Thematic Teaching About Race and American Politics in a Seventh-Grade Social Studies Classroom

In this manuscript, we discuss a research study where our approach to thematic social studies teaching was implemented in a seventh-grade civics classroom. Our study was done within a large metropolitan area in the Southeast. Over the course of the Fall 2024 semester, the civics teacher completed five units to thematically teach the public issue of voting rights issues for Black Americans from Reconstruction to the present. The activities and assessments were shaped by Dr. King’s scholarship on racial literacy and Dr. Journell’s scholarship on political thinking. Drs. King and Journell’s scholarship were utilized to see how students articulate, if at all, how the branches of U.S. government at the local, state, and federal levels have been employed to interfere with and in some cases protect Black Americans’ voting rights.