Students will explore how various black entrepreneurs thrived in Durham's downtown, so much so that Durham's Parrish Street was soon known as Black Wall Street. Students will gain a sense of the challenges overcome and successes experienced by the various black entrepreneurs and businesses on Black Wall Street.

In this lesson, students will examine the linguistic aspect of North Carolina history and culture—its languages and dialects—which is often overlooked. In class discussions based on excerpts from the book Talkin’ Tar Heel: How Our Voices Tell the Story of North Carolina, and video and audio clips, students will consider how we speak may be a reflection of our past and present, as well as how languages and dialects provide a fascinating way to understand North Carolina’s rich and diverse cultural heritage. This lesson will culminate with students applying what they have learned to create their own personal dictionary, with an emphasis on regional and personal dialect and language.

This resource provides the details of the quiet act of defiance that resonated throughout the world, Rosa Parks is known and revered as the "Mother of the Civil Rights Movement." A list of teaching activities are provided for students to analyze the documents pertaing to her arrest and a document analysis worksheet is available.

In this lesson, students will explore themes of First Amendment rights and the freedom to read, while also gaining an actiTo Ban or Not to Ban the Invisible Man: A School Board Simulationve understanding of the roles of School Board members and the responsibilities of active community members, by participating in a School Board simulation where they grapple with the same choice: whether or not to ban Invisible Man.

Many students feel that adults don’t listen and that as teens, they have little power to affect change.  In this lesson, students will explore the successful youth movement during the Vietnam era to change the voting age from 21 to 18‐years‐old. Students will understand that largely due to the valid protests from young people (“Old enough to fight!  Old enough to vote!”) the Twenty‐Sixth Amendment was ratified.

On March 23, 1849, Henry Brown began one of the most dramatic escapes from slavery in Americanhistory. In this lesson plan, students will learn about the institution of slavery by examining the life and experiences of Henry “Box” Brown, focusing on his innovative escape when mailing himself from a slave state to a free state. Through participation in activities such as class discussion, reading excerpts of The Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, Written by Himself, and the creation of their own art and dramatic presentation based on Henry’s life and experiences, students will learn about the complexities of slavery and freedom in the 1800s.

During the last part of the eighteenth and the first part of the nineteenth centuries, there was a growing interest in social reform, or an organized movement to improve the quality of life for particular groups of people. The motivations behind these movements were both political and religious.

In this activity, students will analyze a photograph as a political tool and investigate how photographs can represent people's social and political views.

This inquiry examines the emergence of the women's suffrage movement in the 19th century as an effort to expand women's political and economic rights, and it extends that investigation into the present.

This activity introduces students to the term Jim Crow and the concept of legally mandated racial segregation.

In this lesson, students will learn that enslaved people resisted their captivity constantly. Because they were living under the domination of their masters, slaves knew that direct, outright, overt resistance"”such as talking back, hitting their master or running away"“"“could result in being whipped, sold away from their families and friends, or even killed.