Milwaukee, WI, has an important civil rights history that not many people know about. In the 1960s, battles raged here over open housing and school desegregation, and teens led much of the movement. Decades later, we still suffer from racial and economic segregation, but how many of our students can explain why? And what would it mean to them to find out that in 1960s Milwaukee, youth protested such inequality?

In 2010, a project team of archivists, digital librarians, students, and historians launched the March on Milwaukee Civil Rights History Project, an archive of primary sources and contextual materials. But how could we use this resource to help youth learn about their city’s past and feel invested in their communities? This question led to an unlikely partnership between the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee History and Archives Departments; an arts education nonprofit, Arts@Large; and a class of high school students with one very dedicated teacher. I say unlikely for two reasons. First, not everyone would combine social studies curriculum with the arts. Second, digital archives are valued for their accessibility, and instead of scaling our efforts up to reach the widest audience, we went the other way and decided to work closely with a dozen students from a school for at risk youth.

The goal of the project was for students to research, design, and build an exhibition on Milwaukee civil rights history. The students had little background in primary source materials, were not terribly fond of history, and knew nothing about museum studies. We started by bringing the students to the university campus and teaching them how to use primary sources. We directed them to certain sources but we also gave them time to explore the text documents, oral history interviews, film footage, and photographs in the collection. Over time it became clear to the students that the research was necessary for the more personally meaningful parts of the project to occur.

The students then worked very closely with museum educator Linda D’Acquisto, author of Learning on Display. She taught them to think in terms of big questions and ideas that could translate into visual displays. Their teacher, Kelly DiGiacinto, pulled in other resources, including local museums, and the students began to ask if they could interview some of the former activists themselves. It was at this point that the students started taking ownership of the project. Listening to recorded oral history was no longer enough; they wanted to take on the role of historian and start asking their own questions. By the time some of the local activists visited the classroom, the students thought of them more as rock stars than relics.

The students titled their exhibition "March to Equality." In addition to the humanities-based research and the construction of the exhibits, they also wrote poetry, created collage, and gave performances that included freedom songs, marching, and skits. The students wanted to make sure that their research showed, so they created QR codes leading viewers back to the primary sources on the archive website. During the exhibition opening, the kids stationed themselves at each of the displays and acted as docents for visitors.

Because the students became so deeply invested in the project, they now see their city in a different way. A social studies teacher who visited the exhibit said, "The passion and knowledge that the students . . . showed was truly amazing. I was also impressed by their poise and delivery of the information which connects to language arts standards.” The teacher goes on, “The student who was my tour guide said that this experience ‘gave her pride for the city she lived in and showed her that there are people fighting for what is right instead of just the horrible, negative things you see on the news.’ I thought she captured the success of the project in those words . . ."

To watch the students grow over the course of the project has been one of the most rewarding experiences in my career. They not only learned about local civil rights history through primary sources and oral histories, they have taken ownership of that history. They now see themselves as Milwaukee's new leaders. And they have not stopped. In December, they just finished leading a series of Milwaukee civil rights bus tours.

In her article “Adolescents’ Perspectives on Racial Diversity in U.S. History: Case Studies from an Urban Classroom,” Terrie Epstein looks at how different racial groups are incorporated into historical narratives about the American past. She describes interpretations that address the “great paradox” where both democratic ideals and gross inequalities coexist, and asks, how do students make sense of this story? How, she asked in this study, do student views about race shape the way they understand the historical experiences of racial groups?

Epstein, a professor in the School of Education at Hunter College in New York, analyzed the end-of-year historical narratives of ten 11th graders—five African Americans and five European Americans. She was interested specifically in students’ explanations of three components: racial groups’ experiences, the government role in shaping these experiences, and the existence of a common national history or identity.

She asked each of the students to select the 20 most important historical actors and events from a set of 51 captioned picture cards and explain their choices. What Epstein found was that adolescents’ own racialized identities significantly influenced how they understood history. White students and African American students generally understood the historical experiences of racial groups through distinct historical narratives—one of expanding freedoms, and the other of ongoing racial inequality.

Epstein found that white students generally told positive stories about a nation shaped by those of European descent—a nation that from its inception represented the principles of individual rights and democratic rule. When explaining events directly related to African Americans, Indians, and women, students recognized that these group’s members lacked fundamental rights. Nevertheless, each student constructed a national history and identity in which all Americans shared birthrights to democratic rights and protections and these rights had expanded over time.

African American students tended to create stories of American history characterized not by expanding freedoms, but by relations of racial domination and subordination. African Americans were at the center of their stories, fighting for freedom and equality; white historical figures, on the other hand, were significant as oppressors or as allies in that struggle. Overall, these students constructed a distinct historical narrative in which democratic principles and practices only applied to whites and racial oppression marked the experiences of African Americans, Indians, and Japanese Americans.

How might history teachers begin to think about synthesizing the seemingly contradictory historical themes of expanding democracy and ongoing racial inequality? Epstein suggests that history teachers help students understand that particular forms of democracy and racial inequality existed in every historical period. She concludes that discussions of the indivisible legacies of democracy and racial hierarchy might enable young people to construct narratives in which the racialized extensions and exclusions of democracy marked all Americans’ experiences and perspectives.