The Oscar-nominated film Selma tells the story of the 1965 voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama – a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights era.

"It just happened that this year was a very sensitive time in our country’s history where people were open to hearing the message that many people have been trying to express for decades, some would say centuries," said Tammy Garnes, Director of Director of Education and Understanding for ARRAY.

The director of Selma, Ava DuVernay, started the organization almost 10 years ago. With the surge in online learning due to the pandemic, the group hopes its teaching guide will help connect the past to the present and become a tool for people to use in their communities.

"Can you be that same change like a John Lewis, like a Martin Luther King Jr., in your community today? We give you lots of different ways to do that," Garnes said.

She adds it can be especially helpful for teachers who are not Black and may not know exactly how to approach the subject matter.

"[I've heard] 'I’m a white woman. I don’t know if I can teach this kind of material.' I think what the learning companions did for her was breakdown that barrier and give her a starting place for a conversation," Garnes said.

To create the guide, ARRAY partnered with the Ron Clark Academy in Atlanta — known for some of its innovative teaching styles.

"A lot of times our typical textbooks kind of rush through some of the most important parts of history or skips it all together," said Pamela Haskins.

Haskins is a teacher and contributed to the companion through one of the video lessons called "i-Voted."

"The stuff we’re dealing with right now in 2020, started in 1865 and beyond," Haskins said.

Since young people often play a key role in social justice movements, array also made sure it got input on the curriculum from two college students who are also activists. 

"[We used] very big images, a lot of text but broken up, colors.  We were really thinking about going through this online platform," said Mahira Raihan, a Senior at the University of Southern California studying Media Arts.

"You learn about history, not so you can learn about history in a vacuum, but so you can understand why the present is the way it is, so you know things like voter suppression, protesting, inequality, all these things are going on right outside our windows," said Jaelen Ogadhoh, a senior journalism and philosophy student at Emerson College.

The lessons cover everything from how to hold a successful protest to understanding gerrymandering and how votes are calculated through the Electoral College.

"We are empowering them. We’re giving them the facts so that they can arm themselves with truth," Haskins said.

As a teacher, she believes that is the greatest gift she and other educators can give.

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