In order to engage in a Carousel Conversation, place students into pairs, and assign each pair one of the following women, with consideration of your student in relation to gather materials through internet searches or assigned reading choices, who contributed to the civil rights and/or Black power movements:
- Rosa Parks
- Ella Baker
- Fannie Lou Hamer
- Septima Clark
- Jo Ann Robinson
- Diane Nash
- Tarika Lewis
- Ericka Huggins
- Angela Davis
- Shirley Chisholm
- Pauli Murray
- Daisy Bates
- Johnnie Carr
- Claudette Colvin
- Ruby Bridges
- Mahalia Jackson
- Josephine Baker
Instruct each pair to research their assigned person using the internet/provided readings and any primary or secondary sources from class. They should respond to selected questions about their person:
- In what ways did your person contribute to the civil rights movement? What did they do, specifically?
- What roadblocks or challenges did your person face in their quest for justice?
- Locate a primary source by your person and summarize it. What’s the most important quotation from the document?
- Why is your person important for students of history to study?
Then sit students in two rows facing each other for the “speed dating” activity. Students will share about their assigned historical figure with the partner sitting across from them. Time each round at 2-3 minutes, and have one row move down a seat between rounds so that each student has a new partner for each new round.
After several rounds, lead a class discussion to debrief the activity using the following questions:
- In what ways did women contribute to the civil rights and Black power movements?
- Who were some of the most important women in the civil rights and Black power movements? Why?
- Why and how did the contributions of women differ from those of men?