Teaching for Social Change

This institute has completely transformed how I think about the Civil Rights Movement and ultimately how I am going to teach it in the classroom. I have received so many resources to use for teaching this hard history. I am a part of the movement that will change the way history is being taught and preserved.—NEH summer institute participant

This summer, Teaching for Change was proud to partner with a team of scholars, veterans, and educators from the Duke University Franklin Humanities Institute, the SNCC Legacy Project, and Tougaloo College on a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Teacher Institute, The Civil Rights Movement: Grassroots Perspectives from 1940-1980.

Journalist Melinda Anderson spent several days at the Institute. Her article, "A Better Way to Teach the Civil Rights Movement," was just published byEdutopia.

Anderson writes, "Prompted by a curiosity about the period’s subtleties and complexities, teachers across the country are modifying their curricula and abandoning their textbooks to teach a more accurate history that commonly goes untold: the role of grassroots activists and women, nuanced portraits of leaders like Parks and King, and racial and social justice battles that link the past to contemporary issues of inequality." Continue reading.

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We are making steady progress toward publishing a new print edition of Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching. The new book will include dozens of lessons and resources that help pre-K-12 students learn about the grassroots, people’s history of the Civil Rights Movement. They will learn that the movement began way before 1954, continues today, and was driven by many unsung heroes including women, young people, and rural farmers.

Timothy Jenkins, a Teaching for Change Board member and SNCC veteran, has generously offered to match any donations up to $10,000 in honor of fellow SNCC veteran Chuck McDew (1938-2018), and we are nearly halfway there.

The role of the Civil Rights Movement is to promote a full-scale social revolution in the U.S. by activating people who feel freedom as a passion in their lives and are willing to make it more than an abstract concept. ─ Chuck McDew, SNCC veteran

We can’t produce this new edition without your support. Please help us meet this $10,000 match. Donate today.

Support the Book

Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching, available at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, will introduce teachers to the wealth of resources available at civilrightsteaching.org and provide essential background reading. Please give today.

Your gift of $100 or more will be acknowledged in the new edition of the book and on our website. Please join this growing list of donors.

Your support helps Teaching for Change provide teachers and parents with tools to create schools where students learn to read, write, and change the world.