# data[].attributes.body
Collection of resources

# data[].attributes.headline
Beyond the Bus: Teaching the Unseen Story of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott

# data[].attributes.subject
Beyond the Bus: Teaching the Unseen Story of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott

# data[].attributes.body
Link to Webinar

# data[].attributes.body
Webinar

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Participants discuss nine essential areas to be covered when teaching and learning about the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Participants analyze an image from the Library of Congress' collections and discuss questioning techniques that help students build an understanding about the complexity of the Civil Rights Movement.​

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Don't miss this webinar where you'll learn about nine essential areas to cover when the teaching and learning about the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Participants analyze an image from the Library of Congress' collections and discuss questioning techniques that help students build an understanding about the complexity of the Civil Rights Movement.

# data[].attributes.headline
Building Literacy Skills and Teaching about the Civil Rights Movement with Primary Sources

# data[].attributes.subject
Building Literacy Skills and Teaching about the Civil Rights Movement with Primary Sources

# data[].attributes.body
Webinar

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Participants analyze a map and explore its context; the world in which it was created and not just the world that it shows. Education experts discuss the significance of maps, model thinking routines and highlight items from the exhibition, "The Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Building Literacy Skills and Teaching about the Civil Rights Movement with Primary Sources

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Teaching Tolerance provides free resources to educators-teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners-who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use our materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities where children are respected, valued and welcome participants.

# data[].attributes.headline
Selecting Primary Sources to Examine the Civil Rights Act of 1964

# data[].attributes.subject
Selecting Primary Sources to Examine the Civil Rights Act of 1964

# data[].attributes.body
Webinar

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Primary sources engage students in developing a deeper understanding of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Selecting primary sources to use in the classroom requires careful consideration including examining audience, context, point of view and logistics. Education experts lead participants in selecting primary sources while discussing the goals of teaching about the Civil Rights Movement to include events, leaders, groups, history, obstacles, tactics and connections to other movements, current events and civic participation.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Selecting Primary Sources to Examine the Civil Rights Act of 1964

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Teaching Tolerance provides free resources to educators-teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners-who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use our materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities where children are respected, valued and welcome participants.

# data[].attributes.headline
Identifying Bias and Perspective when Teaching About the Civil Rights Act of 1964

# data[].attributes.subject
Identifying Bias and Perspective when Teaching About the Civil Rights Act of 1964

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This session examines the five essential practices for teaching about the Civil Rights Movement: educate for empowerment, know how to talk about race, capture the unseen, tell a complicated story and connect to the present. Education experts model how the "Circle of Viewpoints" teaching strategy can be used to identify different perspectives using a series of primary sources from the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Identifying Bias and Perspective when Teaching About the Civil Rights Act of 1964

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Teaching Tolerance provides free resources to educators-teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners-who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use our materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities where children are respected, valued and welcome participants.

# data[].attributes.headline
Five Essential Practices for Teaching the Civil Rights Movement

# data[].attributes.subject
Five Essential Practices for Teaching the Civil Rights Movement

# data[].attributes.headline
Building Effective Lessons: Step 1 -- Self-Assessment

# data[].attributes.subject
Building Effective Lessons: Step 1 -- Self-Assessment

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Sort

Look at your list, thinking about the depth and breadth of your coverage. What are students learning about the civil rights movement? Use the Lesson Inventory worksheet to sort your list into these categories:

Level One: lessons that address or include references to the civil rights movement

Level Two: lessons that focus on a single aspect of the civil rights movement

Level Three: lessons that examine multiple aspects of the civil rights movement in depth

Analyze

Identify a specific lesson (or activity or unit) from Level Three, your strongest lessons. Reflect on your instructional practices by responding to the questions and prompts on the Pre-Teaching Reflection worksheet. Did any of the questions surprise you? Explain. Did any of your answers surprise you? Explain.

Evaluate

Draw on your reflections from the Pre-Teaching Reflection worksheet to reevaluate the way you currently teach the civil rights movement through that lesson. What score did your lesson receive?

33-36: lessons that examine multiple aspects of the civil rights movement in depth (Level Three)

25-32: lessons that focus on a single aspect of the civil rights movement (Level Two)

12-24: lessons that address or include references to the civil rights movement (Level One)

You initially placed this lesson in Level Three, thinking that it has students examine multiple aspects of the civil rights movement in depth. Has your thinking changed? Evaluate your other civil rights lessons with the Pre-Teaching Reflection worksheet and then complete a new Lesson Inventory worksheet. Do you see any patterns? Where are the majority of your lessons: Level One, Level Two or Level Three?

Prioritize

You've begun to identify what and how you teach about the civil rights movement. Next, you'll apply key points from the Teaching the Movement initiative. By the end of this series of steps, you'll have a new and improved instructional plan for teaching the civil rights movement to your students.

To get started, return to your updated Lesson Inventory worksheet and identify a lesson for a "makeover." Level Two is a good place to begin. You may also want to consider what your colleagues have planned and whether you can take an interdisciplinary approach to get more bang for your instructional buck.

Set a goal

Whether you have chosen to dig deeper into one topic or combine multiple topics into a unit, it's important that you frame the goal of your Teaching the Movement makeover.

What civil rights movement topic have you chosen? Write up to three essential questions your students will be exploring about this topic.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Teaching Tolerance provides free resources to educators-teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners-who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use our materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities where children are respected, valued and welcome participants.

# data[].attributes.headline
Building Effective Lessons: Step 2 -- The “What” of Teaching the Movement

# data[].attributes.subject
Building Effective Lessons: Step 2 -- The “What” of Teaching the Movement

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
One key to effective civil rights education is coverage of essential content. The 2011 and 2014 Teaching the Movement reports evaluated states on the degree to which their standards included essential civil rights content. In this step, you'll evaluate and improve upon the content you include in your civil rights instruction.

With your makeover lesson in mind, complete the Essential Content Coverage worksheet. Write the topic and an essential question (or questions) at the top of the worksheet. Then list the content you currently teach in the "What I do now" column. You may find it helpful to first refer to the descriptions on the Essential Content Areas handout. Before completing the "What else I could/should I be doing" column, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Does this lesson call for me to include content in all areas? If not, explain.

2. Which areas will be emphasized or will be most central to this lesson?

3. In which area(s) am I least knowledgeable?

4. In which area(s) do I have the fewest resources?

5. In which area(s) do I most need to improve my coverage?

Use the Essential Content Checklist handout to think about content that would help improve your makeover lesson. Use the Essential Content Suggestions handout to generate specific content ideas. Now fully complete the other sections of the Essential Content Coverage worksheet.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Step Two: The "What" of Teaching the Movement

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Teaching Tolerance provides free resources to educators-teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners-who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use our materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities where children are respected, valued and welcome participants.

# data[].attributes.headline
Building Effective Lessons: Step 3 -- The “How” of Teaching the Movement

# data[].attributes.subject
Building Effective Lessons: Step 3 -- The “How” of Teaching the Movement

# data[].attributes.headline
Building Effective Lessons: Step 4 -- Planning for Teaching the Movement

# data[].attributes.subject
Building Effective Lessons: Step 4 -- Planning for Teaching the Movement

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Based on the work you've done in Steps One, Two and Three, use the Instructional Matrix worksheet to turn your learning into planning. This matrix will serve as a springboard for future lesson planning.

Take your time. Talk to others. Refer to the materials you have, but also do research to find other, possibly better, resources.

In Section 1 of the Instructional Matrix worksheet, you'll drill down on the content you listed on the Essential Content Coverage worksheet. With your essential question(s) in mind, list content or topics that fit into the essential areas listed in the first column. Next, list any standards that align. Then unpack the concepts, vocabulary, strategies and skills students will need to learn the content. Finally, determine what materials you will need.

In Section 2 of the Instructional Matrix worksheet, you'll consider the human assets that surround you. This work can't be done in a vacuum; it extends beyond the textbook and the classroom. What contributions can your community make to your students' learning? What role can teachers, students, families, the school and the wider community play in teaching students about the civil rights movement and empowering them to be active citizens?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Step Four: Planning for Teaching the Movement

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Teaching Tolerance provides free resources to educators-teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners-who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use our materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities where children are respected, valued and welcome participants.

# data[].attributes.headline
Building Effective Lessons: Step 5 -- Teaching the Movement

# data[].attributes.subject
Building Effective Lessons: Step 5 -- Teaching the Movement

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Synthesize

Using your completed tool, continue to prepare new civil rights lessons and improve your existing ones.

Get feedback

Once your lessons are written, share them with colleagues who can offer constructive feedback. Incorporate suggestions that align with the essential practices.

Teach

Deliver your new lessons to students. If possible, use the lessons with more than one group of students. Consider having someone record your delivery of the lesson. Be sure to journal and take notes afterward.

Reevaluate

Assess your new lessons using the Post-Teaching Reflection worksheet from Step One. In what ways has your curriculum and instructional practice changed? Did you notice any changes in student engagement? In performance?

Stay inspired

Remember, the march continues! Keep pushing yourself and your students to learn more about the civil rights movement and its impact. By helping young people to think critically about this complex history, you are preparing a new generation to stand and march for justice and equity. Thank you!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Teaching Tolerance provides free resources to educators-teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners-who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use our materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities where children are respected, valued and welcome participants.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A visual history of The Civil Rights Movement leading to The Voting Rights Act of 1965.

# data[].attributes.headline
Speakers - Civil Rights Movement Veterans

# data[].attributes.subject
Speakers - Civil Rights Movement Veterans

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Speakers List by States

The Movement veterans listed here are available for speaking engagements and to answer email queries from students. Schools, churches, youth groups, and other organizations who wish to hear first-hand from those who participated in the Civil Rights Movement can use this list to directly contact Movement veterans.

© Copyright
Webspinner: webmaster@crmvet.org
(Labor donated)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement -- Speakers List

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Movement veterans listed here are available for speaking engagements and to answer email queries from students. Schools, churches, youth groups, and other organizations who wish to hear first-hand from those who participated in the Civil Rights Movement can use this list to directly contact Movement veterans.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Latest News

The Southern Poverty Law Center documented 733 active hate groups in the United States last year.

Southern Poverty Law Center monitors hate groups and other extremists throughout the U.S. and exposes their activities to law enforcement agencies, the media and the public.

We know we don't achieve equality and justice through the courts and investigative reporting alone. The future of our great country lies in the hands of today's young people.

We use the courts and other forms of advocacy to win systemic reforms on behalf of victims of bigotry and discrimination.

Your gift will help win justice on behalf of those who have no other champion, expose and fight the hate that thrives in our country, and provide tolerance education materials free of charge to schools across our nation.

Southeast Immigrant Freedom Initiative

We provide free legal representation to detained immigrants facing deportation proceedings in the Southeast. ​You can help.

Hatewatch monitors and exposes the activities of the American radical right.

Friends of the Center support the fight for tolerance and justice with a modest, monthly gift.

Learn more about our current class action cases or find out if you might be a class member.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Social media has served as our primary platform for community and coalition. With over 21,000 followers on Twitter and over half a million views to our hashtag, we've mobilized the digital community towards concrete action on equity, justice, and anti-racism. Every last Thursday of the month, we host a townhall-style conversation with our participants all over the world. In addition, the hashtag #EduColor has allowed for hundreds of participants to ask questions, provide resources, and answer questions across any number of identity markers.

We pride ourselves on having the difficult conversations while centering the most vulnerable and racially marginalized with a student-centered perspective.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
EduColor - The Organization and the Movement: This Is Our Moment

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Social media has served as our primary platform for community and coalition. With over 21,000 followers on Twitter and over half a million views to our hashtag, we've mobilized the digital community towards concrete action on equity, justice, and anti-racism. Every last Thursday of the month, we host a townhall-style conversation with our participants all over the world.

# data[].attributes.headline
SOCIAL JUSTICE ISSUES: LESSON PLANS, RESOURCES AND ACTIVITIES

# data[].attributes.subject
SOCIAL JUSTICE ISSUES: LESSON PLANS, RESOURCES AND ACTIVITIES

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Social Justice Issues: Lesson Plans, Resources and Activities

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
What are social justice issues, and why are they important for fostering a just society? Explore social justice issues with these free preK-12 resources.

# data[].attributes.headline
National Association for Multicultural Education

# data[].attributes.subject
National Association for Multicultural Education

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME) celebrates the triumphant election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as the new president and vice president of the United States. People in cities throughout the United States flooded the streets to celebrate the Biden-Harris victory with "Build Back Better" promises to unify the country with compassion and togetherness, a beautiful departure from the rage-filled anti-humane path that Trump established as a sower of division and hate.

NAME also is excited to celebrate the first woman to hold the office of Vice President, on the 100 year anniversary of U.S. white women gaining the right to vote. NAME celebrates Vice President elect Harris, who as a Jamaican and Indian woman, becomes the nation's first woman, first woman of color, and second person of color to be elected to the second highest office of the land. Lost in the blur of the Great Depression is the fact that the first person of color to hold the office of vice president was Charles Curtis, a Native American lawmaker and member of the Kaw Nation, who was elected as President Herbert Hoover's running mate in 1928.

Despite this representational win, almost two weeks after the election a blizzard of unwarranted lawsuits are ongoing, attempting to challenge the outcome of the vote. This continues a long line of historical attempts to invalidate voters. While these voter suppression challenges remain, NAME urges the Trump administration to release the nearly $10 million in funding for staffing, federal office space and other needs to enable a smooth transition and rapid focus on corralling the rapid spread of the coronavirus. Beyond that, NAME urges the incoming administration to undo the damage of executive orders, policies and practices attacking diversity and inclusion training, critical race theory, ethnic studies and multicultural education. The nation needs a secretary of education who understands the needs of the nation and will promote diversity and inclusion as the country becomes a majority-minority population.

