The exploration of the trajectory of Shirley Chisholm’s political life can be a springboard into a classroom lesson on suffrage that connects issues of race, class, and gender.

This probing discussion of the Electoral College offers new approaches to teaching about this often-perplexing political system. 

Some important concepts and strategies can help social studies educators teach civics in an inclusive manner when not all students in the classroom are formal citizens.

Studying the nineteenth-century educator and civil rights leader Octavius Catto can help students move beyond the simplistic U.S. narrative of racial progress to a more complex understanding of race and resistance in America.   

Students who studied events such as Louisiana’s 1873 Colfax Massacre, North Carolina’s 1898 Wilmington coup, and Florida’s 1920 Ocoee Massacre were well prepared for interpreting events like the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The National Archives' latest exhibit spotlights the struggles of Americans to define rights related to citizenship, free speech, voting, and equal opportunity.

Engaging students in an examination of historical segregation in Virginia can ignite an important discussion about the ongoing reality of segregation in the United States today.  

Studying the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, which lowered the voting age to 18, can springboard into important classroom lessons on federalism, republicanism, and checks and balances.