The Civil Rights Era: Women's Freedoms
We are adding inquiry-based lessons and powerpoints regularly and constantly seeking those that are already out there by others. If you have an inquiry to contribute, or have feedback on women and topics that are missing, email us at remedialherstory@gmail.com. We are grateful for any feedback, edits, or revisions you can provide.
Library of Congress
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Why were Black women’s stories overlooked in the Montgomery bus boycott?
Black women were at the heart of the Montgomery movement, but history erased all but Parks-- Parks, a decades long NAACP field agent, was turned into a fatigued seamstress. But that's not the real story. In this lesson, students will investigate what really caused the boycott. Students will know the stories and names of Recy Taylor, Gertrude Perkins, and Jo Ann Robinson-- as well as the truth behind why Parks refused to move that day. 
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Library of Congress
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Post war, how did military leaders try to recruit women into national defense?
In this inquiry by Dr. Tanya Roth, students explore recruitment posters from the decades following WWII to see what strategies worked to recruit women into war jobs.
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Library of Congress
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What should be done about abortion?
This is a week long series to more deeply teach about abortion and help students ultimately decide where they stand on the issue of abortion using a data driven and historical approach.
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Library of Congress
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Were women integral to the Black Panther Party? Were the Black Panthers sexist?
Women represented fifty percent of the Black Panther Party, representing the rank and file of the party, but most depictions of the party hide their presence. This inquiry examines the party and the young women who held it together, fulfilled its mission, and dealt with internal misogyny. Also, check out this article from the Zinn History Education Group and this Role Play Activity. We highly recommend you try them in class.
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Was the ERA good for women?
The Equal Rights Amendment, written by Alice Paul and not passed in Congress until 1972, resulted in debates as anti-ERA leadership emerged. Leaders of the women's movement did not take her opposition seriously at first, but her work in the STOP ERA movement led to the amendment not meeting it's expiration timeline. In this inquiry, students will watch or read from prominent proponents, the law itself, and from opposition and decide if this amendment was good for women. If you chose to show the debate, you can find it cited in the lesson plan or linked on YouTube to the left.
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Lessons from Others
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- Women in the 1950s:
- Stanford History Education Group: The happy housewife is a common image of the 1950s. The lives of most women at this time, however, did not resemble this image because of economic and racial barriers. For those who were housewives, was this ideal a fulfilling reality? In this lesson plan, students consider economic and social conditions in the 1950s and question the happy housewife stereotype.
- Gilder Lehrman: This lesson explores the Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan and asks What roles were women expected to play during the 1950s?
- Unladylike: Learn how Louise Arner Boyd defied expectations and gender roles to become a world famous Arctic explorer in this video from Unladylike2020. Boyd mapped unexplored regions of Greenland, studied and photographed topography, sea ice, glacial features, land formations and ocean depths, and made dozens of botanical discoveries. One of her innovations was the use of a heavy aerial mapping camera to document the glacial landscape at ground level, which served as the basis for new and more detailed maps of the region. Her photographs of glaciers provide critical information to climate change researchers today. Using video, discussion questions, vocabulary, and classroom activities, students learn about Boyd's contributions to science, geography, and our collective imagination about exploring new worlds.
- Eleanor Roosevelt:
- Gilder Lehrman: Students will be asked to read and analyze primary and secondary sources about Eleanor Roosevelt and the work she did to support social justice issues both in the United States and around the world. They will look at the role of first lady and see how Mrs. Roosevelt expanded that role to influence the political, social, and economic issues of the twentieth century. Students will increase their literacy skills as outlined in the Common Core Standards as they explore the social justice actions taken by Eleanor Roosevelt, which at times changed the course of world events.
- Edcitement: This lesson asks students to explore the various roles that Eleanor Roosevelt took on, among them: First Lady, political activist for civil rights, newspaper columnist and author, and representative to the United Nations. Students will read and analyze materials written by and about Eleanor Roosevelt to understand the changing roles of women in politics. They will look at Eleanor Roosevelt's role during and after the New Deal as well as examine the lives and works of influential women who were part of her political network. They will also examine the contributions of women in Roosevelt's network who played critical roles in shaping and administering New Deal policies.
