What do schools try to teach their students? A curriculum is a school’s plan for what its students should learn. In the early 1970s, the curriculum at Mark Twain Junior High School offered fewer challenges and less opportunity to its students than those at other nearby schools. Additionally, teachers and administrators at Mark Twain sorted students into different academic tracks along racial lines. White students at the school had access to advanced academic courses, but most Black and Latinx students did not.
No single civil rights organization represents all Black Americans. That was true in the 1960s and is true today. Different organizations have had different political visions, strategies, and styles.
The Black press provided a space for Black thinkers to challenge ideas that were getting attention in white newspapers and other media. James Farmer, an accomplished civil rights activist and National Director of the Congress of Racial Equality, used his column in the Amsterdam News, New York’s main Black newspaper, to share his critique of the Moynihan Report.
