Teaching the History of Civil Rights Through Digital Primary Sources: The 1939 Library Sit-In

On April 22, New America hosted a webinar on Teaching the History of Civil Rights Through Digital Primary Sources: The 1939 Library Sit-In. The event highlighted the 1939 library sit-in, the story of five young men, led by Samuel Tucker, a civil rights lawyer, who engaged in a sit-in demonstration to demand access to Alexandria’s only public library. Thanks to funding from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), the Alexandria Local History/Special Collections branch was able to embark on a year-long project digitizing primary sources materials, which offer a new entrypoint to teaching and learning about civil rights history.

“Primary sources are the raw materials of history, original documents and objects created at a time under study,” said Stephen Wesson, a manager of the professional learning and outreach initiatives at the Library of Congress. Wesson said the Library of Congress recognized the power of primary sources as far back as the 1990s, and began putting its treasures online. Today the library focuses on supporting teachers who use primary sources in their classrooms. “Bringing young people into close contact with these objects,” Wesson said, can give students a sense of “what it was like to be alive in a long past era in a very personal way.”

In addition to Wesson, the first panel featured Rose Dawson, executive director of the Alexandria Library; Annie Evans, director of education and outreach at New American History; Karla Thompson, director of learning design at Maryland Public Television; and Sarah Whelan, K-12 social studies specialist at Alexandria City Public Schools. It was moderated by Lisa Guernsey, senior director of education policy, birth through 12th grade, at New America.

The second panel featured Tricia Walker, local history and special collections librarian of the Alexandria Library; Charlie Williams IV, middle school social studies teacher for District of Columbia Public Schools; Jeryl Payne, fourth grade teacher for Alexandria City Public Schools; Annie Evans, director of education and outreach for New American History and was moderated by me, Jazmyne Owens, prek-12 senior policy advisor at New America.

This panel started with a recounting of the August 1939 library sit-in event and was followed by a walkthrough of the primary source materials that the Alexandria Library has been digitizing. Walker talked through how the library’s research guide is organized, how to navigate through the website, and where to find some of the most sought-after primary sources related to the library sit-in.

Both Payne and Williams agreed that the primary source materials and complimentary resource guide are valuable to supporting their students' learning of history, and for building critical thinking skills. Evans also highlighted how important the work is of digitizing archival materials so that scholarship is more accessible in the PreK-12 space.

Evans highlighted the importance of accessing digital primary source materials given the efforts to erase and minimize important civil rights and U.S. history. She said, “It kills me to see people weaponizing history education and pushing back on the people who are so dedicated to working with young people to use resources like this to really engage kids and make them fall in love with history the way my 5th grade teacher did.”

For elementary school students and teachers, Payne said that digital primary source materials makes history real for her students. She said that when history becomes real for students, they keep that knowledge with them and share it around to friends and family. “Photographs allow everyone into the conversation. Everybody can see expressions on faces,” Payne said. “It brings everyone into the conversation regardless of their reading level, or level of speaking english.” She added: “it definitely makes the learning real for them.”

For middle school students and teachers, Williams shared that digital primary source materials offer a broader lens into the civil rights movement and U.S. history and give students a chance to see themselves as a part of history. He said, “Most kids know the civil rights movement from Montgomery on. They don’t understand that things were happening in the late ‘30s and ‘40s and building up, so that [history] naturally catches their attention.” He also mentioned that as a DC public school teacher, working just across the Potomac River from Alexandria, his students are already familiar with some history in the area, but primary sources materials help them to better understand what the perspectives of students like themselves might have been during important moments in history.

The event ended with a sneak peak at a new digital mapping project underway in partnership with Albemarle High School (also in Virginia), the Virginia Geographic Alliance, New American History, and New America that will provide teachers with map-based stories and “bread crumb” trails that students can click on to trace the path that African American students had to take to gain access to public libraries during the era of Jim Crow segregation. The digital resources created for that project, funded by Virginia Humanities, will be available to teachers by the fall.

We are grateful to our panelists for sharing their expertise. All of the resources shared in the webinar can be accessed below:

• Alexandria Library’s 1939 Sit-in resources
• Alexandria Library’s 1939 Sit-in research guide
• Alexandria Library’s 1939 Sit-In Google drive folder
• New American History Learning Resources
• Teaching with Primary Sources, a program at the Library of Congress
• ThinkPort via Maryland Public Television
• New America’s 1939 Library Sit-in Project
• Recording of the April 22 event

Correction published 12:05 p.m. on May 20, 2025: This blog post has been changed to reference Virginia Humanities, which was previously incorrectly referred to as the Virginia Humanities Foundation.