Black history month

• Dear Teachers: Do’s and Don’ts of Black History Month

Teaching Tolerance

• Why We Need Black History Month Analyzing and celebrating Black history helps students think critically about present-day social issues.
• Black History Month: Teaching the Complete History: Go beyond trauma and struggle to examine the liberation, civic engagement, creativity, and intersecting identities of Black people during Black History Month
• Black History Month: Teaching beyond Slavery –avoid minimizing Black history , include the full human experience beyond enslavement

PBS: Celebrating Black Leaders

• Learn about Charlotta Spears Bass, a crusading newspaper editor and politician who was one of the first African American women to own and operate a newspaper in the United States, in In this video from the Unladylike2020
• Percy Julian: Forgotten Genius: Learn about the education of chemist Percy Julian. Julian’s early educational years paralleled an educational movement that prepared African Americans for industrial jobs, the growing white supremacist movement, and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan.
• Exploring the Poetry of Maya Angelou: This teaching guide is designed for grades 6-12 and will help students learn to use a specific primary source set, The Poetry of Maya Angelou, in the classroom. It offers discussion questions, classroom activities, and primary source analysis tools.
• Brown v. Board of Education and Jackie Robinson’s Push for Equality Students examine why and how Jackie Robinson fought for further integration after the Supreme Court’s decision that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education. Students will explore the Robinson family’s experiences facing overt racism, and discuss the ways implicit attitudes of prejudice shape people’s behavior and treatment of others.

Critical Media Project: Race & Ethnicity

• Race and ethnicity are physical attributes of people, but also ways of seeing and understanding the world. Media plays an influential role in shaping how we think about and enact race in our everyday lives. In the United States and other Western contexts, whites and whiteness have historically been associated with superiority and privilege; people of color have historically been associated with inferiority and framed as less than or “Other.” While we have made some progress in dealing with racial discrimination, inequality and injustice still remain, and the media is a key site where these ideas persist. See Topic Overview PDF for more

Parable of the Polygons: a playable post on the shape of society  a game simulation about segregation and bias

Use the #TakeAKnee Protests to Explore the Legacy of Black Athletes and Activism

• During the 2016 National Football League (NFL) season, Colin Kaepernick — who at the time was a quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers — kneeled during the national anthem to protest police brutality and the systemic oppression of people of color. Kaepernick’s protest — also known as the #TakeAKnee or national anthem protests — sparked a national debate on the relationship between sports and politics and the appropriateness of protest within sporting events. The following video and discussion activities will help students think critically about this debate, drawing on the long history of Black athletes as activists for context.

Facing History and Ourselves:

• Persistence of racial segregation in American schools
• The Debate over reparations for racial injustice
• Making room at the table
• Responding to #LivingWhileBlack
• Black women’s activism and the long history behind MeToo
• The Equal Rights Amendment: a 97 year struggle

Library of Congress

• The Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum join in paying tribute to the generations of African Americans who struggled with adversity to achieve full citizenship in American society.
• Online Lecture with Jason Reynolds – February 25^th: On the Road with Jason Reynolds
  National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature Jason Reynolds will discuss his ambassadorship, including his recent “GRAB THE MIC: Tell Your Story” virtual tour, with Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. Through his platform, “GRAB THE MIC: Tell Your Story,” Reynolds has directed his focus as ambassador by empowering students to embrace and share their own personal stories. This event will be premiered on Facebook and YouTube and on the Library of Congress website.

The Smithsonian:

NEA:  Lesson Plans & Activities

LESSON PLANS

• • In Motion: The African American Migration Experience
    Students in grades 6-8participate in lessons and activities organized around thirteen defining migrations that have formed and transformed African America and the nation.
  • Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series: Removing the Mask
    Students in grades 6-8analyze and compare visual and poetic works by Jacob Lawrence, Helene Johnson, and Paul Laurence Dunbar and consider how they represent changing roles of African Americans.
  • The Poet’s Voice: Langston Hughes and You
    Students in grades 6-8investigate “voice” in Hughes’s poetry, develop their own distinctive voices in journal entries, and write an original poem or critical essay on an aspect of Hughes’s poetic voice.
  • The Illusion of Race
    Students in grades 6-8investigate both genetic and societal consequences of the often-artificial and evolving classifications of race and ethnicity. Student and teacher materials are included.

