Curated OER
Laws of Civil Rights
Students investigate the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In this segregation lesson, students explore the rights that were guaranteed by the legislation as well as attempts by southerners to stop African Americans from voting. Students...
Curated OER
Was That Fair?
Middle schoolers discuss the concept of fairness. In this fairness instructional activity, students look at different scenarios and see if the behavior seems fair. They talk about their answers with their classmates.
Curated OER
5th Grade Social Studies Quiz B
In this grade 5 social studies quiz instructional activity, 5th graders complete a 15 question multiple choice quiz covering a variety of grade 5 concepts.
Curated OER
Before Rosa Parks: Upper Grades Activity: Frances Watkins Harper
Students analyze the rhetorical strategies Frances Watkins Harper used, such as tone, emotional appeal and descriptive language
Curated OER
Voting and the U.S. Constitution (Past, Present, and Future)
Students discuss the 26th Amendment, then write letters to a future guest speaker. Students listen to the guest speaker and ask them questions about voting and voter turnout. Students then create handbills urging citizens to vote.
New Deal Network
New Deal Network: Survey Graphic: Suffrage in the South
This comprehensive and interesting site fully describes black suffrage in the south, and goes into detail on poll taxes. Written in 1940, it offers a fascinating perspective and historic relevance.
Other
Fair Vote: X's and O's: A History of the Voting Rights Act and African Americans
Documented essay on the history of black suffrage in American and the significance of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Texas State Library and Archives Commission
Texas State Library and Archives Commission: The Movement Comes of Age: Suffrage Map, Austin Woman Suffrage Association
Here is an interesting "Suffrage Map," showing which states had granted women the right to vote by 1913. Read how the women's voting movement was, unfortunately, soiled by racism, as shown through the map's text, "Won't You Help Us Make...
National Women’s History Museum
National Women's History Museum: Black Women and Their Role in Women's Suffrage
This instructional activity seeks to explore the role of Black women in the Women's Suffrage Movement and their exclusion from the generally accepted Women's Suffrage narrative.
Texas State Library and Archives Commission
Texas State Library and Archives Commission: Beginnings of the Movement: African American Men Get the Vote
Explore the ways in which the women's suffrage movement, after African-American men were given the right to vote, fell short. Read texts from this period of time.
Other
Celebrating Rights and Responsibilities: Story of the 15th Amendment in Maryland
This resource houses an essay on the passing of the 15th Amendment in Maryland. The essay discusses the political motivations behind the passing and how this affected the black population of the state.
A&E Television
History.com: Native Americans Weren't Guaranteed the Right to Vote in Every State Until 1962
Native people won citizenship in 1924, but the struggle for voting rights stretched on much longer. Native Americans couldn't be U.S. citizens when the country ratified its Constitution in 1788, and wouldn't win the right to be for 136...
Black Past
Black Past: Forten, James (1766 1842)
An encyclopedia article about James Forten, a free black man, who fought in the Revolutionary War, and later became a supporter of abolition and suffrage.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Making of African American Identity: w.e.b. Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk
A chapter that explores how white perceptions influence African American identity. Although granted freedom, citizenship, and suffrage by the Civil War amendments, W. E. B. Du Bois explains how the emancipated black person had yet to be...
Georgia Humanities Council and the University of Georgia Press.
New Georgia Encyclopedia: Atlanta Race Riot of 1906
Article that retells the story behind the Atlanta race riots of 1906 where white mobs killed and wounded dozens of blacks in reaction to newspaper headlines of alleged assaults of white females by blacks, general racial tensions, the...
Other
Black Baltimore 1870 1920: The Fifteenth Amendment Parade and Celebration
Contains a great picture and description of the Fifteenth Amendment parade that was held in Baltimore, to emphasize its importance. Provides links to other civil rights articles.
Black Past
Black Past: Barnett, Ida Wells
This biography details the life and journalistic career of African American women's rights activist Ida B. Wells Barnett.
Black Past
Black Past: Douglass, Frederick
This encyclopedia entry gives a brief overview of the inspirational life of Fredrick Douglass, abolitionist, essayist, and promoter of rights for everyone. There are references to several of his stirring essays.
Independence Hall Association
U.s. History: Reconstruction
A very good overview of Reconstruction in the South after the Civil War. Find the questions that needed to be answered about how to reincorporate the Confederate states, what rights freed blacks would have, and how terms of...
Smithsonian Institution
National Postal Museum: 1990 Black Heritage Series: Ida B. Wells Issue
View the artwork for a U.S. postage stamp issued in 1990 to commemorate Ida B. Wells, one of the founders of the NAACP. With a short passage on her life and contributions to ending discrimination against women and African-Americans.
Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
Gilder Lehrman Institute: History Now: Securing the Right to Vote: Selma to Montgomery Story
[Free Registration/Login Required] Lesson plan asking this essential question: "What conditions created a need for a protest march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 and what did that march achieve?"
Texas Public Broadcasting
Texas Pbs: Texas Our Texas: Age of Oil, Prohibition, Women's Suffrage 1901 1929
Learn how oil has played a major role in the life and economy of Texas, shaping its population, economy, and environment.
Black Past
Black Past: Wright, Jonathan
The importance of Jonathan Wright's legal career is explained in this encyclopedia article.
Smithsonian Institution
National Museum of American History: Separate Is Not Equal: White Only
This section from the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History's exhibition Separate Is Not Equal: Brown v. Board of Education gives the history of Jim Crow laws and how they affected not only the voting rights of...