January 19, 2026, will mark the fortieth anniversary of observing Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a national holiday. The holiday honors both King’s life and his legacy as a leader of a movement for civil rights. The Civil Rights History Project offers teachers and students access to stories, experiences, and perspectives from many individuals who were active in that movement. Teachers could use this collection to mark the holiday and to help students consider how movements take shape and why they require sustained participation.
About the Collection
In 2009, the U.S. Congress passed a law that directed the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) to conduct a national survey of existing civil rights oral history and conduct new interviews with people who participated in the civil rights movement.
Information about the project’s methodology might be of interest to students who are learning about oral history as a type of primary source.
Navigating the Collection: Start with Articles and Essays
The short essays in the Articles and Essays section provide meaningful context to the interviews and help users locate interviews that are relevant to particular civil rights campaigns. For example, the March on Washington essay highlights individuals who participated in the march, links to their interviews, and provides enough narrative to help readers think about the roles people played in order for the march to become such a historic event.
Many of the essays complement topics that are often taught when covering the civil rights movement, including:
- school desegregation;
- Emmett Till;
- campaigns for voting rights;
- youth activists in the civil rights movement;
- the role and philosophy of non-violence.
To support introducing the format of oral histories as a primary source, this essay on collecting and presenting the freedom struggle offers insight into questions about historiography and the strengths, limitations, and considerations of working with oral history interviews.
Limits of searching by date
Teachers may want to give students a heads up that filtering items in the collection by date could be confusing. The date associated the interviews reflects when an interview was conducted, not the time in which the participant was active in the civil rights movement.
Related Resources
Students might discover that they have more questions after listening to the interviews in the collection. Consider sending students to the Related Resources section. Of particular interest may be the online exhibitions, A Day Like No Other and Voices of the Civil Rights.
If your students found particular resources in the collection or from the Library that they enjoyed exploring, we would love to hear about it! Please share your experiences in the comments.