This text highlights the growth of political activism that took place in Harlem during the Great Depression. Discriminatory hiring practices and widespread unemployment triggered job campaigns focused on increasing black employment in the largely…

During the revolutionary era, cheap prints depicting current events were in demand in both England and the colonies. This 1775 British print presented a scene in Edenton, North Carolina, where fifty-one women had signed a declaration in support of…

In this activity students analyze the reasons why the Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted so long and was successful. Students watch a short clip from the PBS documentary Eyes on the Prize about the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Then students analyze primary…

This letter from the Women's Political Council to the Mayor of Montgomery, Alabama, threatens a bus boycott by the city's African Americans if demands for fair treatment are not met.

In May 1954, the Women's Political Council of Montgomery, Alabama wrote a letter to the Mayor of Montgomery asking for changes that would make the city’s public bus system treat African-American riders with more fairness. The Women’s…

In 1937, African-American activists in Chicago founded the Negro Labor Relations League to put pressure on companies that refused to hire black workers. The League's campaigns targeted newspapers (to promote black newscarriers), movie theaters (to…

During the Montgomery bus boycott, researchers from Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee visited Montgomery to learn more about the boycott and document it. Researcher Willie Lee interviewed an African-American woman who worked as a domestic, who…

This worksheet helps students analyze a list of demands from the Women's Political Council regarding better treatment of black riders in Montgomery, Alabama.

African-American civil rights activist Bayard Rustin advised Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., on the Montgomery bus boycott. In this excerpt from his diary, Rustin describes how the city's black residents found ways to get to and from work without using…

In this lesson students will examine three documents about the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-1956) to determine the importance of local activists, especially women, in the civil rights movement. This lesson might serve as an introduction to a unit on…