Book — Non-fiction. By Clint Smith. 2021. 336 pages.
An examination of how monuments and landmarks represent — and misrepresent — the central role of slavery in U.S. history and its legacy today.
Continue reading
Teaching ideas and discussion questions for How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith.
Continue reading
Teaching Activity. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca.
Students discover “echoes of enslavement” in their own state — discrete sites of remembering, forgetting, honoring, lying, or distorting — in this lesson based on the book How the Word Is Passed by Clint Smith.
Continue reading
Teaching Activity. By Cierra Kaler-Jones.
In this lesson, students use key excerpts from How the Word Is Passed by Clint Smith as inspiration for a project where they tell their and their loved ones’ stories.
Continue reading
Book — Fiction. By Kelly McWilliams. 2023. 320 pages.
This young adult novel introduces readers to the history of slavery and its legacy today, challenging the Lost Cause narrative offered to visitors at most plantations (prison labor camps).
Continue reading
Book — Non-fiction. By Bettina Aptheker. 2006. 375 pages.
An uncompromising account of one woman’s personal and political transformation, and a fascinating portrayal of the McCarthy trials, the Vietnam War, and the rise of the women’s movement.
Continue reading
Book — Non-fiction. Edited by Robert Cohen, with a foreword by Tom Hayden and an afterword by Robert Reich. 2014. 320 pages.
Continue reading
Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. Rethinking Schools. 8 pages.
A role play on the history of the Vietnam War that is left out of traditional textbooks.
Continue reading
Book — Non-fiction. By Howard Zinn. Introduction by Cornel West. 2011. 192 pages.
Includes some never before published writings, speeches and interviews that illustrate the evolution and fundamental principles around the story of race in the United States.
Continue reading
Website. Interactive timeline that connects moments in history related to the prison industrial complex.
Continue reading
Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. Rethinking Schools. 16 pages.
In this lesson, students explore many of the real challenges faced by abolitionists with a focus on the American Anti-Slavery Society.
Continue reading
Article. By Laura Shelton. Rethinking Schools. 2022.
A 5th- and 6th-grade teacher asks her students to wrestle with what “identity” and “intersectionality” mean.
Continue reading
Film. Directed by Patrick Sammon and Bennett Singer. 2020. 82 min. and 35 min. versions
The award-winning PBS documentary Cured chronicles a pivotal moment in LGBTQ+ history: the early 1970s campaign to remove the diagnosis of homosexuality from the American Psychiatric Association’s manual of mental disorders.
Continue reading
Book — Non-fiction. By Imani Perry. 2025. 256 pages.
A meditation on the color blue and its fascinating role in Black history and culture.
Continue reading
Book — Non-fiction. Edited by Kathy Roberts Forde and Sid Bedingfield. 2021. 360 pages.
A look at roles of the white press and Black press in the Jim Crow South.
Continue reading
Book — Non-fiction. By Debbie Levy. 2025. 288 pages.
The story of John Scopes, a Tennessee teacher who was found guilty of teaching about evolution, and the nationwide debate that followed about what students should learn in school.
Continue reading
Teaching Guide. By Linda Christensen. Rethinking Schools., 2017, 2nd edition. 314 pages.
Lessons for teaching a range of writing genres while addressing social justice themes.
Continue reading
Teaching Guide. Edited by Dyan Watson, Jesse Hagopian, Wayne Au. 2018. Rethinking Schools. 368 pages.
Essays, teaching activities, role plays, poems, and artwork, designed to illuminate the movement for Black students' lives, the school-to-prison-pipeline, Black history, gentrification, intersectional Black identities, and more.
Continue reading
Teaching Activity.
This people’s tribunal begins with the premise that a heinous crime is being committed as tens of millions of people’s lives are in danger due to COVID-19. But who was responsible for this crime? Students weigh the evidence.
Continue reading
Film. Directed by Vicki Abeles. 2024. 89 minutes.
Explores misconceptions about the role math plays in our lives, who can learn it, and how it should be taught.
Continue reading
Podcast. Hosted by Chenjerai Kumanyika. 2024.
Uncovers the hidden history of the largest police force in the world — from its roots in slavery, to rival police gangs battling across the city, to everyday people who resisted every step of the way.
Continue reading
Book — Non-fiction. By Studs Terkel. 2004. 640 pages.
Interviews with people from all walks of life about their work.
Continue reading
Article. Interview of Howard Zinn by Bill Moyers. 2009.
Book excerpt of Howard Zinn on The People Speak and a range of topics in U.S. history and contemporary issues.
Continue reading
Teaching Guide. Edited by Bill Bigelow and Tim Swinehart. Rethinking Schools. 2014. 400 pages.
Articles, student readings, and teaching activities to understand environmental problems and imagine solutions.
Continue reading
