Teaching Activity. By Say Burgin, Jeanne Theoharis, and Ursula Wolfe-Rocca. 7 pages.
In this activity, students investigate Rosa Parks’ activism — and the gender and racial injustice to which it was a response — before and after her famous bus refusal.
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Teaching Activity. By Jessica Lovaas and Adam Sanchez. Rethinking Schools. 2021. Updated in 2023.
A lesson with case studies from Los Angeles; Birmingham, Alabama; Brooklyn; Detroit; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Albany, Georgia; and Cambridge, Maryland — to introduce students to the diverse struggles across the United States that were represented at the March on Washington.
Teaching Activity by Adam Sanchez
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Teaching Activity. By Adam Sanchez. Rethinking Schools. 24 pages.
A series of role plays that explore the history and evolution of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, including freedom rides and voter registration.
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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. Rethinking Schools. 16 pages.
In this lesson, students explore many of the real challenges faced by abolitionists with a focus on the American Anti-Slavery Society.
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Teaching Activity. Teaching for Change. 2015. 20 pages.
Introductory lesson on key people and events in the long history of the Selma freedom movement.
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Book — Non-fiction. Edited by Peter Cole. 2021. 352 pages.
This biography details the life of Black IWW organizer Ben Fletcher and the working class struggles he took part in.
Teaching Activity by Peter Cole (editor)
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Book — Non-fiction. Edited by Cotera, Espinoza, and Blackwell. 2018. 488 pages.
This anthology focuses on Chicana organizing, activism, and leadership and the intellectual and political legacies of early Chicana feminism.
Teaching Activity by Edited by María Eugenia Cotera, Dionne Espinoza, and Maylei Blackwell
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Book — Non-fiction. Edited by Faith S. Holsaert, Martha Prescod Norman Noonan, Judy Richardson, Betty Garman Robinson, Jean Smith Young, and Dorothy M. Zellner. 2010. 616 pages.
An unprecedented women's history of the Civil Rights Movement, from sit-ins to Black Power.
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Book — Non-fiction. Edited by Gabrielle Foreman, Jim Casey, and Sarah Patterson. Introduction by P. Gabrielle Foreman. 2021.
This volume of essays is the first to focus on the Colored Conventions movement, the nineteenth century’s longest campaign for Black civil rights.
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Teaching Activity. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca, Bill Bigelow, and Andrew Duden. Article by Ursula Wolfe-Rocca. Rethinking Schools. 15 pages.
A role play helps students recognize the issues at stake in the historic struggle of the Standing Rock Sioux to block construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline.
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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 12 pages.
Role play on farm labor organizing in the 1930s shows how racism had to be challenged to create effective worker alliances.
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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. 17 pages.
A role play allows students to examine issues of race and class when exploring both the accomplishments and limitations of the Seneca Falls Convention.
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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 14 pages.
In this role play activity, students assume the roles of union members and attempt to figure out how to respond to a threatened plant closure.
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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 20 pages.
Students “become” several of the social groups who participated in the 1934 Longshore Workers Strike — some of whom had to answer the question, “Which side are you on?”
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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond.
Role play on the 1912 Bread and Roses strike in Lawrence, Mass.
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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 7 pages.
Writing activity for students to complete the narrative of women workers striking at a glove-making factory, exploring possible outcomes.
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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 4 pages.
Activity for students to write from the point of view of one of the women featured in the film Union Maids.
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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow, Adam Sanchez, and Tim Swinehart.
A role-play activity engages students in building solidarity among different groups and organizations fighting fossil fuels and searching for alternatives.
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Teaching Activity. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca. Rethinking Schools. 29 pages.
Through examining FBI documents, students learn the scope of the FBI’s COINTELPRO campaign to spy on, infiltrate, discredit, and disrupt all corners of the Black Freedom Movement.
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Teaching Activity. By Abby Mac Phail. Rethinking Schools. 17 pages.
A lesson on the Keystone XL Pipeline battle.
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Teaching Activity. By Dale Weiss. Rethinking Schools. 3 pages.
A teacher's reflections about a curriculum unit on women's rights contextualizes the history of the feminist movement within the broader struggle of people working for greater equality in the United States.
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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow, Chris Buehler, Julie Treick O'Neill, and Tim Swinehart. Rethinking Schools.
This role play invites students to take on identities of La Vía Campesina activists around the world, to compare/contrast circumstances in order to discover the common goal of “food sovereignty.”
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Teaching Activity. By Tiffany Mitchell Patterson and Jessica Rucker.
In this lesson, students explore the core ideas of Black Power through a gallery walk with images and quotes connected to the life of Rosa Parks, and then consider how to define Rosa Parks’s activism.
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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow and Norm Diamond. 10 pages.
This role play activity on the famous 1892 Homestead Strike, explores the possibility of solidarity among workers of very different backgrounds and at different levels in the workplace hierarchy.
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Teaching Activity. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca, Alex Stegner, Chris Buehler, Angela DiPasquale, and Tom McKenna.
Students meet dozens of advocates and recipients of reparations from a variety of historical eras to grapple with the possibility of reparations now and in the future.
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