At the DC History Center, expanding access to educational experiences is central to our mission. We work to connect with students and teachers across the city, build new entry points for learning, and create resources that reflect and celebrate the full diversity of DC communities. Today, we’re excited to launch the Home Rule Curriculum, a free, four-lesson educational resource that helps teachers and students explore Washington, DC’s long, people-powered path to self-government.
This new DC History Center curriculum is entirely free to download. At a time when many high-quality instructional materials live behind paywalls, removing that barrier is both a practical choice and a values-driven one.
The goal is not only to teach history, but to help students recognize their role in shaping civic life in DC—a city where questions of representation, autonomy, and community decision-making remain part of daily experience.
Cover of the “Home Rule issue,” Washington History, Fall 2024
How the Curriculum Came to Be
This project reflects core DC History Center values: access, dignity, and community. Built from the fall 2024 issue of Washington History—which focused on Home Rule—the curriculum draws on historical scholarship and our archival collections to highlight the voices, debates, and organizing traditions that have shaped civic life in DC. Designed with teacher input, it offers flexible, ready-to-use activities that connect past struggles to present questions about who holds power in our city.
Throughout development, one theme remained clear: progress takes time. The path to Home Rule was driven by community organizing, political resistance, constitutional debate, and, above all, persistence.
Cover to the Home Rule Curriculum Teacher’s Guide.
Inside the Four Lessons
Across four lesson experiences, students encounter DC’s path to Home Rule from multiple angles: constitutional debate, grassroots organizing, individual leadership, and long-term struggle. Together, these lessons help young people see how local history, national politics, and everyday activism intersect in shaping civic life in DC.
We Want to Free DC from Our Enemies Students explore DC’s political status in the mid-20th century and how residents mobilized against limited self-governance. Drawing on grassroots organizing during the Free DC Movement, students examine varying perspectives on Home Rule before developing persuasive civic campaigns that connect historical struggles to current DC issues. This lesson helps learners understand how local activism has long shaped policy and belonging in the District.
A New Kind of Congress This lesson introduces the evolving constitutional and political arguments that defined DC self-government, from the nation’s founding to the Home Rule Act of 1973. Students compare the perspectives of major political figures with grassroots voices who challenged federal authority. Through close reading and source analysis, they assess how federal control has shaped life in DC and how competing visions continue to influence the city’s status.
Home Rule Heroes (Biographies) Students learn about the distinct roles that Josephine Butler, Arrington Dixon, Walter Fauntroy, and Colbert I. King played in advancing Home Rule and broader struggles for racial equity. Through short readings and discussion, they examine how organizers, clergy, policymakers, and journalists use different tools to advocate for change. The lesson concludes with students creating a “Home Rule Hero” trading card, synthesizing research into a visual representation of each leader’s legacy.
DC’s Struggle for Self-Determination (Timeline) Tracing key events from 1788 to the present, this lesson helps students explore major shifts in representation, voting rights, and federal oversight in DC. Working with a timeline, learners identify why pivotal moments mattered and how they shaped residents’ daily lives, civil rights, and local activism. Students then evaluate successes and setbacks across eras, making connections to present-day movements for DC statehood and self-determination.
A page from the Home Rule Heroes lesson plan.
If learners walk away with a deeper sense of how change happens—through organizing, perseverance, and care for community—we consider that a major success.
We invite educators, families, and community partners to download and explore the Home Rule Curriculum, share how you are using it, and tell us what resonates. Your feedback will help shape future lessons and programs.
👉 Download the Home Rule Curriculum 📧 Questions or ideas? Email education@dchistory.org
Together, we can keep DC’s civic story welcoming, rigorous, and alive—grounded in history, open to everyone, and focused on what we build next.
Azia Richardson-Williams is the Education Coordinator at the DC History Center and a dual master’s student at George Washington University, where she studies public administration and art management. Originally from Florida, she previously taught 6th grade in Atlanta, Georgia, and brings a deep passion for education, community engagement, and the arts to her work in Washington, DC.