In the United States, youth of color experience a disproportionate amount of human rights abuses. At the systemic level, they encounter emotional and physical trauma and violence through interactions across several institutions, including the incarceration and immigration systems. This experience of trauma is exacerbated when one lacks the language to articulate that a wrong has taken place. Human rights education supplies a vocabulary for demarcating between right and wrong and can empower those who have experienced trauma to reclaim their own human rights. Despite this, youth across the United States still lack access to human rights language and education. There have been few comprehensive studies within the country which measure basic human rights knowledge of youth of secondary school age. This research overview will examine this knowledge deficit. It will also explore how art education and human rights education are interconnected and help further community knowledge of rights. Lastly, this research overview will discuss selected international case studies of art-based education tools and practices that have been used to measure human rights knowledge in youth communities.