ACTIVITIES

• • Notable African Americans from the 18th-century to the present
    In this Jeopardy-type quiz game students in grades 5-12can choose from three levels of difficulty to test their knowledge of famous African Americans. Spelling counts, for example Billy Holiday rather than Billie Holiday would be marked incorrect.
  • The Underground Railroad: Journey to Freedom
    To play, install free software. Play as a slave escaping from a Maryland tobacco plantation.

SOCIAL STUDIES

• • E. B. Du Bois: Online Resources
    Includes digital materials related to W. E .B. Du Bois and links to external Web sites.
  • The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow
    Stories, interactive maps, activities and tools, and lesson plans and activities for grades 6-12.
  • Black Labor History
    Lessons and links on the life histories of people whose struggle was part of a larger social and economic movement to improve the lives of the working class.
  • Separate Is Not Equal – Brown v. Board of Education
    History, images, and other resources covering the historic Supreme Court ruling ending segregation and ensuring opportunity in education.
  • Africans in America
    Images, documents, stories, biographies, and commentaries. The site provides teacher’s and youth guides. The four part series may be in local libraries.
  • Black History – Biography – Celebrate Black History Month & People
    Biographies, timelines, photos, video, game, quiz, and 101 fast facts.

ARTS

• • Poems to Celebrate Black History Month
    Poems and articles by African-Americans.
  • Jazz: A Film by Ken Burns
    Online activities and biographies, transcripts of many interviews with musicians, K-12 lesson plans, and a music study guide for grades 5-8.
  • The History of Hip-Hop
    A collection of interviews from National Public Radio (NPR) that chronicle the seminal people and events in the hip-hop movement.
  • African American Visual Art and the Black Arts Movement
    The Black Arts Movement (BAM) began in the mid-1960s to provide a new vision of African Americans. This site provides images galleries a theoretical essay, timeline, and links to other online art sources. Note: the top banner links are dead but the bottom links are functional.
  • The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed
    African American History by region.

SCIENCE

• • African Americans in Science and Technology
    Links from the Library of Congress.
  • African American Inventors
    Brief biographies of African American inventors.

SPORT

• • African American Athletes
    Brief biographies and film clips of outstanding African American athletes. Don’t miss the links to legal and political figures, scientists and educators, activists, artists and writers, entertainers, and musicians and singers.

Quizzes

• • Civil Rights Heroes Quiz
  • The Internet African American History Challenge
    Three quiz levels with 7-10 questions

Printables

• • Timeline (Separate Is Not Equal)
    A timeline of segregationist laws and court rulings.
  • African Americans in Science
  • Word Search and Crossword

VIDEO

• • Legacy: Black and White in America
    Compares African-American life today and that of the Civil Rights generation.
  • Faubourg Tremé: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans(68 minutes)
    Considered the oldest black neighborhood in America, Faubourg Tremé is the origin of the southern civil rights movement and the birthplace of jazz. Check local listings to see when it airs on a local PBS station.
  • Forgotten Genius(120 minutes)
    Chemist Percy Lavon Julian struggled against racism as he pursued research with steroids and alkaloids and helped to create affordable and effective treatments for rheumatoid arthritis and glaucoma.
  • African American Lives 2(240 minutes)
    This website for features clips from the series, background on the research, scholarship, and science, and resources for people to trace their own family history. Lessons for grades 6-12 are included. The DVD may be available in local libraries.
  • Cora Unashamed(93 minutes)
    Based on Langston Hughes’ story, this film tells of a Depression-era African-American domestic who lives only for her daughter and the neglected child of her employers.