In addition, NAME supports the Biden-Harris team getting the United States to rejoin the Paris agreement to tackle climate change. The progressive work that NAME knows has to be done would not be possible if climate change were to continue to ravage the Earth with out-of-control wildfires, terrifying hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding and other devastating weather caused by unchecked human consumption of fossil fuels.

The May 25 police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the protests and unrests that followed in the U.S. and globally also show that the Biden-Harris team must immediately eliminate the womb-to-tomb racial disparities in policing, housing, education, jobs, health care and other areas in the United States.

The Biden-Harris administration has a tremendous amount of work to do to benefit the country. But NAME knows that the team renews a sense of hope among people in the USA and beyond.

Click here to download and share this document

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
National Association for Multicultural Education

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME) celebrates the triumphant election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as the new president and vice president of the United States.

# data[].attributes.body
A collection of multicultural films, photo essays, and articles that “explore cultural, social, and environmental issues with a humanistic lens.”

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
D.C. Area Educators For Social Justice is a new initiative launched by Teaching for Change to help build and nurture a network of social justice educators in the D.C. metro area.

# data[].attributes.body
Link to documentary
Link to PBS accompanying website

Link to Facing History and Ourselves page

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Difference Between Us

Everyone can tell a Nubian from a Norwegian, so why not divide people into different races? That's the question explored in "The Difference Between Us," the first hour of the series. This episode shows that despite what we've always believed, the world's peoples simply don't come bundled into distinct biological groups. We begin by following a dozen students, including Black athletes and Asian string players, who sequence and compare their own DNA to see who is more genetically similar. The results surprise the students and the viewer, when they discover their closest genetic matches are as likely to be with people from other "races" as their own.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Difference Between Us Everyone can tell a Nubian from a Norwegian, so why not divide people into different races? That's the question explored in "The Difference Between Us," the first hour of the series. This episode shows that despite what we've always believed, the world's peoples simply don't come bundled into distinct biological groups.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Our Social Studies resources and approach help students connect history to the present and consider how their choices can shape the future.

Teach Social Studies with Facing History

Honed over the course of more than 50 years, our approach to social studies invites students into deeper engagement with the world around them, preparing them to be active and informed citizens committed to making a difference.

What We Offer

Academically rigorous and emotionally engaging social studies resources, including lesson plans, C3-style inquiries, units, primary sources, and teaching strategies for history, civics, government, and humanities courses.

Research-backed instructional materials designed to align with the National Council for Social Studies (NCSS) standards, the C3 framework for inquiry-based learning in social studies, and social studies Common Core standards.

Top-rated professional development opportunities for social studies educators.

Opportunities to improve academic outcomes and student engagement in social studies across your whole school or district.

Explore our full library of social studies resources.

Our Pedagogy

Our social studies curriculum guides students as they explore human behavior, asking them to consider connections between their own actions and the actions of others. By examining the complexities of being human, we nurture caring and curious adolescents who grow into brave and engaged adults. This proven approach is based on more than 50 years of data about student learning and engagement.

Learn more about our pedagogy.

Social Studies Learning Objectives & Student Outcomes

1. Explore the complexity of identity, membership, and belonging
By exploring how our sense of identity, belonging, and membership is shaped by the time and place in which we live, students will gain the ability to analyze how their own identities influence their choices and behaviors, as well as how societies create distinctions between insiders and outsiders. Our approach also helps students consider how social identities such as race, gender, and class impact individual experiences and outcomes.

2. Analyze History and its Connection to Today through a Critical and Ethical Lens
Through inquiry-based study students will develop a nuanced understanding of history by exploring multiple perspectives, analyzing the impact of time on ideas and institutions, and recognizing the influence of diverse groups. Our teaching materials are designed to help them examine the agency and choices of individuals, groups, and institutions, understanding their responsibility for historical events and drawing connections to contemporary social issues.

3. Develop the Capacity for Informed Civic Participation
By recognizing that history is not inevitable and that the future is contingent on the choices people make today, students will develop a deep understanding of systems of power, historical patterns, and social issues that continue to exist today. They will critically analyze the role of citizens in democracies throughout history, including those who were marginalized and denied political rights. Through this exploration, students will recognize the significance of their own decisions, how they impact others, and their ability to shape their communities and the world.

Compared to their peers, students enrolled in a Facing History class were 94% more likely to report that their class motivated them to learn.

Implement the Facing History approach at the school or district level to see the full impact of Facing History in action.

Featured Teaching Resources for Social Studies Classrooms

Enhance your social studies curricula with our adaptable and classroom-ready teaching resources. They pair rich and powerful primary source material with engaging lessons that explore complex concepts like the meaning of democracy and integrate social-emotional learning.

Aligned Social Studies Professional Development

Facing History offers a wide variety of professional development experiences that support making the most of our social studies curriculum. These offerings also develop educator competencies that are foundational to our approach, including: nurturing student-centered classrooms; promoting inquiry-based learning and deliberative skills; and fostering empathy and ethical reflection.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Our Social Studies resources and approach help students connect history to the present and consider how their choices can shape the future.

# data[].attributes.body
National Museum of African American History and Culture

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
National Museum of African American History and Culture

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Talking about race, although hard, is necessary. We are here to provide tools and guidance to empower your journey and inspire conversation.

# data[].attributes.body
Link to NPR All Things Considered -- 2008
B. Obama and the "unrealistic" idea of a post-racial America: link

# data[].attributes.body
Link to France Culture -- 2016: "Le concept de "race" peut-il s'appliquer à l'espèce humaine?"
Link to Canopé: "L'impossible division de l'humanité en races".

# data[].attributes.headline
12 July, 2018 -- Assembly removes word ‘race’ from French constitution

# data[].attributes.subject
12 July, 2018 -- Assembly removes word ‘race’ from French constitution

# data[].attributes.body
Link to France 24 article
Link to Le Monde article

# data[].attributes.body
The New York Times
Link to "How Moving to France and Having Children Led a Black American to Rethink Race"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Thomas Chatterton Williams at home in Paris this summer with his wife and children, from left, Marlow, Valentine and Saul. Credit... Christopher Anderson/Magnum, for The New York Times

Feature

My father was raised under Jim Crow. My children could pass for white. Where does that leave me?

Thomas Chatterton Williams at home in Paris this summer with his wife and children, from left, Marlow, Valentine and Saul. Credit... Christopher Anderson/Magnum, for The New York Times

I left the cafeteria where my brother, Clarence, was racing the wooden kit car he built with the older Boy Scouts, and made my way down the long corridor to the restroom. The building was virtually empty on a Saturday and charged with that faint lawlessness of school not in session. When I finished, I fixed myself in the mirror and, on the way out, ran and leapt to swing from the high bar joining the metal stalls to the tiled wall. In third grade, this was hard to do, a feat of superior athleticism that I savored even in the absence of a witness. The bounce in my legs linked me with my favorite athletes. I wore my hair like them, too, shaved low on the sides and back and slightly higher on top with a laser-sharp part engraved on the left. As my feet thrust forward, the door shot open and B. stepped in. An eighth grader, the eldest of three freckled, blond, almost farcically preppy brothers - Irish Catholic but still WASPier than the sons of Italians, Poles and Ukrainians who formed the backbone of the student body at our parochial school - he watched me dismount. In his costume of boat shoes and Dockers, B. was far from an intimidating sight, but he was bigger than me, and he smiled at me strangely.

I made to pass him on the way out, but he blocked me, his smile turning menacing. "What?" I managed, confused. We'd been in school together for years without ever having exchanged a word. "Monkey," he whispered, still smiling, and my whole body froze: I was being insulted - in an ugly way, I could sense from his expression more than from what was said - but I couldn't fully grasp why. I'd been swinging like a monkey, it was true, but this was something else. I tried again to step around him, at a loss for words; he blocked my way again, looming over me, still with that smirk. "You little [expletive] monkey," he repeated with deliberate calm, and to my astonishment I realized that, although I could not understand why, there was, however vague and out of place, suddenly the possibility of violence. Out of nothing more than instinct, I shoved past him with all the determination an 8-year-old can gather.

He let me go, but I could hear his laughter behind me as I made my way back to the cafeteria, my heart pumping staccato, my face singed with the heat of self-awareness, my inexperienced mind fumbling for the meaning behind what had just transpired. But I knew enough to know that I could not tell my father what happened. I could see his reaction - see him shoot from his leather desk chair where he spent a majority of weekends as well as weekdays bent over a book. "Let's go," he would say in a clipped tone, with that distant expression, as if he were looking at something else, not at me, and by that time he would already be at the hall closet throwing his dark gray overcoat around his broad shoulders, keys jangling in his strong hand.

If I had told him what that white boy said to me in the restroom, Pappy - as we called my father, in a nod to his Southern roots - would have descended into an indescribable fury, the memory of which can tense me up to this day. He would have lost a week of work and concentration - that was as certain as two and two is four. But I also knew that he would be shot through with pain, unable to sleep, up at his desk in the dark, transported to his past, agonizing over this awful proof of what he'd always suspected: that no matter how strong he was, he was not strong enough to shield - not fully - his sons from the psychological warfare of American racism that whispers obscenities at little boys when they find themselves alone.

A fatherless boy raised in Jim Crow Texas, my dad was a tenacious autodidact, the first in his family to get a college degree. His fury over the mind-boggling injustice of lesser men and even their children thinking they had something over him because of nothing greater than the tint of skin and weft of hair was something I could not fully share. Rather, it was something I learned very early to empathize with in my deepest core and to anticipate as best I could.

I failed to do this some time later, on a gorgeous fall afternoon when Pappy made the trip himself to pick me up from school. He seemed to be in a good mood. It was hot outside. He'd showered and powdered his neck - the smell of talc and the pomade he sometimes used to brush his hair sweetening the old leather of the seats. The car was idling, but we hadn't pulled out. Somehow we began to speak about sports, which ones I was good at and which might intrigue me. Basketball was my great love, but in those days baseball mattered, too. "And boxing?" Pappy asked. "It's about time you learn to box. You want to be able to box, don't you?"

I sensed a level of approval in the way he was regarding me. I was old enough now to be let in on this masculine secret. Intellectual development was paramount to my father, of course, but he was hardly a geek. He was a man who happened to be of a certain Southern culture and a certain age, and his talents and tastes had been molded accordingly. That I was not only academically inclined but physically promising pleased him, and both aspects of the self were to be cultivated, that was obviously true. The sun shone warmly on me through the windshield, relaxing my mind, which wandered ahead into my room to lose my school uniform and rush outside to play. I missed the gravity of my father's query. "Oh, I don't know," I said distractedly. "I don't really care that much about boxing."

"You don't care about boxing?" he repeated. "Who told you that?"

"No one told me that. What do you mean?"

Pappy's face tightened. I remember: the ignition churning; that old Benz K-turning; Pappy gesturing at my very white classmates loitering. "Who told you not to like boxing?"

"But no one did!" I didn't even understand the question.

" Goddammit!"

I had not yet spent significant time with the other black boys I would come to know and acculturate myself to, the boys from the redlined peripheries of my small town who were a lot like the boys from the larger, all-black neighborhoods beyond it, boys who seemed older than me even when they might be younger, who threw their hands at each other habitually - and skillfully - both in earnestness and in jest. I was still a few years away from familiarity with any of that, and boxing was something that I had only ever seen my father do. I remember the enormous, generations-old frustration in his exclamation in the car. I don't remember whatever I could have said to him in return, whatever I must have stammered to save myself and calm him down. I do remember his astonishing wounded rage that seemed to have very little, in fact, to do with me - or at least with who I thought myself to be - when he shouted, for the first and only time in my life, "I'll be damned if they make you white!" And I remember the most excruciating silence for the duration of the ride back home, as my brain fumbled around the notion that you could be made into something you knew you could not be.

Image

From left, the author's father, Clarence Williams, the author and his brother, Clarence II, at home in 1993. Credit... From Thomas Chatterton Williams

I have spent my whole life earnestly believing the fundamentally American dictum that a single "drop of black blood" makes a person "black" primarily because they can never be "white." My own father is a red-brown man. Despite a dusting of freckles under the eyes and a prominent nose, no one has ever described him as anything but black. His appearance, along with the strength of his persona, allowed me to assume that the Williams family identity would forever be in his image, even though my mother is unambiguously white - blond-haired, blue-eyed and descended on all sides from Northern European Protestant stock.

When my father was my daughter's age, in the early 1940s, there were still horse-drawn buggies and outhouses where he lived in Galveston, Tex., a short sliver of an island in the Gulf of Mexico that bears the deplorable distinction of having been among the last places in the entire United States of America to free its slaves, some two and a half years after Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. His grandmother was married to a man born in the final year of chattel slavery. Since I was very young, I understood that Texas was not so much where my father came from as where he never wanted to return to. My brother and I were raised in a small but gloriously book-crammed house by loving and devoted parents who came from elsewhere. They kept few photographs or clues to the past and valorized individuality, cultivation and self-creation over membership in any particular lineage or clan. I did not have the language for it then, but compared with all of my Polish and Italian and Puerto Rican and black and Irish neighbors and classmates, what was odd about my parents was just how uninterested in their ancestry they seemed.

To speak about a thing clearly you must first be able to name it. To speak about yourself, you must first be able to assemble a sense of origin. For descendants of slaves, this has proved one of the most precious losses of self-knowledge we've endured. The black experience in the South is tantamount to the biblical flood; we've stumbled off the ark without an inkling of what things were like before it. As I write this, a tab on my laptop displays a pastel pie chart of my ancestral-geographical makeup. I scrutinize the color-coded slices for meaning. That fuchsia "sub-Saharan" segment is markedly less than half - 40.1 percent of the pie - though that is where my received social identity comes from. The marine-blue "European" section, on the other hand, which I always understood existed but nonetheless thought of as existing somehow outside me, makes up 59.2 percent of the circle. This lopsided ratio surprised me, though it should not have. Millions of "white" Americans have sufficient African ancestry - often a result of some wily predecessor's successfully having slipped the yoke - to theoretically have been enslaved in the Southern states that enforced racial-purity laws most fanatically. But that is not the case in my mother's family. My aunt came back 99.9 percent European. Presuming she and my mother share all ancestors, that would put my father around 80 percent sub-Saharan African - right on average, according to some estimates, for the (often forcibly) mixed, Afro-European population of Americans we refer to as "black."

