Guiding Question: How can activists and activism evolve over time?

Big Idea: Lifelong Activism

Students will analyze Rosa Parks' evolving activism during the Black Freedom Movement using primary source sets created from the Library of Congress exhibit "Rosa Parks: In Her Own Words.” Students will use the evolving hypothesis strategy to answer the focus question. They will develop an initial hypothesis, analyze primary sources using the Library of Congress Observe-Reflect-Question tool, and then return to the focus question to either adjust or defend their initial hypothesis.

“To reckon with Rosa Parks, the lifelong rebel, moves us beyond the popular narrative of the movement’s happy ending with the passage of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act to the long and continuing history of racial injustice in schools, policing, jobs, and housing in the United States and the wish Parks left us with—to keep on fighting.” From Jeanne Theodaris and Say Burgin, "Ten Ways to Teach Rosa Parks," History Now 54 (Summer 2019), https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-now/journals/2019-07/african-american-women-leadership.

Rosa Parks spent a lifetime challenging systemic inequality throughout the United States and the world. Yet her legacy is often simplified to a seamstress who took a quiet stand on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama on December 1, 1955. This lesson challenges students to explore a fuller history of Rosa Parks’ role in the Black Freedom Movement, drawing upon primary sources from the Library of Congress exhibit “Rosa Parks: In Her Own Words.” Students will consider how Parks’ activism spread from the South to the North, how she battled a myriad of issues including sexual violence, housing segregation, police brutality, and voting restrictions, and how her work extended into the late 20th century. Students will use the evolving hypothesis and Observe-Reflect-Question strategies to answer the focus question How did Rosa Parks' activism evolve during the Black Freedom Movement?