Putting the Movement Back Into Civil Rights Teaching

Posted by on April 9, 2004

IT?S HERE!
PUTTING THE MOVEMENT BACK INTO CIVIL RIGHTS TEACHING
Published by Teaching for Change and PRRAC

In too many American classrooms, the Civil Rights Movement is taught as an exercise in lauding a handful of saintly heroes. The Movement has the capacity to help students develop a critical analysis of United States history, but the empowering potential is often lost in a pursuit of names and dates. Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching, a new book by Teaching for Change and the Poverty & Race Research Action Council (PRRAC), provides lessons and articles for classrooms and communities on how to go beyond a heroes approach to the Civil Rights Movement. It offers interactive and interdisciplinary lessons, readings, artifacts, and interviews, with sections on education, citizenship, culture, economic justice, and reflections on teaching about the Movement.

With a foreword by John Lewis and a dynamite advisory board, this book is poised to make a real difference in classrooms and communities across the nation. Public Education Network (PEN) president Wendy D. Puriefoy says: ?Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching is a unique collection of urgent voices who remind us that true and lasting movements for social, economic, and racialjustice begin with you and me.? Howard University Law School professor and distinguished author Frank Wu calls it ?as academically rigorous as it is innovative.? He adds, ?The struggle is depicted here vividly and profoundly by a distinguished roster of authors.?

A companion website at http://www.civilrightsteaching.org invites visitors to order the book, peruse web-exclusive content, or find an event in their area commemorating the celebrated Brown v. Board court decision. You can also place an order by contacting Teaching for Change at (800) 763-9131 or http://www.teachingforchange.org.

Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching
Deborah Menkart, Alana D. Murray, and Jenice L. View, eds.
Published by PRRAC and Teaching for Change
576 pp. w/8 pages in full color, $25 ISBN: 1-878554-18-2

ADVISORS: Bill Bigelow, Toni Blackman, Elsa Barkley Brown, Elise Bryant, Clayborne Carson, Charles Cobb Jr., Bill Fletcher Jr., James Forman, Danny Glover, Juan Gonzalez, Lawrence Guyot, Suheir Hammad, Sylvia Hill, Elizabeth Martinez, Nancy Murray, Charles Payne, Renee Poussaint, Sonia Sanchez, Lynda Tredway, Stephen Ward, Debbie Wei, Juan Williams, Yohuru Williams, Howard Zinn