TEACHING KING BEYOND "I HAVE A DREAM."
Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism…
Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world.
—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Teaching about Martin Luther King Jr.
Selected Lessons and Resources About Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement Beyond “I have a dream.”
Many of the resources below are featured on the Zinn Education Project website.
Hidden in Plain Sight: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Radical Vision
Lesson by Craig Gordon
This lesson attempts to help students penetrate the curtain of clichés and lies the corporate media have erected around Martin Luther King, Jr., in order to make him “safe” for public consumption.
A Revolution of Values
Reading and Teaching Ideas
Text of Martin Luther King’s speech “Beyond Vietnam — A Time to Break Silence” followed by three teaching ideas.
Don't Forget That Martin Luther King Jr. Was Once Denounced as an Extremist
Reading and Video
Article and video about King’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington. In 1963, most Americans disapproved of the event, many congressmen saw it as potentially seditious, and law enforcement from local police to the FBI monitored it intensively.
The Limits of Master Narratives in History Textbooks: An Analysis of Representations of Martin Luther King
Reading by Derrick Alridge
A study of how U.S. history textbooks present prescribed, oversimplified, and uncontroversial narratives of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that obscure important elements in King’s life and thought.
COINTELPRO: Teaching the FBI’s War on the Black Freedom Movement
Lesson by Ursula Wolfe-Rocca
Through examining FBI documents, students learn the scope of the FBI’s COINTELPRO campaign to spy on, infiltrate, discredit, and disrupt all corners of the Black Freedom Movement.
A More Beautiful and Terrible History
Book by Jeanne Theoharis
A non-academic, popular historiography that challenges educators to revamp curriculum to include a fuller, more critical history of the Civil Rights era.
Challenging Ourselves
Article by Charles E. Cobb, Jr.
Discussion of the Civil Rights Movement and its lessons, and how they apply to current movements. 2017.
At the River I Stand
Film
Documentary film from California Newsreel on the African American sanitation workers’ 1968 fight for human dignity and a living wage in Memphis, where Dr. Martin Luther King gave his final speech.
Eyes on the Prize II
Film
Two segments of Eyes on the Prize II, “Two Societies (1965-68)” and “The Promised Land (1967-68),” introduce students to King’s work on housing segregation in Chicago, the Vietnam War, the Poor People’s Campaign, and the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike.
Stepping into Selma
Lesson by Deborah Menkart
This lesson invites students to step into the long history of the freedom struggle in Selma, introducing them to people, turning points, and issues.
CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
Q: The struggle to make Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday a federal holiday took how many years?
Take our Civil Rights Movement Mythbusters Quiz to find out the answer to this question and more.
MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT
Q: How long did it take Black residents of Montgomery to begin mobilizing for the Montgomery Bus Boycott?
Take our Montgomery Bus Boycott Mythbusters Quiz to find out the answer to this question and more.