- National Womens History Museum: The purpose of this lesson is to learn about Eleanor Roosevelt as an agent of social change as the First Lady of the United States and later as a representative to the United Nations. Moreover, students will learn how Mrs. Roosevelt used her position as the First Lady to become a champion of human rights which extended after her time in the White House. Students will read primary sources to better understand the legacy of Mrs. Roosevelt.
- Rosa Parks:
- Teaching Tolerance: Most history textbooks include a section about Rosa Parks in the chapter on the modern civil rights movement. However, Parks is only one among many African-American women who have worked for equal rights and social justice. This series introduces four of those activists who may be unfamiliar to students.
- Lesson 1, Maya Angelou, focuses on questions of identity as students read and analyze Angelou’s inspirational poem “Still I Rise” and apply its message to their own lives. Students learn how Maya Angelou overcame hardship and discrimination to find her own voice and to influence others to believe in themselves and use their voices for positive change.
- Lesson 2, Mary Church Terrell, focuses on questions of diversity among turn of the 20th century African Americans. Students read and analyze an 1898 speech by the founding president of the National Association of Colored Women about the class differences within African-American communities and the NACW’s philosophy of “lifting as we climb.”
- Lesson 3, Mary McLeod Bethune, focuses on questions of justice. Students read an interview with this prominent African-American educator and learn about how her personal experience of discrimination motivated her to open a school for African-American students in Florida and to devote her life to the struggle for equality.
- Lesson 4, Marian Wright Edelman, focuses on questions of activism. Students read a commencement speech given by this well-known founder of the Children’s Defense Fund and learn how Edelman has dedicated her life to "paying it forward" and rising above circumstances to make lives better for others. They are then encouraged to apply lessons from the speech to their own lives as they identify and implement opportunities to help improve the lives of those in their school or community.
- Each lesson includes a central text and provides strategies for reading and understanding that text. Students are encouraged to make connections between the texts and their own experiences and to take action against the inequities they identify.
- PBS: After the Civil War and through the Civil Rights era of the 1950s, racial segregation laws made life for many African Americans extremely difficult. Rosa Parks—long-standing civil rights activist and author—is best known for her refusal to give up her seat to a white bus passenger, sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Through two primary source activities and a short video, students will learn about Parks’ lifelong commitment to the Civil Rights Movement.
- Scholastic: This unique activity introduces Rosa Parks and provides an opportunity for students to respond to her experience in writing. As students learn about "the Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement," they see how individuals have shaped American history.
- Teaching Tolerance: Most history textbooks include a section about Rosa Parks in the chapter on the modern civil rights movement. However, Parks is only one among many African-American women who have worked for equal rights and social justice. This series introduces four of those activists who may be unfamiliar to students.
- Labor Rights:
- PBS: In this interactive lesson, use primary and secondary sources such as video and audio to unravel the mystery of Maria Moreno, a woman who fought for farm labor rights before Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta formed the United Farm Workers. Then search out an unsung history maker in your own community!
- National History Day: Dolores Huerta (born 1930) began her career as a community organizer while attending the University of Pacific’s Delta College in Stockton, California, where she served in a leadership position for the Stockton Community Service Organization (CSO). In 1959, Huerta co-founded the Agricultural Workers Association (AWA), comprised mostly of Filipino, Chicano, and Black workers. This group became instrumental during the 1965 grape strike in California. One year later, Huerta and César Chávez joined forces to organize the United Farm Workers (UFW). This group secured the Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975, which provided farm workers in California the right to collectively organize and bargain for better working conditions and higher wages. Huerta continued her work as the founder and president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation fighting for issues gender equality and social justice. In 2012, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States.
