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.

With this digital collection, students will review documents exploring relationships between the Great Migration and the civil rights struggle in northern cities and, especially, Chicago from the 1920s through the 1960s. Students will consider the following essential questions as they review the documents: 1 What does de facto segregation in the urban North look like? How is it similar and different from de jure segregation in the South? 2. How did African Americans respond to the segregation and racism they faced in the North? 3. How did the civil rights movement in the urban North connect to the movement in the South?

This lesson introduces students to the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), one of the "big 5" civil rights organizations (the other four were: the Urban League, NAACP, SCLC, and CORE). The SNCC is credited with having led the student portion of the civil rights movement and with helping initiate the movement's transition to the Black Power phase of the late 1960s. Students will understand the motivation of African-American students in organizing the sit-in in Greensboro and the formation of the SNCC, how the generational differences between members of SNCC and other civil rights groups led to a difference in emphasis in the organizations, and the ideological transition to Black Power in the late 1960s.

In this lesson, students will learn about the case of Dorothy E. Davis, et al. vs. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia using primary source materials. This case predated the Brown vs Board of Education case and was brought about by a 16 year old student who complied the data about the differences between her all black school and the all white school.

In this lesson, high school students work in groups to explore the issue of civil liberties by conducting Internet research on related court cases of their choosing. Working in heterogeneous groups allows for social interaction and fun in the learning process, while also promoting positive interdependence and practicing of research skills. To summarize their findings, groups create PowerPoint presentations to share with the class.

In this lesson, students will examine how Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Marcus Garvey developed competing visions for the future of African Americans in the early years of the 20th century. A set of discussion questions is provided. In an associated activity, students will research current African American leaders and their views on current issues. The students will write a report and give a brief oral presentation on their research.

Segregation in the South in the 1950s might not have existed if, in 1883, the Supreme Court hadn’t declared The Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional. A federal law enacted during Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Act of 1857 was to guarantee African Americans equal treatment in public accommodations like hotels, restrooms, and other public spaces, and public transportation, and prohibited exclusion from serving on a jury. Additionally, the 14th Amendment declared that all races were to be granted equal treatment under the law. However, an 1883 Supreme Court decision clarified that the law did not apply to private persons or corporations. In the decade that followed, a number of other federal court decisions and state laws severely restricted the rights of African Americans. For example, in 1890, the State of Louisiana passed a law that required railroads to provide “equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races.”

America’s involvement in WWI left most Americans exhausted--in more ways than one. Soldiers returning home had suffered huge emotional distress from the war itself as well as from the physical injuries that many had suffered. Americans at home were deeply divided over the issues at the forefront of the League of Nations debate and the impact that the war had on thousands of immigrants with relatives overseas, many suffering in war-torn lands. Many Americans wished to return to what President Harding described as “normalcy.” Because of this desire by the American public, three trends in American society began to develop, both in rural towns and in urban areas across the country

A chapter from The American Yawp open source history textbook focusing on, "The Unraveling."

In this lesson, students will analyze the rhetorical strategies Malcolm X used in his speeches, such as tone, emotional appeal, and descriptive language. They will also consider the strategies used by African American leaders during the Civil Rights Movement and the social implications of these strategies, contrasting the leadership and ideology of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X in the Civil Rights Movement and evaluate their legacies. They will identify personal values and use them to determine appropriate behaviors for protecting their individual rights.

This annotated inquiry leads students through an investigation of the civil rights movement using the lens of nonviolent direct-action protest. The compelling question “What made nonviolent protest effective during the civil rights movement?” asks students to grapple with the means of achieving the various ends of the civil rights movement—an end to segregation as well as the achievement of voting rights and true equality as citizens.