Highlighting Hidden Figures in Civil Rights History
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2020-02-11
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Abstract
As faculty members of disciplines such as law, sociology, and history, many of us have the honor to be able to teach about the Civil Rights Movement as a key component of the curriculum in our classes. To teach concepts of civil rights in a way that brings history to life and enables students to grasp that the fight for equality is still ongoing, it is imperative that faculty members veer from the traditional “whitewashed version of civil rights history” found in so many textbooks and instead, go behind the scenes and highlight the grassroots activists (the unsung heroes and heroines) of the Civil Rights Movement who played amazing roles in effectuating change (Anderson, 2018). Traditionally, the Civil Rights Movement is taught in a way that “includes only the well-known heroes, heroines, and watershed moments” in the short time span of the mid-1950s to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, leaving students with the impression that the movement achieved its goal of racial equality and therefore, “there is nothing left to fight for in regards to equity” (Anderson, 2018). This of course is an inaccurate implication, given “present-day injustices” such as race discrimination in the workplace and in places of public accommodation, hate crimes, racial profiling, and the issue of mass incarceration (Anderson, 2018). By switching from a top-down teaching approach to a bottom-up framework of teaching civil rights, we can give well-deserved recognition to the contributions of grassroots activists who have contributed so much to effectuating positive change, but who remain “hidden figures.” By shedding light on the extraordinary work “ordinary” grassroots activists of the Civil Rights Movement have achieved, we empower our students to realize that they too can be changemakers.
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Civil rights education