Teaching the JAH
The JAH editors select two articles each year to be featured in the Teaching. The Teaching the JAH project creates online “teaching packages” that demonstrate how new JAH articles might be used in teaching U.S. history. Each package includes a targeted article, brief comments from the article’s author, and a set of annotated documents intended for classroom use. Depending on the targeted articles, the document sets might include exercises, illustrations, photographs, video clips, audio clips, and excerpts from other primary historical texts. The packages also include links to other history-related web sites that hold additional relevant materials.
December 2008 Installment
“Worth a Lot of Negro Votes”: Black Voters, Africa, and the 1960 Presidential Campaign
When John F. Kennedy telephoned Coretta Scott King to express sympathy for her jailed husband, he had little idea that his two-minute call would move to center stage in the 1960 presidential election. That call, argues, has obscured Kennedy’s broader efforts to secure the support of black voters while not alienating white voters in the no longer “solid South.” Kennedy drew on the growing transnational relationship black Americans had with an ancestral continent undergoing its own freedom struggles, revealing that he was more interested in Africa than in civil rights. Africa, the newest frontier for Kennedy, became a place where he could show his Cold War credentials, find common ground with black American voters, and strengthen his chances to win the presidency.
