All Labor Has Dignity: An Inquiry into the Memphis Sanitation Strike

The complexities of the civil rights movement are rarely presented in elementary social studies. Year after year, students repeat the same decontextualized "I Have a Dream" crafts and assignments, tasks that do little to help students understand the country's history of racism or the racial dynamics of today. Instead of perpetuating the myth that a select handful of heroic figures made change on their own, educators should situate these figures within collective struggles for justice and interrogate what these figures stood for and stood against. In this article, the author contends that teachers can challenge the oversimplified narrative of Martin Luther King Jr. typically taught in elementary schools through an inquiry into the Memphis Sanitation Strike. Designed for students in grades 3-5, this inquiry includes children's literature and a four-part primary source investigation following the C3 inquiry arc.