In this lesson from Teaching Tolerance, students will focus the most recent constitutional expansion of voting rights: extending them to people between 18 and 21 years of age. Students will read the 26th Amendment and learn about its history. They will view an NBC report from Nov. 5, 2008, that explains how important the youth vote was to the election of Barack Obama. Finally, they will examine the results of a recent study showing that young voters have very different concerns than older voters, and hypothesize about how young voters might affect elections in the future.

Students will read the Constitutional amendments that guaranteed African Americans citizenship and the right to vote for African-American men, as well as use primary sources to develop a deeper understanding of why it was so difficult vote despite the passage of the 15th Amendment.
Students will understand why granting voting rights to African American men threatened the status quo in the South and evaluate the role of the federal government in expanding the right to vote.

In this middle school lesson from Teaching Tolerance, students will explore the calendar to determine why different religions celebrate different holidays and establish what factors school and government leaders should consider when deciding whether public schools should be closed for religious holidays. Students will work in groups to create solutions for school calendars that respect all students and beliefs.

In this lesson, students reflect on ways they have experienced or participated in bias based on physical size and appearance. Students discuss how society's expectations about body image and appearance affect people.

In this lesson, students will consider the strategies Ida B. Wells deployed to raise awareness of social problems and weigh the effectiveness of nonconformity to address a specific audience. Students will use Wells' story to write about a personal experience of conformity or non-conformity.

In this lesson, students will understand excerpts from an autobiographical work and retell scenes from the book. They will also collaborate to convert segments of the text into dialogue, creating a brief play about Susie King Taylor's involvement in the Civil War.

In this lesson, students will analyze written documents for position of writer and content. They will then synthesize a historical position based upon document analysis and connect historical struggles for equality with current movements.

This article discusses the events leading up to and the effects that followed the Brown v. Board of Education decision.

These discussion questions explore the impact of Brown v. Board of Education and the current state of segregation.

This article discusses the resurfacing of segregation in schools over 50 years after Brown v. Board of Education, in the wake of the Supreme Court decisions ending desegregation orders.

This collection of primary resources and corresponding activities sheds light on the endurance of peaceful protesters in Montgomery, Ala., who overturned an unjust law.

In this lesson, students will confirm, negate, and build information about the nation’s changing demographic using an organizational chart; write a letter to respond to a viewpoint offered in the central text; and talk about their own multiple identities in relation to those around them.

In this lesson, students will review and summarize questions about the struggle for equality and apply them to other civil rights struggles. Students will also devise a timeline regarding other civil rights struggles.

In this lesson, students will learn the factors that can both determine and perpetuate poverty over a lifetime and into succeeding generations. Students will understand the difference between short-term need and long-term poverty, brainstorm the circumstances that can lead to each and reach conclusions about which people in our society are most vulnerable to generational poverty.

In this lesson, students summarize biographies of leaders, including Abraham Lincoln, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Rosa Parks, Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Lydia Maria Child, William Lloyd Garrison, Claudette Colvin, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

In this lesson students will define the terms community and activist, explore the “results of activism,” and determine a variety of characteristics and actions that would make someone a leader.

Students gain an understanding of emphathy, practice ways to be more understanding, and reflect on the effects of emphathetic listening.

Students evaluate sources of identity and use a variety of tools to evaluate sources for bias and accuracy.

In this lesson on Family Ties from Teaching Tolerance, students will critically evaluate media messages on the issue of immigration and families, illustrate a narrative, and prepare and conduct an interview and debate on how undocumented status affects the day-to-day lives of immigrant families, particularly women.

In this lesson, students will discuss and write messages about how it feels to be grouped or identified by gender. Then, students will work in groups to record and discuss messages shared with others in the class.

In this lesson from Teaching Tolerance, students will explore the concept of what it means to be an American and analyze how the changing demographics of the United States impact the American identity. Additionally, students will reflect on important concepts from the central text and encourage thinking among peers about how the “face of America” is changing and what that means in their lives and for our nation.

