Tactics for Justice

School Desegregation

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Civil Rights

RESOURCE	GRADE LEVEL	MEDIA TYPE
Analyzing Primary Source Media In this media-rich, self-paced lesson, students analyze primary source news footage to gain insights into public sentiment toward historical figures, issues, and events of the past 50 years.	6-12	Self-paced Lesson
Boston Desegregation This excerpt from WGBH's Evening Compass news program summarizes events of the first year of the 1974 Boston school desegregation plan.	6-12	Video
Boston Desegregation Controversy, 1974 In this 1974 television news footage from WGBH: "Evening Compass", citizens stage a protest in response to mandatory busing to desegregate the Boston Public Schools.	6-12	Video
Brown: A Landmark Case This video segment describes the players and events of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision and how it galvanized the Civil Rights movement as well as white resistance.	6-12	Video
Burke Marshall Assistant Attorney General Burke Marshall, in this transcript of an interview for Eyes on the Prize, remembers mediating the 1962 desegregation of the University of Mississippi.	9-12	Document
Bus to the Burbs This video excerpt from La Plaza: "Bus to the Burbs" looks at METCO, a voluntary busing program in Boston.	6-12	Video
The Civil Rights Movement in America, 1945-1975 This interactive timeline provides a chronological and geographic view of the events of the Civil Rights era and its aftermath.	K-12	Interactive
A Class Divided 1: The Daring Lesson This segment from FRONTLINE: "A Class Divided" profiles an experiment in discrimination based on eye color that took place in a third-grade class in 1970.	3-12	Video
A Class Divided 2: Day Two This segment from FRONTLINE: "A Class Divided" profiles the second day of an experiment in discrimination based on eye color that took place in a third-grade class in 1970.	3-12	Video
A Class Divided 3: An Interview with Jane Elliott In this Web-exclusive interview for FRONTLINE, Jane Elliott discusses her abiding sense that her lesson on bigotry is as necessary today as it was in 1968.	6-12	Document
Constance Baker Motley In this transcript of an interview for Eyes on the Prize, Justice Constance Baker Motley recalls her role as an NAACP attorney in landmark school desegregation cases.	9-12	Document
Desegregation in San Francisco This audio excerpt from National Public Radio's All Things Considered examines policies designed to achieve racial diversity in San Francisco's schools and their impact on Chinese Americans.	6-12	Audio
Desegregation Mandate: Jefferson County, AL A 1967 federal court order resulted in this document, which mandated school desegregation in Birmingham.	6-12	Document
Documenting Brown 1: The Fourteenth Amendment The Fourteenth Amendment established the equal protection clause, later used in key desegregation cases.	6-12	Document
Documenting Brown 2: Plessy v. Ferguson The Supreme Court's 1896 ruling legalized the "separate but equal" doctrine that sanctioned segregation.	6-12	Document
Documenting Brown 3: Gong Lum v. Rice The Supreme Court's 1927 opinion in Gong Lum v. Rice affirmed legalized school segregation.	6-12	Document
Documenting Brown 4: Mendez v. Westminster This 1946 federal court ruling marked a victory for Mexican Americans and chipped away at the "separate but equal" doctrine, declaring segregated schools based on national origin unconstitutional.	6-12	Document
Documenting Brown 5: Brown v. Board of Education, 1954 The Supreme Court's landmark opinion overturned its earlier ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson and declared segregated schools unconstitutional.	6-12	Document
Documenting Brown 6: Brown v. Board of Education, 1955 The Supreme Court's opinion in Brown II reflects the struggle between federal and state governments on how and when school desegregation would occur.	6-12	Document
Documenting Brown 7: Civil Rights Act of 1964 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 helped enforce the Brown ruling, a decade later.	6-12	Document
Documenting Brown: Collected Excerpts This collection of excerpts from legislation and court decisions documents key phases of the legal struggle to gain and implement equal education.	6-12	Document
Getting an Education This video segment, adapted from NOVA, chronicles the education of leading chemist Percy Julian. Although Julian began his elementary school years in the Deep South under Jim Crow laws, he became one of the few African Americans of his time to earn a Ph.D.	6-12	Video
Harry Briggs, Sr. and Eliza Briggs In this transcript of an interview for Eyes on the Prize, Harry and Eliza Briggs describe their experience in the first school desegregation case, Briggs v. Elliott.	6-12	Document
Hyde County School Boycott This slide show tells the story of a yearlong boycott to protest the closing of historically black schools in Hyde County, North Carolina.	3-12	Image
Brown Reactions: Black Educators This 1954 statement, issued by a group of black educators, strongly endorses the Supreme Court's Brown ruling.	6-12	Document
Brown Reactions: Editorials This sampling of newspaper editorials from the mid-1950s reflects the range of public opinion and responses to the Brown decision.	6-12	Document