- Civil Rights:
- National Women’s History Museum: How has the activism of Native American women contributed to fights for the liberation of Native people and communities? Is a lesson plan by the NWHM that helps students reconsider the role of women in native history, the central role they played in challenging how indigenous history was taught, and their activism in the 1960s.
- Zinn History Education Group: In this lesson plan students assume the roles of characters working in and against the Black panther party. Many of the roles are female, showing the integral role women played in the movement.
- C3 Teachers: This inquiry leads students through an investigation of the education system in the United States, focusing on the extent to which systemic racism continues to plague modern schooling. Students investigate schooling before and after the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case in order to evaluate the impact and effectiveness, or “success,” of school desegregation.
- National History Day: Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977) was born Fannie Lou Townsend on October 6, 1917, in Montgomery County, Mississippi. She later moved to Sunflower County where she began sharecropping at the age of six. She married Perry Hammer in 1944 and moved to a plantation in Ruleville, Mississippi. Due to her eighth grade education, she was asked by the plantation owner to serve as the timekeeper, which she did for 18 years. Hamer traveled, unsuccessfully, to Indianola to attempt to vote in 1962. Upon returning to the plantation, she lost her job, forcing her family to find somewhere else to live and work. In 1963, Hamer was named field secretary of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). That fall, while traveling back from a training session, she was arrested and brutally beaten in jail. Through her tireless efforts, Hamer was appointed vice-chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). The following year, the 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed. This pivotal legislation would not have been possible were it not for the efforts of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.
- National History Day: Marian Anderson (1897-1993) discovered the power of her voice at a young age. The Philadelphia native possessed a unique contralto range that helped her become an internationally acclaimed talent. Despite being denied entry into several conservatories because of her race, Anderson’s private training with top vocal instructors led her to performances from New York’s Carnegie Hall to Paris. She entertained several European monarchs and was the first African American to sing at the White House when she accepted an invitation from Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt in 1936. Throughout her career she dealt with segregation in America, and in 1939 the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow her to perform at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. A national backlash to this decision, spearheaded by Eleanor Roosevelt’s resignation from the DAR in protest, led to Anderson singing for 75,000 people on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday 1939. After this key moment for civil rights, she continued her groundbreaking career, along the way becoming the first African American to perform at the New York Metropolitan Opera in 1955. In 1963, she sang at the March on Washington and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
- LGBTQ+ Rights:
- National Women’s History Museum: Should LGBTQ history be required by all states? This lesson seeks to explore the Stonewall Riots, the media interpretation of them, and inclusion and exclusion in the LGBTQ movement through the life of Marsha P. Johnson, including the connections to the present day. Students will examine news articles from the time, reflections from trans activists, and explore the ways the impacts of intersectionality on the LGBTQ community. Through a set of activities, students will explore how Stonewall has been understood and some of the unsung heroes, ultimately seeking to ask why they were unsung. As a summative assessment, students will complete a writing exercise in which they seek to connect the debate over the film Stonewall to what they have learned in class and reflect on what they have learned.
- Teaching Tollerance: Most history textbooks lack inclusion of the significant contributions LGBT African-Americans made to the civil rights movement. This series introduces students to four LGBT people of African descent with whom they may not be familiar, yet who were indispensable to the ideas, strategies and activities that made the civil rights movement a successful political and social revolution.
- Lesson One: James Baldwin: Art, Sexuality and Civil Rights discusses how James Baldwin’s identity shaped his art and political activism. Students will read a New York Times obituary, written the day after Baldwin’s 1987 death from cancer, and listen to an interview conducted by National Public Radio. Far ahead of his time, Baldwin was “out and proud” before that term became a popular cultural idiom. Baldwin’s life illuminates not just the intersection between gay rights and civil rights, but perhaps more important, the connections among self-identification, artistic expression and political activism.