In this lesson students will determine the importance of activism and change within their own and other communities through peer-to-peer or small-group dialogue; begin to identify what determines action is needed in a community through a facilitated large-group dialogue; use dialogue to identify and describe issues within their own and other communities.

Students will explain factors that influenced the movement of people over time by examining the correlation between indentured servitude in the early American colonies and undocumented immigration today. They will understand how demographic trends, such as push and pull factors, lead to conflict, negotiations, and compromise in modern societies.

In this lesson from Teaching Tolerance, students will explore what James Baldwin’s experiences illuminate about the intersections among race, gender, gay rights and civil rights, as well as how Baldwin used his art form—his writing—as a form of political protest to shape the objectives of the civil rights movement and extend its reach to the LGBT community.

In this fifth lesson from Teaching Tolerance's Curriculum Unit for The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander, students will explore how Jim Crow laws functioned as a mechanism of racialized social control. Students will examine how racial hierarchy adapted and persisted after desegregation.

In this ninth lesson from Teaching Tolerance's Curriculum Unit for The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander, students will identify similarities and differences between Jim Crow and mass incarceration and reflect on connections between mass incarceration and their own lives and communities.

This lesson revisits the original nine African-American children who broke the color barrier at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1954. Lessons include close reading and analysis of news reports, television news accounts and writing assignments.

In this lesson, students will understand the importance of self-reflection and how it helps improve observations, understanding, and communication with others in our community.

In this lesson from Teaching Tolerance, students will analyze the connection between civil rights, women’s rights, and gay rights. Additionally, students will examine the role African-American women played in the movements for racial, gender, and sexual equality as well as explore the overlap and interplay between the ideas and activism that shaped the multiple political movements that materialized after World War II.

In this lesson, students read a story about body diversity and discuss the different shapes and sizes that people come in. They make body tracings that celebrate their unique shape and size, and talk about ways to keep their bodies healthy through good nutrition and activity.

In this lesson, students will use the individual experience of Mary McLeod Bethune to analyze choice, its affects on social equality, and impact on their own life experiences.

In this lesson students examine how imagery is used to represent ideas, themes, periods of history, and make cultural connections to poem, "Still I Rise." Students will reflect through written expression how resiliency is in their lives, school, and community.

For this activity, students participate in activites to demonstrate how they are similar and different.

In this lesson, students will recognize and discuss the role of protest songs in the Birmingham youth movement. Then, they will identify their own political agendas and write protest songs.

For this activity, students identify different aspects of culture and interview a family member to learn about their cultural history. Students also identify why aspects and traditions of their cultural history are important and how they contribute to society, understand, appreciate and respect differences and similaritiies among classmates' cultures.

For this activity, students learn about different types of families and exhibit pride in their own unique family without judging other families. Students will also understand, appreciate and respect differences and similarities in their classroom and school.

In this lesson, students discuss the meaning of “A More Perfect Union,” a speech about race made by then-Senator Barack Obama, during the 2008 Democratic primary campaign. Students will also examine and assess how textbooks position groups differently in our national historical narrative — and how this positioning affects our understanding of ourselves.

In this lesson from Teaching Tolerance, students will identify Pauli Murray, her accomplishments and her political activism. Additionally, students will distinguish between “Jane” and “Jim” Crow. Using the provided handout, classroom discussion, and a short written response, students will analyze the connections among civil rights, women’s rights, and gay rights.

This lesson begins by helping students understand the connections between poverty and unemployment. Students participate in a game of musical chairs that simulates the job market, helping them see that one reason for poverty is that there are not enough jobs for everyone who wants one. Then they explore other factors that also contribute to poverty—education and geography, for example—that are part of the legacy of discrimination in this country. They find that African Americans and Hispanics are more likely to be unemployed, and more likely to live in poverty, than white or Asian Americans. In subsequent lessons, students explore more deeply the ways that poverty affects people, and how it perpetuates inequality in the United States.