In this article, the authors discuss how to explore the agency of ordinary citizens using local institutions to combat Jim Crow segregation laws during Freedom Summer. Primary sources from Miami (OH) University website about Freedom Summer and Susan Goldman Rubin's trade book ground the inquiry. Through the series of activities discussed, middle…

The COVID-19 crisis has upended life in the United States, extending well beyond health and safety concerns. Millions of Americans have faced financial instability as states have shut down their economies to curb the spread of the virus. As the COVID-19 crisis continues to unfold, drawing lessons from history on resilience and recovery can inform…

In response to the widening academic achievement gap between Native American students and other students in the United States, a culturally responsive approach was used in a Native American social studies class with positive results. Eighth-grade Oglala Lakota students in an American History classroom experienced a unit infused with lessons that…

"Slavery is the ground zero of race relations," declared James and Lois Horton in their groundbreaking book, "Slavery and Public History." Engaging the history and legacy of slavery is a crucial step in understanding current U.S. society especially race relations. Historic sites that have connections to slavery have begun to…

Museums can provide spaces for both the personal and the political and the past and the present to unite. This case study examines how the National Museum of African American History and Culture has worked to embrace current and historic social justice issues in public programming. The result has strengthened audiences beyond imagining and allowed…

In nineteenth-century America, students buried their mathematics books. This practice consistently celebrated the milestone of passing through collegiate mathematics, yet it changed due to national events. This article considers the case of Bowdoin College, where students buried their books differently before and after the Civil War. Antebellum,…

The Civics Education Initiative is a project of the Joe Foss Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to shaping "young Americans for civic engagement as voters and informed members of their community." The three-year initiative, which launched in September 2015 and concludes in September 2017, has three goals: (1) To ensure students graduate…

The story of Black veterans and their experience in the Vietnam War is one of little investigation especially with regard to those who are from the state of Alabama. This study particularly focuses on the experiences of African American Vietnam War veterans from the state of Alabama. The observations are based on the educational, occupational, and…

Black people all over the world have historically endured slavery, colonialism, racism, prejudice, and discriminatory actions; and they continue to be disenfranchised, disadvantaged, disillusioned, and demeaned by institutions and systems. Of late, Black people in the United States, especially Black males have been encountering blatant police…

After three decades of scholarship describing why and how students ought to be taught to think historically, this study asks what happens when they are. Ten high school students from a school that incorporated historical thinking into all history coursework repeated the think-aloud task from Wineburg's 1991 study of the cognitive processes…

While the human resource development (HRD) literature has made strides to incorporate critical race theory, critical Whiteness studies has not been substantively addressed. White experiences need to be incorporated into organizational learning literature in racialized ways. Unpacking the racialized experiences of Whites in organizational settings…

This paper uses Derrick Bell's interest convergence principle, which argues that whites will support racial justice efforts only if they believe they will see gains for themselves, to examine white philanthropic support of Black education in the postbellum South and in current school reforms. Using the concept of "bad" (or compromising)…

Over the last couple of years, White nationalist groups have been at the forefront of American political life, especially with the events in Charlottesville, Virginia. The historical roots of White nationalist movements run deep in the United States and are most closely associated with the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). In this article the authors explore…

The authors describe the politicization of the process to revise Michigan's social studies standards from 2005 to the present. In 2005, critics objected to the omission of topics they considered important, even though the content expectations document was not intended to be an exhaustive list of material to be covered. The latest, more limited…

Serious history instruction in K-12 U.S. schools has been in decline for decades. History education in Massachusetts has, until now, fared somewhat better than in the nation at large. In 1993 the commonwealth enacted the Massachusetts Education Reform Act--a bipartisan plan to improve education--which mandated core standards and assessments in…