- Lesson Two: Lorraine Hansberry: LGBT Politics and Civil Rights examines the battle over how history has remembered one of the United States’ important mid-20th century playwrights. Some scholars consider Lorraine Hansberry to be a literary genius because she masked radical black politics through the construction of seemingly unthreatening African-American characters. Her 1959 play, A Raisin in the Sun, blazed a trail for African Americans into mainstream theater and entertainment. While Hansberry has long been recognized as a significant figure in black history, less is known about her advocacy for lesbian and gay rights. Hansberry never publically shared her sexual orientation, but she is often described as a closeted lesbian by those who have studied her life and politics. Hansberry’s sexual politics and advocacy for LGBT rights is the subject of this lesson.
- Lesson Three: Pauli Murray: Fighting Jane and Jim Crow focuses on issues of justice. Murray was an accomplished lawyer and intellectual. In this lesson, students will study Murray’s biography and delve into the distinctions she made between Jim Crow and Jane Crow. This lesson explores the life, activism and ideas of a woman, African American and lesbian who fought discrimination in the areas of race, gender and sexuality. Murray, an overlooked figure, was instrumental in connecting civil rights, gay rights and women’s rights.
- Lesson Four: Bayard Rustin: The Fight for Civil and Gay Rights addresses the issue of activism. Rustin was not only dedicated to orchestrating the civil rights movement; he was also one of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s closest advisors, and the organizer of the 1963 March on Washington. In this lesson, students will read Rustin’s words and engage with a historian’s assessment about his activism and legacy. Rustin’s life elucidates the similarities between the modern civil rights movement and the current gay rights movement. Earlier in his life, Rustin was open about his homosexuality in private circles, but remained publicly silent about it. Later in life, Rustin was more vocal and became an advocate for gay rights in ways that had eluded him in his earlier years. In this lesson, students will discuss the similarities and differences between the civil rights and gay rights movements.
- Stanford History Education Group: In the early hours of June 28, 1969, a police raid of the Stonewall Inn exploded into a riot when patrons of the LGBT bar resisted arrest and clashed with police. The Stonewall Riots are widely considered to be the start of the LGBT rights movement in the United States. In this lesson, students analyze four documents to answer the question: What caused the Stonewall Riots?
- Feminism:
- Clio: This lesson plan introduces students to feminism, which is both a historical movement and a political ideology. Its focus is on American feminist activists since 1945. Students have the opportunity to explore various definitions of feminism and to research individual feminist activists. The exercises from this class session can be integrated into lessons investigating the development of democracy, the histories of movements for social justice and equal rights, and social changes since World War II.
- Clio: This lesson introduces students to women activists who helped define and broaden the public discussion of women’s issues in the late 1960s, an era of enormous political upheaval in the United States and around the world.
- Clio: This lesson introduces students to the pioneering woman politician Senator Margaret Chase Smith, who sought to become the first woman President of the United States in 1964. She and other women in the U.S. Congress served as ambassadors for expanding women’s roles in American society in the 1960s and 1970s.
- Clio: In the early 1970s, Boston feminists established a collective to teach themselves and other women about their bodies. Their path-breaking book Our Bodies, Ourselves is now published in 30 languages. In the same era, the Supreme Court ruling Roe v. Wade guaranteed a woman’s right to have an abortion. In the early 1990s, Black women health activists began organizing around the concept of Reproductive Justice, which connects reproductive rights and social justice. Reproductive Justice is defined “as the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.”
- Equal Rights Amendment:
- Stanford History Education Group: In this lesson, students are presented with a claim made on Twitter about the popularity of the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s. Students use the internet to evaluate the trustworthiness of the claim and to determine whether the Equal Rights Amendment had popular support in the 1970s and whether it does today.
- PBS: This inquiry kit features Library of Congress sources examining support for and against the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). What was the Equal Rights Amendment? Why were people against the ERA? Which parts of the ERA do you think were successful and which parts still need work?
- Voices of Democracy: Students examine a Gloria Steinem’s testimony in Congress defending the ERA. What evidence does Steinem offer to support her claims? Did you find her arguments convincing?
