This article examines the possibilities and limits of strategies directed toward racialized healing amidst declarations of pandemics and legislative attacks on public school teachers. We question what these strategies take as a self-evident truth: that race and racism can be conceptualized in terms of health and transparently addressed through…

Having grown up Black in America, the author reflects on his limited exposure to African American literature in school as well as his even more limited opportunity to see himself reflected in the mirrors of those texts. The article then extends into a framework for expanding the inclusion of African American texts in educators' classrooms.…

This paper conceptualises one possible antidote to the conditions that produce public mass gun violence (PMGV) in the United States. I begin by illuminating how PMGV is a backlash to the nation's 'founding' on the violent divisions of colonisation and coloniality. I then inquire: If PMGV is a reflection of a deep societal wound, what methodologies…

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…

Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange's photojournalist activism during World War II was a direct response to President Franklin Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 (EO 9066), which led to the incarceration of 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans in 10 camps across seven mostly western states. Approximately two-thirds of those imprisoned were U.S.…

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…

When John Lewis sought to change segregation laws in 1960 Nashville, Tennessee, he did so through nonviolent sit-ins. Throughout U.S. history, activists like John Lewis have turned to social change tactics outside of the institutions of democracy from which they have been largely excluded. However, social studies curricula rarely frame these…

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…

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…

Rapid changes in American society in the early twentieth century fostered both a general sense of optimism for America's future and a perceived sense of moral dislocation affecting present and future generations of America's youth. Urbanization, modernization, and the increasing presence of immigrant populations were often viewed as challenges to…

Adding further insight into how historical thinking can be used as a lens to examine debates about difficult historical events and philosophies, Gabriel Reich's piece on continuity, change, and historical consciousness shifts the focus to the U.S. context. Reich points out that in the case of Confederate monuments, their greatest power may be in…

Colson Whitehead's acclaimed book, "The Underground Railroad," follows Cora, a runaway slave seeking the nearly impossible goal of freedom. The fictionalized account of a runaway slave girl resonates with a reading of Harriet Jacobs's true account in "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl." One of the most influential works of…

A project-based approach to studying the civil rights movement can stimulate student engagement and their sense of connection to this historic period. The authors taught this project-based learning (PBL) unit on the American civil rights movement multiple times in the past 10 years to classes of middle school, high school general education,…

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…