This seminar explores the Facing History and Ourselves resource book, Choices in Little Rock—a collection of teaching suggestions, activities, and primary sources that focus on the desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. These efforts led to a crisis that historian Taylor Branch once described as "the most severe test of the Constitution since the Civil War." These resources explore a range of civic choices—the decisions people make as citizens in a democracy. Those decisions, both then and now, reveal that democracy is not a product but a work in progress, a work that is shaped in every generation by the choices that people make about themselves and others. This workshop will consider ways to engage students in the issues raised by this history and its civic implications for their lives today. Choices in Little Rock can be used not only to teach history but also to deepen and enrich a study of civics, government, and literature.

"In the last decades of the 19th Century, the United States took decisive steps away from its rural, agrarian past toward its industrial future, assuming its place among world powers. This course examines that movement, covering such topics as business-labor relations, political corruption, immigration, imperialism, the New South, and segregation and racism."

"This course will focus on key episodes when Southern history and the history of the nation intersected at particularly important points: the emergence and spread of slavery, the Founding, the Civil War, the creation of segregation, and the Civil Rights struggle. The course will be taught in Richmond, Virginia, a city rich in museums and historic sites that we will use to explore the subjects addressed in the seminar."

"The workshop will use sites in Atlanta to tell the powerful and provocative stories of the imposition and demolition of the Color Line. The workshop participants will explore the Fox Theater, where the physical barriers of a segregated facility are still visible. They will walk the streets of the two principal historic districts that trace the history of the color line, the Martin Luther King National Historic Site and the Atlanta University National Register District. They will visit sites throughout the city where Civil Rights history is memorialized. The participants will have background readings and primary historic documents, access to historic site documentation on the websites of the Library of Congress (American Memory), the National Park Service, and the Landmark sites themselves in their study of the color line. They will hear lectures in their meeting places and at the sites they visit. Participants will receive resource packets with primary and secondary source materials for principal historical figures and the landmark sites with which they are associated in Atlanta."

"The workshop will use sites in Atlanta to tell the powerful and provocative stories of the imposition and demolition of the Color Line. The workshop participants will explore the Fox Theater, where the physical barriers of a segregated facility are still visible. They will walk the streets of the two principal historic districts that trace the history of the color line, the Martin Luther King National Historic Site and the Atlanta University National Register District. They will visit sites throughout the city where Civil Rights history is memorialized. The participants will have background readings and primary historic documents, access to historic site documentation on the websites of the Library of Congress (American Memory), the National Park Service, and the Landmark sites themselves in their study of the color line. They will hear lectures in their meeting places and at the sites they visit. Participants will receive resource packets with primary and secondary source materials for principal historical figures and the landmark sites with which they are associated in Atlanta."

From Bombingham to Selma, Montgomery to Tuskegee, Alabama's people and places left an indelible mark on the world in the 1950s and 1960s. From Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver to the Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, Alabama citizens have been at the forefront of the crusade to improve African Americans' lot in life in the United States. Selma's citizens began a march in 1965 to protest the killing of one man. This day became known as Bloody Sunday. Now the citizens of Selma have created a people's museum so the world will not forget those tumultuous days and will remember the people's stories. Teachers in this workshop work with noted scholars, converse with living legends, participate in discussion groups, meet foot soldiers of the movement, and travel to key sites of memory dedicated to the preservation of the history of the modern Civil Rights Movement.