How Do You Teach The Civil Rights Movement? : Code Switch : NPR: Note: As part of NPR's series on the summer of 1963, reporter Cory Turner headed to Jackson, Miss. to take a look at how folks are teaching the Civil Rights movement to kids who weren't a part of it — and making the lessons stick.
Much has changed in the past 50 years, since the height of the Civil Rights movement. But how do you teach the Civil Rights to kids who haven't ever experienced it? In Jackson, Miss., Fannie Lou Hamer Institute's Summer Youth Workshop tackles that question.
Take 13-year-old Jermany Gray, for instance. Gray and his fellow students are all African-American, and many of them are from Jackson. They're familiar with the struggle for civil rights — they read about it in text books and saw it in museum exhibits. But for most, it's a story that ended long before they were even born.
Gray has no problem talking about what the Civil Rights movement was back in the '60s, but when asked what it means to him these days, the answer doesn't come as easily.
"What does it mean? I'll have to think about that question," he said. "Maybe I can answer that at the end of the week."