I am well aware that my situation is not yet, and may not ever be, a terribly common one, and that I have experienced a specific set of breaks and good fortune outside my own control that have contributed powerfully to my own sense of autonomy in the world. Growing up, I understood myself to be black, and yet I was also exposed to whiteness through my mother and most (though certainly not all) members of her family in nonantagonistic, positively nurturing ways. Today, my children, who are roughly a fifth West African descended, are so blond-haired and fair-skinned that they can blend in with the locals when we travel in Sweden. All this and more has forced me to wrestle with the particulars of my family's story - its painful past as well as its unwritten future - and reflect on what these specific contradictions might imply about the broader color categories we are all forced into. My family's multigenerational transformation from what is called "black" toward what is assumed to be "white" has led me to yearn for ways of seeing and relating to one another that operate somewhere between the poles of tribal identitarianism and Panglossian utopianism. People will always look different from one another in ways we can't control. What we can control is what we make of those differences.

It has become commonplace to acknowledge the following point, but it bears repeating anyway: The idea of racial classification, as we understand it now, stretches back only to Enlightenment Europe. I have stayed in inns in Germany that have been continuously operating longer than this calamitous thought. But even though we can trace race's origins without much difficulty, it seems impossible - and worse than that, woefully naïve - even to speak of an end to such persistent and flattening thinking, thinking that has led to so much human suffering, precluded and squandered so much human potential. And yet I am convinced that we will never overcome the evils of racism as long as we fail first to imagine and then to conjure a world free of racial categorization and the hierarchies it necessarily implies.

Pappy's father was a living ghost, and his mother died when I was a young child. But from time to time, once a year or less frequently, the phone would ring, and his voice would grow folksier, maybe even slower, and he would chat with some relation for an hour, sometimes more. I tried to picture the faces of these phantom men and women who - incredibly, to me - knew who my father was, knew from what world he had come, but imagine as I would, I had no idea what lives they might lead. "Oh, that's so-and-so from Detroit," my mother might say, as if that could clarify matters for me. When Pappy hung up, whatever link had been temporarily forged with the past immediately receded from our home, and it was obvious the subject was closed. Sometimes, when I asked him how he learned to fight so well, he would get a gentle, wistful look in the eye and say that his uncles in Longview had shown him how - one of the few memories of home I'm aware of that could provoke a wholly uncomplicated smile.

I should have better understood how fundamental boxing must have been to my father's sense of himself as a man in the world, as fundamental as books. After all, the evidence, like those books, was all around me. In that basement, we had a treadmill, stationary bikes and resistance machines, in addition to medicine balls, benches and weights. There was a professional-grade heavy bag and a speed bag in the garage, as well as full sets of headgear and scarlet-red Everlast gloves. Only looking back on it now do I realize that my father must have anticipated that he would train us. There would be intermittent lessons throughout my childhood and adolescence, moments of instruction snatched in the hallway or kitchen in which he patiently demonstrated to me where to place my feet, how to hunch my shoulders - chin down, protect the neck - and how to parry a blow. Pappy was unhittable, at least for me, whip-fast with the hands, torso and head well into his 60s. It was beautiful to witness what he could do. Is there anything more wonderful than watching your father soar? Perhaps, I imagine now, it is equaled only in the pleasure of imparting - really transmitting - something of yourself to your child.

One evening thrusts beyond the fog of childhood memory like a rocky peak glimpsed from an airplane window. Pappy takes the scrawny little boy who must have been me down into the basement, puts the gloves on the boy's fists and then gloves his own hands. It is a hard space, with hard tiled floors cracking to expose the concrete underneath - the most undomesticated part of the house by far. The air is cool and damp on the hottest day of the year. It is an uncomfortable space, with nowhere to sit. You have to stand. You have to work out or remove a book from one of the shelves and read. When you descend into this space, you have to improve yourself in some demonstrable way.

"You ready?" he asks, his Texan accent suddenly ever so slightly more perceptible, or is this a trick of memory now?

"Yes," the boy of my memory replies, and then his father punches him, with but a tiny fraction of his genuine strength but not in any way like a child of 8 or 9, either. He throws straight jabs, repeatedly, on the chin, which astonish the boy, who has never been hit like that before. Has never been hit at all.

"You need to know how to take a shot, how to feel it on your face," Pappy explains lovingly but firmly, not jokingly, to the boy, whose mind has begun to race. "That way, once you're used to it, it can't ever take you by surprise." Stunned but determined to own the respect of his indomitable father, the boy nods his assent, wishing he were anywhere else. He withstands several more blows to the jaw and chin, the imprecision of the bulky gloves allowing one to graze the nose, flooding his eyes with salty tears.

The plane of remembrance shoots ahead and the mountain peak recedes; all that's left are the clouds. I have no recollection of how that session ended, whether on a good or bad or neutral note. I know that Pappy never tried to teach me that strange lesson again, and I didn't ask him to. As it turned out, I never did muster the discipline to learn how to box. That is not to say I didn't learn, through trial and error, how to endure a fight. Rather, it's that everything I knew later to do with my hands, I managed from that day on my own, freestyle - exactly the kind of life-learning my father despises for being unreliable and inexact. But even as a very small child, I understood that Pappy was only showing me the sincerest kind of care. I understood that, for whatever the reason, my father could not relate, not fully, to anyone who hadn't experienced a certain amount of discomfort in life. And yet, I have always suspected that Pappy didn't like that lesson with the gloves any more than I did. Though he thought of it as an indispensable part of a masculinity that girds itself for so many inevitable threats, I don't believe he really wanted me to ever have to rely on my hands.

Throughout my adolescence, largely spent on asphalt ball courts and planted in front of BET with what in retrospect appears a lot like the fervency of the convert, the zealously born-again, I consciously learned and performed my race, like a teacher's pet in an advanced-placement course on cartoonish black manhood. Looking back, I am most jarred by the sheer artificiality of the endeavor. The genes I share with my father and others who look like us, which have kinked my hair and tinted my skin, do not carry within them a set of prescribed behaviors.

Blackness, as I inhabited it and it inhabited me, was not so much what you looked like - that was often a starting point, but there is no more physically diverse group of Americans than "blacks." Rather, it grew into a question of how you spoke and dressed yourself, your self-presentation - how you met the world, the philosopher Martin Buber might say. Blackness was what you loved and what in turn loved or at least accepted you, what you found offensive or, more to the point, to whom your presence might constitute an offense. The 1990s will not go down in history as a particularly incisive political epoch in the history of black America. At the risk of overgeneralizing, when compared with the era we now inhabit, my generation's youthful apathy seems outrageous. My friends and I tended to favor form over content, the cant of a brim or the jewel in an earlobe; race pride for us could boil down to nothing more than rhythm and athleticism, the way a person learned or didn't learn to cut through the air; it was fussing over not looking fussed, the perpetual subterfuge of nonchalance.

There are few things more American than falling back on the language of race when what we're really talking about is class or, more accurate still, manners, values and taste. This is why an older blue-collar Italian friend of my brother's could tell me foolishly but in all seriousness that my bookish father was "whiter" than his own financially secure but uneducated dad; and it's why a tough black boy I met could step inside our tiny house, glance at our shelves and in the cramped kitchen at my blond mother cheerily baking snacks and declare against all evidence to the contrary, "Man, y'all are rich."

Back then, I couldn't fathom just how improbable it was that my mother had found her way into that kitchen at all. She led a sheltered life in Chula Vista before graduating from San Diego State in 1968. There have been few eras during which the racial malady of the nation, always lying in wait like Camus's plague, flared to the proportions of the late 1960s. President Lyndon Johnson's ambitious Great Society initiative was in full effect, and though she had intentions of pursuing a graduate degree, Mom decided first to put her idealism into practice. She took a position in the San Diego County War on Poverty program, in Otay Mesa - the same neighborhood as the conservative Baptist church where her father was the minister - and became the director of a center providing basic social and recreational services to low-income black and Mexican families. One evening, she hosted a community meeting and invited the executive director of the county agency to speak. As the fastidious Southerner standing before her carefully laid out his vision of social justice, my mother listened rapt, feeling as if he were speaking not just to her but from her, putting into words the inchoate jumble of thoughts that had been stirring in her mind for years.

The author's parents, Kathy and Clarence Williams, in the 1970s. Credit... From Thomas Chatterton Williams

They began working together, and she fell in love with this man and his mission all at once, deciding that she would marry him. Nine years her senior, my father took longer to reciprocate. He was wary of the ludicrous, irrational resistance he knew in his bones would be coming for them. Only the year before, the Supreme Court had ruled on Loving v. Virginia, invalidating so-called racial-integrity laws that barred interracial unions in certain states, yet a Gallup poll showed a vast majority of white Americans (more than 70 percent) still opposed the idea of black people and white people marrying. My parents, justifiably fearful of compromising his position in the community and her relationship with her family and church, found it impossible to acknowledge each other romantically in public - an excruciating racial tax that boggles my mind to think they were forced to pay. It wasn't until my father accepted another appointment in Los Angeles, where my mother soon followed, that they were able to live openly and freely. After five circumspect years, my father proposed, once he was convinced that they were individually robust enough to withstand the ostracism and scrutiny they would surely encounter, especially once they decided to have children.

There are photos of my mother with the family that was hers before we became her own, which I have to scrutinize at length before I can recognize who she is. Who is this brood, with all that blond hair bleached a blazing shade by the California sun? One photo in which Mom is around 16, in the early 1960s, has her standing alongside her parents and young siblings. Of course the children are just that, which is to say they are genuine innocents, but the parents inhabit a country that does not yet have civil rights, and they are posed with an unperturbed air that reminds me of something James Baldwin once observed about how racism dehumanizes us all but may in fact dehumanize the racist more severely.

Looking at my Bible-thumping grandfather, whom I so markedly resemble in the facial structure holding up my tanner shell, I feel several conflicting emotions well up inside me. I feel both anger and pity, but mostly I feel the cold unreality of familial connection. (I feel this too when I look at the old black-and-white photo my father keeps of his mother, whom I never met but who I always vaguely understood was made uneasy by her son's marriage.) It is hard to believe that we are in any way kin. In truth, we are "family" only in the most technical sense of the term. I feel no more bonded to this man (whose angular features live in permanent stalemate in me alongside Africa) than I feel to that sliver of pie chart on my DNA test results labeled "Senegambian."

Nonetheless, he intrigues me. I neither love nor hate him. I feel sorry for him. And I wonder about the gratuitous charge he paid for having failed for decades to live up to his own professed Christianity - even knowing that he was failing yet unable to help it - by allowing himself never to be bothered in any way at all with the all-American experience of someone like my father. To avoid that experience at all costs, to avoid even recognizing its existence, to drive it as far as possible from his mind and from his interpersonal interactions, to curate his environment to exclude it and, finally, to be the type of man who, when that experience found him anyway, would turn his back on it even as he knew and could admit that the reason was skin-deep - what then was the price, in real terms, of this clichéd, cookie-cutter life he insulated himself inside?

It is only now that I am a father myself that I can appreciate the exorbitant price of the loss my grandfather inflicted on himself, and on my mother and on my grandmother, too - but mostly on himself. Once a year every autumn of my childhood, my grandmother, Esther, would fly from San Diego to Newark and spend two joyful weeks with us at our home in Fanwood. Two out of 52 weeks a year - not much in the grand scheme of things, but still that's all it took for me to know her, and for me to love her profoundly. I knew without question that she loved me. At the time, I never really stopped to question why Grandma always came solo. "Oh, he doesn't like to fly," was a typical excuse. "He has a bad back, you know." I didn't think to ask myself why he couldn't call.

The author's maternal grandparents, Art and Esther Robbins, in the late 1940s or early 1950s. Credit... From Thomas Chatterton Williams

It was only in adulthood that I realized what this absence necessarily implied. It was only while visiting my grandparents during a monthlong stay in San Diego at the home of my best friend from college that I realized how profoundly ungenerous - how impressively unimaginative - my grandfather's entire worldview could really be. I saw it then, suddenly and with the force of an epiphany, because for a moment the circumstances of the exchange had nothing to do with me. My grandfather was, at the time, confined to a motorized wheelchair and completely dependent on my grandmother. A fire-and-brimstone kind of Christian, Grandpa could also turn on the charm when he wanted to and was in a wonderful and welcoming mood that day. He seemed to be genuinely proud that I had graduated Georgetown, and other members of my mother's family had joined us that afternoon, too, lending the gathering a festive air.

After Grandma cleared the coffee and snacks, and as my friend Josh and I said our thank-yous and goodbyes, my grandfather wheeled himself over to a bookshelf and took down a crisp copy of the New Testament, pressing it meaningfully into Josh's hands. "I'd like to give this to you, son," he said. "I hope you'll read it with an open mind and think about it hard." I felt my heartbeat speed up. I still don't know how my grandfather discerned that Josh is Jewish - had he simply deduced it from his appearance? - and I was too young or too shocked to express the anger that I felt welling inside me. As we drove away in pursuit of the Southern California evening, drove away toward the beach and other, lighter concerns, I remember thinking that I had at long last seen my grandfather for who he was. I remember finally feeling convinced, and perhaps on some level vindicated, too, that this smallness was him. But it wasn't him alone. He was simply exercising, explicitly, the prerogative of many men and women just like him. This was the arbitrarily normative nature of my grandfather's WASP identity - the false universality of his own tribal bias - put into appallingly hierarchical practice. Were there a book that could have converted my father from his blackness, I have no doubt in me that my grandfather would have procured a copy and magnanimously slipped it to him.

