In June 2026, LFI received a subgrant of the Lewis-Houghton Initiative through the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources Regional Program’s Southern Region at Middle Tennessee State University. The LHI grant appropriated funds to the LOC to support the development of education projects that analyze the Library’s creative arts-related primary sources to teach and learn about history, civics, and/or democracy at the secondary education level.
Our approach moves beyond rote memorization of landmark cases by encouraging students to engage with authentic sources, make meaningful connections, and understand how Supreme Court rulings have shaped and continue to shape American society. Students will review a landmark case, study primary sources, and analyze poetry to create a fuller picture of the impacts of each ruling. We have created an introductory lesson, a concluding lesson, and five other lessons targeting specific landmark Supreme Court cases where students can truly understand the societal, cultural, and emotional impacts that these cases had.
These lessons are sponsored in part by the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources Southern Region at Middle Tennessee State University. Content created & featured in partnership with the TPS Southern Region does not indicate an endorsement by the Library of Congress.
About the Lessons
Policy (Landmark Supreme Court Cases)
The featured cases are chosen because they appear in the state benchmarks, clarifications, End-of-Course Assessments, AP exams, or Florida Civic Literacy Examination. Students in Florida are expected to know the impacts of over fifty Supreme Court cases by the time they graduate high school. We wanted to offer a deeper way to evaluate the impacts by studying art and images from the time of the rulings. All of our case summaries come from landmarkcases.org, created by Street Law and the Supreme Court Historical Society, and are available in varied reading levels.
Poetry
Each lesson features poetry or song lyrics that will be analyzed along with primary sources and a landmark Supreme Court case. These poems are either from the time of the ruling or share similar themes and subject matter. Prominent poets like Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou can be found in the lessons as well. These poems are meant to shed light on some of the lasting effects that rulings had on society. They give emotional depth to these cases.
Primary Sources
The primary sources in each lesson are meant to help students immerse themselves in these moments of history. The images, photographs, and oral histories offer additional perspectives on the landmark cases, showing the implications that resulted from the rulings. All of the primary sources featured come from the Library of Congress. Every lesson features at least two.
Teaching The Lessons
Teachers have a lot of flexibility with these lessons. Accompanying student modules are available on civics360.org, where students can work through the lessons independently. Teachers can also mix and match, choosing to teach the introduction lesson whole-group, and allow students to independently work through the rest of the modules, or teachers could lead students through all of the lessons and have them work on a culminating project (the conclusion lesson) in small groups.