In this lesson, students will investigate the vast cultural impact on American culture of teen dance shows in general, and the Twist in particular.

In this lesson, students will evaluate what the emergence of the Girl Groups says about the roles of girls and women in the early 1960s, as the nation sat on the threshold of a new Women's Rights movement that would challenge traditional female roles. In 1963, Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, widely considered a milestone in the emerging feminist movement and it came at the peak of the Girl Groups' popularity. Did the success of the Girl Groups signal a new female empowerment, under which girls and women could finally come out from the shadows of Rock and Roll and tell the world what was on their minds? Or did the very labels "Girl Group" and "girl singer" and the focus of so many of their songs on the search for the ideal man simply reflect the traditional domestic roles of women as wives and mothers?

In this lesson, students embark on a "walking tour" of Memphis, using the city as a case study through which to view complex race relations and integration issues that affected communities across the U.S. While plotting points of historical interest on a map, students consider how artists such as Elvis, the Mar-Keys, and Booker T. and the MGs resisted social norms through their music and performances. Listening to oral history from Stax owner Jim Stewart, students explore how an integrated record label operated in the middle of a segregated community and was able to create a unique and powerful Soul sound that signaled a shift in race relations in America.

In this lesson, students will watch a 25-minute video, Aretha Franklin ABC News Close Up (1968), as a pre-lesson activity. In class, students examine a timeline of landmark events that occurred during the women's movement from 1961 to 1971. While watching multiple live performances of Aretha Franklin, including "Dr. Feelgood," "Do Right Woman," "Respect," "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman," and "Chain of Fools," students will seek to identify Gospel influences and investigate whether issues related to women's rights are reflected in the songs as well. The extension activity includes an insightful personal narrative that provides an account of sexism that existed during the Civil Rights era.

In this lesson, students will explore the emergence of Sixties Soul music within the context of the Civil Rights movement of the early 1960s. Using Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions' iconic "People Get Ready" as a starting point, students will examine the connection between musical and political voices, and the ways in which popular song helped express the values of the movement and served as a galvanizing force for those involved.

This lesson will consider the manner in which Hard Rock pushed overdriven, distorted guitar to the front. It will contrast an R&B style, often driven by keyboards and horn sections, with Hendrix's "Purple Haze," where the guitar takes center stage, with only drums and bass as accompaniment. The lesson will also explore the way Hendrix was received not as a journeyman from the world of R&B, but as a phenomenon that seemed to arrive as if from nowhere.

How did Rock and Roll serve as an expressive tool for the working-class youth of Detroit?

In this lesson, students will learn about behind-the-scenes operations at Motown Records and a few of the company's most important contributors through a "cafe conversation."

In this lesson, students will examine the history and popularity of "We Shall Overcome" and investigate six additional songs from different musical genres that reveal the impact of the Civil Rights movement. These are: Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit," a poignant Blues song depicting the horrors of lynching; Bob Dylan's "Oxford Town," a Folk song about protests after the integration of the University of Mississippi; John Coltrane's "Alabama," an instrumental Jazz recording made in response to the September 1963 church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four African-American girls; Nina Simone's "Mississippi Goddam," a response to the same church bombing as well as the murder of civil rights activist Medgar Evers in Mississippi; Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come," a Soul song written after Cooke's arrest for attempting to check in to a whites-only motel in Shreveport, Louisiana; and Odetta's "Oh Freedom," a spiritual that Odetta performed at the 1963 March on Washington.

Accompanying the musical and political changes in Soul music that took place as the 1960s moved forward into the 1970s was a profound shift in African-American identity. Whereas Motown artists had been groomed for mass consumption by white audiences in the mid-1960s, Soul artists increasingly embraced a style much more in sync with their African roots (and in many cases reflecting a more militant political view). These developments paralleled musical changes in which melody was to varying degrees made secondary to an emphasis on rhythm and groove, as it often was in traditional African musical forms. Together, these shifts were emblematic of the growing Black Pride movement, with its characteristic slogan, "black is beautiful." This lesson looks at these social and musical changes, with a focus on James Brown and his seminal proclamation of black pride, "Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud."

In this lesson, students will examine photographs, live recordings, video interviews, and a government report in order to learn about the historical and cultural context of the Soul music recorded in the 1970s.

Disco's roots were multiple. It had connections to R&B and Funk, but it was also born out of the urban gay culture in New York City. But no matter its roots, it quickly moved into the mainstream with a string of best-selling hits by artists from Donna Summer to the Village People. The phenomenally successful 1977 film Saturday Night Fever took Disco's commercial popularity to surprising heights. The film's soundtrack produced numerous  Top 10 hits and the album sold over 15 million copies.