I was living in France when my grandfather died, and I did not fly back for his funeral. This was the beginning phase of a life-altering relationship with another country that would provide me with several crucial gifts, among which I would count a clarifying distance from the all-American racial binary and its attendant mythologies, as well as a chain of friendships that would lead, eventually, to my wife and children.

I fell in love with Valentine almost as soon as I met her through friends one winter night at a bar in Paris. The progress of our courtship outstripped the speed of conscious thought. I did not know that I would do it even 20 seconds before it happened, but that summer when I got down on my knee and proposed without a ring or a plan, she accepted. In the morning, I woke next to my fiancée both exhilarated and shot through with terror. Though an overwhelming majority of my girlfriends had been black or nonwhite, and even though I had ceased thinking in terms of having a type, the finality of actually having chosen a white woman felt anything but trivial. And while I knew that it was impossible to marry "blackness" or "whiteness" in the abstract, that knowledge did not entirely put me at ease. How could it?

The author and Valentine Faure on their wedding day in France in 2011. Credit... From Thomas Chatterton Williams

Of all the things in the world that lazy morning, I thought of Eldridge Cleaver, the Black Panthers' minister of information, excoriating James Baldwin, whom he saw as decadent and cosmopolitan, for what he called the "racial death-wish" that motivates blacks to commingle with whites. I remembered Cleaver's famous, venomous articulation of the story of Yacub from his 1968 collection of essays "Soul on Ice":

According to Elijah, about 6,300 years ago all the people of the earth were Original Blacks. Secluded on the island of Patmos, a mad black scientist by the name of Yacub set up the machinery for grafting whites out of blacks through the operation of a birth-control system. The population on this island of Patmos was 59,999 and whenever a couple on this island wanted to get married they were only allowed to do so if there was a difference in their color, so that by mating black with those in the population of a brownish color and brown with brown - but never black with black - all traces of the black were eventually eliminated; the process was repeated until all the brown was eliminated, leaving only men of the red race; the red was bleached out, leaving only yellow; then the yellow was bleached out, and only white was left. Thus Yacub, who was long since dead, because this whole process took hundreds of years, had finally succeeded in creating the white devil with the blue eyes of death.

Was I not, right now, all too gladly completing Yacub's sinister work - a racial murder-suicide, wiping out myself and my father's entire line along with me? The thought flattened me against the mattress. How long I spent on my back watching the ceiling fan twirl, I couldn't say. At some point, Valentine shifted to me and smiled, I thought, bravely. Perhaps she'd sensed my anxiety. "You know you don't have to go through with this," she whispered. "You have the right to change your mind." And with that, the material of my life was suddenly back in my hands, moldable in a way it seldom ever can be. I had a decision to make, and no one else could make it for me. I would marry this woman I wanted to marry, I told myself, and all the rest was distraction.

The ceremony was held at Valentine's grandmother's home in Normandy. Before we exchanged our vows, I remember strolling across the property with my father, just the two of us; he was handsome and formal in his suit. We stopped beneath an apple tree overlooking the carp ponds and neighboring cow pastures and little Norman outbuildings all over the lawn, with their dark columns and white plaster walls, little gingerbread houses that epitomize all kinds of things that we are not. My father turned to me with an expression that was tender and, I think, also somewhat grave, and told me, "Son, don't lose yourself." He wasn't scolding me, and he wasn't stern - he seemed almost to be imploring me or perhaps not even addressing me at all but speaking through me to some younger him. I'm not sure. We were interrupted shortly after, and I had to step away. We never resumed that conversation, but his words still come back to me and only grow louder with each passing year.

At 90, Valentine's grandmother C., is a hardy, imposing Parisienne, brought up with servants and a general sense of ownership in the world that, for reasons of race and class and demographic shifts resulting in competition for resources on a global scale, neither Valentine nor I will ever know. As a child, she played and danced ballet with Brigitte Bardot. Once every month or two, Valentine and I, with our daughter, Marlow, in tow, made the 90-minute trip to Normandy, where many of Valentine's formative memories occurred. The place was remote enough that there were no numbers on the address, just an intersection of narrow roads winding through the apple orchards and horse and dairy farms that crop up along the region's Route du Cidre. As often as not, the names of the little towns and villages along the way are familiar because of their excellent cheeses. This property had always been Valentine's oasis, one she was understandably eager to impart to Marlow while the family still had it. (It was not something the next generation was able to maintain, and the family sold it before my son, Saul, could ever visit.) It's not a lavish home, but the plot is the size of the municipal park I spent my summers in as a child in New Jersey. I am certain that besides myself and Valentine's cousin's high school boyfriend, the only black people to have set foot on this land came as guests to my wedding.

Like my father, C. has known a world I cannot fully imagine. She had just received her first Communion when Nazis seized her family's property in Normandy to quarter their soldiers; when she returned, she found that the Germans had shot up all the family portraits, and her Communion dress was ripped apart and soiled - and yet, when the fighting was over, her life more or less resumed as normal, back to the country clubs and back to her place in the lower reaches of the upper tier of a European society that still held an immense global network of colonies and influence. We have had vastly different life experiences, but she has never been anything but warm to me and my family.

In spite of - or really because of - this easy acceptance, I am often thinking about skin when I'm in Normandy. Valentine, her younger half sister, Juliette, and I rush into the yard to sunbathe at the first rays of light to puncture the heavy skies; Juliette, whose mother's family is from the south, near the Spanish border, gets several shades darker than I do, and this is a source of amusement for us both. My daughter, Marlow, is the palest person in the family by a standard deviation, and Valentine and I are preoccupied with preventing her from burning.

And then there is that glistening dark brown skin of the antique that C. keeps on the table in the living room. It never escapes my notice that among the muntjac antlers and equestrian prints - little anachronistic emblems of mastery - C. keeps an astonishing, thick-lipped, bug-eyed porcelain head of a slave or servant woman on her coffee table (lidded and hollow inside, meant to hold bonbons, keys and other knickknacks). Whenever I am in the living room, I am incapable of denying it my attention.

The first time I saw it, we'd just come in from swimming, and I was on my way to the bathroom to wash up before lunch. When I came back and sat down, I wanted Valentine to tell me I hadn't seen what I thought I had. She blushed. We ate the mounds of shellfish C. put out, followed by the customary local cheese, and I thought of other things. But when I took my coffee to the sofa, I could feel that cursed head's eyes glued on me, watching, judging, maybe even beseeching me not to forget. Valentine and her cousins often hide the head when their grandmother isn't looking, but sometimes there is no clear and diplomatic way to do this, and I never insisted, though I have asked myself if this alone is enough to mark me as a traitor.

I wouldn't be able to explain to C. why I don't want my children to see this object when they are old enough to grasp its historical implications. She would be mortified, I know it, but I'm also under no illusions that she could fully appreciate just what about this souvenir poses such an existential problem for me. Valentine does, and I've complained at length to her, and yet the bizarre thing is the more I complain, the more I realize that I am also playing a role, willing myself, even, into some strange communion with an anger that exists somewhere outside me - an anger that has never rightfully been my own. The lived experience behind the anger belongs to someone else, to a memory. My wife and I can argue until we actually begin to laugh because the grievance remains too abstract, too artificial. Try as I might, I do not see myself - or my father or anyone else I know and love, for that matter - in that sad porcelain figure. And so I am left to question just why I am bound and defined by this demeaning past in some truer way than I am allowed to be by my more or less leveled present.

What I do know is that it can come almost as a relief to members of historically oppressed groups when we do find evidence of bias or insensitivity: What did you think? Of course she keeps a woolly-haired slave's head on her coffee table! Racism - like race - will always be what it has always been, we tell ourselves, and there can be no exit or respite. Yet the wound can and does heal; I have seen this happen. That slave head in its terrible specificity is troubling, but the conclusion I draw from the greater dynamic of all our lives assembled there in Normandy is far from pessimistic, because the terms on which people like Valentine and me meet and live with one another have been (and will continue to be) powerfully altered, and because we really have created - right now - a mixed-up and imperfect but thoroughly accepting and loving family. I do not, and do not wish to, see myself in the master, but can - and should - I really claim to glimpse in the slave's face my own eternal reflection?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
My Family's Life Inside and Outside America's Racial Categories (Published 2019)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Feature My father was raised under Jim Crow. My children could pass for white. Where does that leave me? Thomas Chatterton Williams at home in Paris this summer with his wife and children, from left, Marlow, Valentine and Saul. Credit...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Toolkit for "Straight Talk About the N-word"

# data[].attributes.body
“Mommy, What Does ‘Nigger’ Mean?” by Gloria Naylor in Ground and Writing about America’s Cultures (1994)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Take this test to learn more about your own bias and learn how bias is the foundation of stereotypes, prejudice and, ultimately, discrimination.

# data[].attributes.headline
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack

# data[].attributes.subject
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack

# data[].attributes.body
1990 perspective-changing piece by Peggy McIntosh

# data[].attributes.headline
Unconscious Bias- An Educator's Self Assessment 

# data[].attributes.subject
Unconscious Bias- An Educator's Self Assessment 

# data[].attributes.headline
Why Teaching Black Lives Matter Matters | Part I

# data[].attributes.subject
Why Teaching Black Lives Matter Matters | Part I

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
For Trinity Thompson, the decision of whether or not to address high-profile killings of black people with her second-graders was a no-brainer. She was teaching in Harlem soon after Eric Garner was killed by a police officer in a nearby New York City borough.

"How do I respond to this?" Thompson recalls asking herself. "And then from there, it was like, How do I respond to this- again?" Each time news reports covered another black person dying at the hands of police, her students-most of whom were black-asked more and more difficult questions. A career-long social justice educator, Thompson was committed to a response that focused not only on the problem, but also on how people were resisting it and seeking solutions.

And that meant teaching second-graders about Black Lives Matter (BLM).

She knew it was risky. When the Black Lives Matter movement comes up in conversation, it is often characterized in one of two ways: as the work of strategic activists drawing attention to and combating issues that harm black people, black communities and humanity at large, or as a movement marked by violent outbursts and driven by an exclusionary, racist, anti-police agenda.

This split gives some educators pause when it comes to teaching about BLM. Others embrace the topic, recognizing it as an opportunity to teach about collective action and to link past racial justice movements to the present. But all educators, by virtue of the fact that their students have either direct or mediated exposure to Black Lives Matter, should know the basic facts about the movement's central beliefs and practices.

Not all of us are like Thompson; the students who sit in front of us daily are not always directly affected by the killing of unarmed black people or any of the other injustices that plague our nation. But as teachers who function as caretakers, truth-seekers and advocates of justice, we can acknowledge how the threat of justice in one community is, to borrow from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a threat to justice in every community. We have a civic responsibility to be educated about Black Lives Matter and, as we learn, we must teach.

The Beginning and the Hashtag

The Black Lives Matter movement began with a commitment to ending police brutality and state-sanctioned violence and injustice against black people. It is also dedicated to affirming black people's "contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression," according to its founders. The movement was started by three black women-Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi-following the 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman, a Florida man who had shot and killed Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager, the preceding year. Garza took to social media the night of that acquittal, stating in part, "Black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter." A year later, Michael Brown, another unarmed black teenager, was shot and killed by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri; the officer was not indicted. Shortly thereafter, the internet was filled with messages of outcry and support that included #BlackLivesMatter.

Since the Ferguson action in 2014, BLM has taken shape as a multichapter national organization; 37 chapters currently operate in the United States, one in Canada. Many BLM chapters and other organizations that embrace the movement mobilize people to demonstrate in communities where police shootings have occurred and to convene at large gatherings-such as political rallies-to bring awareness to police brutality. The website of the original group, blacklivesmatter.com, also lists other types of local and national events, such as teach-ins, panels and Twitter chats, and encourages organizers to submit their own events.

In an October 2016 interview with TEDWomen, Cullors explained what the movement means to her.

"Black Lives Matter is our call to action. It is a tool to a reimagined world where black people are free to exist, free to live. It is a tool for our allies to show up differently for us," she said. "I grew up in a neighborhood that was heavily policed. I witnessed my brothers and my siblings continuously stopped and frisked by law enforcement. I remember my home being raided. And one of the questions, as a child, I had was why? Why us? Black Lives Matter offers answers to the why."

Myths and Criticisms

People who don't follow Black Lives Matter usually become aware of the movement when news sites report on BLM actions or protests. What many people don't realize is that the leadership also embraces policy change and legislation as necessary elements to end oppression of black people-and that the work and the leadership are not limited to the Black Lives Matter network.

One common misconception about the BLM movement is that it is leaderless. But there isn't one leader; there are many. "BLM is composed of many local leaders and many local organizations including Black Youth Project 100, the Dream Defenders, the Organization for Black Struggle, Hands Up United, Millennial Activists United, and the Black Lives Matter national network," organizers explain on the website. "We demonstrate through this model that the movement is bigger than any one person."

Another misconception is that the movement is solely a mechanism for protest. In fact, the many people and organizations with agendas and goals that overlap and align with BLM have produced detailed policy demands and proposals for institutional reforms. Campaign Zero, for example, outlines a list of policy proposals largely focused on ending police brutality. It is a strategy for addressing one of the most visible, damaging and deadly symptoms of systemic racism. The Movement for Black Lives, a collective of more than 50 organizations, advances a platform covering six areas of domestic-policy reform, including economic justice and investment in equitable education and health care instead of criminalization and incarceration.

