ABSTRACT
In the philosophy of teaching statement that accompanied my applications for academic jobs after completing graduate school, I began by saying that teaching, for me, was a mutual intellectual pursuit between the instructor and the instructed. I never anticipated how apt a description it would become of my college teaching experience. In the summer of 1998, it seemed that no less than cosmic forces working overtime gave me the opportunity to spend five weeks at the Du Bois Institute at Harvard University, participating in a seminar entitled “Teaching the Southern Civil Rights Movement.” That fall, for the first time, I was conducting my own course on the American Civil Rights Movement. I returned to my job at the University of the South, eager to share my novel ideas on the subject. I was going to instruct the uninformed, inform the misinformed, and enhance the understanding of those who had just mastered the traditional narrative of the movement. I believed that the students’ idea that the Civil Rights Movement was just another example of how American democracy naturally becomes more and more inclusive over time. I wanted them to understand that the Civil Rights Movement provided unique insight into the relationship among freedom, oppression, and democracy, but it was I who got the first lesson. Context! Context! Context! It quickly became apparent to me that what I taught my students about U.S. history before and after the Civil Rights Movement proper was at least as important as what I taught them about the movement itself—that is if I wanted it to be a meaningful course for them.
