TOPIC 8.6: Civil Rights Movement in the 1940s & 1950s

Beyond Rosa Parks: The Women Behind the montgomery bus boycott

Jo Ann Robinson, Claudette Colvin, Mary Fair Burks, Mary Louise Smith, & Aurelia Browder: The women who desegregated Alabama’s buses

Jo Ann Robinson, Claudette Colvin, Mary Fair Burks, Mary Louise Smith, & Aurelia Browder: The women who desegregated Alabama’s buses

KC-8.2.I …civil rights activists and political leaders achieved some legal and political…although progress toward racial equality was slow.

Unit 8: Learning Objective G: Explain how and why the civil rights movements developed and expanded from 1945 to 1960.

Objective: Students will be be able to explain how an organization of women fought busing segregation in the South.

Teaching women’s history in the US history classroom:

The following is a helpful framework created by Stephanie Tellis and Naadia Owens that helps us rethink how we teach Black women’s history. Tellis and Owens used work from the Learning for Justice program to identified three levels of education about Black women. For much of this country’s history, common school curriculum was at level 0 because Black women’s stories were often excluded from the narrative of American history. Our goal should be to give Black women’s stories “Level 3” contextualization.

Level 1: Lessons that reference the impact of Black women on something you’re teaching in class.

  • Ex: When teaching about the Stonewall Uprising, Marsha P. Johnson is mentioned.

Level 2: Lessons that focus on a single aspect of Black women when you’re teaching a unit in class

  • Ex: When teaching a unit on the American Revolution, a poem by Phillis Wheatley is included and students are provided with the biographical context of her life.

Level 3: Lessons that examine multiple aspects of the history of Black women.

  • Ex: Teach about the Great Migration primarily from the vantage point of Black women and girls. Students learn about push and pull factors for Black women and girls coming to the north and study their experience once arriving in Northern cities.

Notes

This lesson comes from a collaborative effort with three brilliant educators that I was able to meet through a conference presented by The Carter Center for Black History Education. Thank you to Dr. Kristen Duncan of Clemson University for providing insight on content and to Stephanie Tellis (@theantibiasedu) and Naadia Owens for their expertise on teaching Black women’s stories.

This lesson provides crucial background information for a story that students think they know. The lesson confronts the myth that “Rosa Parks was just a common seamstress who happened to be too tired to give up her bus seat one day.” This lesson will provide students with some “Level 3” contextualization about the fundamental role of women in the organization and creation of the modern Civil Rights Movement.