Many people, however, view the BLM movement as violent, seeking to "sow a racial divide" and intent on interrupting the work of police officers commissioned to protect and serve the public. For example, Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, said in a television interview that the movement is "inherently racist" and "divides us." He further stated, "They don't mean 'black lives matter'; they mean 'let's agitate against the police matters.'"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why Teaching Black Lives Matter Matters | Part I

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
For Trinity Thompson, the decision of whether or not to address high-profile killings of black people with her second-graders was a no-brainer. She was teaching in Harlem soon after Eric Garner was killed by a police officer in a nearby New York City borough. "How do I respond to this?"

# data[].attributes.headline
Bringing Black Lives Matter Into the Classroom | Part II

# data[].attributes.subject
Bringing Black Lives Matter Into the Classroom | Part II

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In my article " Don't Say Nothing," I warn about the dangers of teachers being silent on the issue of racial violence. And what I love about this profession is that, when teachers do speak, when we take a stance and choose to engage in the political, we plant seeds for the next generation. When we teach in ways that promote respect, love, empathy and understanding-despite the difficulties we may face in doing so-we have the power to influence young people who will eventually become doers and leaders in this world.

Teaching about the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement allows each of us to chew on multiple injustices simultaneously. We are able to teach not only about racism, its history and its present manifestations, but we also are able to point to solutions and methods of action so our students don't become disillusioned. When students are overcome with doubt, we can draw parallels to Standing Rock and say to them, "This is how people are fighting for change in spite of the obstacles they are experiencing." We can talk about sexism and patriarchy, but we can also leverage conversations about sexuality using gender-neutral and affirming language.

Teaching about BLM isn't just about police brutality and the ways an organization is seeking to end it. Bringing this movement to the classroom can open the door to larger conversations about truth, justice, activism, healing and reconciliation.

The work required to teach about Black Lives Matter is extensive and heavy, but this topic can be addressed effectively in classrooms-at any grade level.

Elementary Applications

Trinity Thompson and her colleagues, who teach second grade in Harlem, knew they wanted to teach about the BLM movement. However, a couple of false starts made it clear that, for their efforts to be sustained and successful, they needed to establish safety and provide students with context. They decided to form a Cultural Competency Committee to educate themselves about social justice issues, build lesson plans and incorporate family input. The committee developed a six-month curriculum that focuses on education professor Bree Picower's six elements of social justice curriculum design: self-love and knowledge, respect for others, issues of social injustice, social movements and social change, awareness raising, and social action.

"I think for me the biggest thing was providing both windows and mirrors," Thompson explains, "having their community and their history, even in Harlem, reflected in what they're learning ... but also providing them windows. We looked at Stonewall, we looked at South Africa and we looked at Palestine."

Thompson used text-based culture circles to initiate conversations about police violence and Black Lives Matter-a format she had already used with them throughout the curriculum. She began by reading to her students an age-appropriate text about what to do when bad things happen, then guiding them through a discussion, providing them the space and language they needed to process what they were experiencing. Thompson even took her students through Campaign Zero, a data-driven platform dedicated to ending police brutality in the United States. She admits that this was a difficult task, but she was able to make it work by referring to pictures on the Campaign Zero website.

Karen Shreiner, a second-grade teacher in Oakland, California, is another example. Shreiner works for a charter school network committed to equity and social justice. Because her students-like Thompson's-are so young, Schreiner has found creative yet age-appropriate ways to immerse them in the discourse necessary to understand and process such serious subject matter. She embeds current topics into pre-planned units, allowing her to meet content and curriculum demands while also teaching pressing issues in meaningful ways. To introduce students to her unit on activism, she used an activity her students were familiar with: gallery walks. In this case, she used images that captured moments of resistance.

"I have pictures of everything from the March on Washington to when the Bay Bridge was shut down because of Black Lives Matter protesters a couple years ago," Shreiner says. She has students go to each photo, then use questions and sentence frames they've practiced. "They can say things like, 'I notice that _____' or 'I wonder why this person is _____' or 'I think this person feels _____ because _____.'"

Schreiner is careful not to tell her students what to think about the images, letting them come to their own conclusions. "A lot of them will notice things like, 'Some of these pictures are from a long time ago. Some of them are from now,'" she recalls. "'A lot of these pictures involve the police. A lot of the pictures involve the police treating people in ways that aren't nice.'" If she hears students say things that reflect assumptions or implicit bias, she interrupts them to ask that they provide evidence. Her approach works, she says, because she establishes trust in her classroom and prepares students all year to talk about issues of identity, diversity, justice and action.

A Middle School Approach

Middle school students attending after-school programming through Breakthrough Providence learn about Black Lives Matter not from classroom teachers but from other students. Dulari Tahbildar is the executive director of this Rhode Island-based chapter of a national collaborative focused on the needs of middle-level students from low-income households. The organization offers supplementary curriculum developed and taught by high school and college students who are preparing-with the support of Breakthrough-for careers in teaching. Tahbildar says the organization was unanimous in its decision to focus on Black Lives Matter during the 2016-17 school year.

"A lot of people don't really recognize the voices and contributions of our youngest students," Tahbildar says. "We're working with 16- to 22-year-olds who don't have any formal teaching experience, and we basically give them a crash course in 'What is a lesson plan? What is an objective? How do you develop trusting relationships with students?'" The organization also emphasizes to its young teacher-students the importance of driving critical thinking and not telling students what to think.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Bringing Black Lives Matter Into the Classroom | Part II

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In my article " Don't Say Nothing," I warn about the dangers of teachers being silent on the issue of racial violence. And what I love about this profession is that, when teachers do speak, when we take a stance and choose to engage in the political, we plant seeds for the next generation.

# data[].attributes.headline
TEACHING ABOUT RACE AND RACISM: LESSON PLANS AND RESOURCE

# data[].attributes.subject
TEACHING ABOUT RACE AND RACISM: LESSON PLANS AND RESOURCE

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Teaching about Race and Racism: Lesson Plans and Resources

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
5 Collection of 2020 Use these free prek-12 race and racism lesson plans and resources to educate students on challenging racism, police violence, implicit biases and more.

# data[].attributes.headline
Bryan Stevenson on the Frustration Behind the George Floyd Protests

# data[].attributes.subject
Bryan Stevenson on the Frustration Behind the George Floyd Protests

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The past weekend saw the start of an uprising in dozens of American cities, with tens of thousands of people taking to the streets for peaceful protests and violent encounters with the police. The proximate cause was the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed, handcuffed African-American man, by a Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin. In Minneapolis and other cities, police in riot gear have responded aggressively to protests and looting, pushing and shoving protesters and using an arsenal of crowd-control weaponry. In Louisville, a black restaurant owner was shot dead, under circumstances that remain unclear; in Brooklyn, social media captured an incident in which police officers drove into a crowd of protesters.

On Sunday, I spoke by phone with Bryan Stevenson, a civil-rights lawyer and the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, a human-rights organization that challenges convictions, advocates for criminal-justice reform and racial justice, and created the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, in Montgomery, Alabama, which honors the victims of lynching and other forms of racial terror during the Jim Crow era. Stevenson, who was the subject of a Profile, by Jeffrey Toobin, in 2016, is also the author of a memoir, " Just Mercy," which was made into a feature film last year. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, Stevenson and I discussed the roots of police violence in both slavery and Jim Crow, how to change the culture of policing, and the frustration and despair behind this week's protests.
What has been your biggest takeaway from the past week?
We need to reckon with our history of racial injustice. I think everything we are seeing is a symptom of a larger disease. We have never honestly addressed all the damage that was done during the two and a half centuries that we enslaved black people. The great evil of American slavery wasn't the involuntary servitude; it was the fiction that black people aren't as good as white people, and aren't the equals of white people, and are less evolved, less human, less capable, less worthy, less deserving than white people.

That ideology of white supremacy was necessary to justify enslavement, and it is the legacy of slavery that we haven't acknowledged. This is why I have argued that slavery didn't end in 1865; it evolved. Next month will be the hundred and fifty-fifth anniversary of when black people gathered to celebrate the end of slavery: Juneteenth. They believed they would receive the vote, and the protection of the law, and land, and opportunity, and have a chance to be full Americans. They were denied all of those things because this ideology of white supremacy would not allow Southern whites to accept them, to value them and to protect them, and so, immediately after 1865 and the Thirteenth Amendment, violence broke out. We are going to be releasing a report next month on the horrendous violence that took place during Reconstruction, which blocked all of the progress.

So, for me, you can't understand these present-day issues without understanding the persistent refusal to view black people as equals. It has changed, but that history of violence, where we used terror and intimidation and lynching and then Jim Crow laws and then the police, created this presumption of dangerousness and guilt. It doesn't matter how hard you try, how educated you are, where you go in this country-if you are black, or you are brown, you are going to have to navigate that presumption, and that makes encounters with the police just rife with the potential for these specific outcomes which we have seen.
How do you think our current era of criminal justice and policing is a continuation of that past?
I think the police have been the face of oppression in many ways. Even before the Civil War, law enforcement was complicit in sustaining enslavement. It was the police who were tasked with tracking down fugitive slaves from 1850 onwards in the north. After emancipation, it was law enforcement that stepped back and allowed black communities to be terrorized and victimized. We had an overthrow of government during Reconstruction, and law enforcement facilitated that. Then, throughout the first half of the twentieth century, it was law enforcement and police and our justice system that allowed people to be lynched by white mobs, sometimes literally on the courthouse lawn, and allowed the perpetrators of that terror and violence to engage in these acts of murder with impunity. They were even complicit in it. And, as courageous black people began to advocate for civil rights in the nineteen-fifties and nineteen-sixties, when these older, nonviolent black Americans would literally be on their knees, praying, they were battered and bloodied by uniformed police officers. That identity of violence and oppression is not something we can ignore. We have to address it. But, rather than address it, since the nineteen-sixties, we have been trying to distract ourselves from it and not acknowledge it, and not own up to it, and all of our efforts have been compromised by this refusal to recognize that we need to radically change the culture of police.

Now, the police are an extension of our larger society, and, when we try to disconnect them from the justice system and the lawmakers and the policymakers, we don't accurately get at it. The history of this country, when it comes to racial justice and social justice, unlike what we do in other areas, is, like, O.K., it's 1865, we won't enslave you and traffic you anymore, and they were forced to make that agreement. And then, after a half century of mob lynching, it's, like, O.K., we won't allow the mobs to pull you out of the jail and lynch you anymore. And that came after pressure. And then it was, O.K., we won't legally block you from voting, and legally prevent you from going into restaurants and public accommodations.

But at no point was there an acknowledgement that we were wrong and we are sorry. It was always compelled, by the Union Army, by international pressure, by the federal courts, and that dynamic has meant that there is no more remorse or regret or consciousness of wrongdoing. The police don't think they did anything wrong over the past fifty or sixty years. And so, in that respect, we have created a culture that allows our police departments to see themselves as agents of control, and that culture has to shift. And this goes beyond the dynamics of race. We have created a culture where police officers think of themselves as warriors, not guardians.
Do you think this situation with the policy today has a specific purpose, and what is it?
It does. But the purpose was possible because of our unwillingness to recognize the wrongfulness of this racial hierarchy. Even the abolitionists, many of whom fought to end slavery, didn't believe in racial equality. So, if you embrace white supremacy, then you are going to use black people and exploit black people and deny black people opportunities, because it advances that purpose. And a lot of white supremacy wasn't even "purposeful." What was the purpose of banning interracial marriage? What was the purpose of banning black people from coming into restaurants? It was about maintaining racial hierarchy, and that presumption or narrative that black people are dangerous, that black people can't be trusted, that black people have to be controlled. And if it didn't have an economic value, that didn't mean that it wasn't purposeful. The purpose was to sustain that hierarchy.

So you take a history like that, and then you combine it with a culture like the culture of policing that we have created, where people are taught to fight and to shoot like soldiers. When the government equips police departments like they're equipping the military, we undermine healthy relationships between the police and the community. We don't train them to deëscalate, or deal with people suffering from mental illness or the complexities and anger and frustrations of poverty. And then we bring them in, often to places where they don't live. We view the police as an occupying military force. That kind of culture gives rise to the violence that we see.

It is possible to create a police department where people think of themselves as guardians. Their commitment is to protect and serve even the people they are arresting. The best police officers will tell you that their job is to make sure that the person who may have just committed a crime is safely encountered, that they keep that person safe, but that is not the way most police officers are trained. And we facilitate it by protecting the whole institution, so no one in this country can tell you how many people were killed by the police last year, because we don't require that data. People have been trying for two decades to mandate the disclosure of that kind of information, and there is this institutional resistance. And that's a larger problem-the way we have insulated these institutions from reform.
Should the protests be oriented toward a specific agenda, and, if so, what should that agenda be?
I don't think it would be fair to ask protesters to solve the problems created by this long history. In many ways, protests are a reaction of frustration and anger to the unwillingness of elected officials to engage in the kind of reforms that need to happen. The protests are a symbol of frustration and despair. I think the answers have to come from elected officials. We can change the culture of institutions in this country. We have done it time and time again. In the nineteen-seventies and nineteen-eighties, if you look at the laws, there was hardly any punishment for people convicted of driving while drunk. We tolerated it. Even though it was catastrophic, it wasn't something we saw as a priority. Then Mothers Against Drunk Driving began lifting up new narratives, and all of a sudden the political will shifted. We created a new culture, and we now take stronger steps.

Regardless of the wealth or affluence of the offender, we do more. That is a cultural shift that has made death from drunk driving much less frequent than it was fifty years ago.

With domestic violence, it is the same story. In the nineteen-sixties, a woman who called the police could not expect that her spouse would be arrested. The police would come and pull him outside and tell jokes. There was a sympathy for the frustration that led to violence. And then we began changing that narrative. Women and victims of domestic violence started lifting their voices, and the political will changed. And today we have a radically different view of people who engage in domestic violence. Even our most prominent athletes and celebrities, if accused credibly, are going to be held accountable in ways that weren't true even ten years ago. That is a cultural shift. And we are in the midst of a cultural shift about sexual harassment in the workplace. There is a different tolerance level. In New York, people need to take tests to make sure they can recognize sexual harassment.

