UW Press: Understanding and Teaching the Civil Rights Movement

Understanding and Teaching the Civil Rights Movement
Edited by Hasan Kwame Jeffries

“Jeffries has called upon some of the leading educators and thinkers in the nation to masterfully reconstruct the narrative of the civil rights movement. This volume empowers educators to take back the movement from trite binaries and simple anecdotes by adding much-needed nuance to the methods and characters. The result is a truer and more balanced understanding of the fiercest periods of the black freedom struggle.”
—Stefan Bradley, Loyola Marymount University

The civil rights movement transformed the United States in such fundamental ways that exploring it in the classroom can pose real challenges for instructors and students alike. Speaking to the critical pedagogical need to teach civil rights history accurately and effectively, this volume goes beyond the usual focus on iconic leaders of the 1950s and 1960s to examine the broadly configured origins, evolution, and outcomes of African Americans’ struggle for freedom. Essays provide strategies for teaching famous and forgotten civil rights people and places, suggestions for using music and movies, frameworks for teaching self-defense and activism outside the South, a curriculum guide for examining the Black Panther Party, and more.

Books in the popular Harvey Goldberg Series provide high school and introductory college-level instructors with ample resources and strategies for better engaging students in critical, thought-provoking topics. By allowing for the implementation of a more nuanced curriculum, this is history instruction at its best. Understanding and Teaching the Civil Rights Movement will transform how the United States civil rights movement is taught.

Hasan Kwame Jeffries is an associate professor of history at The Ohio State University and the author of Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama’s Black Belt.

“Promotes an alternative to the ‘master narrative’ so prevalent in our society. It does this not only through explicating the importance and the complexity of the freedom work from the days of slavery to present but also shares and critiques resources and ideas for effective pedagogy.”
—Timothy Dove, coeditor of Collaborative Reform and Other Improbable Dreams: The Challenges of Professional Development Schools

Also in the Series
Understanding and Teaching U.S. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History Edited by Leila J. Rupp and Susan K. Freeman	Understanding and Teaching American Slavery Edited by Bethany Jay and Cynthia Lynn Lyerly