The Selma to Montgomery Voting Rights March: Shaking the Conscience of the Nation (Teaching with Historic Places)

This lesson is part of the National Park Service’s Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) program.

This lesson explores some of the methods the State of Alabama used to prevent African Americans from exercising their right to vote and how community leaders in Selma worked together with Martin Luther King, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and other national civil rights organizations to remove those restrictions. It discusses Brown Chapel in Selma, where the march began, and the State Capitol Building in Montgomery, where the march reached its triumphant conclusion.

Some of the participants in the events of March 1965 are still alive to tell their stories. This lesson is based, in part, on a rich trove of oral histories. It illustrates the importance of the testimony of eyewitnesses to history—as well as some of the difficulties in using this type of evidence.

Essential Question

What methods have Americans used to secure their civil rights? What challenges have they faced?

Objective

1. To identify the methods Alabama, and other states, used to prevent African Americans from exercising their right to vote;
2. To describe the events during the marches of March 7, March 9, and March 21-25, 1965;
3. To analyze the roles played by local activists and national organizations in the voting rights campaign in Selma, Alabama;
4. To trace the effect Selma had on Federal voting rights legislation;
5. To identify surviving places in the local area associated with civil rights.

Background

Time Period: 1820s to early twentieth century
Topics: This lesson could be used to understand the modern Civil Rights Movement and the legacies of Reconstruction. It could also be used to enhance lessons about citizenship, forms of political participation, civil rights, and racial violence.

Full Lesson Plan