We have not engaged in that kind of cultural transformation when it comes to policing. Now, we have the tools. We know how to do it. I spent several months on President Obama's task force on policing, in 2015, after we had a period of riots. We have forty pages of recommendations. That can change the culture of policing. It begins with training. It begins with procedural justice, and policies, and changing the way police officers are viewed and opening up communities.

Do you think the Obama Administration did enough on this issue, especially before 2015?
No one has done enough. But this is not a federal problem alone. I am critical of the current Administration shelving all of those recommendations, withdrawing from lawsuits where police departments had been sued, and signalling that we do not care about this anymore. But I also don't believe that excuses what mayors and governors and local officials have failed to do. You don't need a White House to engage in culture change at your police department. That can be done in cities and communities and states. These reforms need to happen locally. The federal government can and should be playing a bigger role in incentivizing these changes. But anyone looking to the White House and the Presidency exclusively is not going to get it. I also think that, if we allow another five years to go by with no meaningful reform, then we have to stop talking about Washington. Every mayor and governor in this country has a blueprint for changing culture in policing and making things better. Whether they do it or not is the harder question.
You are saying this can't come from the top alone-but, having someone at the top of the system who talks about shooting people and tells police to get tough, how much does that worry you about the future, even knowing how bad the past has been?
Yeah, I think any time we reinforce this idea that police officers are there to control and dominate and menace, that they should be unapologetic and feared and ready for battle, we are reinforcing the culture and the dynamic that has given rise to so much distrust. It's not good for public safety. It is not even good for officer safety, and it is certainly not good for creating the kinds of healthy communities that most of us want to live in. It's the wrong model. It's like someone coming along and saying, "Doctors don't need to care for their patients, or talk to their patients, or be polite, or be respectful, or show any interest. They have skills and knowledge, and their job is to treat, and anybody who is asking for more than that is too much." That mind-set will cause a lot of people to die. They will not get the health care that they need, and doctors will not be successful because it's the wrong culture for helping people get the cure and treatment that they need.

The same is true for public safety. You can go to other places in the world and see evidence of this everywhere. And we have even done it here. There are police departments in this country that have radically changed their relationship to the community. Camden, New Jersey, fifty years ago, was just a boiling pot, and things would blow up all the time, and relationships between police and community leaders were fraught with tension and conflict. And that has changed radically because of leadership and engagement.

Many of these protests this week have had more white people than the protests five years ago. How do you think that is or is not likely to change the movement?
To be honest, it's not that hard to protest. It's not that hard to go someplace. And it doesn't mean that it's not important. It doesn't mean that it's not critical. But that's not the hard thing we need from people who care about these issues. We need people to vote, we need people to engage in policy reform and political reform, we need people to not tolerate the rhetoric of fear and anger that so many of our elected officials use to sustain power. We need the cultural environments in the workplace to shift.

Black people in this country have to live this very complex existence when they live and go to work and go to school in these spaces which are largely controlled by white people. They can't really be their authentic selves. That means that there is this tension and there is this challenge, and at some point you get overwhelmed by that. And when these incidents of police violence take place, and people are killed, literally, on video, right in front of you, and the perpetrators are staring at you, you get angry and you want to express that anger.

It's not just anger over what happened to George Floyd or Breonna Taylor or Ahmaud Arbery. It is anger about continuing to live in a world where there is this presumption of dangerousness and guilt wherever you go. I'm sixty years old and have been practicing law for thirty-five years. I have a lot of honorary degrees and went to Harvard. And I still go places where I am presumed dangerous. I have been told to leave courtrooms because the presumption was that I was the defendant and not the lawyer. I have been pulled out of my car by police who pointed a gun on me. And I can just tell you that, when you have to navigate this presumption of guilt, day in and day out, and when the burden is on you to make the people around you see you as fully human and equal, you get exhausted. You are tired. And I would argue that the black people in the streets are expressing their fatigue, their anger, and their frustration at having to live this menaced life in America. And that is not the same thing for white people who are supporting them. It doesn't mean that white people shouldn't be supporting them, but I don't think it's the proper focus of what many of us are trying to give voice to.
Criminal-justice reform has become a bipartisan issue, but it often seems to be spoken of as being distinct from police brutality and police reform. How important is it to bring police reform into the broader context of criminal-justice reform?
I think, for many of us, it has always been at the center of it. Changing the way we police, prosecute, judge, and punish is the essence of criminal-justice reform.

I think people use the phrase "criminal-justice reform" in a pretty lazy way. Modifying the federal sentencing parameters at the edges, so a very small percentage of people in federal prisons might get reduced sentences, is not meaningful criminal-justice reform. Ninety per cent of the prisoners in the United States are in the state system. That is not impacted by what the White House or any President has done. [ The Obama Administration amended federal sentencing guidelines in order to reduce the sentences of people convicted of nonviolent drug crimes. In 2017, Jeff Sessions, who was then the Attorney General, overturned those reforms.] The real meaningful reform would have been implementing the task force's recommendations, changing the way we think about police and prosecutorial accountability, mandating the data disclosure that would allow us to evaluate the nature of this problem. And, when you don't do those things, everything else you do is going to be compromised.

We had the so-called War on Drugs that was carried out against black and brown people, because the law-enforcement agents that were the people carrying out that war saw black and brown people differently. That's a policing and prosecutorial problem. The immunity we have created to shield people from accountability is a barrier to shield people from any effective reform. That includes sentencing and all these others things, because, if prosecutors can withhold evidence and wrongly convict people, and police can abuse people and coerce confessions, then nothing else we do at the sentencing or policy level is going to be effective. And that has to change.

Race, Policing, and Black Lives Matter Protests

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Bryan Stevenson on the Frustration Behind the George Floyd Protests

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Isaac Chotiner interviews Bryan Stevenson, the Equal Justice Initiative founder, civil-rights lawyer, and author of "Just Mercy," about the culture of policing and the frustrations behind protests of the killing of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery.

# data[].attributes.body
The Washington Post's map: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/
Also "The racist roots of American policing": https://theconversation.com/the-racist-roots-of-american-policing-from-slave-patrols-to-traffic-stops-112816

# data[].attributes.headline
TEACHING ABOUT RACE, RACISM AND POLICE VIOLENCE

# data[].attributes.subject
TEACHING ABOUT RACE, RACISM AND POLICE VIOLENCE

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Teaching About Race, Racism and Police Violence

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In 2014, the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Eric Garner in New York City, Tamir Rice in Cleveland and too many others caused waves of nationwide protest and appeals for stronger protections against police brutality. These events—along with the lack of accountability for the police officers wh…

# data[].attributes.body
Collection of resources

# data[].attributes.headline
Key Narratives for Teaching about the Civil Rights Movement

# data[].attributes.subject
Key Narratives for Teaching about the Civil Rights Movement

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
These narratives are drawn from an article by Judy Richardson about teaching Eyes on the Prize, a talk by Charles Cobb Jr. in January 2017, the introduction to Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching, and feedback from teachers gathered at institutes hosted by Teaching for Change and the SNCC Legacy Project.

1. The Civil Rights Movement was a primary force for the expansion of democracy for all.

2. The Movement was based on the work of thousands of local "ordinary" people who both organized and sustained it.

3. The Movement thrust forward its leaders, not the other way around.

4. The Movement was not simply a series of spontaneous demonstrations - it was often carefully planned and executed.

5. Women and youth were a fundamental part of the leadership and the troops of the Movement.

6. The tradition of protest grew out of a long history of activism and resistance in the Black community.

7. The Freedom Struggle had many demands, including an end to state-sponsored and -condoned violence, voting rights, access to health care, education, housing, land rights, environmental justice, peace (antiwar), labor rights, recreation, and more. Quality education has always been a primary focus of the Freedom Movement for African Americans.

8. The tactics of the Movement included economic boycotts, protests, grassroots organizing, economic co-ops, building organizational alliances, self-defense, nonviolence (both tactical and philosophical), freedom schools, popular education, and more.

9. State-sponsored and/or -condoned violence, including sexual violence against African Americans, was frequent, random, and carried out with impunity.

10. Most people in the United States were not part of the Movement.

11. Music played a major role in strengthening and unifying the Movement.

12. Oppression and resistance existed in both the South and the North.

13. Even the smallest acts of solidarity by white people with African Americans were nipped in the bud with swift and harsh punishment.

14. The Movement was based on humane values that brought out the best in each individual involved.

15. The Movement emphasized responsibility to one another.

16. With few exceptions, the commercial white press in the South (and to some extent in the North) played an active role in promoting white supremacy through lies, omissions, and exposing activists, while the Black press played a key role in supporting the Movement.

17. A diverse group of national and international participants was involved in the Movement.

© Teaching for Change 2018

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Key Narratives for Teaching about the Civil Rights Movement - Civil Rights Teaching

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
These narratives are drawn from an article by Judy Richardson about teaching Eyes on the Prize, a talk by Charles Cobb Jr. in January 2017, the introduction to Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching, and feedback from teachers gathered at institutes hosted by Teaching for Change and the SNCC Legacy Project.

# data[].attributes.headline
Lutte contre le racisme et l'antisémitisme - Vademecum

# data[].attributes.subject
Lutte contre le racisme et l'antisémitisme - Vademecum

# data[].attributes.headline
Seizing the Moment: Teaching Race and Racism Today

# data[].attributes.subject
Seizing the Moment: Teaching Race and Racism Today

# data[].attributes.body
Hasan Jeffries, keynote session at NCHE  Equity Summit
Link to ppt: https://www.nche.net/files/NCHE%20Seizing%20the%20Moment-%20Teaching%20Race%20and%20Racism%20Today%20(August%204,%202020).pdf

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Seizing the Moment: Teaching Race and Racism Today

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Zinn Education Project is my compass in a sea of corporate textbooks, packaged common core curriculum and standardized testing. My entire curriculum is based on lessons that can be found on the Zinn Education Project.

High School Social Studies Teacher, Portland, Ore.

Your support is needed to help more students learn people's history. 100% of Zinn Education Project funding comes from individuals like you. Donate today.

By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca

From voter ID laws to voter-roll purges, gerrymandering to poll closures to the deadly in-person voting conditions during a pandemic, the right to vote is under attack and the stakes are high. It is critical that students learn about the fight for voting rights, past and present.

Oct. 4, 1961: Burglund High School Walkout...

More than McCarthyism: The Attack on Activism Students ...

I can UNDERSTAND pessimism, but I don't BELIEVE in it. It's not simply a matter of faith, but of historical EVIDENCE. Not overwhelming evidence, just enough to give HOPE, because for hope we don't need certainty, only POSSIBILITY.

-Howard Zinn

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Zinn Education Project: Teaching People's History

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Zinn Education Project promotes and supports the teaching of people's history in middle and high school classrooms across the country. Based on the lens of history highlighted in Howard Zinn's best-selling book A People's History of the United States, the website offers free, downloadable lessons and articles organized by theme, time period, and reading level.

# data[].attributes.headline
Boston University Center for Antiracist Research

# data[].attributes.subject
Boston University Center for Antiracist Research

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Our Mission: To build an antiracist society that ensures racial equity and social justice

The mission of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research is to convene researchers and practitioners from various disciplines to figure out novel and practical ways to understand, explain, and solve seemingly intractable problems of racial inequity and injustice. We foster exhaustive racial research, research-based policy innovation, data-driven educational and advocacy campaigns, and narrative-change initiatives. We are working toward building an antiracist society that ensures equity and justice for all.
Read the Founder's Statement by Ibram X. Kendi
What is antiracist research?

Whereas racist research historically has posed the question, "What is wrong with people?" antiracist research now asks a different question, a better question: "What is wrong with policies?" Our belief is that framing research on race and racism around antiracist questions leads to antiracist narratives, effective policy solutions, and impactful advocacy campaigns that cut to the root of racial inequality: racist policy.
Learn more about our research

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Center for Antiracist Research is dedicated to solving seemingly intractable problems of racial inequity and injustice.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Check e-mail ePayStub español | 中文 | français | tiếng Việt | 한국어 | አማርኛ

# data[].attributes.body
Start Guide

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
6.1. Civil Rights Groups

6.2. Civil Rights Constituency Groups

6.3. Legal Defense of Civil Rights Groups

6.4. Immigration Rights Groups

National Immigration Project

A network of lawyers, law students, legal workers, and community advocates working to defend and expand the rights of all immigrants in the United States, regardless of legal status.

America's Voice

Works to guarantee full labor, civil, and political rights for immigrants and their families.

United We Dream

An immigrant-youth-led network of 100,000 immigrant youth and allies and 55 affiliate organizations in 26 states that advocates for the dignity and fair treatment of immigrant youth and families, regardless of immigration status.

National Immigration Law Center (NILC)

Dedicated to protecting and promoting the rights of low income immigrants and their family members.

6.5. Criminal Justice Groups

6.6. Groups Challenging Capital Punishment

National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (NCADP)

Provides information, advocates for public policy, and mobilizes and supports individuals and institutions that share an unconditional rejection of capital punishment.

Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC)

Provides the media and the public with analysis and information on issues concerning capital punishment.

6.7. Community Organizing Groups

Also see 12.3. Progressive Training and Education Groups

and 1.3. Progressive Lobbying and Electoral Action Groups

6.8. Disability Rights Groups

6.9. Elder Advocacy Groups

Alliance for Retired Americans

A nationwide organization allied with the AFL-CIO and other partners working to ensure social and economic justice and full civil rights for all citizens, particularly focusing on retiree legislative and political issues.

