Selma Online offers free civil rights lessons amid virus

RIO RANCHO, N.M. » The first attempt of the historic march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., in 1965, led to police violence against peaceful African American demonstrators. The beatings, known as “Bloody Sunday,” generated anger across the nation 55 years ago this month and prompted President Lyndon Johnson to push the Voting Rights Act through Congress.

It was one of the most significant moments in U.S. history but remains almost absent from public schools’ social studies lessons.

A new online project by the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University and a coalition of foundations hopes to change that. The center this month unveiled Selma Online — a free, online teaching platform that seeks to transform how the civil rights movement is taught in middle and high schools across the country. The project uses footage from Ava DuVernay’s 2014 movie “Selma” and attempts to show students how events in 1965 shaped voting rights.

Harvard scholar and documentary filmmaker Henry Louis Gates Jr. helped create an interactive website with the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance program and Left Field Labs. Its release comes as schools across the U.S. have closed because of the coronavirus and many students are in need of educational material to learn at home.

“It’s perfect timing, unfortunately, because of the crisis we are in,” Gates told The Associated Press. “Not only is the timing optimal for teachers who are developing online lesson plans but also for families.”