I taught my first class on the civil rights movement two decades ago.

My goal then was to teach students everything that I had learned about the movement,

about its origin and evolution, key events

and influential figures, guiding philosophies and leading strategies, as well as victories

and defeats.

That goal has not changed over the years, but what has changed is how I go about getting

there.

When I started out, I used to focus on distilling the movement into digestible nuggets of information.

During lectures, I'd say, it's vital to remember this or make sure you remember that.

And my students learned a great deal about what had taken place during the Black Freedom Struggle.

But a few years ago,

I started to notice something about my students. Not about those who were enrolled in my class

at the time, but about those who had taken my class before, my former students, the ones I had

already taught.

I heard from them on occasion.

An email here, a direct message there, even an office visit now and then,

and each shared a personal story about their civil rights class.

But their stories were never about my meticulously researched digestible nuggets of information. Instead, they talked about

specific discussions tied to specific civil rights literature that we had read or films

that we had watched. Some recall the time when we debated armed self-defense after

reading a graphic novel about the life and times of Malcolm X.

Others, the Paul that fell over our classroom when we watched four little girls and talked about the Birmingham church bombing.

...