Leadership and Change
Teaching American History Grant
2011 - 2012
America in the Intersection:
The Civil Rights Movement
Yohuru Williams, Ph.D.
Fairfield University
January 10, 2012
In this interactive history seminar professor Yohuru Williams of Fairfield University explores the history
of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements in New York and the nation through the lens of
biography using innovative teaching methods from his book Teaching U.S History Beyond the Textbook
(Corwin, 2008). Geared toward middle and high school teachers, the seminar will engage the notion of a
“long black freedom struggle” with an eye toward helping teachers help students identify the National
council for History education’s History’s “Habits of the Mind” including continuity and change and
history as unfinished business.
Scholar Biography
Dr. Yohuru Williams is Associate Professor of History and Co-Director of Black Studies at Fairfield
University. He received his Ph.D. from Howard University in 1998 and after six years as a professor of
history and director of Black Studies and Graduate Studies at Delaware State University joined Fairfield's
faculty in the fall of 2005. Dr. Williams is currenlty on sabbatical from Fairfield University and serving as
the Vice President for History Education for the American Institute for History Education in Swedesboro,
New Jersey. In January Dr. Williams was named one of Diverse Issues in Higher Education’s emerging
scholars for 2009.
Dr. Williams is the author of Black Politics/White Power: Civil Rights Black Power and Black Panthers in
New Haven (Blackwell, 2006) and Teaching U.S. History Beyond the Textbook (Corwin, 2008). He is the
editor of A Constant Struggle: African-American History from 1865 to the Present Documents and Essays
(Kendall Hunt, 2002) amd the co-editor of In Search of the Black Panther Party: New Perspectives on a
Revolutionary Movement (Duke University, 2006) and Liberated Territoty: Toward a local history of the
Black Panther Party (Duke University, 2009) He also served as general editor for the Association for the
Study of African American Life and History's 2002 and 2003 Black History Month publications, The Color
Line Revisited (Tapestry Press, 2002) and The Souls of Black Folks: Centennial Reflections (Africa World
Press, 2003). Dr. Williams served as an advisor on the popular civil rights reader Putting the Movement
Back into teaching Civil Rights.
Dr. Williams's scholarly articles have appeared in The Black Scholar, The Journal of Black Studies, The
OAH Magazine of History, Delaware History, Pennsylvania History and the Black History Bulletin. Dr.
Williams is presently finishing up a single authored book entitled Six Degrees of Segregation: Lynching,
Capital Punishment and Jim Crow Justice, 1865-1930.
Publications
Books
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Yohuru Williams, Teaching Beyond the Textbook. Corwin, 2008.
Yohuru Williams, Jama Lazerow. Liberated Territory: Toward a Local History of the Black Panther
Party. Duke, 2009.
Yohuru Williams, Jama Lazerow. In Search of the Black Panther Party. Duke, 2006.
Yohuru Williams. Black Politics White Power, Civil Rights, Black Power and the Black Panthers in
New Haven. Blackwell, 2006.
Yohuru Williams, Tamara Brown et al. The Souls of Black Folk: Centennial Reflections. Africa
World Press, Forthcoming September 2003.
Yohuru Williams. A Constant Struggle: African-American History from 1865-Present Documents
and Essays. Kendall Hunt Publishers, February 2003.
Yohuru Williams et al. The Color Line Revisited: Is Racism Dead. Acton, MA: Tapestry Press,
January 2001.
Recommended Resources, Websites and Books
HERB: Social History for Every Classroom from the American Social History
Project/Center for Media and Learning
HERB’s collections feature materials, strategies, and perspectives to enliven your teaching of selected topics in
U.S. history. Check out the 93 strategies and activities that come up when you search “Civil Rights and Citizenship”
http://herb.ashp.cuny.edu/
The Library of Congress Teacher Resources
Check out theprimary source sets, online exhibitions, lesson plans, student online activities and library collections
on the theme of Civil Rights. The resource lists below are designed to help make the Library’s digital collections
more accessible for both teachers and students.
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Primary Source Sets
Specific artifacts (images, manuscripts, maps, sound files) with analysis tools help students think like
historians about a particular historical event or phenomenon. Sets include Jim Crow In America and The
NAACP: A Century In The Fight For Freedom.
http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/themes/civil-rights/set.html
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Online Exhibitions And Multi-Media Presentations
Multimedia resources from the Library of Congress that support instruction about civil rights. These
resources include expert presentations, exhibitions, bibliographies, Webcasts, and other online materials.
http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/themes/civil-rights/exhibitions.html
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Lesson Plans
Use these lesson plans, created by teachers for teachers, to explore civil rights.
http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/themes/civil-rights/lessonplans.html
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Digital Collections of Primary Sources
Check out this link to find historical context and ideas for integrating digital collections of primary sources
into instruction. Many collections are listed on this site for easy access. Sample collections include:
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Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project 1936-1938
Jackie Robinson and Other Baseball Highlights, 1860s-1960s
The Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of Congress
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http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/themes/civil-rights/collections.html
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Civil Rights for Students
This is a helpful list of online activities and background information to help students learn more about civil
rights. The list includes many topics including Harriet Tubman, Langston Hughes, Fourteenth Amendment,
and political cartoons, to name a few.
http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/themes/civil-rights/students.html
Resources for Teaching about The Civil Rights Movement
This website is the online companion guide to the book Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching by
Teaching for Change. The site includes the handouts, additional lesson plans, and an extensive annotated list of
books, films, audio and websites for both teachers and classrooms. The books are divided by the following
categories: a) Literature for K-12 Students - Fiction and Non-Fiction; b) Background Reading for Teachers; c)
Biographies and d) Oral Histories and Primary Documents
http://civilrightsteaching.org/resources
Columbia University: Mapping The African American Past
http://www.maap.columbia.edu/
Eyes on the Prize resource site
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/index.html
National Portrait Gallery Smithsonian Museum - African-American Portraits
http://www.npg.si.edu/exhibit/motto/
Ella Baker article, “Bigger Than a Hamburger”
http://www.crmvet.org/docs/sncc2.htm
John Lewis, March on Washington Speech, 1963
http://www.crmvet.org/info/mowjl.htm
Official Program, March on Washington
http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?doc=96
List of Primary Sources
(See the website for these documents)
Document A0: Martin Luther King, Address to First Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) Mass
Meeting, at Holt Street Baptist Church, December 5, 1955, Montgomery, Alabama;
Document A: Civil War Amendments (1865-1870);
Document B: State Laws on Color (1865-1927);
Document C: The Black Codes of Mississippi (1865);
Document D: Jim Crow Laws (1896-1950;
Document E: The Lynching of Richard Coleman (1899);
Document F: Accounts of Women Lynched from the Crisis (1911-1918);
Document G: Example of a Racially Restrictive Covenant;
Document H: The Married Life of Georgia Peons.
Document I: Lyrics Stevie Wonder, Living for the City (1973)