AARP Public Policy Institute

Researches and advocates on a wide variety of issues related to aging especially health and long-term care, economic security, independent living, and consumer issues.

National Academy on an Aging Society

A policy institute that fosters critical thinking about the implications of an aging society.

6.10. Children Advocacy Groups

6.11. Family Advocacy Groups

Futures Without Violence

Develops innovative strategies to prevent domestic, dating, and sexual violence, stalking, and child abuse.

MomsRising

Works to increase family economic security, to end discrimination against women and mothers, and to build a nation where both businesses and families can thrive by educating the public and mobilizing massive grassroots actions.

6.12. Feminist / Women's Liberation Groups

6.13. Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Liberation Groups

6.14. Family Planning Groups

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
National Immigration Project A network of lawyers, law students, legal workers, and community advocates working to defend and expand the rights of all immigrants in the United States, regardless of legal status. America's Voice Works to guarantee full labor, civil, and political rights for immigrants and their families.

# data[].attributes.headline
A Better Way to Teach the Civil Rights Movement

# data[].attributes.subject
A Better Way to Teach the Civil Rights Movement

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A native of the Magnolia State, Jessica Dickens grew up just a short drive away from one of the most infamous events of Mississippi Freedom Summer: the 1964 disappearance and murder of three civil rights workers on their way to investigate a church burning. She's also a graduate of one of Mississippi's segregated high schools-part of a group of all-white private schools established in the 1950s to thwart school integration.

Yet even with her personal ties to civil rights history, the central figures in Dickens's history lessons in her early teaching years in Mississippi were Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks-two of the most memorable leaders from her own schooling, and staples of U.S. history textbooks. It was only with exposure to fresh thinking through a teaching fellowship on civil rights history-and after uncovering her state's untold stories-that the 11-year veteran began to shift her teaching approach.

"I realized we were providing an extreme disservice... by teaching the whitewashed version of [civil rights] history," Dickens said, calling that realization her "turning point."

It's a common oversight in America's classrooms. The story of the civil rights movement, as told and retold, generally includes only well-known heroes, heroines, and watershed moments from 1954 to 1968: Brown v. Board of Education, Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, the Montgomery bus boycott, sit-ins, and nonviolent black protests. In assessing states' curriculum standards, a 2014 report from the Southern Poverty Law Center concluded that coverage of the movement was "woefully inadequate" and focused on "a small group of charismatic leaders" and "a series of dates, names, and actions." Five states-Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Oregon, and Wyoming-neither covered the movement in their standards nor provided supplemental materials to teach it.

But a new push is underway among educators like Dickens to correct this narrow view. Prompted by a curiosity about the period's subtleties and complexities, teachers across the country are modifying their curricula and abandoning their textbooks to teach a more accurate history that commonly goes untold: the role of grassroots activists and women, nuanced portraits of leaders like Parks and King, and racial and social justice battles that link the past to contemporary issues of inequality.

"It's very difficult to get down to the nitty-gritty in the few days that some teachers have to cover this content, but still, you can present the 'I Have a Dream' speech as the centerpiece, or you can present the story of Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer, Gloria Richardson, or other on-the-ground activists," stressed Aaron Broudo, a U.S. history teacher at Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School in New York City. "It's a choice of where you start, and where you start has a lot to do with the way you're conceptualizing the role of civil rights curriculum in a student's education."

Debunking Common Myths

Motivated by a desire to deepen his historical knowledge, Broudo recently joined more than two dozen middle and high school teachers at Duke University for a three-week summer institute led by veterans of the civil rights movement and recognized experts on the black freedom struggle.

Textbooks were spurned in favor of primary documents-including original curriculum from the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Schools, numerous in-depth readings on little-known activists of the era such as Amzie Moore, and recorded interviews and archival video footage from civil rights organizers like Ella Baker. Throughout the seminar, a bottom-up teaching of history was emphasized, aimed at debunking many of the common misperceptions and misunderstandings about the period.

Even though participants had sought out the experience, many were still surprised by what they learned-specifically the roles of black churches, youth, schools, families, and grassroots organizations in furthering the movement. In particular, many were unaware of the significance and leadership of black women, which Judy Richardson, codirector of the institute, said is among the most underreported angles in history lessons.

In the mass action against Montgomery's bus system, "women put the leaflets out, they're the ones who tell the black community that Mrs. Parks has been arrested and suggest a boycott of the buses," and yet "the traditional narrative is only men," said Richardson, a veteran of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a prominent group formed in the 1960s, and coeditor of Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC. The institute's reteaching of movement history mirrored what many notable researchers have been saying for decades.

In a 2006 paper, historian Derrick P. Alridge scrutinized six widely used high school history textbooks to analyze the depiction of Martin Luther King Jr., finding King was universally portrayed as "moderate, magnetic, and inspirational... rather than the radical and controversial figure he was during his lifetime." Likewise, the image of Rosa Parks as meek and mild is a grossly oversimplified interpretation, writes Jeanne Theoharis, a political science professor at Brooklyn College. Parks was a seasoned organizer and activist in Montgomery, Alabama, for over a decade before the yearlong bus boycott.

This top-down framing in most history curricula-which puts the focus on renowned leaders-obscures the story of the significant local organizing that fueled civil rights victories, said Tina Tosto, an English teacher at Pascagoula High School in Mississippi and former middle school history teacher. Tosto, who attended the institute, added that isolating the period in history lessons also deprives students of an understanding of the key historical events leading up to the movement-namely the role of black World War II veterans who demanded equality at home after serving overseas-and the chronic societal problems it failed to fully resolve.

"The passage of legislation-the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act-was definitely a success of the movement that fell short," she said, referencing present-day injustices like racial profiling and mass incarceration. "The danger in teaching that the civil rights movement achieved its goals is that it implies to students that there is nothing left to fight for in regards to equity."

Sanitizing History

Yet learning new content is one thing-it's another to discuss a historical era rooted in brutality and racism. At the institute, thorny issues surfaced following the screening of Eyes on the Prize, the award-winning series on the civil rights movement. The stark contrast between academic discussions on racial oppression and the raw realities exposed in the documentary footage sparked tough conversations between the black teachers and their white counterparts, who formed the bulk of institute attendees, just as white teachers make up the vast majority of the nation's public school teaching force.

Crystal Proctor, a black social studies teacher at Suitland High School in Forestville, Maryland, said the participants were resisting "what we've always been taught versus the truth," and compared the exchanges to what she's observed in tense, emotional classroom discussions on race.

Teachers also questioned how easy or difficult it would be to apply what they learned at Duke within their schools, which are not necessarily full of peers ready and willing to change their teaching practice, according to a number of participants. "I had a coworker who said that teaching so in-depth about wrongdoings against African Americans was divisive... and that we all need to 'get over it,'" said Tosto, referencing teachers' resistance to embracing a more accurate retelling of the movement. Other teachers pointed to challenges at a higher level, such as a lack of support for professional development from administrators and an overemphasis on state accountability mandates.

These sentiments echo what civil rights scholar Charles M. Payne, a professor at Rutgers University-Newark, explained as a general lack of institutional support for teaching about the movement, and racial conflict more broadly, in American schools. The result, he said, is a "mangling of history" in which the movement is taught as a moral plea rather than a battle for political and economic power.

As with other tumultuous periods in American history, such as the forced migration of Native Americans or the internment of Japanese Americans, Payne said, civil rights education is "cursory and sanitized," often neglecting to emphasize how controversial and disruptive the period actually was.

"Just weeks before the March on Washington [in August 1963], the Gallup poll showed most Americans-60 percent-were opposed and thought it would set back the movement's cause," Payne said. Mass demonstrations, boycotts, and sit-ins "were not considered civil then," he noted. "In classrooms, much of that gets lost."

Payne stressed the value in school leadership taking the lead in changing that framing.

Connecting the Past to the Present

The payoff for students when the civil rights movement is comprehensively taught is considerable, added Payne, noting that young people come away able to interpret social change from a more critical perspective and see themselves as part of it. The impact may even be more sizable for white students, "who are even further removed from the history" than black youth, who may be similarly unaware of the events outside of the standard narrative but do have a "sense of the structural features of inequality" from their daily lives, he said.

To broaden her students' understanding of the civil rights movement, Jann'l Henry, a middle school English teacher at Whittier Education Campus, a K-8 public school in Washington, DC, introduced her class to the biography of Claudette Colvin, a contemporary of Rosa Parks, and a documentary on Bayard Rustin, the organizer of the 1963 March on Washington.

The reaction from her majority-black classroom, she said, was immediate and swift: "I thought that Martin Luther King was just a nonviolent person," said one student. "I didn't know that people had to be taught these tactics and how to be a pacifist," a classmate added, while another student said, "I didn't know that there was a black, gay man that perhaps should have been the face of this movement but wasn't."

Similarly, through a role-playing activity on the civil rights movement, Dickens awakened the curiosity of her 10th-grade students in rural Mississippi. " Stepping into Selma "-a city that played a major role in the freedom struggle-allowed her class to take on the identities of activists from the period, many of whom were the students' own age at the time, which increased the relevance and impact of the lesson, she said.

Yet the most enduring outcome of reconsidering the civil rights era, according to Henry, may be helping all students critically examine the influence of social and political movements and connect the past to the present day.

"I teach my students that the civil rights movement is ongoing," said Henry. "You can't look back and say, 'This was when black people didn't have rights. This was when Jim Crow existed.' They know a lot about Ferguson.... We're still fighting for civil rights."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A Better Way to Teach the Civil Rights Movement

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A native of the Magnolia State, Jessica Dickens grew up just a short drive away from one of the most infamous events of Mississippi Freedom Summer: the 1964 disappearance and murder of three civil rights workers on their way to investigate a church burning.

# data[].attributes.body
Documentary

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Skip to Main Content

EYES ON THE PRIZE tells the definitive story of the civil rights era. More More

EYES ON THE PRIZE tells the definitive story of the civil rights era from the point of view of the ordinary men and women whose extraordinary actions launched a movement that changed the fabric of American life, and embodied a struggle whose reverberations continue to be felt today. Narrated by political leader and civil rights activist Julian Bond (1940-2015).

Funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Ford Foundation and viewers like you.

Support for PBS.org provided by:

X CLOSE

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Skip to Main Content EYES ON THE PRIZE tells the definitive story of the civil rights era. More More EYES ON THE PRIZE tells the definitive story of the civil rights era from the point of view of the ordinary men and women whose extraordinary actions launched a movement that changed the fabric of American life, and embodied a struggle whose reverberations continue to be felt today.

# data[].attributes.headline
Teaching Hard History Podcast: Season 3-The Civil Rights Movement

# data[].attributes.subject
Teaching Hard History Podcast: Season 3-The Civil Rights Movement

# data[].attributes.body
By Hasan Kwame Jeffries for Learning for Justice

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The civil rights movement offers critical context for understanding the systemic police violence, voter suppression efforts, 'law and order' rhetoric and criminalization of activism we see today. It also helps us understand the strategies activists use to fight these injustices. Historians Shannon King and Nishani Frazier explain how they use 21st-century Black activism to teach the movement's history-and how they use the movement to help students better understand the contemporary Black freedom struggle.

The history of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense can help us understand the transition from civil rights to Black Power and contemporary issues like mass incarceration. From the Ten-Point Platform to survival programs, historian Robyn C. Spencer outlines key aspects of the party's revolutionary ideology, grassroots activism and community service. And historian Jakobi Williams joins to share valuable classroom insights.

Historian Clarence Lang joins us for a conversation about Malcolm X. We discuss his commitment to Black pride and self-determination and his rejection of the white gaze and the myth of American exceptionalism. Learn how teaching about the life and works of Malcolm X can illuminate the universe of possibilities of the civil rights movement-and the diversity of ideology, strategy and political thought within the Black freedom struggle.

In this episode, we talk with movement veteran Courtland Cox about lessons from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and his own development as a young organizer of the Emmett Till generation. We join Karlyn Forner and John B. Gartrell to tour the resources available through SNCC Digital Gateway. And we hear from student organizer Kaia Woodford about the lessons from the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements that inform her activism today.

Oral histories, historic sites, archives and museums expand students' understanding of the past. They fill in gaps in our textbooks-complementing what's included and capturing what's not. This episode highlights online oral history collections including the Civil Rights History Project. It offers recommendations for students conducting their own oral histories. And it explores resources from the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.

Teaching civil rights history to young learners creates both opportunities and challenges. The 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer Project and the subsequent Freedom Schools offer important lessons for helping elementary students to understand the civil rights movement. In this episode, we explore community-based strategies and activities for bringing the Black freedom struggle into your classroom.

If you're finding this podcast useful, please support us by taking our 10 question Listener Survey. And stay tuned! More episodes are on the way. In the meantime, if you're looking for ways to talk with students about the relationship between the hard history of white supremacy and the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Learning for Justice resources can help you lead student-responsive, historically grounded discussions about the recent violence.

From the hard work of organizing to the reality of everyday life under Jim Crow, films and literature can bring historical context to life for students. In this episode, we recommend several "must use" films, books, poems and plays for teaching the civil rights movement. We also discuss strategies for incorporating these works across the curricula and for turning even problematic texts into grist for meaningful critical discussions.

Everyone thinks they know the story, but the real history of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott is even better. This episode details the events that set the stage for Ms. Parks' civil disobedience. You'll meet the leaders and organizations who transformed a moment of activism into a 13-month campaign. And you'll learn about the community that held fast in the face of legal and political attacks, economic coercion, intimidation and violence.

To fully understand the United States today, we have to comprehend the central role that slavery played in our nation's past. That legacy is also the foundation for understanding the civil rights movement and its place within the history of the Black freedom struggle. This episode is a special look back at our first season. It explores and expands on the 10 Key Concepts that ground Learning for Justice's K-12 frameworks for teaching the hard history of American slavery.

