This study examined the learning trajectory of five US humanities teachers when navigating learning to teach the difficult history of school desegregation within a context of a six-month inquiry-based professional development. The research questions were: What do teachers frame as problems when teaching difficult histories? How do they…

One of the critical issues facing Historians today has been the emergence of Strong State regimes and the politicized pseudo history they produce in countries claiming to adhere to democratic norms. The attack on the Capital of the United States was based on a series of lies about voter fraud supported by President Donald Trump and members of…

In this article, I consider the limitations of school integration research that overlooks Black research perspectives, White policy interests, and the paradox of race in the New Jim Crow--America's system of racial caste in the post-Civil Rights Era. Applying critical race theory as critical policy analysis, I discuss the importance of theorizing…

Learn how to design history lessons that foster students' knowledge, skills, and dispositions for civic engagement. Each section of this practical resource introduces a key element of civic engagement, such as defending the rights of others, advocating for change, taking action when problems are observed, compromising to promote reform, and…

This article briefly reviews the contributions to this volume and revisits the original focus of the Civil Rights Act (CRA). It considers how much progress has been made in addressing the original concerns regarding ethnic and racial discrimination that the act was intended to address and the intersection of language issues with them. The article…

Since the 1930s, federal housing policies and individual practices increased the spatial separation of whites and blacks. Practices such as redlining, restrictive covenants, and discrimination in the rental and sale of housing not only led to residential segregation by race but also continue to shape Whiteness and frame narratives about what…

The need to ensure equal rights to different age groups without discrimination in our country necessitates the study of international experience. One of the traditional and at the same time, urgent problems in the USA is the problem of age equality and the overcoming of discriminatory theory and practice. The goal of the study is to analyze the…

Fifty years after the U.S. Congress passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act (CRA), Native Americans continue to fight for the right "to remain an Indian" (Lomawaima & McCarty, 2006) against a backdrop of test-driven language policies that threaten to destabilize proven bilingual programs and violate hard-fought language rights protections…

Exploring controversial and difficult events and issues with young children can be challenging. The Civil Rights Movement is an abstract, perhaps remote, issue for young children today. However, it is an important part of our country's history and a theme worthy of study. This article suggests ways to use photographs to explore this mature subject…

The author utilized Critical Race Theory (CRT) to examine the passage of the US Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965 in an effort to disrupt the simplistic, uncritical understandings of the US Civil Rights Movement common to school texts while also arguing for the ongoing importance of the VRA in a time when voting rights for people of color are under…

This article presents a detailed example from the Albert Shanker Institute's report that shows the error of U.S. history textbooks and how it is distorting the historical record. One of the most glaring errors in textbooks is the treatment of the role that unions and labor activists played as key participants in the civil rights movement. The…

This article examines the legal and political significance of teacher unionization in rural and suburban school districts between 1960 and 1975. While most historians focus on the growth of unions in urban areas, strikes in outlying districts played a determinative role in the development of public sector labor law, particularly in the arbitration…

With the rise of the Cold War, federal officials in the United States sought to end the racial segregation that the U.S. Supreme Court had accepted in the 1896 decision of "Plessy v. Ferguson." Although the reforms began with changes in the armed services, they moved to reduce racial segregation in schools. Many forces brought about the…

More than forty years have passed since Congress, in response to the Civil Rights Movement, enacted sweeping antidiscrimination laws in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. As a signal achievement of that legacy, in 2008, Americans elected their first African American president. Some would…

In this article, the author examines the practice of the filibuster, using as the featured document the signed cloture motion in the Senate for an end to the filibuster to block the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The accompanying teaching activities enable teachers to introduce their classes to the history and practice of the filibuster. (Contains 1…