Welcome!
We are pleased to present this learning adventure based on a key moment in US civil rights history,
About the eLearning:
According to Life magazine in the 1950s, “the pattern of segregation is a crazy quilt of complexity and inconsistency.” Travel back in time to form your own opinion. Play the role of a school newspaper opinion reporter assigned to ride the Montgomery, Alabama bus system in 1955. Armed with a trusty notebook and guided by teacher/editor Ms. Wells, you will observe incidents between the bus driver and African-American patrons. Each simulated incident is a common and recorded historic event. During the seven-stop ride, record your impression of each.
After completing all seven stops, your notes are assembled into a featured opinion story for the school newspaper. Ms. Wells may or may not make suggestions for improving the story before it is sent to the printer. The eLearning concludes with a printable version of the story in a custom school newspaper format.
Why we created this eLearning experience for middle school students
It has now been more than fifty years since the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Many of today’s students have grandparents and great-grandparents who endured the daily burdens of legalized segregation. Yet most students do not know specifically what legalized segregation meant to pre-civil rights movement generations.
Before the Boycott: Riding the Bus is intended to bring to life a small aspect of Jim Crow laws for students, specifically the bus conditions that caused Rosa Parks to make her heroic stand on December 1, 1955.