You cannot teach the civil rights movement without talking about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But it's critical that students deconstruct the mythology surrounding the movement's most iconic figure to learn about the man, not just the hero. The real Dr. King held beliefs that evolved over time. A complex man, he was part of a much larger movement-one that shaped him as much as he shaped it.

The civil rights movement was never strictly a Southern phenomenon. To better understand the Jim Crow North, we explore discrimination and Black protest in places like Milwaukee, Omaha, Cleveland and New York. To examine the Black Freedom Movement beyond the South, we examine the Black-led fights to gain access to decent housing, secure quality education and end police brutality in these cities.

Armed resistance and nonviolent direct action co-existed throughout the civil rights era. In this episode, three historians confront some comfortable assumptions about nonviolence and self-defense. Wesley Hogan examines the evolution, value and limitations of nonviolence in the movement. Christopher Strain offers a three-part strategy for rethinking this false dichotomy in the classroom. And Akinyele Umoja offers insights about armed resistance from his research in Mississippi.

Alice Qannik Glenn is the host of Coffee and Quaq and assistant producer of The Forgotten Slavery of our Ancestors. This short, classroom-ready film offers an introduction to the history of Indigenous enslavement on land that is currently the United States. This new resource from Learning for Justice features an extensive group of experts, many of whom will be familiar to listeners from Season 2.

Jim Crow was more than signs and separation. It was a system of terror and violence created to control the labor and regulate the behavior of Black people. In this episode, historian Stephen Berrey unpacks the mechanics of racial oppression, the actions white people took-in and beyond the South-to maintain white supremacy, and the everyday ways Black people fought back. And the directors of the film An Outrage join ELA-teacher Ahmariah Jackson to discuss teaching the racial terror of lynching.

Music chronicles the history of the civil rights struggle: The events, tactics and emotions of the movement are documented in songs of the era. From The Freedom Singers to Sam Cooke, historian Charles L. Hughes explains how your students can use music for both historical insight and evidence in the classroom.

Students don't enter our classrooms as blank slates. When it comes to the civil rights movement, we often have to help our students unlearn what they think they know while we're teaching them what actually happened. The people were more complex, the strategies more complicated and the stakes more dangerous than we like to remember. In this episode, historian Nishani Frazier and social studies teacher Adam Sanchez demonstrate the value of teaching the movement from the grassroots up.

Teaching the civil rights movement accurately and effectively requires deconstructing the myths and misconceptions around it. Most people are familiar with a very specific version of the movement that exaggerates government support and denies the existence and persistence of racism outside the South. Julian Bond called this the "Master Narrative." It celebrates sanitized icons and downplays grassroots organizing. And it overhypes nonviolence while disparaging self-defense and Black Power. In this episode, we talk with historian Nishani Frazier and social studies teacher Adam Sanchez about how to separate fact from fiction in your civil rights teaching.

The systems that enabled and perpetuated African and Indigenous enslavement in what is now the U.S. have much in common, and their histories tell us a great deal about the present. Professors Bethany Jay and Steven Oliver join us to talk about connections between the first two seasons and how to teach them, and we preview what's to come in season three.

In this special call-in episode, listeners share their stories and questions from throughout season 2-including teaching remotely, working with families and stakeholders, and incorporating social justice into subjects like math and science. As educators, we're strongest when we support each other. And you'll hear great suggestions from fellow teachers, like these resources we discuss from Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia.

It's time for our first call-in show! We know things are chaotic for you and every other educator right now. We feel it too, so this seems like the perfect time to talk. Pick up the phone and dial 888-59-STORY (888-597-8679). Our lines are open until Sunday night, April 19. Teaching hard history is even harder right now, so let's talk about resources you can use if you're teaching virtually. Ask us your questions; tell us your stories. And let us know how you're doing.

Indian Removal was a brutal and complicated effort that textbooks often simplify. It is also inseparably related to slavery. Enslavers seeking profit drove demand for Indigenous lands, displacing hundreds of thousands of Indigenous people. Some of these Indigenous people participated in chattel slavery. Focusing on the Chickasaw and Choctaw nations, this episode pulls the lens back to show how Removal and enslavement must be taught together. This story must be told if we're going to understand the full hard history of American enslavement.

The Americas were built on the lands, labor and lives of Indigenous peoples. Despite being erased from history textbooks after the so-called first Thanksgiving, Indigenous peoples did not disappear. Colonial settlers relied on the cooperation, exploitation and forced labor of their Native neighbors to survive and thrive in what became North America. Focusing on New England, historian Margaret Newell introduces us to the Charter Generation of systematically enslaved people across this continent.

From 1936 to 1938, the Federal Writers' Project collected stories from people who had been enslaved. The WPA Slave Narrative Collection at the Library of Congress is a valuable resource; these oral histories are also problematic. Interpreting these narratives within literary and historical context, students can develop primary source literacy. Historian Cynthia Lynn Lyerly outlines unique insights these texts can add to your curriculum.

To better understand the United States' past and present, we need to better understand Indigenous identities-and classrooms play a huge role. This starts with examining what's missing from our social studies, history, civics and government curricula. Throughout this episode, we reference the K-5 Framework for Teaching Hard History as we shed light on key topics like sovereignty, land and erasure.

Educators can no longer ignore our country's history of Indigenous enslavement. Our students need a fuller understanding of the pivotal history of slavery to comprehend the present and develop a vision for our nation's future. In this mid-season recap, we highlight key lessons about this consequential part of American history-along with teaching strategies and resources-through the voices of leading scholars and educators featured so far.

Throughout the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, the forced labor and bondage of Indigenous peoples was integral to the economic and political history of what became the Southwestern United States. Historian and author Andrés Reséndez outlines the significance of silver mining, Indigenous enslavement and resistance in the history of New Mexico and Latin America. We examine how, as white settlers moved west, so-called "free soil" states like California continued to institutionalize coerced labor.
Listen Now

A hundred years before the first ship carrying enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia, Europeans introduced the commercial practice of enslavement in "The New World." And for the next 400 years, millions of Indigenous people throughout the Americas were enslaved through several forms of forced labor and bondage. Historian and author Andrés Reséndez calls this "The Other Slavery," and his work is changing our understanding of the transatlantic slave trade.
Listen Now

Andrés Reséndez is the author of The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America. His work has changed conventional wisdom about the institution of slavery in the Atlantic world. Over the next two episodes, host Hasan Kwame Jeffries and Reséndez will discuss key turning points in this history-exploring how it expands our understanding of the transatlantic slave trade and the lasting legacy of colonialism, which continues to reverberate in our communities. Be sure to join us.
Listen Now

Each autumn, Thanksgiving brings a disturbing amount of inaccurate information and troubling myths into classrooms across the United States. Most students don't learn much about the history of Native nations-and even less about Indigenous peoples today. Dr. Debbie Reese explains what to look for and what to avoid (or teach with a critical lens) when selecting children's books by and about Indigenous people. She also recommends specific books to counter common misconceptions in your classroom.
Listen Now

Children's books are often the primary way young students are exposed to the history of American slavery. But many books about slavery sugarcoat oppression. Professor Ebony Elizabeth Thomas examines what we should consider when it comes to how children's books portray African Americans and Indigenous people, their cultures and the effects of enslavement. She also explains why it's crucial to create "a balance of narratives" when selecting books about marginalized and underrepresented communities.
Listen Now

For elementary teachers approaching the topic of slavery, it can be tempting to focus only on heroes and avoid explaining oppression. But teachers' omissions speak as loudly as what they choose to include. And what children learn in the early grades has broad consequences for the rest of their education. Dr. Kate Shuster guides us through the new Teaching Hard History K-5 framework from Learning for Justice. We also learn how four elementary teachers are beginning to use it in their classrooms.
Listen Now

Understanding Indigenous enslavement expands our conception of slavery in what is now the United States. It spread across the entire continent and affected millions of people of different backgrounds. If we define slavery too narrowly, we can fail to see its persistence over time and even its modern-day permutations. Historian Christina Snyder examines the Civil War, Lincoln and emancipation with Indigenous people in mind.
Listen Now

Millions of Indigenous people lived in North America before European colonial powers invaded. Along with an insatiable desire for free labor, Europeans brought a system of slavery that significantly differed from the historical practices of enslavement among Native nations. Historian Christina Snyder tells the story of what happened when these worlds collided. European concepts of bondage transformed the way Native nations interacted with each other, resulted in the enslavement and death of millions of Indigenous people, and sparked widespread resistance by Native nations.
Listen Now

The Smithsonian's Eduardo Díaz and Renée Gokey discuss the importance of learning about Indigenous enslavement. And former Teaching Tolerance Director Maureen Costello explains all of the program's classroom resources available for teaching this history, including a first-of-its-kind K-5 framework.
Listen Now

We're turning our attention to the enslavement of Indigenous people, spending more time with teachers in the classroom and adding support for K-5 educators. Tune in next week for more advice about teaching the history and long legacy of American slavery.
Listen Now

Download the transcript for all of season 1 here.

Historian Bethany Jay returns - answering questions from educators across the country. Host Hasan Kwame Jeffries and the co-editor of Understanding and Teaching American Slavery confront teacher anxieties and counter misconceptions in our season finale.
Listen Now

From elementary to high school, YA literature can introduce fundamental themes and information about slavery, especially when paired with primary sources. John H. Bickford shows how to capitalize on the strengths and weaknesses of trade books about slavery.
Listen Now

Using the present to explore the past. Tamara Spears and Jordan Lanfair suggest a Social Studies unit about Resistance & Kanye West, and a set of English Language Arts lessons examining holidays to understand the legacy of American slavery.
Listen Now

How it's done. Tamara Spears teaches middle school Social Studies in New York and Jordan Lanfair is a high school English Language Arts teacher in Chicago. Each has been developing additional lessons about slavery for years. They share their experiences.
Listen Now

Over the next few episodes, we're bringing Season One to a close. Tune in for stories from the classroom, guidance for elementary teachers and language arts classes. And answers to questions from listeners like you.
Listen Now

Enslavement didn't end with Emancipation. Historian James Brewer Stewart discusses modern-day slavery happening across the world-and right here in the U.S.-showing educators how to connect the past with the present.
Listen Now

A listener's question leads to a meaningful moment. And now we want more! Take a listen, then email us to tell us your story about teaching hard history for an upcoming, special episode.
Listen Now

At James Madison's Montpelier, the legacy of enslaved people isn't silenced-and their descendants have a voice. Christian Cotz, Price Thomas and Dr. Patrice Preston Grimes explain how that happened, and why it's important.
Listen Now

In the United States, justice was never blind. Historian Paul Finkelman goes beyond legal jargon to illustrate how slavery was entangled with the opinions of the Court-and encoded into the Constitution itself.
Listen Now

Constitutional historian Paul Finkelman explains the deeply racist bargains the founding fathers struck in order to unify the country under one document and discusses what students need to know about how slavery defined America after the Revolution.
Listen Now

Film historian Ron Briley returns with more documentary, feature film and miniseries suggestions for history and English instructors. From Ken Burns to Black Panther, this episode offers background and strategies for incorporating pop culture into classroom lessons.
Listen Now

Film has long shaped our nation's historical memory, for good and bad. Film historian Ron Briley offers ways to responsibly use films in the classroom to reframe the typical narrative of American slavery and Reconstruction.
Listen Now

Most students leave school thinking enslaved people lived like characters in Gone With the Wind. Dr. Deirdre Cooper Owens reveals the remarkable diversity of lived experiences within slavery and explains the gap between what scholars and students know.
Listen Now

To see a more complete picture of the experience of enslaved people, you have to redefine resistance. Dr. Kenneth S. Greenberg offers teachers a lens to help students see the ways in which enslaved people fought back against the brutality of slavery.
Listen Now

Students learning about slavery often ask, "Why didn't enslaved people just run away or revolt?" Lindsay Anne Randall offers a lesson in "Process Drama"-a method teachers can use to answer this question, build empathy and offer perspective.
Listen Now

In many ways, the U.S. has fallen short of its ideals. How can we explain this to students-particularly in the context of discussing slavery? Professor Steven Thurston Oliver has this advice for teachers: Face your fears.
Listen Now

Follow the money. Dr. Christy Clark-Pujara explains why American slavery couldn't have existed without a national commercial infrastructure that supported and benefited from the labor of enslaved people.
Listen Now

Dr. Bethany Jay is back to talk about teaching the end of the Civil War, and how enslaved people's participation in the war helped subvert the institution of slavery.
Listen Now

What really caused the Civil War? In this episode, Salem State University Professor Bethany Jay offers tips for teaching lesser-known history that clarifies this question and cuts through our cloudy national understanding of the Confederacy.
Listen Now

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
What we don't know about American history hurts us all. Teaching Hard History begins with the long and brutal legacy of chattel slavery and reaches through the victories of and violent responses to the civil rights movement to the present day.

# data[].attributes.headline
Men and women of the African American Civil Rights Movement

# data[].attributes.subject
Men and women of the African American Civil Rights Movement

# data[].attributes.body
PBS

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
Leaders of the Civil Rights Movement | Explore Black History | PBS

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Daisy Bates was a complex, unconventional, and largely forgotten heroine of the civil rights movement who led the charge to desegregate the all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957. From Independent Lens.

Malcolm X appears on Boston public television producer Henry Morgenthau III's "The Negro and the American Promise." After watching the segment a viewer wrote that he was shocked "that such a blatant display of racial prejudice could be aired."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Leaders of the Civil Rights Movement | Explore Black History | PBS

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Daisy Bates was a complex, unconventional, and largely forgotten heroine of the civil rights movement who led the charge to desegregate the all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957. From Independent Lens. Malcolm X appears on Boston public television producer Henry Morgenthau III's "The Negro and the American Promise."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A story of civil rights era cold cases and families still searching for justice.