- Voices of Democracy: This speech relates “Women’s Liberation” to social changes that occurred during the 1960s and 1970s, such as the anti-war and civil rights movements. Steinem’s address helps students see the connections between these social movements and understand how the movements built upon one another. Steinem breaks with the rhetorical tradition of graduation speeches by urging action rather than celebration. Instead of praising the learning that graduation commemorates, Steinem urges an “unlearning” by refuting several myths about women, several of which are grounded in academic coursework or studies. Steinem’s point of view as a woman who has recently testified before Congress on equal rights is leveraged in this speech, yet she uses this opportunity not just to urge the liberation of women, but to emphasize the broader outlook of a humanist movement that seeks the liberation of all interdependent beings.
- Title IX:
- Gilder Lehrman: The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the federal judicial system and has both original and appellate jurisdiction. Historically, the Supreme Court’s most influential role has been through the exercise of judicial review. The court’s power to declare acts of the legislative and executive branches unconstitutional, and therefore null and void, has enabled Supreme Court Justices to act as policy makers. Title IX is a United States law enacted on June 23, 1972, that states: "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance." Looking at the issues and concerns that prompted Congress to pass gender equity legislation will enable students to debate the significance of judicial review and the Supreme Court regarding interpretation and reinterpretation of the Constitution and the laws of the United States.
- Gilder Lehrman: Students will examine primary documents and secondary sources to analyze gender equity during the last quarter of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first century. Students will be able to identify the major social and economic trends of the second half of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twenty-first century. Students will be able to examine the effects of activism in the twentieth century and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on the passage of Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972.
- Teaching Tolerance: This lesson uses the text of Title IX as a jumping-off point for students to explore how girls’ and women’s experiences in education have and have not changed in the 40 years since this landmark 1972 legislation became law.
- Shirley Chisolm:
- National History Day: Shirley Chisholm (1924-2005) was born in New York City to immigrant parents. After high school, Chisholm attended Brooklyn College and began a career in education after graduation. After finishing her masters in early childhood education in 1952, she worked for the New York City Division of Day Care before being elected to the New York State Legislature in 1964. After a court-ordered redistricting changed the congressional boundaries in Brooklyn, Chisholm ran for the new seat and was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1968. She was the first African American Congresswoman. While in Congress Chisholm protested against the Vietnam War and advocated for programs to help the poor, women, children and minorities, causes that she would fight for throughout her seven terms in the House. In 1971 Chisholm became a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus. In 1972, she declared her candidacy for the Democratic nomination for presidency. Although she received assassination threats and ran a small campaign, Chisholm received 152 delegate votes (10% of the total) but ultimately lost to George McGovern. In 1977 Chisholm helped establish the Congressional Women’s Caucus. After leaving Congress in 1983, Chisholm taught at Mount Holyoke and was nominated to serve as the ambassador to Jamaica by President William J. Clinton, although she declined due to poor health. Chisholm died in 2005 in Florida and was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in 2015.
- Voices of Democracy: The push for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) marked the beginning of what many scholars identify as the birth of the contemporary women’s rights movement. Shirley Chisholm was a political icon who used this speech to carefully build an affirmative case for change, demonstrating how both women and men were harmed by laws that perpetuated sex discrimination. Her opposition to the status quo made her seem radical to some, but she was the first African-American woman elected to Congress. As a member of Congress, she earned a reputation for candor and political courage as she used her public speaking and debating skills to champion the interests of women, people of color, and people living in poverty at a pivotal time in U.S. history. The ERA addressed an important political question: do society’s attitudes affect laws, or do laws shape society’s attitudes? By arguing that laws shape popular thinking, Chisholm advocated for a constitutional amendment, the ERA, that would guarantee federal protections to both women and men, overriding state laws with the goal of also changing national attitudes towards the capacities and rights of both sexes. Chisholm used her considerable debate skills to demonstrate that the ERA would benefit both men and women, as well as the nation as a whole, by assuring that the U.S. lived up to its founding ideals of equality and justice for all.
