For Immediate Release: June 19, 2002
Further information: Ann Scanlon 617-514-1662
The John F. Kennedy Library will sponsor a summer institute for teachers from the Boston Public Schools that will examine the struggle for civil rights and include presentations by such key civil-rights activists as Dorothy Cotton, a top advisor to Martin Luther King, and Vivian Malone-Jones, one of the students Governor George Wallace sought to bar from the University of Alabama in 1963. Thirty-five schoolteachers will benefit from first-hand accounts of such landmark 1960s initiatives as the Freedom Rides, the Birmingham campaign, the March on Washington, voter-registration drives, and other civil-rights events and efforts. Teaching American History – The Civil Rights Struggle During the Kennedy Years will run June 26, 27, and 28 and July 1 and 2 at the Kennedy Library in Boston.
Participants will include:
- Vivian Malone-Jones, one of two students Alabama Governor George Wallace sought to bar from entry to the University of Alabama in 1963;
- Dorothy Burlage, co-founder of Students for a Democratic Society and co-author of Deep in Our Hearts: Nine White Women in the Freedom Movement;
- Dorothy Cotton, an advisor to Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s highest-ranking woman in the 1960s;
- Gerald R. Gill, co-editor of Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader and twice-named Massachusetts College Professor of the Year;
- Bob Moses, a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee leader in the 1960s who guided the voting-rights campaign in Mississippi; and
- John Seigenthaler, Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s representative in the South during the Freedom Rides.
The teachers will also benefit from the Kennedy Library’s significant holdings of primary sources including historical documents, photos, recordings, and film footage. Kennedy Library educators Nina Tisch and Sam Rubin will introduce these materials, and small-group discussions will help teachers discover ways to incorporate these resources into their curriculum.
The teachers will also discover ways to teach the civil-rights struggle of the 1960s to students who were born in the 1980s and 1990s. With Boston-area students in mind, the Library’s Education Department has included information about civil-rights activists from Massachusetts and the long-term impact of the struggle on Boston. Information will also be presented in the context of national and international developments.
This conference is made possible by a Teaching American History grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The conference is funded for 35 teachers and fully enrolled.