Challenges & Opportunities of Teaching Civil Rights Movement: Desegregation

Students are sometimes disappointed to learn the true story of Rosa Parks – that she was a member of the NAACP engaged in a deliberate tactic of civil rights activism, and that her famous bus ride was not an isolated and spontaneous act of heroism but part of a planned legal strategy. They are also surprised to learn that Brown v. Board was not entirely unanticipated but that instead it capped a systematic legal campaign to overturn Plessy Ferguson dating back to the 1930s. 

Therefore, this unit might provide you with the opportunity to explore not just the major events of the civil rights movement, but also the process of change. As part of this, you might ask your students why we tend to prefer these more romantic stories of individual heroism to the more complex tales of incremental, calculated, and organized reform.