minute each of representative ballads, hymns and spirituals, patriotic odes, minstrel tunes, songs from musicals, protest songs, and songs about the state of Virginia. Clips include performances by Woody Guthrie, Paul Robeson, Lead Belly, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Bob Dylan, and the Beatles. Accompanied by a 10,500-word essay arranged by types of music and interspersed with more than 100 historical documents, including manuscripts, illustrations, photographs, hymn books, songsters, portraits, posters, sheet music covers, album covers, and record labels. A "Virginiana" section provides material from Thomas Jefferson's library to illustrate his interest in music. The site is a good introduction for those interested in understanding historical roles, functions, and uses of music by various American groups.

History Through Deaf Eyes

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An exhibit of 60 images, mostly photographs, and a 2,500-word essay that presents a social history of deaf community life in the U.S. from the early 19th century to the present. Covers education, the development of American Sign Language, the "silent press," deaf people in the workplace, media portrayals, deaf clubs, activism, and technological developments. Also includes material on a few historical figures such as the Reverend Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Alexander Graham Bell. Hosted by the National Deaf Life Museum, the website also has links to educational resources and the Through Deaf Eyes documentary film produced by Florentine Films/Hott Productions and WETA, Washington, DC, in association with Gallaudet University. A solid introduction to the history of deaf people in America.

We Shall Overcome: Historic Places of the Civil Rights Movement

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A "National Registry of Historic Places Travel Itinerary" covering 42 places of significance with regard to the postwar African-American civil rights movement. Churches, colleges, private homes, places of business, neighborhoods, and government offices, primarily located in the South, are each described in 300-word entries illustrated with one or two photographs. An introductory 5,000-word essay offers a narrative history of the movement with annotations to specific sites. Focuses on the 1950s and 1960s, with no attempt to cover civil rights struggles of groups other than African Americans. A few sites cover events and persons active prior to the 1950s, such as Ida B. Wells's home in Chicago and the W. E. B. Du Bois Homesite in Great Barrington, MA.

Users can access sites from a map of the U.S. or by a list organized by states. Information for visiting each site is also provided, as is a list of 39 related websites and a 34-title bibliography. The site's creators note that the places were nominated by states and thus "do not represent a systematic effort to survey, identify, and list all important civil rights sites in the National Register." A useful way to introduce students to civil rights history.