Define what civil rights actually are. Students need to understand that civil laws exist to provide structure for communities and create boundaries of acceptable behavior.
Discuss the leaders and notable figures of the Civil Rights Movement, allowing students to place historic names into a real context. Of course, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. were key figures, but the organizations and political leaders of the era (JFK, SNICC, NAAPC etc.) should also be covered.
Explain the terms "Jim Crow" and the "Reconstruction Period" to provide context for the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
Teach students about the landmark legal case Brown vs. the Board of Education, which made desegregation an enforceable law. Discussing the desegregation of schools in a classroom environment provides a great opportunity for visual references. Students can see the integrated and diverse classroom around them and imagine the vast differences a similar classroom would have had during the 1940s and 1950s.
Show students the different methods of protest used during the Civil Rights Movement using video from the time as well as classroom demonstration. Students could perform their own "sit-in" and role-play passive resistance.
Talk about the results of the Civil Rights Movement and the effect it has on the world today. Provide examples of civil rights struggles taking place currently and how the movement of the 1950s and 1960s created a basis for all future civil rights issues in America.