In this lesson, Gospel music is used as a way to introduce students to the rhythmic concepts of beat, meter, backbeat, subdivision, and syncopation. By clapping and counting along to videos of Mahalia Jackson, Sam Cooke, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, The Staple Singers, and Beyonce, students practice hearing and identifying these various aspects of rhythm. Students will also use an interactive TechTool to gain a deeper understanding of the syncopated rhythms that allows Gospel, as well a popular music in general, inspire us to move.

Taking Sam Phillips as a case study, this lesson explores the role of the producer in the recording studio as one defined by an ability to guide the recording process but also to affect the wider cultural context. After investigating what a producer does and why an artist might benefit from a producer's services, this lesson looks at the way Sam Phillips' approach in some ways reflects the trend of urbanization in the American South. Like Phillips, many of his artists came from rural backgrounds and were seeking the benefits of urban life. That move toward the urban, and the racial mixing it fostered, was almost encoded in the music, as the lesson activities will illuminate. Finally, the lesson looks at Phillip's guidance of a young Elvis Presley and suggests how the music they produced created an opening for African-American music to "crossover" into mainstream American popular music.

This collection uses primary sources to explore the poetry of Maya Angelou. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.

In this activity students learn about literacy tests and other barriers that kept black Southerners from being able to vote. Students also take a 1960s literacy test from Alabama.

In this lesson students will read to understand how Black and Brown men are currently incarcerated in America at a much higher level than any other demographic. Students will evaluate the relationship between slavery and the current criminal-justice system. They will close read two anchor texts from the New York Times 's 1619 Project, i.e., an excerpt from the article “Slavery Gave America…” and an excerpt from the article "The Idea of America." Using these texts, other visuals, and a video as their background knowledge resource bank, students will write to make and support a claim about mass incarceration and the ways in which this practice, much like slavery, significantly conflicts with America’s foundational ideas such as “all men are created equal.”

In this lesson, students will investigate the work and legacies of Black and Latinx pioneers often ignored in larger discussions about LGBTQ+ history, by collaborating with other students in analyzing primary source documents. Students will also explore the ways city governments and activists are working to combat the erasure of Black and Latinx trans women and the broader whitewashing of the Gay Liberation Movement.

Students will compare Kendrick Lamar's "Alright" with black protest songs of the past in order to identify common themes and ideas tat artists have used to illustrate black experience in the United States.

In this lesson. students will read statements from Black Lives Matter and watch a clip fron CNN's Soundtracks to explore the sifnificance of the movement and the music made in response to the issues they rally behind. Students will also analyze clips from the music videos of artists Kendrick Lamar and Beyonce Knowles-Carter to understand music's relation to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Students will analyze demographic data, and watch footage from CNN's Soundtrakcs series and a congressional hearing after the disaster to better understand the magnitude of Hurricane Katrina, and the way the federal government's response brought to light issues of racial neglect. Students will also invesitgate how Kanye West's comments during a national fundraiser articulated the disappointment and anger many black American's felt following Hurricane Katrina.

In this lesson, Barack Obama's second inaugural address serves as a launching point for classroom discussions on how the Stonewall Riots might be comparable to other seminal moments in the ongoing fight for equality in the United States. To supplement these discussions, students will analyze Rod Stewart's "The Killing of Georgie" as a poetic account of LGBTQ+ discrimination in the United States, and compare primary source documents from the Women's Rights, Civil Rights, and LGBTQ+ Rights movements.

In Part One of this lesson, students are introduced to apartheid in South Africa. They watch clips from Steven Van Zandt and Arthur Baker's Sun City documentary to learn about apartheid, and attempt to experience what life might have been like during apartheid through a classroom activity. Then, students consider ways in which apartheid could be fought, and whether elements of apartheid in South Africa also existed in the history of the United States.

In Part 2 of this lesson, students view clips from the Sun City documentary and explore how musicians united to challenge apartheid. In a group setting, students will consider the various strategies activists, corporations, and other governments used to isolate the South African government and hasten the end of apartheid. Finally, students consider how apartheid relates to segregation in the United States.

This collection uses primary sources to explore the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.

The corrupting influence of slavery on marriage and the family is a predominant theme in Solomon Northup's narrative Twelve Years a Slave. In this lesson, students are asked to identify and analyze narrative passages that provide evidence for how slavery undermined and perverted these social institutions. Northup collaborated with a white ghostwriter, David Wilson. Students will read the preface and identify and analyze statements Wilson makes to prove the narrative is true.

This lesson focuses on the slave narrative of Solomon Northup, a free black living in the North, who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the Deep South. Slave narratives are autobiographies of former slaves that describe their experiences during enslavement, how they became free, and their lives in freedom. Because slave narratives treat the experience of one person, they raise questions about whether that individual's experiences exceptional.

This collection uses primary sources to explore visual art during the Harlem Renaissance. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.

This collection uses primary sources to explore the impact of women blues performers. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.

Houston’s zydeco dance scene brings joy and a driving rhythm to partner dancing, and in this episode, we explore the dance’s deep roots in Creole culture and music. What was called La-la in Southeastern Louisiana Creole communities became known as zydeco in Houston with the influence of R & B and the ‘King of Zydeco’, Clifton Chenier. Houston is where zydeco is thriving, evolving and reaching a broader audience, around trail-riding clubs who dance together after their rides to the accordion-driven sounds of zydeco bands with a touch of hip-hop. As infectious as zydeco is, it’s grown popular worldwide, but what hasn't changed is how zydeco brings community together in Houston.

If Cities Could Dance is a Webby Award-winning video series featuring dancers from cities across the United States. Step into the shoes of dancers from across the country who dare to imagine what it would look like if their city could dance.