Introduce the concept of multiple perspectives and point of view, reminding students that history is made up of individual people who may have vastly different ways of remembering and making sense of events in the past.
Introduce oral history as a type of historical evidence. If you are not familiar with teaching oral history, you and your students can review the Making Sense of Oral History guide from History Matters.
Ask students to listen to the oral histories and read the interviews about the planning and the execution of the Greensboro sit-ins (Howard, McNeil I, McNeil II, Brandon, Bess, Johns, and Tisdale; all located in the Object in History section).
Then ask students to compare and contrast these perspectives. They should consider the following questions:
Whose account of the events do you trust? Why?
Why might the accounts differ?
What elements of the story can you be sure of?
How has comparing and contrasting these accounts changed your understanding of the Greensboro sit-ins?
Why might historians use such first hand accounts as evidence when there are inconsistencies in the way people remember?
What questions do you still have about the sit-ins?
Finally, compile a list of the students' remaining questions. As a class select the best two or three questions to submit to the Forum.
