The 2008 Summer Teachers Conference focused on the year 1948. Lesson plans created by teachers attending the conference and powerpoint presentations delivered by speakers are presented on this site.

AP U.S. Government & Politics is assembled from UC-approved college preparatory courses. Upon completion of this course, student will be able to: express ideas clearly in writing; work individually and with classmates to research political issues; interpret and apply data from original documents such as court cases and bills; write to persuade with evidence; develop essay responses that include a clear, defensible thesis statement and supporting evidence; raise and explore questions about policies, institutions, beliefs, and actions in a political science context; evaluate secondary materials, such as scholarly works or statistical analyses; explain the foundations and underpinnings of democratic government; demonstrate comprehension of documents essential to American government and politics; evaluate the importance of federalism in the political operation of the nation; describe the nature of American political parties and their role in the election process; analyze the patterns of voter behavior; describe the functions and workings of policy making institutions (Congress, the Presidency, the Courts, and the Bureaucracy); analyze the major developments in civil rights and civil liberties in America.

These photographs depict typical daily activities of African Americans before the Civil Rights movement gained force. From the segregated schools of the Deep South to the bustling cities of the North, the backdrop of different communities reveals a range of experiences.

Recommended for: Grades 6-12

This site showcases the African American collections of the Library of Congress. Displaying more than 240 items, including books, government documents, manuscripts, maps, musical scores, plays, films, and recordings, this is the largest black history exhibit ever held at the Library of Congress.

This lesson introduces students to the role of African-Americans in WWII using news reel. This lesson is based on the understanding that students have already been exposed to news reel as primary source documents in the Social Studies classroom (this can be done in succession with Lesson #1 or as a stand alone lesson during African-American History Month or during a WWII unit).

This lesson encourages students to identify problems facing African Americans immediately after Reconstruction. Students then work in small groups to identify documents describing a particular problem, consider opposing points of view, and suggest a solution and present their research findings.

These materials document the goals and activities of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights; from the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.

This course will cover American political thought from the nation's founding through the 1960s, exploring the political theories that have shaped its governance. As there is no one philosopher or idea that represents the totality of American political thought, the student will survey the writings and speeches of those who have had the greatest impact over this period of time. Much of the study required in this course is based on the original texts and speeches of those who influenced political thought throughout American history. The student will learn and understand the impact that their views and actions have had on the modern American state. Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to: describe the religious and political origins of the American political system; explain how Enlightenment thinkers, such as John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Baron de Montesquieu, influenced the political philosophies of American founding fathers; analyze how the colonial American experience shaped many of the core values represented in American government and expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution; compare and contrast the differing opinions on the role of the government that the founders expressed; trace the development and evolution of the concepts of 'states rights' and 'federal (national) supremacy'; connect the observations of De Tocqueville in Democracy in America to the concepts of equality, individuality, and civic engagement in American political discourse; examine the evolution of race in the American political system (from slavery to the 2008 election of Barack Obama); discuss the changes in the political role of women in America from its colonial days to the present; connect the concept of 'American Exceptionalism' to the industrial revolution, capitalism, and imperialism; analyze the roots of reform in the Progressive Era and their impact on modern political discourse; explain major principles of American foreign relations over time; assess the purpose and impact of ŇAmerican war rhetoricÓ over time; differentiate between 'liberal' and 'conservative' political beliefs in modern American government; illustrate how the political turmoil in the 1960s greatly shaped contemporary American political discourse; evaluate the current political discourse as represented in the 2008 and 2010 elections. (Political Science 301)

In this oral history from the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, Audrey Hendricks recalls her arrest and jailing at the age of nine for participation in the Children's Crusade of 1963.

This is an annotated collection of Library of Congress resources about America's pastime. It includes early baseball pictures, baseball songs and stories, baseball cards, the first all-professional baseball team in America (the Cincinnati Red Stockings, 1869), Cy Young, Ty Cobb, home run kings, and letters and speeches by Jackie Robinson, the first African American to play major league baseball.

This excerpt from WGBH's Evening Compass news program summarizes events of the first year of the 1974 Boston school desegregation plan.

This 1954 statement, issued by a group of black educators, strongly endorses the Supreme Court's Brown ruling.

This sampling of newspaper editorials from the mid-1950s reflects the range of public opinion and responses to the Brown decision.

Zora Neale Hurston's 1955 letter to the editor expresses her belief that the Brown decision would prove detrimental to the educational interests of black students.

Assistant Attorney General Burke Marshall, in this transcript of an interview for Eyes on the Prize, remembers mediating the 1962 desegregation of the University of Mississippi.

This lesson plan will introduce students to the political, social, and economic issues surrounding school desegregation using oral histories from those who experienced it firsthand. They will learn about the history of the "separate but equal" U.S. school system, the 1971 Swann case which forced Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) to integrate, and the recent decision to discontinue busing for racial integration in Charlotte-Mecklenburg. They will compare and contrast neighborhood schools with schools integrated through busing, and listen to oral histories of students who have experienced both types of schools in CMS. Through discussion with classmates, they will create a list of the negatives and positives of both neighborhood and integrated schools. Students will then write an argumentative essay explaining which type of schools they would support, and will defend their argument with evidence from the oral histories.

Students will compare and contrast "Civil Disobedience" and "Nonviolent resistance" during the Civil Rights era in N.C.. They will analyze changes in North Carolina during the postwar period to the 1970's and assess the political and social impact of the Civil Rights movement on local, state and national levels.

This site provides a summary, history, and teaching activities related to the EEOC and this historic law, which forbade discrimination on the basis of sex as well as race in hiring, promoting, and firing.

This interactive timeline provides a chronological and geographic view of the events of the Civil Rights era and its aftermath.