Connecting Students With Freedom Movement Veterans
Teaching & Teacher Resources
Links to Additional Teacher Resources
The Civil Rights Movement — the "Freedom Movement" — was above all a mass peoples' movement for social justice. A movement of people nationwide coming together to change their lives for themselves. But too often that central fact has been discounted or omitted by commercial textbooks and teaching guides that present a narrative focused only on a benevolent court ruling in 1954, a couple of iconic leaders, a handful of famous protests in a few well-known places, some tragic martyrs, and the gracious largess of magnanimous legislators.
This page of resources is for teachers interested in digging deeper, teachers who want to present the Freedom Movement as an example of how social change in America can be, and historically has been, forced up from the bottom of society. It's a page for teachers who want to help their students understand the Civil Rights Movement from the inside out by exploring the words and thoughts, fears and triumphs of those who themselves lived the history as they made it.
Deborah Menkart, Teaching For Change:
In my work teaching about and developing lessons on the modern Civil Rights Movement for grades 7+, I rely on the CRMVet website for primary documents, photos, analysis, updates on veterans, timelines, and more. It is by far the best online archive on the Southern freedom movement.Reading the primary documents dispels myths about the movement and captures students' attention. The primary documents include daily logs that paint a vivid picture of the violence against voting rights activists; letters that reveal disagreements among organizers; and reports that highlight challenges the organizers had to face such as transporting and housing volunteers, communications, and fundraising.
I appreciate the careful vetting of the site content by veterans of the southern freedom movement who are committed to having the history told accurately and thoroughly. I highly recommend crmvet.org for teachers and students alike. It will transform your own understanding of Civil Rights Movement history and as a result, it will also transform your teaching of this history.
Direct interaction with living women and men who participated in the Civil Rights Movement brings that history to life in a way that no textbook can. Students can interact with veterans via class visit, remote access, or email. CRMA Speaking Coordinator.
Teaching the Freedom Movement:
Lessons From the Southern Freedom Struggle: Movement veterans discuss
teacher questions in an online webinar hosted by U.C. Berkeley. August
2020.
What would you want students to know about the southern freedom movement?
What do you want students to know about how change making occurs?
Session #1, 
Session
#2,
Transcript: Questions From Teachers: A Discussion by Freedom Movement veterans, 2020
Teacher Recommendations about this CRMVet website from Civil Rights Teaching.
Courses & Syllabi:
Freedom Summer course syllabus, Dr. Nicole Burrowes & Dr. La TaSha Levy
PDF Version
Word Version (editable)
Civil Rights 2nd Grade Activities, Jessie Le Grand, teacher at Cascade Heights Public Charter School in Clackamas, Oregon.
Lesson Plan: Brown v Board of Education: Teaching
With Documents (National Archives)
Lesson Plan: With All Deliberate Speed
(Anti-Defamation League)
Lesson Plan: Celebrating Black History ~ The Birmingham
Children's Crusade
Lesson Plan: Selma to
Montgomery Voting Rights March (National Parks Service)
In addition to the original source materials on this website, the SNCC Digital Gateway, (SDG) and the SNCC Legacy Project (SLP), the following websites provide bottom-up and inside-out teaching guides and lesson plans about the Civil Rights Movement:
Example activities:
"We Had Set Ourselves Free"
Black Upsurge Against Racial Segregation
Bringing Civil Rights Activists to Life in an Elementary Classroom
"A School Year Like No Other"
Warriors Don't Cry
Claiming & Teaching the 1963 March on Washington
Teaching a People's History of the March on Washington
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
Teaching SNCC: The Organization at the Heart of the Civil Rights Revolution
SNCC Role Play Materials
Teaching the 1964 New York City school boycott
What We Don't Learn About the Black Panther Party — but Should
Teaching Voting Rights in the Time of Coronavirus
Book: Putting the Movement Back Into Civil Rights Teaching, 2nd Edition. 2024
March on Washington Online Teaching Quiz
Bus Boycott: Historical Documents
Expanding Voting Rights
Critiquing the Traditional Narrative
Desegregation (Sit-ins, Buses, Schools)
Voting Rights
Let Justice Roll Down: CRM Through Film (Yale Teachers Institute)
Oh Freedom! Teaching African American Civil Rights Through Art (Smithsonian)
Teaching the Montgomery Bus Boycott: 50 Years Later (Civil Rights Teaching)
Teaching the Movement, Miriam Cohen Glickman, SNCC (1967)
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