Richard Young, Brookline Public Schools

Five of the Best Web Sites on Civil Rights

http://www.historynow.org/06_2006/index.html

This web journal of the Gilder Lehrman institute marshals all of the many resources of this wonderful history organization for thematic treatments of many periods of U. S. history, including this extensive work on civil rights. This page includes lesson plans for elementary, middle and high school levels. While the elementary lesson is weak, the others are full of great links that open primary source documents such as PDFs of the actual voter registration and literacy tests used in the south in the 1950s. Although it would take time, the high school lessons plans could be adapted to elementary level and would be well worth the effort. The lesson plans contain invaluable links to other web sites ranging from excerpts from the inaugural of George C. Wallace to the full text of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Finally, the “Ask the Archivist” (Mary-Jo Kline) section is a treasure trove of links and materials. If you have questions, you can email them to her—and she really takes the time to research and answer your query. It is especially nice to feel a human presence on a web page.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/about/index.html

This companion web site to the Eyes on the Prize series on PBS is full of great links and activities. The section called “For Teachers” includes an introduction, context, an area on press responses (during the historical period of the listed subject), music, video and photo galleries to each of 26 sections of the video. Used in conjunction with the PBS series and a book such as The Civil Rights Reader, this site will provide powerful ancillary visuals and activities for teachers of all levels.

http://www.teachersdomain.org/tdhome.html

You will need to register for the Teachers Domain website, but it is well worth the time and effort to do so. This site contains innumerable resources for the classroom teacher, including PDF documents of primary sources, and multimedia materials of Real and Quick Time videos and Flash interactive photo displays. You will be able to use videos that you can find in no other place when you use this site. The special collection on Civil rights contains lessons that include a background essay, discussion questions, and links to MCREL Social Studies standards, as well as compelling multimedia links embedded directly into the lessons.

http://www.voicesofcivilrights.org/

This site links to many multi-media features and to extraordinary images. They link to “countless others whose voices you may not recognize,” which is a feature much to be desired when dealing with the Civil Rights movement. Often, K-12 websites do not range far from the holy trinity of Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, and Thurgood Marshall, so it is refreshing to see that this web site includes the voices and experiences of many, many people who were there at a key point in history. The timeline is also extremely useful and begins in the 19 th Century, which helps to give students a sense of the length of the struggle for civil rights and that the movement did not begin with a court case in the 1950s.

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/exhibit/aopart9.html

The American Memory website is a treasure trove of images and PDFs of primary source documents. Unfortunately, it is also a jumble of sorts (because it is so vast), so you have to plan some time to work on strategies for finding what you need. The above link connects to one of the nine sections of African American Odyssey called, “The Civil Rights Era.” American Memory doesn't include lesson plans or links to standards but it does have wonderful documents that you cannot find at any other place.