In this lesson, students will examine raw documentary footage, demographic charts, television news stories, and song lyrics to connect the sounds of early Hip Hop to the substandard living conditions in American inner cities in the late 1970s, particularly the Bronx in New York City. Students will compose their own verses to Grandmaster Flash's "The Message," to be followed up with a research-driven writing assignment to further explore the urban environment depicted in the landmark song.

Gangsta Rap grew in part out of the social and political climate on the West Coast, where cities such as Compton, California, became engulfed in gang violence fueled by the crack cocaine epidemic. Longstanding tensions between the African-American community and the police came to a head in the Rodney King case and the announcement of its verdict. Gangsta rappers began to write explicitly about inner city violence. Songs were marked by a liberal use of profanity and images of the gun-toting toughs who lived amidst the brutality of the inner city. Gangsta Rap often overlapped with the East Coast-based "Mafioso Rap," whose practicioners cultivated personas of high-living, power-wielding gangsters who drove fancy cars, drank champagne, and sported intimidating weapons all while promoting a strong sense of kinship. Fiction seemed to become fact when rappers Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. were victims of unsolved, highly public murders. Soon enough, a countermovement some called "Conscious Hip Hop€" began to emerge, primarily on the East Coast. Many fans saw it as an answer to the often violent and controversial lyrics common in Gangsta Rap. Though in many ways responding to the same conditions to which Gangsta Rap reacted, this subgenre sought to inspire positivity through its lyrics, much like some of the earliest Hip Hop music. Lyrics were intended to challenge and inspire while also questioning the social and political status quo.

In this lesson, students will discuss how the ideals of the Harlem Renaissance and Locke's New Negro were exemplified by the poetry of Langston Hughes. Specifically, they will examine how Hughes incorporated the vernacular tradition of the Blues in his work, and identify the literary techniques Hughes employs to make his poetry so vivid.

This lesson investigates how electrifying the guitar was a contributing factor to the emergence of a sound that came to define Rock and Roll and, to a large extent, mid-20th century American popular culture. Featuring content from the PBS Soundbreaking episode, "Going Electric," which includes the guitar playing of luminaries Charlie Christian, Pete Townsend, Muddy Waters and Jimi Hendrix, this lesson examines the spirit of curiosity, adaptation and invention that characterized the early 1950s and in the 1960s led to the guitar's emergence as a versatile and attractive instrument for musicians and as the quintessential Rock and Roll icon.

In this lesson, students listen to Flint-based rapper Jon Connor's song "Fresh Water for Flint" to better understand the sense of frustration and injustice people living in the city felt during the water crisis. Students then experiment with creating their own water filtration system to better understand the scientific and engineering principles behind water treatment. Lastly, they consider the biological effects of lead poisoning and determine specific, political, economic, and scientific causes behind the Flint water crisis.

This unit is designed for middle-school students in the Content Area of Visual Art focusing on Identity Politics, Voice, Critical Race Theory, Activism and Social Justice. The unit is accessible for modification and inclusion of all grade levels. Anti-Bias and Anti-Racist training interwoven with Social-Emotional Identification and Self-Care gives students skills and guidance to navigate humanity in the twenty-first century. The objective of the unit is for students to gain critical awareness of the self in the past, present, and future. Students will be able to project and assist in their vocality and aspirations for the self and the collective. Students will explore critical race theory and identity politics in relation to the self and their visual art practice. Through research and application, students will consolidate, frame, and expand their visual thinking to be full of self-determination and self-respect.1 Through critical analysis, students will activate their critical conscience and create a voice that is written, spoken, and established through visual representation. This visual art practice will give students a voice for change and act as a facilitator to sustain all paths of liberation.

Teaching multicultural literature is happily a big part of the modern conversation about English classes. However, a question that is less often asked is, what is the root of the need for it? Many Americans shuffle about their lives oblivious to the structural racism that permeates much of our society and culture. Those who choose “not to see color” or race are proliferating opportunities for a dominant culture to continue and even expand, thereby limiting opportunities for others. Through utilization of two important concepts – Critical Race Theory and Colorblind Racial Ideology – we can improve humanities instruction by scrutinizing the much bigger, and often ignored, picture of modern racism. Combining this with instruction on the art of Afrofuturism – specifically the work of Octavia Bulter, Sun Ra, and Jean Michel Basquiat among others – we can also fill a similar gap in the modern American imagination.

How do you ensure students get the most out of black history and Black History Month? Here are some suggestions.