The typical U.S. history curriculum does not ask students to think about justice. While ignoring injustice may reduce controversy in the classroom, critically thinking about justice engages students and prepares them to be citizens in an often contentious democracy. This article proposes five characteristics of history curricula that support…

The purpose of this qualitative, single case study is to investigate how teacher-created curricula addresses key Native American events in early U.S. history and to determine if such curricula provided students with accurate representations of Native American content. To do this, we used discourse analysis to consider the meanings of words and…

In this conceptual article we consider the pedagogical possibilities and pitfalls of incorporating White ally figures in history and social studies curricula. Drawing on the burgeoning scholarship on race and the social studies and literature on alternative racial orientations, such as allies, antiracists, and abolitionists, we contend that…

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…

As historians and publishers scrambled to revise American history textbooks in the wake of the 1960s, textbooks increasingly strove to include the experiences of African Americans and avoid dangerous racial stereotypes. After the Civil Rights movement and decades before scathing criticism of textbooks for their inability to address racism in…

The Civil War novel for children has come of age. Although Civil War novels with little substance remain in print, more recent novels are serious in tone and readily available for classroom use. This article briefly summarizes a few Civil War novels that would be good in the classroom.