Although the United States Supreme Court declared segregation in education under law unconstitutional in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, the public high schools in Jackson, Mississippi, would remain segregated until 1970. The present study examines the effects of this social climate on the high school band programs in…

Typically, when a community's historical materials encounter a large academic library's archives, the engagement is transactional: they sign forms, they hand over their archives, and we assure them that their materials will be valued by researchers. These procedures make assumptions about comfort with gift agreements (what if communities seek…

Our paper revisits a neglected chapter in the history of geographic education--the civil rights organization SNCC and the Freedom Schools it helped establish in 1964. An alternative to Mississippi's racially segregated public schools, Freedom Schools addressed basic educational needs of Black children while also creating a curriculum to empower…

This Instructional Resource focuses on the photographic work of Mississippi artist Eudora Welty (1909-2001). Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for "The Optimist's Daughter," Welty lived most of her life in Jackson, Mississippi. She used photography as a way to create visual "snapshots" that fueled her successful writing career of…

On this 50th-year anniversary of "Alexander v. Holmes Board of Education" (1969) nationally enforcing school desegregation in fall 1970, Mississippi is being sued for racial disparities in public education between Black students and White students in Williams et al. v. Bryant et al. (2017). Using quantitative and qualitative primary…

In this paper, the author outlines the results of a research study conducted on one class cohort, focusing on the impacts of teaching Black women's history through Anne Moody's 1968 memoir, "Coming of Age in Mississippi," on their understandings of race and the experiences of Black women. Specifically, Moody's memoir provides a rich…

This lesson describes a geohistorical unit in which the students demonstrate their understanding of significant events in American history. The purpose of the lesson is for students to understand that the rapid population growth of the United States was made possible by the removal of Native Americans. In the first part of the lesson, students use…

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…

Although geographically rooted in the Southern United States, the U.S. poultry industry is best understood in a transnational, or even global, perspective that can be difficult to address in regionally bounded courses. In intellectual terms, the topic straddles a number of historiographic subfields that have steadily grown in recent decades. These…

Students learn about the history of the civil rights movement and are empowered to create positive change in their communities, states this author, Susan M. Glisson, Executive Director of the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation. She describes the efforts to build racial understanding among young high school students through the…

The civil rights movement of the late 1950s and 1960s had a transformational effect on American society and on grassroots movements for social justice at home and abroad during that era and beyond. But much of the history of the push for racial equality in America is often told as if it is on a constant repetitive loop, when other accounts are…

Corn clubs played an important role in improving agriculture at the turn of the 20th century. Corn clubs were local organizations consisting of boys who cultivated corn on one acre of land under the supervision of a local club leader. The purpose of this historical research study was to document the organization, operation, and outcomes of corn…

Background/Context: Educators, parents, politicians, and the media often complain that young people know little history and compare them unfavorably to better-educated, earlier generations. However, the charge is exaggerated. Young people have performed poorly on history tests for decades. Students' poor scores on one test in particular, the focus…

The author began writing this essay the day after waves of euphoria swept over what appeared to be a profoundly altered public space. Americans had seen the most diverse gathering of people coming freely together to affirm a common purpose no one could quite yet define. No one had instructed them to come out in the cold of that inauguration…

In the following pages, Robert Moses tells the history of the early civil rights movement in Mississippi, focusing on the individuals, alliances, and strategies that brought about fundamental change in the United States and ultimately made possible the election of Barack Obama to the presidency. Moses describes how the efforts of Justice…