Why MLK Encouraged 225,000 Chicago Kids to Cut Class in 1963
Learn about the 1963 Chicago Public School Boycott, when students demanded better schools for black neighborhoods and equal opportunity for all.
![Crowd fills LaSalle Street between City Hall and building housing Board of Education as hundreds of demonstrators marched in Chicago on Oct. 22, 1963 following a one-day boycott of public schools.](/sites/default/files/styles/dynamic_stack_296_1x/public/2022-05/Democracy_1963_AfricanAmericanIntegrationAntiSchoolBoycott1963IL_FH2169828.jpg?h=12de4a96&itok=CAfhRaQg)
Glenn Ligon, Untitled - Four Etchings [B]
This black-on-white etching quotes Zora Neale Hurston's essay "How It Feels to be Colored Me."
![A black ink etching on white paper with the words, "I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background" repeatedly printed. The words smudge and get blacker at the end](/sites/default/files/styles/dynamic_stack_296_1x/public/2022-06/D11336_Medium_res.jpg?h=a6843db5&itok=YsJY4iEp)
Glenn Ligon, Untitled - Four Etchings [C]
In this black-on-black etching, Glenn Ligon uses Ralph Ellison's quote from the prologue of his novel, Invisible Man (1952): "I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus side-shows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only themselves, or figments of their imagina-"
![Black on Black etching that says, "“I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.”](/sites/default/files/styles/dynamic_stack_296_1x/public/2022-06/D11337_Medium_res_0.jpg?h=c978a40d&itok=rRnW4TXY)
Platform of the Workingmen’s Party of California (en español)
In Spanish, the political platform of the Workingmen's Party of California, a third party organized around eliminating competition for white laborers in the West and advocating for a ban on Chinese immigration.
![Chinese workers building the Loma Prieta Lumber Company's railroad in California.](/sites/default/files/styles/dynamic_stack_296_1x/public/2022-07/Chinese_railroad_Workers_1880_FH2110498.jpg?h=7feeb858&itok=sJSfVjZM)
Chinese Immigrants Write to President Grant
Chinese leaders in California write to President Ulysses S. Grant in 1876 about the discrimination their communities face from a rising anti-Chinese movement.
![President Ulysses S. Grant, half-length portrait, seated, facing right](/sites/default/files/styles/dynamic_stack_296_1x/public/2022-07/Ulysses_Grant_1869_FH21412.jpg?h=4b9455f5&itok=BuGykV5F)
Chinese Immigrants Write to President Grant (en español)
In Spanish, Chinese leaders in California write to President Ulysses S. Grant in 1876 about the discrimination their communities face from a rising anti-Chinese movement.
![President Ulysses S. Grant, half-length portrait, seated, facing right](/sites/default/files/styles/dynamic_stack_296_1x/public/2022-07/Ulysses_Grant_1869_FH21412.jpg?h=4b9455f5&itok=BuGykV5F)
"Colored Rule in a Reconstructed (?) State" (1874)
How do racial stereotypes in the media create and reinforce “in” groups and “out” groups in a society?
![Cartoon of members of the South Caroline Legislature in argument in the House, with Columbia rebuking them.](/sites/default/files/styles/dynamic_stack_296_1x/public/2022-07/1874_ColoredRuleinaReconstructed%28%3F%29State%281874%29_FH140919_0.jpg?itok=FEBN9jCc)
Part Five: Violence and Backlash
Scholars discuss racial violence that took part in the South during the Reconstruction era.
![](/sites/default/files/brightcove/videos/images/posters/image_474.jpg)
"He Wants a Change Too" (1876)
Propaganda about racial stereotypes used in the Reconstruction Era
How do racial stereotypes in the media create and reinforce “in” groups and “out” groups in a society?
![Print shows an African American man standing with a rifle, while in the background other African Americans lay dead and buildings burned. Quotes in the block on left call for meeting force with force.](/sites/default/files/styles/dynamic_stack_296_1x/public/2022-07/1876_HeWantsaChangeToo_FH2125840.jpg?h=ddcac193&itok=TG4pdX3A)
Exploring Civil Rights and Migration: 18-week Curriculum Outline
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Recommended for 7th and 8th-grade, this outline provides an instructional pathway for middle school educators to teach an 18-week curriculum exploring membership, belonging, and the power of individual and collective choices.
![Students working together in a classroom](/sites/default/files/styles/dynamic_stack_296_1x/public/2022-06/20150813_TreyClark_0826.jpg?h=10d202d3&itok=yhllecYr)