On a hot July day in 1854, 24-year-old schoolteacher Elizabeth Jennings, accompanied by a friend, attempted to board a horse-drawn trolley to attend Sunday church services in Lower Manhattan. The Irish conductor refused, telling Jennings, who was African American, to await a horsecar for "her people." When Jennings resisted, the…

The nationwide commemoration in 2020 of the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment is an opportunity to explore not only women's long struggle to achieve this landmark moment, but also to engage in an exploration of women's civic engagement during the woman suffrage movement. The terms "woman suffrage" and "suffragist" often…

The real story of slavery's end involves one of the most significant social movements in the history of the United States and the heroic actions of the enslaved themselves. Revealing this history helps students begin to answer fundamental questions that urgently need to be addressed in classrooms across the country: How does major social change…

Decades of curriculum research have uncovered a persistent trend: white people are depicted as dominating the history of the United States, whereas communities of color and their experiences are omitted or misrepresented in social studies textbooks and curriculum standards. The message the resulting curriculum sends to children is that the United…

On August 18, 2020, The United States will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment which gave women the vote. Belle La Follette played an important role in helping women gain the right to vote guaranteed in this amendment. She advocated for women in her home state of Wisconsin and across the country. This article…

According to John Adams, the real American Revolution occurred "in the minds and hearts of the people" long before the armed conflict ever began. This shared anti-British sentiment in prewar colonial America was largely fostered by committees of correspondence. Formed a decade before the revolution, the committees were the first…

When teachers discuss the 2020 presidential election with students, now and in future years, they will, appropriately, place front and center the ramifications of the baseless challenges by Donald Trump and his supporters to Joe Biden's victory. Even as state and federal courts across the nation tossed out lawsuits challenging vote counts, the…

This article traces how Mexican American Studies (MAS) scholar activists led and supported a statewide movement for MAS in Texas. As a Xicana feminist scholar activist, Saldan~a draws from her retrospective memory and personal archive of organizational notes, movement documents, personal testimonies before the State Board of Education, and photos,…

In the United States, there's a national infatuation with those who have broken barriers--racial, religious, gendered, and so on--and have presumably changed the rules of the game for others. News outlets and history textbooks seem unable to resist a good story of "firstness." Researchers have speculated why this is the case: What better…

This study investigated how racism was represented in a unit on civil rights in three 11th-grade U.S. history classes. Using qualitative methods, I observed classroom lessons in three teachers' classes, collected curriculum and student work, and interviewed teachers and students to document and explain how racism was represented during the Civil…

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…

Research indicates that history-based curricula--specifically textbooks and trade books--about Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement (CRM) are problematic and limited. If race relations are arguably America's long, unsettled tension, then Dr. King was one of its most impactful figures. Using the relevant historical research as a framework and the…

In 1957, a civil rights organization called Fellowship of Reconciliation created a comic book to teach America's youth about the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Entitled "Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story," the comic book was enormously successful. John Lewis, a young civil rights activist at the time, recalled that the book was…

Technological innovations and inventions are changing society and world culture so fast that it's often difficult to keep up. This article provides many web sites that will provide classroom teachers or even full social studies departments with information and lesson plans to integrate the importance of inventions and technology into their…

United States history classrooms have the potential to simultaneously foster an understanding of students' cultures and experiences today in relation to the nation's history and develop critical thinking and technology literacy. Yet classroom materials and instructors tend to avoid, ignore, or misrepresent controversial topics such as race and…