Six young men riding on a horse-drawn wagon filled with corn at the Manual Training and Industrial School for Colored Youth in Bordentown, NJ, 1935

Even the Best Jim Crow School…Was Still a Jim Crow School

Before Brown v. Board of Education, Black activists split between integrationist and separatist factions, particularly at New Jersey’s Bordentown School.
king cake with baby surrounded by mardi gras beads

Should We Teach K-12 Students the History of King Cake?

King cake, eaten during Carnival season in New Orleans, is more than just a sugar-sprinkled treat. Should students learn about its connections to white supremacy?
Marcus Garvey, 1941

Marcus Garvey and the History of Black History

Long before the concept of multicultural education emerged, the United Negro Improvement Association pushed for the teaching of Black history and culture.

Elements of Design: Spotlight on Color

Color, like line, shape, texture, and the other elements of art and design, communicates meaning and creates visually compelling experiences. Here's how.

What Can Native American People in Prison Teach Us About Community and Art?

An exploration of creativity, ingenuity, and resilience using the American Prison Newspapers collection and JSTOR. The second curriculum guide in this series.

Exploring Images In (and Out of) Context

When you think you understand an image, ask yourself what contextual information might be missing.
U.S. soldiers reading books in a YMCA library

Why Learn to Read?

The value placed on literacy has changed over time, shifting from a nineteenth-century moral imperative to a twentieth-century production necessity.
An advertisement by the Partnership for a Drug Free America

The Story Behind “This is Your Brain on Drugs”

How did the campaign behind the Partnership for a Drug Free America’s iconic commercials develop, and why were its products so memorable?
Studio portrait of Mourning Dove

Christine Quintasket

Better known by the pen name Mourning Dove, Quintasket was a leader and activist who used her position as a public intellectual to fight for Colville rights.
Part of a painting by Paul Sandby of Reading Abbey Gateway

The Reading Abbey Girls’ School

This all-girls boarding school in England produced a generation of accomplished female writers in the eighteenth century.