Brown Reactions: Judge Brady This 1954 statement from Tom Brady, a founder of the White Citizens' Council movement, expresses opposition to the Brown decision.	6-12	Document
Brown Reactions: Zora Neale Hurston Zora Neale Hurston's 1955 letter to the editor expresses her belief that the Brown decision would prove detrimental to the educational interests of black students.	6-12	Document
Ike and Little Rock This video segment, adapted from American Experience: "Ike", profiles the president's controversial response to the Little Rock school desegregation crisis in 1957.	6-12	Video
Mendez v. Westminster: Desegregating California's Schools Sylvia Mendez recalls the conditions that led Mexican Americans to sue for desegregation in the 1940s in this segment from Mendez vs. Westminster: Para Todos los Niños/For All the Children, from KOCE-TV.	3-12	Video
Implementing Brown Point/counterpoint commentary on the president's actions after the Brown ruling; from American Experience: "Eisenhower."	6-12	Video
Little Rock Nine This collection of photos shows scenes from the controversial desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957.	6-12	Image
Melba Pattillo Beals Melba Patillo Beals was one of nine black students who desegregated Little Rock's Central High School in 1957. In this interview, recorded for Eyes on the Prize, Beals describes her tumultuous experience.	9-12	Video
Reconsidering Brown In the video segments presented in this activity, leading historians and legal scholars reflect on the promise of the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, and why it remains unfulfilled.	9-12	Self-paced Lesson
Reconstruction and Black Education This mini-documentary from the American Experience: "Reconstruction" Web site follows post-Civil War development of public education for African Americans in the South and the resistance it sparked.	3-12	Video
Re-Examining Brown This lesson explores the historical complexity of the struggle to desegregate schools, the geographic scope of racism, conditions that prompted activism and litigation, and how laws have changed over time.	9-12	Lesson Plan
Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth This oral history transcript from the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute documents the tumultuous life and leadership of the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, who survived a bomb attack that destroyed his home.	6-12	Document
The Road to Brown This video segment looks at the history of the NAACP's efforts to convince the Supreme Court that segregated schools were unconstitutional, leading up to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education cases.	9-12	Video
Segregated Schooling in Alabama This scrapbook documents conditions in Birmingham's segregated schools in 1963, as well as white resistance to integration.	3-5	Image
Segregated Schooling in South Carolina In this video segment, produced for the Levine Museum of the New South, Joseph De Laine Jr. and Ophelia De Laine Gona describe conditions in segregated South Carolina schools.	3-12	Video
Segregation Ordinances: Birmingham, AL This document from 1951 spells out Birmingham's segregation ordinances, the laws requiring the separation of the races.	6-12	Document
Sherman Oaks, a Model for Integration This audio segment from National Public Radio's All Things Considered tells the story of a California school designed to end segregation.	6-12	Audio
Simple Justice 1: A Handful of Lawyers This segment from American Experience: "Simple Justice" profiles Charles Houston's strategy for attacking segregation and how he trained the legal team that eventually argued the Brown case.	6-12	Video
Simple Justice 2: Social Science Evidence This segment from American Experience: "Simple Justice" documents Dr. Kenneth Clark's "doll test," which became important social science evidence in the Brown case.	6-12	Video
Simple Justice 3: The Trial Begins This segment from American Experience: "Simple Justice" captures the legal issues and opening arguments in Brown v. Board of Education.	6-12	Video
Simple Justice 4: Arguing the Fourteenth Amendment This segment from American Experience: "Simple Justice" explores the issue at the heart of Brown v. Board of Education: whether the Fourteenth Amendment applied to segregated schools.	6-12	Video
Simple Justice 5: Marshall's Closing Statement This segment from American Experience: "Simple Justice" reenacts Thurgood Marshall's closing statement in Brown v. Board of Education.	6-12	Video
Simple Justice 6: Justice Warren Reads the Decision This segment from American Experience: "Simple Justice" explores the dynamics and arguments among the Supreme Court justices who ruled in Brown v. Board of Education.	6-12	Video
Strategies for an Equal Education Students examine the inequality in education faced by African Americans in the 20th century. They review the Fourteenth Amendment, identify and examine strategies used to overcome discrimination, and analyze the advantages and disadvantages of each.	6-12	Lesson Plan
Taking a Stand This lesson provides an introduction to the discrimination and segregation that triggered the Civil Rights movement, through the eyes of some of the youngest activists at the time.	3-5	Lesson Plan
Vanessa Venable In this transcript of an interview for Eyes on the Prize, Vanessa Venable describes the impact of school closings in Prince Edward County, Virginia from 1959-1964.	6-12	Document