May 17, 2014 will mark the 60th anniversary of the monumental Supreme Court case
Brown v. Board of Education
, which declared the status quo of "separate but equal" to be unconstitutional. Although this meant public schools were now required to be integrated, the battleground for equality in education was just beginning. Use the resources below to provide students with the historical context of
Brown v. Board of Education
in the civil rights movement, to inform them of the important roles students played in integrating the schools and engage them in conversation about the unfinished work of the civil rights movement.
Use these video responses from the PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs to start the conversation in your classroom about the topic of school integration. Students from around the country were asked, "Should integration be a priority in education?" Share this compilation of student answers and then see where your students stand on the issue. Perfect for a written response activity or a class debate. Want to hear answers from students and adults who took part in the rapid response?
Click here
to visit the Student Reporting Labs home page.
An interactive timeline filled with video and text about the events that shaped the civil rights movement. For teachers there is a
timeline guide
that denotes the event and the length of its corresponding video. The timeline starts with the enslavement of the African people and ends with current events relevant to the continued issue of equality and civil rights.
Use this article from
Teaching Tolerance
to provide your students a text version of the story of the case that changed a nation along with analysis of the monumental event and reactions from the nation. It continues the story through the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and weighs its impact on the systemic racism that existed (and some say still exists) within the United States.
These three video clips tell the story of
before
,
during
and
after
the
Brown v. Board of Education
decision. Each comes with discussion questions and background information from
PBS Learning Media
.
Click on the specific time frame listed above to access the clips which average 7 minutes each.
This rich resource from the
Smithsonian Institutes' National Museum of American History
covers the major events, provides information about key players and primary sources related to the historic decision. Linda Brown, pictured above, was a small, but important, part of the battle for equality that groups like the NAACP had been fighting for decades.
This lesson plan details the history of one of the four cases that made up
Brown v. Board of Education
and the decade long struggle to integrate Virginia's Prince Edward County schools. Despite the Supreme Court's decision, in 1959 Prince Edward County decided to close their schools all together rather than integrate, leaving the county's black children without an education for five long years.
In this lesson, students analyze what “The American Dream” means, and what role racial discrimination may play in failing to attain that dream from generation to generation. When things like access to education, jobs, home ownership are denied systematically to a race of people the consequences are crippling and unjust.
In this
interactive resource
journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones and photographer Masie Crow tell the story of modern day segregation in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Don't miss the other elements to the story:
Martin Luther King dreamed of an America where people would, "not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." Use this lesson plan to start a discussion in your classroom about where we are on the path to realizing this dream.
Despite the clear message from the Supreme Court that segregation had to end, it would take decades to integrate schools and many challenges would be faced along the way. One such story is of the integration of Little Rock High School, which took the executive action of a president and the National Gaurd to enforce. Use this PBS NewsHour Extra video blog to update students on the lives and relationship of the two women captured in this famous photograph during the integration of Little Rock High School in 1957.
380887 08: Over two hundred thousand people gather in front of the Lincoln Memorial August 28, 1963, during a rally in support of civil rights legislation. (photo by National Archive/Newsmakers)
Use this glossary of civil rights movement words to support student learning.
