City of Boston Archives Curricular Materials

The City of Boston Archives developed a series of grade school lesson plans to accompany their materials on school desegregation in Boston. Visit lesson plans that feature the use of materials from their collections below.

• Unit 1: Timelines Using Primary Sources
• Unit 2: Charting, Graphs, and Primary Sources
• Unit 3: Exploring the Truth in Primary Sources
• Unit 4: Comparing and Contrasting the Past
• Unit 5: Meeting Historical Figures through Primary Sources

Key People and Terms

Included in the City of Boston Archive's curricular materials is a list of key people and terms for understanding school desegregation in Boston. Click here to download a PDF of their list of terms. Here are some examples of key terms and individuals:

• Judge Arthur Garrity: was a United States Federal judge who became best known for issuing the 1974 order that Boston schools would carry out desegregation by means of forced busing.
• Segregation: the action or state of setting someone or something apart from other things or people. The forced separation of different racial groups in a country, community, or establishment.

Boston Public Schools Curricular Materials

The History of Boston Busing & Desegregation is a project initiated by the Boston Public Schools' history department in 2014 to collect resources and develop curricular materials for elementary, middle, and high school teachers.

A Long Road from Brown: Desegregation in Virginia

A grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities funded a week long workshop entitled "A Long Road from Brown: Desegregation in Virginia," for teachers of grades 6-12 to re-frame the teaching of school desegregation. This workshop resulted in the creation of curricula that explored school desegregation and its impact. A sample of the curricula are listed below:

• "School Desegregation in Virginia:" Grades 5-6 lesson plan that explores when it is acceptable to break the law in the context of student walk-outs.
• "Exploring School Desegregation in Connecticut:" Grades 6-8 lesson plan that observes desegregation in the North and the effects of segregation on Connecticut public schools.
• "What are you willing to fight for?:" Grades 9-12 lesson plan that examines the role of student walk-outs in desegregation.