The Modern Era and Human Rights

In 1948, with the Holocaust and World War II fresh in memory, the nations of the world tried to write down the rights every person deserves. This unit asks: how have people created more inclusive societies that value human rights?

Header landmark: United Nations General Assembly Hall — New York

In 1945, most of Africa and much of Asia were still ruled by Europe. Within thirty years, dozens of new nations had raised their own flags.

Header landmark: Black Star Gate (Independence Arch) — Accra, Ghana

Mahatma Gandhi led hundreds of millions of people against the most powerful empire on earth without an army. His weapon was nonviolent civil disobedience.

Header landmark: Sabarmati Ashram — Ahmedabad, India

In the United States, segregation laws denied Black Americans the rights the nation promised to all. Ordinary people organized to change that.

Header landmark: Lincoln Memorial — site of the March on Washington

When Americans saw police dogs and fire hoses turned on children on their own television screens, the Civil Rights Movement gained support no speech alone could win.

Header landmark: Edmund Pettus Bridge — Selma, Alabama

In South Africa, a white minority government divided every person by race. Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison fighting it, and walked out to become president.

Header landmark: Robben Island prison — Cape Town

In 1994, in just one hundred days, about 800,000 people were murdered in Rwanda while the world looked away. Today you examine how divisions created under colonial rule were turned into genocide.

Header landmark: Kigali Genocide Memorial — Rwanda

This unit has followed movements that expanded rights and events that destroyed them. Today you categorize them as a historian and look for the patterns.

Header landmark: Triptych: Sabarmati Ashram · Lincoln Memorial · Robben Island

At eleven years old, Malala Yousafzai began writing an online diary about girls being banned from school. Technology carried her voice from a valley in Pakistan to the entire world.

Header landmark: Swat Valley school — Mingora, Pakistan

In 2011, protesters across the Arab world used phones and social media to demand rights. Their posts, and the governments' responses, give historians a flood of evidence from many perspectives.

Header landmark: Tahrir Square — Cairo

You began this unit by reading the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. You end it by writing a declaration of your own, built from the evidence of people who fought for those rights.

Header landmark: United Nations headquarters with the flag row — New York