Born into poverty in rural Georgia and raised under the shadows of Jim Crow segregation and the Great Depression, Alice Coachman fought through gender taboos and racial barriers to become a record-breaking track star. Then, in the 1948 London Olympics (the first to be held after WWII), she leapt to victory in the high jump and became the first black woman in history to win Olympic gold. One of postwar America’s most high-profile athletes and the first African American woman to be spokesperson for a national brand, Coachman’s life and achievements were honored during the 1996 Atlanta Olympic games.

The Woodson Center's Black History and Excellence curriculum is based on the Woodson Principles and tells the stories of Black Americans whose tenacity and resilience enabled them to overcome adversity and make invaluable contributions to our country. It also teaches character and decision-making skills that equip students to take charge of their futures. These lessons in Black American excellence are free and publicly available for all.

Born to poor sharecroppers in Texas, Bessie Coleman (1892-1926) was the first African American woman aviator, earning an international aviation license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. Throughout her career as a daredevil stunt pilot in thrilling airshows, she consistently defied expectations and broke through racial and gender barriers to dazzle audiences and inspire future generations of Black American pilots, aviators, and astronauts. This lesson tells the story of Coleman’s life in the wider context of the “barnstorming” early days of flight and the rising opposition to racial segregation exemplified by newspapers like the Chicago Defender.

The Woodson Center's Black History and Excellence curriculum is based on the Woodson Principles and tells the stories of Black Americans whose tenacity and resilience enabled them to overcome adversity and make invaluable contributions to our country. It also teaches character and decision-making skills that equip students to take charge of their futures. These lessons in Black American excellence are free and publicly available for all.

This is a brief lesson designed to introduce students to the lives and contributions of Sarah and Angelina Grimke, two remarkable sisters, who played a pivotal role in the Abolitionist and  Suffrage Movements in South Carolina and the United States. 

Debates about families, sex, and sexuality frame the outline of this course. Each of these subjects differed greatly for individuals in all parts of the Atlantic World, and immediately became points of contention in the clash of societies during the early modern era. The course traces key themes and questions in a variety of locations, mainly focused in West Africa (Liberia, Ghana, and Nigeria), Europe (England and France), and North America (the U.S. and Mexico) since 1700. In addition to learning about historical subjectivities of people in the past, the course also explores historiography (that is, the history of history) as well as tools and techniques used in researching and interpreting the past.

This resource contains five excerpts from documents about indigenous women in Latin America and critical questions about these excerpts.